Conservatives Lose
by Donald Devine
Issue 99 - January 16, 2008
The radical leftist Alexander Cockburn said of the Iowa Republican victor: as ?demonstrated during his ten years as the governor of Arkansas, [Mike] Huckabee is a progressive, with enlightened views and a record of substantive action on immigration, public health, the regressive nature of sales taxes, education of poor kids and the possibility of redemption for convicted criminals.? As governor he was so ?enlightened? in following the state education association union agenda and with increasing spending generally, he received the endorsement of the New Hampshire NEA for president.
New Hampshire GOP winner John McCain voted against the George W. Bush tax cuts in 2001 and again in 2003. He supported the Administration?s amnesty immigration bill. He supported the No Child Left Behind educational centralization act. He was co-sponsor of the free-speech-limiting McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill. He is an enthusiastic supporter of more government market regulation in such fields as securities, automobiles and communications, among others.
Ronald Reagan would be appalled! Although a miracle is remotely possible, the likelihood is that Reagan conservatism is dead for this election.
Sure Gov. Huckabee is strong on conservative social issues and Sen. McCain is a war hero and often a leader against wasteful spending and earmarks. But Ronald Reagan insisted that conservatism was a triad of limited national government taxes, regulation and spending, a commitment to traditional social values, and a strong but pragmatic foreign policy. The closest to the Reagan tripartite formula is Fred Thompson but he came in a weak third in Iowa and had one percent in the Granite State. Ron Paul is strong on cutting spending and supporting traditional social issues but, although he recognizes proper limits on foreign entanglements, goes to the extreme of voting against almost all defense appropriations and sees little need for any foreign military presence at all.
While Mitt Romney mostly says things President Reagan would agree with, he has not been able to convince most people he is sincere and as a result received disappointing margins in the early states, including a narrow win in his home state Michigan, after large leads in early polls. The only other candidate registering in the nomination contests is Rudy Giuliani, who is questionable on all three of the Reagan criteria. So the chances a Reaganite can win are slim and none.
Even at its lowest ebb, conservatism had hope for the future. Barry Goldwater lost the 1964 election by a landslide. But conservatives considered him the winner because his ideals eventually triumphed under President Reagan. Although his opponent won overwhelmingly, by the end of Lyndon Johnson?s term he was so unpopular he could not even seek re-election. His Great Society ended in the 1970s with both colossal inflation and economic stagnation. In contrast, Sen. Goldwater?s idea of limited constitutional government became the Republican platform and rallied the imagination of the generation that nominated and elected Reagan, resulting in a 9.7 percent reduction in non-defense discretionary spending, with total domestic spending down from 17.9 to 16.4 percent of GDP during his tenure.
The only one with any claim to be a future Barry Goldwater is Rep. Paul; but he has some real problems and will certainly not follow his predecessor and win the GOP nomination. This is understandable because the limited government cause is now actually at an even lower ebb. Long gone are the days of President Reagan?s absolute reduction in discretionary spending over his eight years or even the limited Congressional reductions immediately following the 1994 election. The George W. Bush presidency has resulted in the largest percent increases in domestic national spending of any eight years since the early New Deal?and, of course, in inflation-adjusted dollars, absolute spending has increased many times more even than under Franklin Roosevelt with much greater market regulation and control over state and local governments.
Even worse, over these years most young Republicans now consider federal standards to control education, energy, commerce, agriculture, etc. as the proper positions of their party, rather than policy areas for state or local government or the private sector, as for Goldwater and Reagan. Many others think empire should be the foreign policy goal, while Reagan?s Weinberger Doctrine set narrow limits on the use of military force. In an era when a presumably conservative president says that ?when someone hurts, government has to move? no leader is speaking for a Reagan-like limited government and the young assume big government is the only solution.
The young people who provided the Goldwater movement with its energy and became the adult leadership for Reagan came predominately from an organization called Young Americans for Freedom. Its now aged alumni were asked their opinion of Rep. Paul and particularly what they would have thought of him if they were now as young as they were when they were first attracted to Goldwater. Twenty-seven percent were so opposed to his anti-war positions that they would not even consider him a conservative. Yet, while only 38 percent were actually supporting Paul for president, 72 percent thought they would have been attracted to and inspired by his limited constitutional government message when they were young.
