WFB: Bush not all that conservative

What on Earth could possibly be in that book that could sink Rumsfeld. I mean, what is there that we don't know that somehow dwarfs what's already public knowledge? Did Ricks find out Rumsfeld shot a man in Reno just to watch him die or something?

Interesting statement by Buckley. Also interesting how much conservatism has in common with communism-- both are invincible ideologies that have never actually been implemented.

WFB has a point, of course, that there is no Burkean or Oakshotean theory of governance that would lead one to predict the actions of these Republican leaders. But maybe conservatism should be defined by the actions of those who call themselves and are embraced by conservatives (WFB's analysis didn't emerge until after the 2004 election, until after the president's approval ratings hit 30%).

What's more, the "extravagant domestic spending" has been astonishingly unproductive. If it had been on, say, effective health care, or top-level education, or funding studies for alternative sources of energy than oil, or some new kind of super-duper roads that decrease transportation costs, or new levees, or something, you could at least argue that this spending would be an investment that would to some degree pay for itself. Tough to make that case for the prescription drug benefit as enacted.

So, in conclusion, I think that the Republican leaders' actions demonstrate the ultimate bankruptcy of conservatism, but have nothing to say about the utility of government spending. Perhaps a conservative will be able to share a different view.>

Oh, sorry if I was unclear, Rod, I didn't mean to be expressing doubt about your source's assertion, just astonishment. I mean, are there any humans of sound mind, not employed by the Pentagon or the govt, who think that Rummy's doing a heck of a job? Torture, prisoner abuse, failure to plan for the postwar scene, misreading and stovepiping of intelligence, failure to provide basic needs (electricity, stability)for Iraqis, disregard of expertise on nationbuilding, closing the Pentagon office responsible for nationbuilding... What on Earth could there be in that book that would make people say, "OK, _now_ he's crossed the line!" Honestly, it must be some hooker he killed back in the 70s or something.

Wouldn't you love to read the postwar plan that Rumsfeld had? Were there any descriptions as to how to provide stability after the fall of Saddam? Or was it more, "Well, we'll go in there, we'll be greeted as liberators, and everyone will love us practically as much as I love me. We'll have a pile of new oil, we'll find a bunch of WMD, democracy will spontaneously spread across all the world's strategically important countries, the axis of evil countries will disarm, the eschaton will be immanentized, and everything will pretty much just be awesome. Love, Don.">

Conservatives are electing conservatives who aren't following a conservative agenda. That doesn't mean that they're following a "liberal" agenda. It means that they stink at forming and executing effective policies that do the job in an efficient and effective way.

Bush might not be a conservative, but he's a Republican-elected by Republicans. He calls himself a "compassionate conservative" and gets a pass at election time by Republicans.

If you don't like him and don't think that he's doing a good job, then don't vote for him.>

I haven't discovered anything new about this President that I didn't know prior to the last election. I'm amazed that so many conservatives are just waking to the idea that Bush stinks at managing domestic spending and has a ineffective foreign policy. Dah?>

Daniel Larison: "The relationship between GOP governance and conservatism is that of a con-man and the Bible he uses to sucker people. We would not, I hope, discredit the Bible on the basis that it has been used by a fair share of shysters over the years."

I see your point, Daniel, but to further the discussion-- not all pastors & priests are shysters. One must look long and hard to find conservative politicians who adhere to the tenets of what powerless nerds at typwriters consider to be the Platonic essense of conservatism. Where is this conservative governance that intellectuals pine for?

Now, I'm open to the view that I'm overlooking some terrific governors, or misunderstanding Reagan's legacy, or something. But true conservative governance seems, to me, to be as elusive as was true communist governance for its true believers.>

Regarding Fiasco, Prof. Bainbridge has the generic book description up in one of his posts. From the description, it doesn't sound all that revelatory, actually, but maybe it will bring together a number of threads of criticism:

">http://www.professorbainbridge.com/2006/07/fiasco.html#more>

Thanks for your response, Mr. Larison, to my comments that, now that I re-read them, could easily have led you to express irritation with me rather than honesty about today's conservatives.

