The Young Curmudgeon: The Conservative Crack-Up Meme (UPDATED)

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March 24, 2005

The Conservative Crack-Up Meme (UPDATED)

There is an emerging consensus among intellectuals of the center-right that the conservative movement is falling apart under the stewardship of the Bush administration and the Republicans in Congress. I'd heard talk like this for awhile and generally found it to be premature, but in this week of Schiavo and steroids the idea is now pretty much inarguable.

This Andrew Sullivan piece for the London Times is an excellent overview of the internal contradictions facing the movement. Here are the paragraphs on social policy:

Gone are the days when Ronald Reagan said: “The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralised authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.”

The Republicans have plans to intervene directly in many people’s lives — spending billions on sexual abstinence education, marriage counselling, anti-drug propaganda, a war on steroids, mentoring programmes for former prisoners, and on and on. Got a problem? Bush’s big government is here to help.

Where Republicans once believed that states should have priority over the federal government, Bush has pushed in the opposite direction. Last week the religious right wanted a federal ruling to prevent a Florida woman in a persistent vegetative state from having her life-support cut off. This is a job for the federal government?

They have overruled state laws on medical cannabis and tried to prevent states from making their own policies on gay civil marriage. In the 1980s Republicans wanted to abolish the federal Department of Education, believing local control was best. Bush has all but ended local control, introduced national standards and added a huge increase in federal spending. No wonder Ted Kennedy, the arch liberal Democratic senator, voted for the bill.

How these contradictions can be resolved is hard to see. Is conservatism now paternalist, spending huge amounts of federal money to guide people into more moral lives? Or is it about restraining government so people can make up their own minds how to live?

This long blog post by Sullivan also makes some good points. He includes a pretty damning quote from Fred Barnes which makes it clear that in his view concerns over due process under the constitution are to be trumped by the religious Rights interpretation of morality (in the Schiavo case). Sullivan also includes a quote by Robert George, the ultra-conservative legal scholar who has become an instant hero to members of the Save Terri! faction, be they conservative or liberal. George blathers on about how concerns over federalism don't matter because the Schiavo case concerns someone civil rights, which are covered under federal statues. Sullivan has an excellent response:

And George's appeal to "civil rights" depends, of course, on what you mean by "civil rights." Where gays are concerned, George's belief is that gays have no fundamental civil rights with respect to marriage or even private consensual sex. George even believes that the government has a legitimate interest in passing laws that affect masturbation. But when he can purloin the rhetoric of "civil rights" to advance his own big government moralism, he will. The case also highlights - in another wonderful irony - how religious right morality even trumps civil marriage. It is simply amazing to hear the advocates of the inviolability of the heterosexual civil marital bond deny Terri Schiavo's legal husband the right to decide his wife's fate, when she cannot decide it for herself. Again, the demands of the religious right pre-empt constitutionalism, federalism, and even the integrity of the family. When conservatism means breaking up the civil bond between a man and his wife, you know it has ceased to be conservative.

This Robert George guy truly is scary. Mickey Kaus has a quote up where George implies that even if Terri Schiavo had had a living will drawn up saying explicitly that she would want the feeding tube removed in such a situation, the living will should not have been enforced.

When Sullivan went on about this stuff in the past I used to think he was being a bit overwrought. Who can argue now? I still think his criticism of Bush's conduct of the war has been far too harsh. (Though neither do I simply assume that everything Bush has done in this arena is an example of his peerless brilliance and moral rectitude like, say, Hugh Hewitt, or the guys on Powerline.) However, if anything, Sullivan's criticism of Bush and the Republican Congress's domestic policies has been far too restrained, given the ugly reality we're now seeing.

Personally, I'm now ready to say provisionally that - though I certainly couldn't stomach actually voting for Kerry, or for any of the fringe candidates - I wish that I hadn't voted for Bush (not that it really mattered since I voted in New York) and wish even more that I hadn't participated in the Get out the Vote effort in New Hampshire. Though, in a final irony, I guess it's all a wash because Bush ended up losing New Hampshire. The corruption, Nixonian paranoia, fiscal irresponsibility, big government liberalism, and religious rightism of George Bush/Tom Delay "conservatism" needed to be punished, not rewarded, back when we had a chance to do something about it. Kerry's domestic policies wouldn't have been appreciably that much different. He had absolutely the wrong instincts on the war, but he was boxed in, and would have faced a Republican Congress. Not even Ted Kennedy actually proposed cutting and running from Iraq. In fact, there's a case to be made by someone less dull-witted than I that, by engaging in the bold gambit of invading Iraq, Bush and his cabinet set in motion such powerful forces of change in the Middle East that anyone could have been the next president and simply watched the positive developments in Lebanon and elsewhere. Kerry, of course, would then have been trumpeted as the great liberalizer of the Arab world by the mainstream press. But hey, history is full of ironies right?

