October 30, 2006
CABANA BOY CONSERVATISM:
George Will's Nostalgic Conservatism (James Lewis, October 30th, 2006, American Thinker)
[George] Will is a Madisonian conservative. He believes in small government above all. That is a safe hope for his liberal admirers, because they know it’s not going to happen. The best conservatives can hope for is Newt Gingrich-style voucher programs, with Federal education money empowering children and their parents rather than the fat and self-serving education industry. But Gingrich isn’t really betting that the US Goverment will actually shrink. Federal dollars for education haven’t gone down in a century.So liberals can feel happy with Mr. Will. He is a sort of old-fashioned bangle on their string of conservative intellectuals, admirable but harmless. Yes, yes, wouldn’t it be nice to go back to a misty memory of Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson (sans the slaves), but we all know that’s a nostalgic fiction. George Will allows the Washington Post to pride itself on its fairness; after all, it has a distinguished conservative on its otherwise wildly skewed list of pundits.
The Bush administration is everything Mr. Will despises about modern conservatism. Stylistically it is Jacksonian, not Madisonian. Andrew Jackson’s cowboys are whooping it up again in the White House, and Mr. Will’s lip is curling. The Bush Administration carries out a vigorous and hotly debated foreign policy, rather than avoiding foreign entanglements, as George Washington advised. Bush has added money to education, though he has tried to make it more accountable. Bush hasn’t vetoed any Congressional spending bills—or anything else for that matter. As far as George Will is concerned, vetoing spending is the main function of a President.
All you need to know about Mr. Will is that he thinks George Allen and Jim Webb are political heavyweights. Posted by Orrin Judd at October 30, 2006 4:53 PM
God help anyone who dressed and acted like him where I was a kid.
Cuz he was goin' in the barrel.
Posted by: Pepys at October 30, 2006 5:29 PMMore troubling: he thinks Tony LaRussa is a genius...
Posted by: Foos at October 30, 2006 5:33 PMI know, listening to him blather on is almost enough to put me off baseball.
Posted by: Pepys at October 30, 2006 5:42 PMI like him but he's been disturbingly "off" lately. Still, I think he's fun to read when I agree with him. He's a master of polite evisceration.
If you want an idea of how conservatives routinely denigrate their leaders prior to canonizing them once they're out of office, you can't do much better than to read what Mr. Will wrote about President Reagan in the 1980s.
Posted by: Matt Murphy at October 30, 2006 7:09 PMActually Webb is (or was) a political heavyweight. Not that I support him. I support the lightweight stupid one.
Posted by: h-man at October 30, 2006 7:27 PMWebb got ten minutes of fame when he back-stabbed Reagan and that should have been the end of it.
Posted by: oj at October 30, 2006 8:22 PMSeparated at birth: Milhouse and George Will.
Posted by: Mike Beversluis at October 30, 2006 8:33 PMGeorge Will was the most articulate voice against Jimmy Carter when he was President. I have always wondered if he thought he drove him from office (single-handedly).
He used to give great interviews on Larry King's radio show (back in the early 80s). I liked him on the Brinkley show, but I haven't watched a Sunday political show in years.
The article reminded me of my 'radical' friends in college, who hated Buckley, but just mildly disliked Will.
Webb was never a political heavyweight - he is too cranky.
Posted by: jim hamlen at October 30, 2006 11:29 PMWebb is just Pat Buchanan with a better book contract.
Posted by: Mike Morley at October 31, 2006 6:59 AMWill is the kind of conservative who Pat Moynihan could spellbind.
Posted by: oj at October 31, 2006 8:20 AMWebb is who we are afraid McCain might be.
No one's afraid that McCain is a racist, isolationist, deviant.
Posted by: oj at October 31, 2006 12:23 PMSpeaking of Cabana Boy, Kerry really stepped on his member last night in Pasadena. Listening to him "fight back" today at his presser is like listening to the headmaster in the movie "The Scent of a Woman".
Every GOP Senate and House candidate should immediately call on his/her opponent to repudiate Kerry's remarks.
Posted by: jim hamlen at October 31, 2006 4:26 PM