Now, it's worth noting that any political party will run afoul of its ideologues. Politics is the art of compromise; blogging, somewhat less so.

But the thing is, conservatism professes to be aimed at decreasing the reach of the state, particularly on economic issues. And Republicans, when they were out of power, thrived for decades on tarring Dems as "tax-and-spend" liberals.

But the GOP seems to be the "increase-spending-and-cut-taxes" party, the party of free lunches. It's not just that the party runs afoul of its ideology; it's that the bulk of its actions while in power don't reflect this ideology that seemed so good when it was purely abstract.

Taxes should be maintained at rates that encourage economic growth and allow for the maintainance of the desired level of social services. I don't get the cartoon version of conservatism that fetishizes "tax cuts" uber alles. Surely there are times when taxes need or ought not be cut-- maybe, for instance, when you're running up the largest debt in the history of Western civilization.

All I can think is that it's a political ploy-- it's fun to be in power, it's fun to promise tax cuts regardless of wheter it's sound policy, so, tax cuts & little American flags it is.>

I guess I'm from the old school that considers parties the vehicles to implement policy. The GOP is primarly defined by conservatism. The democracts are primarily defined by liberalism. While each can be subgrouped, I generally fail to see the relevancy of debating whether a Republican is a true conservative. As far as political science goes, the utility of the conservative label is only useful in so much as it represents a body scholarship. The conservatism of today I see being increasingly influenced by libertarianism. Even those who lament the influence of neoconservatism are speaking of an intellectual movement gaining ground in the conservative movement.>

Republicans have become "borrow and spend." I haven't read the books, but I bet that's not a part of "conservativism."

I don't know what Buckley said before the election. I just know that the President who took us to war and managed it so incompetently is still in office and was put there by people who call themselves "conservatives."

These words only have meaning to me in how they affect the real world. In the real world, Republicans call themselves "conservative" and card carrying Republicans vote incompetent people into office.

It's time to forget what politicians say and fire them if they aren't doing a good job.>

One of the main flaws in the attempt to implement a conservative "revolution" via the GOP has been that the party, once ensconced in central government, soon discovered that the easiest way to perpetuate itself in Washington was to buy off as many interests as possible. Suddenly being the governing party intoxicated many in the majority, and I think they lost track of why they were there in the first place. This illness became acute once the GOP effectively controlled all branches of government, as there was really nothing to discipline the majority or check the indulgences of the moment. Being the party in power in time of war seems to have overwhelmed better judgement of conservatives who only a few years before had shuddered at the flippant invocation of executive privilege and the abuse of presidential powers. Some of was apparently cynical posturing, but I know that these were very real issues for their constituents at the time. With the GOP, never rule out self-destructive cynical manipulation of faithful voters. That being said, I think their time in power is what corrupted and changed many of them; the Iraq war and their deference to the President in time of war drove made them lose all sense of proportion.

On average, the post-'94 GOP-controlled Congress outspent its immediate Democratic predecessor significantly, a fact that was covered up nicely by the economic expansion. A key problem behind this, which is inescapable no matter what your views are or what your party affiliation is, is the concentration of power and the vast amounts of revenue that the central government controls--it was to the end of depriving the central government of such massive funding and weakening its grip that tax cuts became a central theme for philosophical conservatives. If the government had less largesse at its command, so the theory went, the less power over states and communities it could ultimately wield. The economists were then drafted to make tax cuts seem responsible and sound, whereupon a libertarian ethic of maximising growth and getting money back in the pocket became the main line of argument. Even as late as 2000 you could still find Bush reciting slogans that Karl Rove had had him memorise about "starving the beast," meaning depriving the government of revenue, but he never had any intention of starving any beast (he's a compassionate fellow, after all).

The only problem with this idea was that spending never declined, which made it impossible to diminish the power of the central government, and supply-side theory was right enough that it ended up making the tax cuts of the '80s into a windfall for the feds. That Republicans spent many years in the '90s using this as an argument in favour of their position (tax cuts don't reduce revenue, so there's no need to fear massive spending cuts!) showed how far gone they already were.

