Category Archives: conservatism

by | February 5, 2012 · 5:49 PM

Study: Obama Most Conservative Democratic President in Recent History

By Luke Brinker

If President Barack Obama truly subscribes to a political philosophy based on “Saul Alinsky radicalism,” as Newt Gingrich alleges, he has a funny way of showing it. Political scientist Keith Poole of the University of Georgia recently plotted the public positions of presidents from Harry Truman to Obama on a liberal-conservative scale. Poole found that, contrary to Tea Party mythology, Obama is far from a hard-core leftist. In fact, he’s to the right of every Democratic president since Truman:

Poole has also examined the phenomenon of party polarization, the topic of endless Beltway punditry. Polarization, Poole has found, is real, but it’s not the result of “both sides” moving toward the extremes. Republicans have moved much further to the right than Democrats have to the left. (Read this post for more, including some nifty charts that illustrate the point.) This is important to bear in mind when considering some of Obama’s purportedly “liberal” policies on issues like health care, the environment, and economic stimulus. Obama’s signature domestic accomplishment – the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 – is grounded in the “individual mandate,” a requirement that individuals buy health insurance or pay a penalty. The intellectual origins of the mandate are on the right; the Heritage Foundation, Newt Gingrich, and Mitt Romney are among its past backers. (It’s easy to see why: by discouraging free riding,  the mandate upholds conservative notions about personal responsibility, as Romney wrote in a Wall Street journal op-ed in 2006. It also preserves the for-profit, private insurance model at the expense of a more efficient single-payer solution, which many on the left favor.) On climate change, Obama’s proposed solution has been a cap-and-trade scheme, which was also the position of the McCain-Palin ticket in 2008. George H. W. Bush implemented a cap-and-trade program to deal with sulfur dioxide emissions in the early 1990s; that market-based approach has proven remarkably successful, decreasing sulfur dioxide emissions by 40 percent since 1990. As for Obama’s economic stimulus policies, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 drew on many conservative ideas; in fact, one of economists’ chief critiques of the bill was that it was too reliant on inefficient tax cuts (which Democrats inserted in a futile effort to gain substantial GOP backing) and too light on large-scale infrastructure spending. Even where Obama has supposedly governed as a “liberal,” he’s hardly been a bona fide New Deal type.

The Tea Party may characteristically refuse to acknowledge reality on this score, but it’s clear that Bruce Bartlett is right: Obama is essentially a moderate conservative.  The Tea Party Jacobins have so radically redefined conservatism that it’s hard to remember that Burkeans still exist – they’re just Democrats now.

6 Comments

Filed under conservatism, liberals, political parties, politics

Tagged as , , , ,

by | January 6, 2012 · 3:16 PM

British Conservatives, and Ours

By Luke Brinker

Conor Friedersdorf rips into Rick Santorum, pointing out that the fiercely anti-gay former Pennsylvania senator’s “pro-family” views are largely a “sham”:

Santorum isn’t “pro-family” so much as he is “pro-family for people whose family doesn’t include anyone gay.” He regards marriage as a force for good in the lives of couples who enter into it and their children. He is willing to deny those benefits to gay families, because he believes — without any evidence — that keeping gay marriage illegal will benefit straight unions.

What would he do about the quarter of a million people who’ve already established stable families by entering into same sex marriages? He would destabilize the family lives of those people. He explained that in a recent interview with Chuck Todd, where he touted his preference for a constitutional amendment codifying marriage at the federal level as a relationship between a man and a woman:

SANTORUM: I think marriage has to be one thing for everybody. We can’t have 50 different marriage laws in this country, you have to have one marriage law…

TODD: What would you do with same-sex couples who got married? Would you make them get divorced?

SANTORUM: Well, their marriage would be invalid. I think if the Constitution says “marriage is this,” then people whose marriage is not consistent with the Constitution… I’d love to think there’s another way of doing it.

I presume everyone reading this post is either married or is close to someone who is married, whether it’s parents or close friends or a boss or teacher or colleague. Think of that married couple. That family. Imagine if they got a letter in the mail informing them that by order of the federal government, their marriage is no longer valid. I submit that a man who would send out letters like that to gay and lesbian married couples does not deserve to be labeled as the candidate with the most pro-family agenda. His desire to invalidate the unions of people who are already married, some of whom have kids — to invalidate existing families by federal mandate — makes him arguably the least pro-family candidate, despite his other pro-family positions.

The more than a quarter of a million families with a gay married couple at their core are not disconnected from American society. They have extended families: brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, friends who come over every Thanksgiving — and for all these extended families, for everyone who has a gay person in their extended family, Rick Santorum isn’t a pro-family candidate, because he is hostile to their family as it actually exists, and would invalidate it by decree if he could. Are we to regard targeted tax cuts as the more important stance?

