GRUMPY OLD MEN

A Questionable Kind Of Conservatism (George F. Will, July 24, 2003, washingtonpost.com)

This is the summer of conservatives' discontent. Conservatism has been disoriented by events in the past several weeks. Cumulatively, foreign and domestic developments constitute an identity crisis of conservatism, which is being recast -- and perhaps rendered incoherent.

George W. Bush may be the most conservative person to serve as president since Calvin Coolidge. Yet his presidency is coinciding with, and is in some instances initiating or ratifying, developments disconcerting to four factions within conservatism.

The four groups, according to Mr. Will are: isolationists, angry about the war; supply-siders, worried about the failure to cut spending; strict constructionists, worried about the affirmative action ruling; and social conservatives, worried about the sodomy ruling. [There's also a fifth group, or maybe they're just part of the first, with a somewhat different concern: immigration.]

The first group doesn't much matter, because there are far more independents and even Democrats (especially white women) who favor a robust response to terror than there are conservatives/libertarians who are so disaffected from the State that they fear a president of their own party more than they fear the meltdown in the Islamic world. Mr. Bush would be well advised to give a major speech, at some point--setting reasonable limits on our global ambitions and outlining how we'll know when we've won this round of the war against the "-isms", but he can't win by playing to this contingent.

The second group has already shown a propensity to roll over, during the Reagan years. Give them their cuts and they'll ignore everything else. The President should make it a goal of his second administration to pass a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, but no one ever lost more votes than he won by spending money.

The latter two groups are going to require, as Mr. Will suggests, just one thing: a known and trusted conservative appointee to the first Supreme Court opening. In fact, if such an opening were to occur next year, he'd do well to appoint a lightning rod--John Ashcroft, or Robert Bork for that matter--someone who would turn the Left rabid and force the Right to rally to the flag. Nor need the administration give up its desire to make an affirmative action pick--either Miguel Estrada or Janice Brown would likely satisfy conservatives as well as filling a politically desirable demographic profile. An intentionally combative nomination might ultimately fail, but, regardless, Mr. Bush would have proven his red meat conservative bona fides and shut up all the back-biters. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 24, 2003 8:48 PM