The End of the Conservative Era
November 5, 2008 will be a triple witching day in American politics. Not only will the presidency change hands, but the party holding the White House will relinquish power and the modern conservative era that began in 1980 will crash to an end. The explanations for these epic changes can be found in my new books, The Keys to the White House 2008 Edition and White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement.
The Keys to the White House are a historically based prediction system that retrospectively account for the results of presidential elections from 1860 to 1980. Prospectively the Keys predicted well ahead of time the popular-vote winners of every presidential election since 1984. In 2004 the Keys anticipated George Bush reelection more than a year and a half prior to Election Day.
The system is based on the theory that that a pragmatic electorate chooses a president according to the performance of the party holding the White House as gauged by the consequential events and episodes of a term. Debates, advertising, television appearances, news coverage, and campaign strategies - the usual grist for the punditry mills - count for virtually nothing on Election Day.
The Keys are 13 diagnostic questions that are stated as propositions that favor reelection of the incumbent party. When six or more of these propositions are false the party in power loses the White House. This year, the incumbent Republican have governed poorly enough to have lost seven keys, one more than needed to predict their defeat. The party lost the 2006 midterm elections and does not have a sitting president at the top of its ticket. Economic growth has lagged during Bush's second term, the administration lacks major domestic accomplishments, and it has suffered failure abroad with no compensating successes. In John McCain, the GOP lacks a charismatic candidate comparable to Ronald Reagan. An eighth key will also fall if the economy tumbles into recession this year.
But Republican problems are not limited to losing a presidential election. The modern American conservative movement has run its course, the victim of contradictions that have splintered the movement beyond repair.
The conservative leadership has deserted the House and the Senate, and Democrats should expand their majorities in both these chambers this fall. Conservatives are unhappy with presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, but they failed to find a champion among a slew of other Republican candidates for president. They have even turned on their one-time hero President George W. Bush, a sure sign of a movement in decline. In the unkindest cut of all, the late patriarch William F. Buckley said about Bush in 2006, "If you had a European prime minister who experienced what we've experienced it would be expected that he would retire or resign."
In straining to prove his conservative credentials, McCain vainly hopes to appease a movement that is too fragmented to be appeased. Like Humpty Dumpty after the fall, all the GOP's horses and all the GOP's men cannot put together again business and social conservatives, big and small government conservatives, tax cutters and deficit hawks, and foreign adventurers and advocates of the humble foreign policy that Bush proposed in his 2000 campaign but quickly abandoned. They cannot find common ground between prudential conservatives, including McCain, who are wary of radical change and revolutionary conservatives like Newt Gingrich who are dedicated to smashing the liberal state and annihilating the Democrats.
Conservatives cannot reconcile their historic opposition to social engineering with their backing for one of the most expensive and ambitious social engineering ventures in US history: the reconstruction of Iraq. They cannot square their backing for states' rights with their support for constitutional amendments on abortion and gay marriage and their opposition to vehicle emission standards set by California and other states. They cannot reconcile their advocacy of individual freedom with their support for warrantless wiretapping of U. S. citizens, stringent versions of the Patriot and Military Commissions Acts, and an Executive Order that empowers the federal government to freeze the assets of anyone who threatens Iraq's stability and government.
The defeat of John McCain by the liberal Barack Obama would mark the end of the current conservative era almost as clearly as Franklin Roosevelt's defeat of Herbert Hoover in 1932 marked the end of the conservative 1920s. Even if McCain were to win the presidency he would likely preside over a divided government and become a transitional figure, an Andrei Chernenko to a future Mikhail Gorbachev.
But the transition may not be an easy one for today's liberals. In 1969, when liberalism was facing troubles of its own, Buckley's brother-in-law L. Brent Bozell, who helped build National Review, warned that conservatives had failed to respond with a constructive program of their own. It is a warning that liberals should heed as they contemplate conservatism's troubles today.
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28 years. The conservative whiners can't say they didn't get a fair shot at running things. Unfortunately, they ran things into the ground. George W. Bush will be remembered as the singular individual who destroyed the conservative movement.
All the leadership, Gingrich, DeLay, Hastert, Frist, Lott, Davis.....
Now, all they have left are the windbags like Limbaugh, Coulter, Maglalang-Malkin, Drudge.
Couldn't happen to a nicer group of people. R.I.P. Thank God, there is justice in this world after all.
The "after all" is the key phrase. It's too bad so many soldiers had to die or be maimed for no reason, and it's too bad so many reasonable politicians' careers were trashed, and who knows how many potentially great politicians shied away from public service because of the cesspool the GOP created and assiduously maintained?
Now I know why they fed them to the lions.
lol !
Good riddance to bad rubbish!!!
As long as there are dishonest dollars to be made, conservatives will exist. Just look at McCain. He tells one audience one thing one day and then tells another audience the exact opposite the next day. Then he denies he ever took either position. Even though he's been exposed mutiple times, his supporters do not care. He's a Republican. He's a way hero. Bottom line end of story. We truly are the very stupidest of countries.
Iraq is the least of their problems -- it is merely f hypocrisy.
A more serious threat to conservatism is the complete failure of conservative orthodoxy -- extremely limited government and unconstrained markets -- to deal with any of our challenges.
In short, conservatisms failure is not so much that they are hypocrits when it comes to Iraq; rather it is when they are true to their philosophy, catastrophe follows. To wit: global warming; econmic meltdown; erosion of American prnciples in the miasma of consumerism ... etc. etc. etc
Democrats ran Louisiana from 1880 through 2008, with only 2 Republican governors elected in that span. Are you suggesting that Democrat governance effectively prepared that state to deal with the challenge of Katrina?
