The "Bush is not a conservative" defense

I'm fascinated by Jonah Goldberg's move to try sever conservatism's fate from that of President Bush by arguing that the President is not a conservative:

[T]here is one area where we can make somewhat useful comparisons between Nixon and Bush: their status as liberal Republicans...

Bush is certainly to the right of Nixon on many issues. But at the philosophical level, he shares the Nixonians' supreme confidence in the power of the state. Bush rejects limited government and many of the philosophical assumptions that underlie that position. He favors instead strong government. He believes, as he said in 2003, that when "somebody hurts, government has got to move." His compassionate conservatism shares with Nixon's moderate Republicanism a core faith that not only can the government love you, but it should spend money to prove its love. Beyond that, there seems to be no core set of principles that define Bush's approach, and therefore, much like Nixon, no clearly communicable message that explains why he does things other than political calculation and expediency.

The idea, of course, is to not let Bush's failure damage conservatism as a political movement. As Glenn Greenwald points out, however, conservatives happily claimed Bush as one of their own when he was popular even though he displayed some big government tendencies. But now that he's unpopular, it's likely we'll see more "Bush is not a conservative" rhetoric.

This rhetorical tactic is fascinating because it inverts what Democrats did after the debacle of the 1980/1984/1988 elections. Democrats started denying they were liberals, whereas conservatives today are denying that Republicans are conservatives.

It also conveniently reverses the way conservatives interpreted President Clinton's ideology. Every move toward the center that Clinton made was interpreted as a sign of political expediency that just masked his underlying liberalism. By contrast, President Bush's moves toward the center (education, prescription drugs, immigration, refusing to propose major budget cuts) are interpreted as revealing his true liberal tendencies.

The other absurd aspect of this is Goldberg's suggestion that Bush is unpopular because he's too liberal:

Perhaps this unnoticed fact [Bush's alleged liberalism on domestic issues] explains part of Bush's falling poll numbers more than most observers are willing to admit. The modern conservative movement, from Goldwater to Reagan, was formed as a backlash against Nixonism. Today, Reaganite conservatives make up a majority of the Republican party. If Bush held the Reaganite line on liberty at home the way he does on liberty abroad, he'd be in a lot better shape. After all, if Bush's own base supported him at their natural level, his job-approval numbers wouldn't be stellar, but they wouldn't have his enemies cackling, either.

USA Today/Gallup happened to ask a poll question about precisely this issue, and the results indicate exactly the opposite. 45% of Americans think Bush is too conservative, 28% think he's just about right, and only 19% think he's too liberal. Part of the most recent decline in Bush's poll numbers is certainly due to growing conservative discontent, but that's only because there's no one else left to alienate -- liberals and moderates already disapprove of Bush in massive numbers (according to USA Today/Gallup, 52% of conservatives approve of Bush, compared with 28% of moderates and 7% of liberals). If the President moved meaningfully toward the center, he'd almost surely gain in popularity. Conversely, moving further to the right would likely hurt his overall political standing. It's hard to imagine that more hard-edged conservatism would leave Bush in "a lot better shape," as Goldberg claims.

Comments

[Jonny]

[deleted by Brendan for ripping off a Q and O post without attribution]

[Jon Henke]

Y'know, earlier in the day, I made some points very similar to those "Jonny" just made. In fact, I made exactly the same points. This choad just copied and pasted my post without attribution. Jag-off.

In any event, I think Greenwald's post is a remarkable contradiction of his own earlier points, and a thoughtless caricature of the points made by Goldberg, et al.

[Grumpy]

A local preacher once delivered an infamous sermon titled, "Jesus Was Liberal, But Not *A* Liberal."

Along the same lines, but the other way 'round, George W. Bush is a conservative, but he's not conservative.

(FYI, the sermon was in response to demonstrators who held signs reading "Jesus Was A Liberal" while protesting the previous week's sermon, entitled "Scare-a-Liberal Sunday.")

[Brendan Nyhan]

Jon, those points may be true about Greenwald - I don't know. But I wasn't endorsing his entire post nor his consistency over time. What about the points I made? Not sure what criticism of Greenwald has to do with my post.

Here is a link to Jon's post on Greenwald for those who are interested. I'm deleting the comment that rips him off without attribution.

[b-psycho]

Someone should ask the ones responding to those polls what the definition of "conservative" is. Hell, I'd like to know myself, cuz the image I'm getting boils down to rampant statism & corruption wrapped up in small-minded Jesus-and-the-flag symbolism.

If they see it the same way then apparently I'm not giving folks enough credit if they're actually smart enough to reject it.

[Jon Henke]

Brendan, I don't think there's an objective, central definition of "conservative" or "liberal", so it's a bit difficult to create a taxonomy of Bush policy here. Conservatism and liberalism are tendencies, rather than clear, consistent philosophies. One might argue that NCLB is a "conservative" policy, but conservatives in 1994 would have blasted it as the perfect illustration of Big Government liberalism.

Both sides will argue indefinitely and never the twain shall meet, probably because the words they use mean exactly what they want them to mean, rather than distinguishable policy directions.

In any event, Bush's "compassionate conservatism" has always been criticized within the Republican Party, as have the Drug bill, NCLB and a host of other policies. Republicans have certainly claimed Bush as one of their own -- after all, he is -- and conservatives have always sided with Bush, because the alternative was even less conservative than him, but there has always been broad dissatisfaction with him, too.

Many like to think that conservatives wholeheartedly touted Bush previously and have done a complete about-face now. But that's not really the case. They defended him previously as the lesser of the evils, but they've always had reservations. At the time, they were criticized for being unwilling to criticize Bush. Now, critics have switched course and are focusing on the criticism of Bush, rather than the defenses. The criticism has always been there, but other battles were being fought.

In any event, if conservatism is marked by skepticism of government and a belief in federal restraint -- as Greenwald has described it -- then it seems like anger at Bush's policies would counsel exactly that political philosophy. The failures the Right criticizes in Bush are precisely the failure to be "conservative" in that sense.

Generally speaking, when Bush is criticized for being insufficiently conservative, it's the restraint/spending policies that are being criticized. Would he be more popular if he'd been more restrained? I happen to think so. Maybe I'm wrong, but that would seem to cover an awful lot of the objections to him.

What do you think?

[Seth Kramer]

I would argue that Bush is so disliked because he's not consistantly liberal or conservative.

Sure socially he's a total right-winger on issues like abstinence only, the Gay Marriage Amendment, stem cell research, and "Faith Based Initiatives", but he's also got these ideas that are conservo-liberal hybrids like wanting to "fix" Social Security by privatizing it which is a typically conservative plan, but doing it his way would require massive debt which is not fiscally conservative.

Medicare Part D: It's a liberal health care plan implemented like a pro-business conservative. It has the benefit of chafing people on both sides of the isle.

NCLB: A potentially very expensive education plan that's not fully funded. Again it rubs both sides the wrong way.