Rep. Paul?s position that American forces should not be involved beyond its shores does go well beyond even traditional non-interventionism. YAF?s mission statement allowed foreign intervention based upon the ?just interests? of the U.S., not on abstract non-interventionism (nor upon abstract intervention, for that matter). From the earliest years of the new Constitution, the U.S. was in Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, the French high-seas, British Canada and Spanish Florida, to say nothing about against (foreign) Indian tribes. George Washington?s warning was against entangling, permanent alliances, not about rejecting foreign relationships per se. It is true, as Paul likes to quote, that John Quincy Adams spoke of America?s heart and how it should act in world affairs in the following terms.
Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet on her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world; she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit. . . . Her glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind.
Yet, Paul omits Adams? immediately following words.
She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.
Paul?s foreign policy views limit his future appeal. Even Adams held that America does have a spear as well as a shield and she can be aloof from foreign engagement only to the degree ?her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind? allows. Adams, of course, himself was the author of the rather aggressive Monroe Doctrine setting terms for all of South America, as well as of the transcontinental treaty with Spain and new relationships with Denmark, Mexico, the Hanseatic League, the Scandinavian countries, Prussia and Austria. One can even agree with Paul that it was not in U.S. interests to invade Iraq but with Adams not to reject it on abstract principle but upon whether it was necessary or not, or whether it should not have degenerated into nation-building. It should be noted that even Rep. Paul voted for the initial engagement in Afghanistan.
On the other hand, there is no question that Paul has reached deep into popular passions at least among active citizens. His packed early rallies exploded with placards reading ?liberty, liberty.? John Derbyshire says they might be ?crazy, as some colleagues tell me? and ?perhaps they are, to be shouting for liberty in 2007, after decades of swelling federal power and arrogance, of proliferating taxes, rules, and interests, of gushing transfers of wealth to politically connected elites from working- and middle-class grunts, of the college and teacher-union scams, of the metastasizing tort-law rackets, of ever more numerous yet ever more clueless intelligence agencies, of open borders and visas for people who hate us, of widening cracks in our sense of nationhood (?Press one for English ??), of speech codes and race lobbies and judicial impositions.? One might even say it is as ?crazy? to be for limited constitutional government today as it was in 1964.
Political movements are built on enthusiasm and whatever the Paul supporters are, they are fervent. Talk is cheep but writing checks and activism show commitment. In fact, it was Barry Goldwater who was the first to support a presidential campaign predominantly on small contributions and this prefigured his influence. Paul?s fundraising is phenomenal. In November, Paul surpassed the all-time on-line record by raising over $3 million in a single day, from over 37,000 contributors, celebrating Guy Fawkes? rebellion against English oppression of all things, asking only $100 each. On Boston Tea Party Day he doubled that again with $6 million. Thousands contribute $25 per week. His fourth quarter 2007 fundraising of $18 million surpassed all other candidates and included many more individual contributors. While this does not represent a majority or even close to one, it does represent an army of activists?again following Goldwater.
Except for foreign policy, Paul is very much in the Goldwater and Reagan conservative tradition. Even there, Reagan committed U.S. troops much less than his successors, Republican and Democratic, and Paul?s admonitions against empire could fit into a new comprehensive Reaganite limited government platform. On domestic policy, Paul?s nickname regarding government spending is ?Dr. No,? voting against most spending bills in Congress. He is for sound money, eliminating government bureaus, federalism and privatization. He is against abortion, a national ID card, and an environmentalism that does not respect property rights. All matters not given to the national government in the Constitution should be exercised by the states or the people, he insists, mimicking the much neglected 10th Amendment.
Even if the Republican nominee wins the 2008 election, which is unlikely, the idea of limited government would not be high on his agenda and even if it were would be frustrated by a Democratic Congress. Meanwhile, Paul?s more passionate supporters will mature. There are nuts in any political movement?and there surely were in the 1960s--but mostly only the sound personalities persevere. Youthful enthusiasm is the lifeblood of any political movement and the only place it now exists on the right is with Mr. Paul, whatever his limitations. If the idea of limited government is to survive, it can paradoxically only come from a new generation of leaders motivated at least partially by a seventy-two year old Congressman.
Donald Devine, the editor of Conservative Battleline Online, was the director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management from 1981 to 1985 and is the director of the Federalist Leadership Center at Bellevue University.
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