October 30, 2005
TOO IMMATURE TO LEAD (via mc):
Miers, the Rebellion's Latest Casualty: Why the Right Never Surrenders, Or Declares Victory (Kevin Merida, October 30, 2005, Washington Post)
"I think for a lot of conservatives, our mind-set is we're not Republicans," [Al Regnery] explained. "We're swimming upstream, we're holding the party accountable, we're on the outside. Our job is always swimming upstream."It is useful psychology for conservative activists, this idea of the permanent, beleaguered underdog. Ambitions are never quite fulfilled. Justice is never quite done. An aggrieved state of mind is a fertile state of mind. It is the kind of thinking whose roots were planted more than 50 years ago. In Goldwater's case, he owed his 1952 election as an Arizona senator to Ike. And yet when his frustration with Eisenhower's spending peaked, he turned on his friend, calling Ike's administration a "dime-store New Deal."
Democrats certainly have their noisy scrums -- the left is either angry at the center for acting like Republicans or the center is blaming the left for election debacles. But the Republican right seems to have a special, disciplined vigilance when it comes to internal warfare. Where else can you find the ironic spectacle of a House speaker being shown the guillotine by the very crew of conservative revolutionaries he created? That was Newt Gingrich's fate in 1998, forced to resign after leading Republicans to the first House majority in four decades.
After reneging on his read-my-lips pledge of "no new taxes," then-President George H.W. Bush found himself hissed and hounded by conservatives and ultimately undermined as he went on to lose his 1992 reelection bid. Even the beloved Ronald Reagan got smacked from time to time by his brethren on the right. An all-star lineup of conservatives went after him over his dealings with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his support of a treaty to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles. Howard Phillips, chairman of the Conservative Caucus, went so far as to call the Gipper a "useful idiot for Soviet propaganda." Three decades later, phoning in from the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival, Phillips said: "My loyalty is not to any political personality or any political party."
The problem of conservative ideologues is psychic--you can't both govern a democracy and be ideologically pure. It's funny, the far Right objects to George Bush as a Jacobin, but it is they who behave like fanatical true believers rather than free men. Posted by Orrin Judd at October 30, 2005 9:19 AM
Another reason why it may seem prudent to ideologues and movement leaders never to declare victory is financial. If a problem is solved, why should people contribute to your organization? Why should your organization even exist?
Tammy Bruce said she was told this explicitly by a NOW leader: Never declare victory. If one problem seems solved, always discover a new one. We have to keep the contributions flowing in.
Posted by: L. Rogers at October 30, 2005 9:44 AMWell. they haven't acheived victory, have they? Besides their electoral victories, what part of the conservative agenda have they accomplished?
Posted by: Robert Duquette at October 30, 2005 10:38 AMRobert:
Control of all three branches of government. Numerous free trade agreements. Tax cuts. Education vouchers. HSAs. Abortion limits. Stem Cell limits. Hundreds of judges. Civil Service Reform. FBI. Removal of Saddam. Removal of Arafat. Reform throughout the Islamic world. My fingers are tired from typing or I'd go on...
Posted by: oj at October 30, 2005 10:46 AMControl of all three branches of government.
That is a means, not a goal. It is only a goal for Statists.
Numerous free trade agreements.
Clinton enacted NAFTA. Bush just following the trend.
Tax cuts.
Not permanent. Without spending cuts it will only exacerbate the deficit. "Deficits don't matter" is not a conservative principle, it is a political expedient.
Education vouchers.
Where?
HSAs.
No brainer, Dems would have done likewise.
Abortion limits.
Window dressing. It is still legal.
Stem Cell limits.
More window dressing.
Hundreds of judges.
The results of which are TBD. Reagan and Bush I did the same.
Civil Service Reform.
He added to the Civil Service rolls with the Dept of Homeland Security.
Removal of Arafat.
He died, we didn't remove him.
Reform throughout the Islamic world.
Is this really a conservative goal? Or a NeoCon goal? Many conservatives not happy with this.
Robert:
Control of government is the end of politics. Conservatives can't ever realize their ideological ends.
Posted by: oj at October 30, 2005 11:50 AMWe don't control the 3 branches, otherwise, Estrada wouldn't be in private practice and it wouldn't have taken 5 years to get this far.
Posted by: Sandy P at October 30, 2005 6:21 PMGuns. We keep moving the chain on guns. {He typed, with the sound of the Eagles game in the background) The end of the AWB, the Protection of Lawful Commererce in Arms Act--wake up and smell the napalm: it smells like victory.
Look, if we move too fast on almost anything, a reaction sets in and we start to lose. Things are going right on schedule, as long as we keep our nerve and be honest with one another. We are doing as well as is reasonably possible.
We should be looking at how advancing our priorities fits in with the election cycles. The key is to maintain the initiative and not allow ourselves to become rattled by our old friends in the MSM. We need to be telling our base in the work-up to the mid-terms that we have delivered on the Supreme Court thus far and that we need to keep the pressure on to finish the job.
Posted by: Lou Gots at October 30, 2005 7:26 PMSandy:
One guy quit for personal reasons, who'd be a Judge now otherwise, and you think it cancels everything else out? That's what we mean by fanaticism.
Posted by: oj at October 30, 2005 8:03 PMOJ: We are not even close to having control of the Judiciary.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at October 30, 2005 8:56 PMThe war isn't over until Bork's son (does he have one?) becomes President of Yale. And Orrin's son becomes President of Dartmouth.
Posted by: jim hamlen at October 30, 2005 9:21 PM