Friedersdorf’s post brought to mind British Prime Minister David Cameron’s speech to the Conservative Party conference  in Manchester this fall. The contrast between Santorum’s apocalyptic view of same-sex marriage and Cameron’s eloquent defense of it is striking:

I once stood before a Conservative conference and said it shouldn’t matter whether commitment was between a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, or a man and another man. You applauded me for that. Five years on, we’re consulting on legalising gay marriage. And to anyone who has reservations, I say: Yes, it’s about equality, but it’s also about something else: commitment. Conservatives believe in the ties that bind us; that society is stronger when we make vows to each other and support each other. So I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I’m a Conservative.

Upon reading of Cameron’s speech, I reflected upon the profound differences between Great Britain’s Conservative Party and the US’s Republican Party. Cameron, Britain’s top Tory, supports abortion rights, action to combat climate change, and socialized medicine. Whereas denunciation of Obamacare, which enshrined private insurance as the American way of providing health care, is standard fare among even “moderate” Republicans, Cameron pledges fealty to Britain’s single-payer National Health Service. Backbench Tories grumble that Cameron isn’t conservative enough, but even Members of Parliament (MPs) considered in fringe in Britain would be condemned as RINOs by the Republicans’ Tea Party base. When right-wing MP Nadine Dorries proposed legislation this summer requiring women seeking abortions to undergo “independent counselling,” Dorries felt compelled to reassure Britons of her pro-choice credentials: “I am pro-choice, pro-women’s rights. I fully support the legalisation of abortion in 1968 and would hate to see a return to the dark days of back-street operations,” she wrote in the Daily Mail. Meanwhile, the US has GOP presidential contenders who oppose abortion rights even in cases of rape and incest, and others who find fault even with the legalization of contraception.

This is not to downplay the shortcomings of Britain’s Tories. Under Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osbourne, the nation is implementing an economically counterproductive austerity regime. Owing to deep-seated Euroskepticism on the part of many Conservative MPs, Cameron orchestrated the Tories’ divorce from the EU’s coalition of center-right parties, the European People’s Party, signing up instead with an EU group encompassing further-right parties. But faced with the choice between a conservative party led by a man who doesn’t claim a “direct line” to a supernatural deity or one in which no small number of presidential contenders state that they have received communication from the Almighty, I’d choose the former any day.

Leave a Comment

Filed under conservatism, conservatives, political parties, Republicans

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

by | December 18, 2011 · 1:04 PM

Why Newt Gingrich is not a Conservative

By Luke Brinker

Newt Gingrich came under fire in last week’s Republican debate for his proposals to disband the liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and subpoena judges to answer questions about their decisions before Congress. Michele Bachmann, a self-proclaimed “constitutional conservative,” enthusiastically endorsed Gingrich’s idea to get rid of courts whose judgments he doesn’t like. For someone who claims an undying affinity for the Constitution, which enshrines separation of powers, it’s a curious position to take.

It’s also a fundamentally un-conservative position, and it’s not insignificant that it’s embraced by “conservative” Tea Party types. Here’s Gingrich on Face the Nation this morning, courtesy of ThinkProgress:

SCHIEFFER: One of the things you say is that if you don’t like what a court has done, that Congress should subpoena the judge and bring him before Congress and hold a Congressional hearing… how would you enforce that? Would you send the Capitol Police down to arrest him?

GINGRICH: Sure. If you had to. Or you’d instruct the Justice Department to send a U.S. Marshal.

What Gingrich is proposing is nothing less than a wholesale revamping of the nation’s basic constitutional structure, a move dramatically at odds with the conservative tendency to, well, conserve. Edmund Burke, one of intellectual conservatism’s leading historical lights, emphasized the importance of tradition and history. For Burke, conservatism was as much a sensibility as it was an ideology. Contemporary Burkeans like New York Times columnist David Brooks oppose reflexive anti-government thinking because it discounts the ability of sound government programs to advance social stability and national prosperity. But as E. J. Dionne, a liberal who actually reads Burke (unlike most conservatives), points out, today’s Tea Party Jacobins are not conservatives at heart:

Related to this is the third great contribution of conservatism: a suspicion of human nature and a belief that humans cannot be remolded like plastic. Conservatives see a fallen side of human nature usually described in terms of original sin. And when utopians propose to create a New Man or a New Woman, the conservative typically cries: Stop!

From generation to generation, human nature doesn’t really change.

Efforts to alter it typically lead to totalitarian forms of political and social catastrophe.

A society that fails to keep these conservative warnings in mind is likely to run into trouble. Yet our current forms of conservatism seem thoroughly un-conservative or, as Peter Viereck put it in the 1950s, “pseudo-conservative,” which is an ally of pseudo-populism.

It’s not just that the mob that gathered outside the Capitol to shout epithets at Democratic lawmakers before they voted on health care was disrespectful of the very norms that conservatism preaches. It’s also that utopianism, typically a danger on the left, now runs rampant on the right.

Many who call themselves conservatives propose to cast aside even government programs that have stood the test of time. They seem to imagine a world in which government withers away, a phrase that comes from Friedrich Engels, not Buckley. Or they tie themselves up in unruly contradictions, declaring simultaneously that they are dead-set against government-run health care and passionate defenders of Medicare.

And while modern conservatism has usually supported the market against the state, its oldest and most durable brand understood that the market was an imperfect instrument. True conservatives may give “two cheers for capitalism,” as Irving Kristol put it in the title of one of his books, but never three.

