CAMPAIGN FOR AMERICA'S FUTURE: "The Crackup of Crackpot Conservatism"
"What is missing from this hagiography is that this emperor has no clue."
ourfuture.org
ourfuture.org
Robert L. Borosage
The Crackup of Crackpot Conservatism
06/03/03 | Source: www.tompaine.com
Karl Rove, Bush's political guru, is on a roll. His President enjoys high poll ratings, despite the doldrums in the economy and the chaos in Iraq. Republicans in the Congress march in lock step. The packing of the judiciary with reactionary activists is moving forward. The Republican Party is raking in more money than it can spend. A potent right-wing political machine enforces discipline, echoes the line and blisters any opponents. 9/11 and Iraq have been turned to partisan purpose. And on the other side, the Democratic Leadership Council is strafing other Democrats again, as if stuck in 1984 forever. As Adam Clymer reports, Republicans increasingly believe that Rove's ultimate fantasy - forging an enduring conservative coalition that can dominate for decades - is now in reach.
What is missing from this hagiography is that this emperor has no clue. George Bush and the "movement conservatives" that drive his administration have never been more powerful or more bankrupt. They simply have no answers for the challenges that now face this country.
Over the past two years, the US has witnessed a staggering reversal of fortune. We've gone from peace and prosperity to war and recession. We've suffered the worst act of terror on US soil ever, the most expensive stock market collapse ever, the biggest corporate crime wave since the Gilded Age, the worst trade deficits in recorded history. States and cities wrestle with the largest fiscal crisis in over fifty years. And we've gone from record budget surplus to record deficits overnight.
American families pay the price for this. Wages are declining; unemployment is up. Health care is broken. Retirement plans are shattered. Schools are laying off teachers and shutting down after-school programs. The cost of college is soaring. More and more Americans are struggling simply to make ends meet.
Bush argues he is not to blame, and to some extent that's true - he didn't cause 9/11 or the recession or the stock market crash.
But Americans are looking for solutions, not excuses. And Bush and his movement conservatives have no answer to offer. Their mantra, of course, is smaller government, lower taxes, strong military, traditional values. But our government is already the smallest of any industrial nation, our taxes the lowest, our military the strongest, our people among the most devout. We've already been there and done that.
For most families, Bush's policies are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Declining wages and rising inequality are accelerated by his relentless war on labor, opposition to minimum wage, attack on overtime and the forty hour week, and tax giveaways to the wealthy. His health care plan is a payoff to the drug companies and the insurance companies, blocking action on soaring health care costs. After the stock market crashed, workers discovered that corporations dramatically slashed their contributions to worker retirement in the switch from guaranteed pensions to private savings plans. Bush wants to do the same with Social Security and Medicare, using privatization as a cover for slashing government's contribution. This president remarkably wants to build schools in Iraq but not in the US, and broke even his own promise on funding for education.
The reality is that conservative policies have dominated the last two decades of US policy. Many of the challenges we face -- corporate crime, inequality, trade imbalance, declining wages, overcrowded schools, public squalor -- are the unintended consequences of those policies. The policies that got us into this fix are not likely to get us out.
Worse, Bush has given his administration over to the most extreme reactionary elements of his party, while embracing a brazen crony capitalism to reward those who pay for that party. Zealots who want to use tax cuts to eviscerate government's capacity to act drive his fiscal policy. Or as the conservative Financial Times editorial page put it, "the lunatics are in charge of the asylum." His judicial appointments are vetted by Federalist Society extremists who want reactionary judicial activists to outlaw government's authority to act, overturning not only a woman's right to choose and civil rights, but the New Deal itself, eliminating government's authority to protect consumers, workers or the environment. Or as Cas Sunstein of the conservative University of Chicago Law School put it, "They want to restore the status quo ante from about 1934...It's a radical agenda." Bush's foreign policy is given over to neo-conservative ideologues who openly champion a new American empire, while abandoning fifty years of bipartisan American support for alliance and international cooperation. As Ted Sorenson, respected advisor to John Kennedy put it, this is not a "new realism," but an expression of "the arrogance of power and the ignorance of history." And much of the rest is simply special interest corruption - -an energy policy defined by and for big oil, a prescription drug policy by and for the drug companies, an environmental policy catering to the polluters' lobby.
When given a clear choice, a broad majority of Americans favor a far different course than that pursued by this administration. Americans want to save Social Security and Medicare, not privatize them. They prefer investment in schools and health care over more tax breaks. They want to hold corporations accountable, raise the minimum wage and empower workers, rather than allow corporate self-regulation. They want to protect the environment rather than cut back on environmental regulation.
Rove is smart enough to know this. He argues, "The two major parties have sort of exhausted their governing agendas." But he knows that the conservative agenda is particularly unpopular. So Bush doesn't trumpet his conservativism the way Reagan and Gringrich did. Instead, he drums on patriotism, dresses up like a reformer on domestic issues and resorts to Orwellian distortions and straight up lies to disguise his policies. With money, special interest support, and the formidable right-wing political machine, Bush and Rove may just get by for a time. But deception and disguise are no way to forge an enduring majority coalition. We are at the end of their era, not the beginning of it.
That's why those who counsel Democrats to cut loose their loyalists and drift to prevailing right-wing winds have it wrong. We need a big argument about the direction of this country - and Democrats would benefit most from forcing it. Do we want a smaller government dominated by corporate lobbies, or one that is on your side? Do we want to free up corporations and CEOS, or empower workers and protect small investors, consumers and the environment? Do we want to police the world alone, or return to the polices that made this country strong - alliance, international law, sharing the burdens and seeking to be a source of hope not of fear? Do we want a society where all are on their own, or to build the basic supports vital for raising a family in an economy of increasing flux, starting with health care, education and training, and retirement security? Do we want a corporate-defined trade policy that ships good jobs abroad while racking up unsustainable deficits or do we want fair and balanced trade that will spread the blessings of the global economy?
To drive that debate, Democrats would do well to learn from how the New Right responded to life in the political wilderness in the mid-1970s, when Nixon was in disgrace and Democrats controlled everything. At that moment, New Right strategists decided not to drift to the center but to build an independent capacity to drive their message, their values and their movement into the political debate. They sought to take over the Republican Party from green-eyeshade moderates and make it their vehicle. They built the Heritage Foundation, an openly right-wing propaganda center. They invested in the Moral Majority, galvanizing the right-wing evangelical movement. They built a network of conservative PACs, led by the National Conservative Political Action Committee. They mobilized a movement that transformed not only the Republican Party but national political debate as well.
The rise of the New Right wasn't solely due to its own organizing. Liberalism had no answer for the challenges facing the country in the 1970S -- stagflation, growing pressures on families, moral decline, America held hostage. And the successes and excesses of the triumphant movements of the 1960s generated a furious reaction that fueled New Right organizing. But only by organizing independently was the right able to grab the opportunity created by these dynamics.
Today, conservatism is failing to meet the challenges facing the country. And the excesses of the self-described "movement conservatives" who dominate this Administration are generating an impassioned response from those under attack - workers, women, minorities, environmentalists.
Now progressives must build the independent capacity to drive this energy into the political debate. And force a large debate about this country's direction and about fundamental issues. If Americans are given a choice, Karl Rove might well not like where they end up. |
