Chris Stirewalt, the Examiner’s top-notch politics editor, worries that the sun may be setting on American-style conservatism and that the only recourse in the Obama era will be to concede the inevitable socialization of the economy, the permanence of the welfare state and the inevitability of a GOP gone all wet.
Such fatalism is a continual temptation for conservatives because we recognize the dark side of human nature is always there. But to determine if his fears are well-grounded, let’s take a short American political history tour, starting with FDR and the New Deal.
After that man won the White House twice and gained passage of most of his New Deal, lots of Republicans despaired of ever winning again. So in 1940 they went with a former Democrat, Wendell Wilkie, a Modern Republican who promised that he wouldn’t repeal the New Deal. He got whupped.
In 1944, they put another Modern Republican up against FDR, New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey, but it was at the height of WWII, Roosevelt had achieved Sainthood and Dewey got whupped. Four years later, people were sure Dewey would win it all. But Truman gave’em hell and Dewey got whupped again. He spent the rest of his life as a model for wedding cakes.
Finally, in 1952, a Modern Republican won. Ike was a non-political war hero who was courted by both parties. Once elected, he left the Democrats in Congress to run the country while he fought the Soviets, so nothing really changed.
In 1960, when Ike faced the two-term limit, the Democrats countered the vice-president who served under the GOP’s old war hero who would keep the welfare state with a young war hero who would keep the welfare state. JFK defeated Richard Nixon, the sweaty Veep, and the brief but glorious restoration of Camelot followed while Nixon sulked in Caifornia and Manhattan.
By this tme, the folks in the GOP base were sick and tired of losing, so these “tell-the-government-to-go-to-hell” conservatives, as you so aptly labeled them, temporarily displaced the Modern Republicans in 1964 and ran Arizonan Barry Goldwater, whose platform was the Conscience of a Conservative. He got whupped, but with a big difference – this time, for the first time since 1932, voters had a choice, not an echo.
Something else happened, too. The Modern Republicans – whose birth and power was mid-wifed by media friends like Roy Howard of Scripps-Howard Newspaper, Ogden Reid of the New York Herald Tribune and the Cowles brothers – fought back, arguing that modern life was too complex to go back to the old rugged individualism. The only way to win elections is to adopt “Me, Too” Moderate Republicanism that appeals to Independents and Centrists, they said. Their media friends cheered them on, as always.
Yes, it was the same old tired argument they’d made since the New Deal but it worked, just barely, in 1968, mainly because Nixon ran under false colors. He was allegedly “the new Nixon,” who would lead the “emerging Republican majority” to administer top-to-bottom reform of Washington. That sounded conservative. Tricky Dicky lied. (Not unlike Obama, I might add).
So the Modern Republicans gave us Nixon and Jerry Ford – who gave us detente, wage and price controls, Whip Inflation Now and The Pardon – and we all know how that decade of debacles ended.
Yet, the GOP base somehow survived Nixon, Ford and Carter, and in 1980 they finally got their man, Ronnie Reagan, who defeated the Soviets, cut taxes and made a modest start towards a restoration of limited government. Unfortunately, Morning in America became a sweltering mid-afternoon in 1988.
Reagan’s veep, George H.W. Bush, another Modern Republican, managed to sound just enough like a real conservative to get himself elected. He promptly returned to Modern Republican form, letting the Democrats raise taxes and spending. That got us Slick Willie, Monica and her blue dress, and Hillary of the multi-colored coat.
Now stay with me here because this is getting a little complicated: Slick Willie reached too far to the left with Hillary in her national health care phase in 1993, so Newt and the Conservative Base That Is The Heart of the GOP signed a Contract with America and swept into power in Congress in 1994, promising to resume what Reagan started by not merely telling the government where to go but actually sending it there, one or two departments at a time.
Tragically too many of the Contract wth America Republicans decided by 1996 that they really didn’t want to send the government to hell after all because they rather liked getting to spend billions, the perks of power made them forget why they came to Washington in the first place, and those earmarks were absolutely intoxicating, so why shouldn’t they keep their seats for life, just like the Democrats had done for decades?
They kept talking like they were still conservatives often enough to get re-elected, but it was all BS. They accepted W’s “Compassionate Conservativism” as insurance in 2000, but 9/11 came, time nearly ran out on the War in Iraq, the Conservative Base That is the Heart of the GOP got totally fed up with the whole disillusioning mess, and the Democrats got Congress back in 2006 and the White House in 2008.
Barack thinks he has a mandate for socialism. In fact, he won the White House in great part because millions of Baby Boomers saw voting for Obama as proof that they weren’t racists like their parents. And he promised a tax cut for 95 percent of us and a “net spending cut” in the federal budget, so it was “safe” to vote for him.
Two months into the Obama era and they are waking up to how terribly wrong they were about Obama. They thought they were getting an articulate, moderate liberal who wouldn’t do anything rash. Instead they got a radical Machiavel who is congenitally rash, especially with his socialist agenda for health care, energy and education.
So what does all this say about whether we see a rising or a setting sun for conservatism in America? Well, hopefully you noticed three recurring themes.
First, Modern Republicans, Democrats and the Mainstream Media are always telling the GOP to give up fighting for limited government, individual freedom and American Exceptionalism. That’s because what all three groups really want is for the conservatives to just shut up and go away, permanently, so they can get on with the Europeanization of America.
Second, it usually takes the conservatives – who, did I mention, are the heart and soul of the GOP Base – a while, but they typically find their voice about once a decade – Reagan in 80, Contract with America in 94 and Sarah Palin, briefly, in 2008.
Third, the GOP wins Congress when it promises to do things like term limits, tax cuts and honest judges, not when it pledges to leave Big Government alone or just make it work better. The only time the GOP wins the presidency is when it runs a war hero or a real conservative like Reagan, or somebody who does everything possible to sound like Reagan.
So where are we? Palin may or may not be the next heir to national conservative leadership, but two things are certain: First, the conservative Base of the GOP is undergoing a transformation from perpetually concerned citizens to millions of taxpayers who are mad as hell and who aren’t going to take it any more. If you doubt that, check out this Google map of the Tea Party Protests planned for April 15.
Second, the Republican Establishment in Washington, which is chronically susceptible to the Modern Republican Fallacy, should understand that the Tea Party Protests movement is not theirs by default. In fact, as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich warned a few days ago, the GOP risks losing this reinvigorated Conservative Base to a new third party if there is even a faint whiff of insincerity this time around. And God help the GOP if it gets back in power in 2010 and 2012 and then blows it, again.
Bottomline: Obama is so far over-reaching that he is radicalizing and coalescing the opposition with an intensity that exceeds even that seen in the days of Prop 13 in California. If the congressional GOP are faithful to their professed conservative principles and offer a credible program for delivering on those principles if returned to power, they will regain the House majority in 2010, or get close enough to it to put a Blue Dog Democrat in the Speaker’s chair.
And if that new House GOP draws the proper lines in the sand with Obama and the still-Democratic Senate, then the GOP presidential nominee will defeat Obama in 2012. That’s when the real revolution will begin.
You heard it here first.