It’s richly ironic that Gingrich, who would have us alter basic constitutional principles, describes Barack Obama as the “most radical president ever.” Obama displays a far more conservative sensibility than Gingrich. Consider his health care overhaul, which did not discard the existing system in favor of single-payer but instead worked within the present framework of private insurance. Consider his failed cap-and-trade proposal, an effort to deal with climate change by using tried-and-true market mechanisms. Consider his realist approach to foreign policy, rooted in small-scale actions like drone attacks and not Messianic visions of democracy promotion. Juxtaposed against the reactionary ideology and cowboy diplomacy of the Republican mainstream, it’s enough to make one wonder who the real radicals are.

Leave a Comment

Filed under conservatism, conservatives, constitution

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

by | October 8, 2011 · 3:55 PM

Republican Hypocrisy Watch: Freedom of Religion Edition

By Luke Brinker

Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA)

You need not look any further than this past week’s Values Voters Summit, where Republican candidates highlighted their social conservative, godly credentials, to see that the American right denies that the First Amendment institutes the separation of church and state. To hear Michele Bachmann and her ilk tell it, the notion of a “wall of separation” (a phrase that stems from a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association) is a Big Lie propagated by what Bill O’Reilly calls the “secular progressives.”

So how do social conservatives square their professed adherence to the Constitution with their constant fusing of religion and politics? Liberals make the mistake of assuming social conservatives are either stupid or hypocrites, but there actually is a conservative argument that pledges fealty to the First Amendment’s religious freedom clauses while simultaneously supporting the inter-mingling of religion and public affairs. To understand where conservatives are coming from, it’s useful to consider some background.

The First Amendment’s religious freedom guarantee consists of two clauses. The free exercise clause protects the right of citizens to practice (or not practice) any faith of their choosing. Most of the controversy surrounding the free exercise clause deals with how far the government should go in accommodating those who choose to exercise a particular faith. For instance, in the 1963 case Sherbert v. Verner, the Supreme Court ruled that the government needed to demonstrate a compelling state interest before it could refuse unemployment compensation to an individual who lost her job because it conflicted with the practice of her religion.

The establishment clause is the more divisive of the two clauses. The First Amendment expressly prohibits the establishment of a state religion. Liberals and conservatives agree that this means there can’t be a national church, as in England. But they divide over whether government support for religious symbols and institutions amounts to an unconstitutional government endorsement of a specific brand of religion. (For example, does posting the Ten Commandments at the entrance to a court house effectively establish Judeo-Christianity as the state faith?) Liberals adopt the strict separationist argument that the government must maintain absolute neutrality with respect to all faiths, so things like Ten Commandments displays and public funding for religious institutions violate the establishment clause. Conservatives, on the other hand, argue that the establishment clause merely precludes the government from interfering in the affairs of religious groups. It’s perfectly fine for the government to fund “faith-based initiatives,” for example, as long as government officials aren’t telling the religious group what to believe and preach. It follows that what the framers really aimed to avoid through the establishment clause was the government telling religions what they could and couldn’t do.

But wait – for House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Buck McKeon, a Republican from California, it’s quite acceptable for the government to dictate the behavior of clergy – when it comes to making sure they don’t perform same-sex weddings:

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) said Friday he’d rather see Congress fail to pass a defense authorization bill for the first time in half a century than give ground on contentious provisions that seek to direct suspected terrorists into military custody and to ban gay marriages by military chaplains.

This is apparently what happens when conservative constitutional principles conflict with right-wing bigotry against gays and lesbians.

Leave a Comment

Filed under conservatism, conservatives, constitution, gay marriage, religion, Republicans

Tagged as , , , ,

by | August 16, 2011 · 7:36 PM

Rick Perry’s Federalism Facade

Connor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic takes on Rick Perry’s supposed “state’s rights stance” by pointing out his simple contradictions of wanting the power reserved for the states, except when does not fit the GOP agenda.  This was the best few lines in the piece:

What is there to say about a man who says all that — local control on issues including marriage is what the Founders intended, it’s a necessity for holding America together as a country, one-size-fits-all solutions are oppressive, the ability to vote with one’s feet should be maintained, novel social experiments strengthen the nation, it’s good that people can live in communities ruled by people who share their values, the federal government should only involve itself in the people’s affairs as a last resort — and who then favors the Federal Marriage Amendment?

Here’s what I’d say about him: either he is willing to passionately profess, at great length, arguments and sentiments he doesn’t actually believe, or in order to become president, he is willing to abandon his most closely held and expansively argued convictions. I am not sure which is more damning.

The state’s rights/federalism argument is more of a cloak to try and get all the legs of the Republican Party on the bandwagon.  Perry is combining the Ron Paul views of the Tea Party with the Sarah Palin wing.  Unfortunately, both positions contradict, most of the time.  Either Perry is a social conservative or libertarian conservative, but being both simply does not fly.

Can Rick Perry take on both roles? 

Leave a Comment

Filed under conservatism, conservatives, Republicans, Rick Perry, tea party, Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , ,