← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Sertorius
Thread ID: 20771 | Posts: 7 | Started: 2005-10-27
2005-10-27 04:47 | User Profile
New York Times
October 23, 2005
Op-Ed Columnist
The Savior of the Right By DAVID BROOKS
The economist Bruce Bartlett is a man of immense intellectual integrity. In an era when many commentators write whatever will affirm the prejudices of their own team, Bartlett follows his conscience and has paid a price. He was fired by his conservative think tank for being critical of President Bush.
Along the way, he's emerged as the most articulate spokesman for the view, which I hear all the time now, that Bush has betrayed conservatism. Bush, the argument goes, has radically increased spending on housing, community development, farm subsidies and a raft of big government programs. He's federalized the American education system. He's failed to seal the borders against illegal immigration. He's created a huge new entitlement program and exploded the deficits. He's increased government regulation and hasn't even nominated a true conservative for the Supreme Court.
It's a coherent case, but it's wrong. Bush hasn't abandoned conservatism; he's modernized and saved it. If we're going to have one of our periodic conservative crackups - which, in case you haven't noticed, is what we are in the middle of - let's at least learn the right lessons from the past 10 years.
Let's start by remembering where conservatism was before Bush came on the scene. In the late 1990's, after the failure of the government shutdown, conservatism was adrift and bereft of ideas.
Voters preferred Democratic ideas on issue after issue by 20-point margins. The G.O.P.'s foreign policy views were veering toward isolationism, its immigration policy was veering toward nativism, its social conservatism had crossed into censoriousness, and after it became clear that voters didn't want to slash government, its domestic policy had hit a dead end.
Almost single-handedly, Bush reconnected with the positive and idealistic instincts of middle-class Americans. He did it by recasting conservatism more significantly than anyone had since Ronald Reagan. He rejected the prejudice that the private sector is good and the public sector is bad, and he tried to use government to encourage responsible citizenship and community service. He sought to mobilize government so the children of prisoners can build their lives, so parents can get data to measure their school's performance, so millions of AIDS victims in Africa can live another day, so people around the world can dream of freedom.
"Government should help people improve their lives, not run their lives," Bush said. This is not the Government-Is-the-Problem philosophy of the mid-'90s, but the philosophy of a governing majority party in a country where people look to government to play a positive but not overbearing role in their lives.
In part because of Bush's shift, the G.O.P. has become the party of the middle class. Bush beat Kerry among whites earning between $30,000 and $75,000 a year by 22 percentage points.
This is not to say that Bush's approach to government is fully coherent. The tragedy of the Bush administration is that it never matched its unorthodox governing philosophy with an unorthodox political strategy... With his policies, Bush could have built a broad coalition across the right and center of American life. Unfortunately, his political strategy was a base strategy, which led him to reinforce the orthodox divisions between the parties.
Despite all the mistakes that have been made, it is nonetheless true that Bush has ennobled and saved American conservatism. As the G.O.P. moves forward, its leaders will break into two camps, post-Bush and pre-Bush. The post-Bush conservatives will build on the changes Bush introduced and refine his vision of using government positively to give people the tools to run their own lives. The pre-Bush conservatives will try to go back to the libertarianism and social conservatism of 1995.
The future belongs to post-Bush conservatives. If you want a glimpse of that future, read the speech David Cameron gave earlier this month, which electrified the British Conservative Party conference. Cameron has learned the essential lessons of Bushism. He offered a positive, governing conservatism. He talked about helping moms afford child care and helping the people of Darfur survive. "A modern, compassionate conservatism is right for our times," he declared.
He's right. In some ways future conservatives will be different from President Bush. But they will not succeed unless they absorb the essential lessons that are George Bush's best legacy. [url]http://www.econopundit.com/archive/2005_10_01_econopundit_archive.html#113016026146343389[/url] ================== Brooks must have been on drugs or drinking Neocon moonshine when he penned this crap.
2005-10-27 05:47 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Voters preferred Democratic ideas on issue after issue by 20-point margins. The G.O.P.'s foreign policy views were veering toward isolationism, its immigration policy was veering toward nativism, its social conservatism had crossed into censoriousness, and after it became clear that voters didn't want to slash government, its domestic policy had hit a dead end.
Almost single-handedly, Bush reconnected with the positive and idealistic instincts of middle-class Americans. He did it by recasting conservatism more significantly than anyone had since Ronald Reagan. He rejected the prejudice that the private sector is good and the public sector is bad, and he tried to use government to encourage responsible citizenship and community service. He sought to mobilize government so the children of prisoners can build their lives, so parents can get data to measure their school's performance, so millions of AIDS victims in Africa can live another day, so people around the world can dream of freedom..... [/QUOTE]Bush saved conservatism from itself and conservatives. Brooks says it better than any paleo could.
2005-10-27 07:59 | User Profile
What a nauseating editorial. :dung:
Jew Brooks claims that Bush single-handedly "saved" conservatism, but that's ridiculous. What Bush did was act as a willing puppet for those who perverted conservatism into something that conserves nothing at all -- except Judeocentric foreign policy, which has been intensified to the point where military force is being used to benefit Israel at US expense.
2005-10-28 12:21 | User Profile
LOL! :whstl:
2005-10-28 13:06 | User Profile
Gabrielle,
I don't agree. If this was happening to another country it would be funny. Seeing how it is happening here it isn't, unless one really has a sense of black humor. [QUOTE]Let's start by remembering where conservatism was before Bush came on the scene. In the late 1990's, after the failure of the government shutdown, conservatism was adrift and bereft of ideas.[/QUOTE] This came about either because Gingrich is an idiot or worse, he sabotage his "revolution". Now, this is funny. [QUOTE] Almost single-handedly, Bush reconnected with the positive and idealistic instincts of middle-class Americans. He did it by recasting conservatism more significantly than anyone had since Ronald Reagan. He rejected the prejudice that the private sector is good and the public sector is bad, and he tried to use government to encourage responsible citizenship and community service. He sought to mobilize government so the children of prisoners can build their lives, so parents can get data to measure their school's performance, so millions of AIDS victims in Africa can live another day, so people around the world can dream of freedom.[/QUOTE] Fred Barnes has a term for this: "big government conservatism". What an oxymoron by a moron. Brooks should call this pile of dog crap what it is. Neoconservatism.
This column shows the absolute bankruptcy of the so-called modern day "Conservatives" and their "ideas".
2005-10-28 21:03 | User Profile
Bush "saved" conservatism from actually putting in place spending cuts. He remade conservatism as one based on deficits and absurd amounts of spending.
Oh yeah, and nation-building, which he vowed to never do in 2000.
2005-11-09 01:59 | User Profile
Bushism is Jewism.
I remember reading Podhoretz the Elder or someone like that, pre-consciousness, declare that the two main things conservatives in the middle of last century got wrong were race and WWII.
It seemed a puzzling statement, but now I get why it was said. Brooks carries on the tradition.