Conservative Columnist: Time for a GOP vanishing act

February 3, 2008
Conservative Columnist: Time for a GOP vanishing act

Me, I don't know, but it's hard to shake the sense that four more years of GOP rule from the White House might just about kill off conservatism as a viable governing philosophy. Given the exhausted and brain-addled state of the right at the end of the Reagan Era, it's arguably better for both the country and conservatism for our side to retreat to the woods for some hard thinking and meaningful reform.

Here's the most despairing thought: that in the grand scheme of things, it's not going to matter much who wins the presidency. Why? Because it's quite possible that the economic crisis now breaking upon us is going to be beyond any politician's ability to manage, so severe that the fallout will dwarf any other issue that has preoccupied American political debate of late.

Is America turning left?

August 9, 2007
Is America turning left?

The easy scapegoat is Mr Bush himself. During his presidency, the words Katrina, Rumsfeld, Abramoff, Guantánamo and Libby have become shorthand for incompetence, cronyism or extremism. Indeed, the failings of Mr Bush's coterie are oddly reassuring for some conservatives: once he has gone, they can regroup, as they did after his father was ousted in 1992.

Yet this President Bush is not a good scapegoat. Rather than betraying the right, he has given it virtually everything it craved, from humongous tax cuts to conservative judges. Many of the worst errors were championed by conservative constituencies. Some of the arrogance in foreign policy stems from the armchair warriors of neoconservatism; the ill-fated attempt to "save" the life of the severely brain-damaged Terri Schiavo was driven by the Christian right. Even Mr Bush's apparently oxymoronic trust in "big-government conservatism" is shared in practice by most Republicans in Congress.

America Isn't Conservative

August 20, 2007
America Isn't Conservative

"Having recaptured Congress last year, the Democrats are on course to retake the presidency in
2008," says the venerable British weekly, which blames the destruction of the vaunted Republican
machine on the ideological excess and breathtaking incompetence of the Bush administration, as
well as the sleaziness of the G.O.P. leadership in Congress.

The editorial warns fellow conservatives against claiming that George W. Bush failed to fulfill
their agenda. The president is a lame duck but not a good scapegoat, because "rather than
betraying the right, he has given it virtually everything it craved, from humongous tax cuts to
conservative judges." The worst political errors of the Bush regime, from its ruinous war in Iraq
to the awful Terri Schiavo intervention, sprang directly from the brilliant minds of the religious
right and the neoconservatives.

The Conservative Implosion

August 9, 2007
The Conservative Implosion

The obvious cause of the right's implosion is the implosion of the Bush presidency. Mr Bush has the worst approval ratings since Jimmy Carter—29% according to Newsweek and 31% according to NBC News. Only 19% of Americans think that America is headed in the right direction under Mr Bush. An astonishing 45% of Americans, including 13% of Republicans, support impeaching Mr Bush, according to the American Research Group.

The most obvious cause of the implosion of the Bush presidency is the disaster in Iraq. The Republican Party's biggest advantage over the Democrats has long been on foreign and defence policy. You voted Democratic if you cared about schools and hospitals. But you voted Republican if you cared more about keeping America safe in a dangerous world. September 11th 2001 turbo-charged that advantage. The Republicans used the "war on terror" to roll over the Democrats in elections in 2002 and again in 2004.

Nor can conservatives claim that Mr Bush is a country-club Republican like his father. He has devoted his energies to giving "the movement" what it wants: the invasion of Iraq for the neoconservatives (who had championed it long before September 11th); tax cuts for business and the small-government conservatives; restricting federal funding for stem-cell research for the social conservatives; and conservative judges to please every faction.

This desire to pander to the conservative movement is partly to blame for the administration's practical incompetence. Mr Bush outdid previous Republican presidents in recruiting his personnel from the conservative counter-establishment. But this often meant choosing people for their ideological purity rather than their competence or intelligence. Some 150 Bush administration officials were graduates of Pat Robertson's Regent University, including Monica Goodling, who put on such a lamentable performance before a House inquiry into the firing of nine US attorneys. A more pragmatic president would surely have sacked many of the neoconservative ideologues who have made a hash of American foreign policy