Bush's second term hasn't destroyed the modern conservative movement, but losing the presidency and having time to re-evaluate the "stategery" would have been more beneficial than being in power and making the movement ever more obnoxious and ideologically incoherent.

UPDATE: I see that Jonah Goldberg is now saying that what we're witnessing is not a crack-up but a healthy debate; a sign not of internal tensions within the conservative movement but internal health. However, in my opinion, the problem is not that a debate is going on, it's that no debate is going on. Bush/DeLay "conservatism" has become the only game in town, no matter how internally inconsistent, and how non-conservative it becomes. The "crack-up" that I'm referring to (I don't know about anyone else) is not between different factions of conservatism but the crack-up of Bush/DeLay conservatism itself. It's big government liberalism in economic policy, and religious rightism in social policy trying to pass itself off as "conservatism". By trying to please nearly everyone it will ultimately please no one, and has already reached the point of pleasing far fewer than it used to.

Posted by Eric Deamer on March 24, 2005 at 01:20 PM in Domestic Politics | Permalink

Comments

Great writeup here, Eric. I couldn't agree more. If I wrote about politics on my blog at all, I would have said just about the same thing. I voted for Bush in the fall (and in his first election) and while I don't know if I should have voted for Kerry or should look seriously at Hilary '08 now, I do know that I wish I hadn't voted for Bush. I am a staunch economic and small government conservative (keep the government out of my life type) and always vote Republican, and I am stunned that I have been on the other side of almost every single action that Bush and his cronies have taken since the election. And that shocking revelation has made me feel incredibly out of touch with the current "conservatism" running through the country, especially when I hear people like Hannity and Rush defending the Schiavo federal interference, which just goes against every thing they have said for as long as I can remember and goes against any basic conservative "states rights trump" thought anyone has ever had. The words "maybe the liberals were right" was never in my vocabulary until now, and that's downright scary to me, and should be scary to Bush/DeLay/Karl Rove as well.

Posted by: Bill | March 24, 2005 at 03:05 PM

You guys are going on like you are on a steroid-induced mood swing. Six months is a short time in which to be convinced that EVERYTHING YOU KNEW WAS WRONG. It suggests a lack of careful thinking. I don't like everything about Bush, but it's laughable to suggest that he's any different now than he was a year ago. Get a grip.

Posted by: Brian | March 24, 2005 at 04:42 PM

I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. I'm as much a federalist as the next guy, and I fully support a persons right to choose how they want to die. I even support assisted suicide if that's your choice. But if a judge rules that you should drown your kids in a bathtub, will you follow his orders like a blind mole? My opinion of the Schiavo case is that it needs a full trial. It is possible (not certain, but certainly possible) that there is a massive miscarriage of justice underway and that whis woman is going to die against her wishes, depsite having someone who will look after her. If you're OK with that, then you're the one with the problem.

Posted by: Trapeze | March 25, 2005 at 12:15 AM

I'm not sure that believing there is something that just doesn't smell right about Michael Schaivo means you're a religious right nutcase. I support gay marriage but I'm very troubled by killing a brain-damaged woman by starvation against the deepest wishes of her parents.

Posted by: Matthew Cromer | March 25, 2005 at 08:31 AM

"It is simply amazing to hear the advocates of the inviolability of the heterosexual civil marital bond deny Terri Schiavo's legal husband the right to decide his wife's fate, when she cannot decide it for herself."

The guy has been living with another woman for years, given her 2 kids, and calls her his fiance. Do you think the "advocates of marriage" don't know that? That "marriage bond" is a mockery in their eyes. For Sullivan and you to completely ignore that is dishonest. I've lost even more respect for him than I already had. Since this is the first really bad judgment I've seen from you, and I know you personally, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

The plain facts of the case: someone is being sentenced to death, who has not committed a crime, who has not even been accused of a crime, solely on hearsay by one party who has a conflict of interest. If this were an inmate on death row, the same uproar, attempts to shine a light on the case, attempts at federal relief, etc. would be happening, except it would be the liberals doing it.

