You don't me to tell you that 2005 was a bad year for Republicans, and an even worse one for conservatives. You probably also don't need me to tell you most of the wounds are self-inflicted.
Infighting on the Right is a strange thing. Superficially, it can often seem to observers as if we're fighting about angels atop a pin. Many of the debates, particularly the more philosophical ones, end up sounding a lot like Bolsheviks versus Mensheviks, or worse, one half of Frank Gorshin versus the other.
Welcome to the Republican Party, 2005.
That said, our ideological pie fights have, in the past at least, made us a stronger, more appealing party. Republicans *have* a practical governing philosophy, even if so many seem to have forgotten it.
With Friday's Typepad crash, I was unable to address this op-ed from the Washington Post's insufferable E.J. Dionne ("free" registration required; scalawags). I'm sure that most Republicans, and all conservatives, who read his piece on Friday had the same impression: who the hell is Dionne talking about? It's like he's reviewing a movie he hasn't seen. A *foreign* movie he hasn't seen.
Let's accept -- for the sake of argument, but also because the critique contained some truth -- that at some point during the 1970s, liberalism became tiresome, arrogant, unreflective and hidebound. Let's further stipulate that this image gave conservatives their opening to seem fresh, creative, exciting and all those other virtues that marketers love to claim for their products.
It can be asserted beyond a reasonable doubt that each of the disapproving words about liberalism in the previous paragraph now applies to conservatism. The most compelling evidence for this is the contorted, contentious and incoherent struggle by Republicans in Congress to produce a budget.
The Republican leaders may or may not pass their cut-from-the-poor, give-to-the-rich budget. It takes a degree of political incompetence usually associated with Democrats for the side that wants to preserve the true spirit of Christmas to invite so many coal-in-the-stocking metaphors at this time of year.
But there is something more important about this failure. It marks the dead end of a worn, haggard argument that conservatives have been peddling for 30 years, ever since that energetic guru of supply-side economics, Jude Wanniski, published his first articles on the subject and his exciting 1978 manifesto, "The Way the World Works."
A worn, haggard argument that just so happens to be true, as evidenced by the economic boom currently underway-- a boom so strong and consistent that it's survived not only war but the worst natural disaster in American history.
But it took until this moment in 2005 for Republicans themselves to realize (even if many won't acknowledge it yet) that the help-the-wealthy, damn-the-deficits approach doesn't hold together, either as policy or politics. They are learning that the public doesn't buy the idea that cutting taxes on dividends and capital gains should take priority over providing health coverage and child care for struggling Americans. The tax cuts, it turns out, don't pay for themselves. The poor have not fared well since the big supply-side tax cuts of 2001 and 2003.
And given how much Republicans want to spend on defense, farm subsidies, homeland security, roads, bridges, subsidies for energy companies, a flawed drug program for seniors and lots of other stuff, there's no way they can cut enough from programs for the poor to offset the costs of their tax giveaways.
Ah, yes, these are always programs for the poor, aren't they?
Rich kids go to public schools, too. Rich grandparents get Social Security and prescription drug benefits, too. The Democratic Party failed its own core philosophy of helping the downtrodden when it chose to define the downtrodden as every American outside of the Bush family and the leadership of Enron.
The Republicans are disappointing today not because they're bereft of ideas, or because their ideas are wrong. They're disappointing today because they've forgotten the ideas that got them to where they are. They've discovered the short-term allure of political expediency, of avoiding arguments rather than encouraging them. Republican cowardice in the face of Democratic narcissism may be enough to maintain their political majority for a brief while, but it's laying the groundwork for resounding defeat.
Chief among these problems is the lack of spending discipline. Hell, it's not even a lack-- it's a wholesale abandonment of any discipline. Republicans have been even worse than the Democrats in this department, which is simply shocking.
I believe there are a number of reasons for this. First, power corrupts. The Republicans have power now, and after being in the wilderness for so many decades, they're eager to maintain their hold on power. And the way to do that in Washington is by doling out favors, in the form of cash. The Democrats did this while in power, the Republicans now do it themselves.
Second, there's simply that much more money available to spend, making the problem even more dramatic.
Third, when in power, you don't need to think about what to do to gain power. Innovation is stifled. The ideas that got you there are forgotten, replaced by intellectual timidity. Just imagine how different our federal government might have been had the Contract With America came about under a Republican president. Now, realize that such a thing would never have happened, because the Clinton administration was the fulcrum upon which the Contract turned.
The more I watch the Republicans founder, the more I worry about a structural defect in modern American politics. The congressional experiment is increasingly a failure. In the last sixty years, there have been precisely two ideological presidents (LBJ and Reagan) eager to make drastic reforms in the nature of government. We're due for a third ideological president, but none is on the horizon. And what new ideas are out there? Modern Liberalism is addicted to unaffordable entitlement, and modern conservatism has surrendered to that impulse in pursuit of political advantage.
Dispiriting times, indeed.
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This posting was made on my personal computer.
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