Both John McCain and Barack Obama have moved rightward during the presidential campaign, confounding those who predicted the election would amount to a repudiation of conservatism.
“We’re still a right-of-center nation, not a left-of-center nation,” said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union. “Both candidates recognize what some of the analysts don’t recognize: If you want to win, you better be able to appeal to the conservative middle.”
Although it is customary for Democratic candidates to lean left during the primaries and then tack right during the general election, it is unusual for GOP candidates to grow more conservative as the campaign progresses. And yet on issue after issue, McCain continues to inch rightward.
His latest shift came on the question of offshore drilling, which he now supports after years of opposition. Earlier, McCain adopted more conservative stances on taxes and immigration.
Meanwhile, the scope of Obama’s rush to the right has angered many leftists who once swooned over his unapologetic liberalism. In the past month, Obama has become more conservative on trade, gun control, capital punishment, campaign finance, the terrorist surveillance program and the separation of church and state. Although he started his campaign on a promise to quickly withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, he set off alarm bells on the left last week by announcing that he would “refine my positions.”
“The blogoshpere’s gone insane,” said Amy Isaacs, national director of Americans for Democratic Action, a liberal advocacy group. “There is a bit of pragmatic politics that goes on and that is not new to Barack Obama.”
“Still, I do not believe this country is fundamentally a conservative country,” she added. “The so-called Reagan Democrats who, quite frankly, were not voting in their own self-interest will now be returning to their natural roots. That will bring us back to a more liberal perspective because it’s in people’s enlightened self-interest.”
Some analysts have argued that the Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006 foreshadowed a looming “conservative crackup.” Others say voters were punishing corrupt and hypocritical Republicans, not rejecting the tenets of conservatism.
“Americans, in the main, believe in capitalism and free enterprise,” Keene said. “They don’t believe in class warfare, higher taxes or bigger government. A party or a candidate who ignores those values has got trouble.”
Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, cautioned that most Americans “cannot even define ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ in rudimentary terms.”
“Of course conservatism is still viable at this somewhat more liberal moment, just as liberalism continued to make contributions during the Reagan years, for example,” Sabato said. “The tug of war between the two is part of the yin and yang of American politics.”