Assuming the best about Michael Schiavo's motives and behavior, he still has a blatant conflict of interest and she should not be executed based on his word. It is only happening because brain-damaged adults are not presumed to be equal under the law.

Posted by: Yehudit | March 25, 2005 at 11:43 AM

I keep on hearing that the guy had a "conflict of interest" but I honestly don't understand what's meant by that. (Beyond that, keep in mind all the crazy claims and counter-claims going on between both sides). Are you talking about the insurance money? I've seen some links purporting to show that he doesn't stand to gain anything because of all the money he's paid to keep her as she is for all this time. I've seen some that purport to show that there is no windfall settlement. Who knows what to believe?

On the marriage thing, the key phrase here is "civil marital bond". You're talking like those religious conservatives who don't understand (or want to erase) the distinction between a civil marriage and a marriage in the relgious sense, or in any other deeper sense (like emotional or romantic). In the gay civil marriage debate, we were told again and again and again (and again) that the insitution of heterosexual civil marriage was sacrosanct and that to allow any other group to join it would change it too much, especially if the other group wouldn't have children, was allegedly unfaithful etc. The fact that straight married couples were unfaithful, non-procreative, made a mockery of the instituion, etc. every day didn't matter. These things only mattered as arguments to stopping gay people form joining the institution. What I concluded from this was that there is no aspect of any straight person's marriage which can be criticized or questioned. It doesn't matter that the marriage between Michael and Terri Sciavo was (to say the least) unconventional. They still had an inviolate, sacrosanct civil marriage, and all the legal incidents thereof. If allowing gay people to join the institution would somehow undermine their marriage, why wouldn't allowing the federal government to intervene in their most basic, intimate legal decisions? Decisions which under Florida law were reserved for the spouse?

You still can't drop the hysterical, histrionic tone on this for some reason. No one was "sentenced to death". No one was "executed". As William F. Buckley said, it's more precise to say that the debate was over whether someone's life (or as some would have it "life")should be prolonged even further in the same condition, not whether some random person gathered off the street should be killed.

At any rate, the Supreme Court has now reviewed the case and refused to grant cert. So, I don't know how anyone could possibly say that there was no due process.

I'm just amazed at your self-confidence in thinking that you have some special knowledge of "the plain facts" here.

Posted by: Eric | March 25, 2005 at 01:31 PM

As a libertarian, I would like to ask why do you
think the Bush/Delay conservatism is some sort of aberration? When in the history of the Republican party has it ever belived in federalism, capitalism and small government? For
most of its history the Republican party seems
to have behaved as a traditional conservative
institution i.e. - a corporate socialist/theocratic big-government advocate.
The contradiction is not those in power now,
but you, the "american conservative" - small
government, federalism and capitalism advocates
who until 1900 were northern Democrats when
they were finally purged by William Jennings Bryan and the Progressives. They had no choice
but to join the Republican party where they
were no more welcome than the Democratic party.
But advocates of less geovernment are always
welcome in the party out of power.

So, I would like to suggest that those advocates
of small government, federalism, and capitalism who call themselves "conservatives" are entirely
confused as to who they are and what true conservatism aactually is and would be far better off redefing themselves as they truly are-
libertarians.

BobS

Posted by: BobS | March 25, 2005 at 03:58 PM

I wish i voted for Kerry instead. and thank god for andrew sullivan. i thought he'd already given up on the blogging thing. nice to see him tell the unvarnished truth about Bushco again.

Posted by: john marzan | March 26, 2005 at 06:41 AM

"I keep on hearing that the guy had a "conflict of interest" but I honestly don't understand what's meant by that. (Beyond that, keep in mind all the crazy claims and counter-claims going on between both sides). Are you talking about the insurance money? I've seen some links purporting to show that he doesn't stand to gain anything because of all the money he's paid to keep her as she is for all this time. I've seen some that purport to show that there is no windfall settlement. Who knows what to believe?"

The conflict of interest is the fact that he is openly living with another woman and has fathered 2 children by her, he has also been calling her his fiance.... You know, gee, what should I do?

As to the money, most of it is gone, it was spent on the lawyers petitioning the court to kill her. Isn't that cruel, the money that was meant to provide for your welfare and therapy is being used to kill you....

Legally he is still her husband because they were never divorced, but just keep in mind..if you are estranged from your spouse but not divorced - that person legally can pull the plug on you. Is this a good idea? They may hate your guts but remember that life insurance policy that you have....hmmmm

Posted by: deb | March 28, 2005 at 02:45 PM