Katrina proved one thing. Government at ALL LEVELS utterly failed to deal with the problem competently. The fact that three of the four levels of government involved were all run by Democrats for a very long period of time strongly argues against your inference that liberal big government IS capable of dealing with challenges.
When disasters become big enough, they can be too much for individual states to handle. That's why the Federal government steps in (FEMA = FEDERAL Emergency Management Agency) So nice try shifting the blame and finger pointing, but it won't wash.
You may not remember, but the Mississippi had the worst floods in a century during the Clinton administration. The reason you probably don't remember is because THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DID IT'S JOB UNDER CLINTON!
You wingnuts keep caterwauling about eliminating government, Well you got your wish. The ability of the Federal government to respond to emergencies was all but eliminated under Bush. The Katrina disaster was simply conservative chickens come home to roost.
It is not the end of conservatism. Our constitution is conservative. It is (hopefully) the end of NEO-conservatism. We don't need extremes on either side.
Conservatism has been about robber barons and wannabe emperors at least since Hooverville days. About the Rich dominating the poor.
When BushCo was popular, it was the flower of conservatism.
Conservatism is a failure,
Own it.
Conservatism is a novel idea on paper. Just like communism is a novel idea on paper. Both are idealistic and both are impossible to obtain. Conservatism focuses on the idea of a very small government. This will never work for several reasons. Our military industrial complex moves our government to continually invest heavily into our military. The influence of lobbyists and PACs forces our politicians to create revenue for their particular interests. Education and Social Security will always exist. The whole notion that we want our politicians to keep taxes low but keep our military large is ludicrous. We need a government with a balanced budget that functions efficiently no matter how large or small. This a progressive idea and as progressives we must continue to push our ideas because it's the only way our country will survive.
The epitaph for the Era's tombstone:
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. "
John Kenneth Galbraith
The Bush Administration's Neo-con/Christian coalition took conservatism and selfishness to such a brutal and lethal extreme, with disastrous results both foreign and domestic, that there appears little doubt it will go down in U.S. history as among the worst, if not the worst.
R.I.P.
Well, I do see reasons for optimism, but I'll believe it when I see it. W pushed the conservative agenda to its ultimate extent as well as proved monstrously incompetent. Nonetheless, I do not see the Dems with an idea that will unify them in the same way that supply side economics gave the GOP a kind of ascendence of ideas. The writer does not address this lack of ideas at the core of the Dem candidacy - it is still against W.
An excellent piece. However, I believe the short-tenured Soviet Premier Chernenko's given name was Konstantin.
Obama does have a plan, and it is generally a good one. He is in fact a left leaning centrist - not a Marxist or a Muslim. I support him because he has a vision of what this country could be, and is articulate enough to inspire people with that vision. What he will probably do after elected is to initiate withdrawal from Iraq, put some good people in charge of remaking our health care system, and other good people in charge of putting together an energy policy - then, he will sit back and support initiatives that come from the Democratically controlled House and Senate. My hope is that his presidency will remain as transparent as his campaign has been. If this happens, he will enjoy high approval and be able to make significant changes.
Mr. Lichtman, I cannot begin to underestand why you, the overwhelming majority of your media colleagues, our politicians and Americans, in general, continue to use the word "conservatives" when talking about today's Republican Party. It couldn't be more clear that today's Repubs are anything but conservatives. The Party is an association of radical, right wing groups that, collectively, have taken the nation to perhaps its most dangerous and harmful time in history.
They have inflicted extensive and perhaps irreparable damage. Whatever you want to call them, they are most certainly not conservative and our continued failure to label them as the radicals they are is a very serious mistake. It affords them a certain legitimacy that they do not deserve , and this causes real harm.
Whatever you choose to call them, they will never go away quietly or willingly. Their accomplishments of recent years are clear proof of the harm they represent. They must constantly be monitored, opposed and neutralized. They represent the greatest of all dangers to our nation, its systems of governement and justice, and our Constitution. Even the dangers posed by terrorism pale in comparison to those posed by America's so called "conservatives". It is vital that the country recognizes them the enemies of greatest concern to our institutions and way of life.
"Conservatives cannot reconcile": Sure, they can. Don't underestimate their ability to believe 15 contradictory facts a day and 20 on Sunday
"conservatives had failed to respond with a constructive program of their own. It is a warning that liberals should heed as they contemplate conservatism's troubles today...."
Liberalism didn't fail because of poor policies and programs: I can't explain what happened in 250 word but suffice to say it was a complicated suit of issues not the least of which was support for the 1964 Voting Rights Act. The liberal agenda never lacked for programs or policies the problem for liberals is that it is almost impossible to explain the liberal agenda in a 30 second sound byte.
... or pay for it with a 30% tax hike.
You still think conservative economics works?
You conservatives have no economic creds.
You Conservatives trashed the economy in record time!
Shut up while the adults clean up your mess.
What Mr. Lichtman's piece is pointing out, MourningDude, is that the conservatives have had 3 decades to make good on their promises, and not only have they failed miserably but their innate greed and corruption has bankrupted the nation both morally and fiscally.
All they, and you, have left is the pathetic whine that liberals might raise taxes. It won't work anymore. People are wise to you.
Seeing you refer to Obama as a liberal reminds me how far to the right this country has moved politically. Once again, let me emphasize that Barack Obama is largely a somewhat left-leaning centrist; slightly more left leaning than Bill Clinton but unless events overtake his centrist pragmatism I don't think we can expect an expecially liberal agenda from Obama. I hope I'm wrong.
George Bush is a financially liberal tax and spender, the biggest tax and spender in history. Tax breaks to the rich, or "my base", as he calls them, and 300 bucks back this year to the middle class who are getting fucked backwards and forwards.
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