You're absolutely right that the GOP in government has simply abandoned fiscal restraint in budgeting matters and lost any concept of limited government or federal deregulation as political goods in themselves. I suppose the best answer is that there are varying degrees to which members of the GOP have sold out to the big-spending, big-government agenda. Some, like Hunter and Paul, have held fast to the same principles that animated them all along, while others have gone along more grudgingly but many of Mr. Bush's policies out of an unfortunate sense of party loyalty (many of the Republicans now breaking with Mr. Bush on immigration are those who have become fed up with the go-along-to-get-along approach) and still others who have been enthusiasts for everything the President has proposed. The first group is very small, there is still some hope for the second group's chastening and rehabilitation in this election year, while the third group deserves to go down to defeat for what it has done to the good name of conservatism.>

Daniel, some close relatives of mine have been conservatives for decades, and feel deeply let down by what's gone on the past 5 years. So, this can't be the funnest thing in the world for you, so thanks for being willing to go over it.

Now, history hasn't "proven" that conservatives can't govern, any more than history had "proven" in 1200 that Christian countries were forever to remain a wussy backwater, or in 1890 that East Asians were incapable of fathoming industrialization.

The question is, are today's conservatives like communists in 1990, or like... um... conservatives in December 1964?

You wrote: "That Republicans spent many years in the '90s using this as an argument in favour of their position (tax cuts don't reduce revenue, so there's no need to fear massive spending cuts!) showed how far gone they already were."

This might be at the root of our disagreement, if we decide we disagree. The problem, to me, is that Republicans didn't want to do the heavy lifting of making tax cuts fiscally responsible. They didn't want to fight politically difficult battles to change Americans' minds about the level of services that the government provides. So they continued to rail against government largesse, but would cut only relatively insignificant amounts from programs that primarily benefit the poor and the young. No cuts to the largest, most expensive, and most popular programs.

I was in HS in 1994, and my political memory doesn't go a whole lot further back than that. I have seen a Democratic president work with a Republican Congress to balance the budget responsibly. The whole "tax-and-spend Dems" charge means nothing to me. I genuinely believe, based on what I've seen in the past 10+ years, that if the Dems controlled Congress & the presidency, we'd be in much better hands, fiscally, then we are today. I may be setting myself up for the same kind of disappointment you feel today.

Now, it's hard for me to disprove the thesis that, even if they were more concerned with good governance initially, Dems after 10 years in power would be every bit as bad as the GOP today. Maybe Democrats just lack that killer instinct to try to restructure Washington for partisan gain like Gingirch, Delay, Abramoff, et all did with the K Street Project. Or maybe it just hadn't occurred to them.

Off the top of my head, I don't feel that Democratic "applause lines" are as dangerous as Republican ones. "Tax cuts uber alles" and "let's find us some enemies to smite!" are much more dangerous (and more difficult to caricature in an effective way politically) than "let's create conditions that allow good jobs at good wages". But that might just be because it's psychologically easier to see the speck in my brother's eye than the plank in my own.

You wrote: "supply-side theory was right enough that it ended up making the tax cuts of the '80s into a windfall for the feds."

Umm... well, let's agree to argue over that one at some later time.

Also, here's some good news for conservatives on the anti-tax front, bad news on the rule of law front.
">http://www.tnr.com/blog/theplank?pid=26506>

It's about an unwillingness to make tough choices. If we want to start wars and build nations, then we need pay for that choice. If we aren't willing to pay for it, then we shouldn't make it a priority.

If we want to live in a society where the government helps the weakest among us(single mothers with children and the mentally/physically challenged), then we have to pay for it. If not, we should say that it's OK in America for people to go hungry or die from medical neglect and enjoy our tax cuts.

If we want to live in a society where the people(central government)contribute fair share to the advancement of science, then we have to pay for it. If not, we should let private corporations figure out how to do it and enjoy our tax cuts.

It's about making choices. My family makes them on a daily basis to manage a budget. Why should we expect less from our elected officials?>

I've no background in economics, but I remember reading that deficits lead to inflation.

It's scary to know that our Vice President, Dick Cheney, would proclaim that "deficits don't matter."

Is that a conservative view? Deficits don't matter?>