Conservative Counter Attack
by Donald Devine
Issue 120 - November 19, 2008
If President Barack Obama and his Democratic Congress aggressively pursue the leftist programs of their dreams, they will fail. If conservatives do not believe this, they do not trust their own philosophy and have no business so calling themselves. The President-elect will have overwhelming Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, the united power of the Executive Branch including a sympathetic bureaucracy and their supporting labor unions, and a fawning and compliant mainstream media. What could possibly stop them anyway? Re-electing John Boehner as Republican House leader after he headed a disastrous election effort will not do it.
Conservatives tried to warn President George W. Bush and the GOP from the beginning that big domestic government ?conservatism? is not only oxymoronic but cannot work. They did not listen. Six months of stimulus has failed. When the Treasury Secretary marched in the nation?s nine biggest bank CEOs on October 13 and told them the government was going to buy shares in their firms and there would be no arguments about it in spite of opposition from the three healthiest firms, the fate of the Bush Administration, the John McCain campaign and probably the nation ? to say nothing of U.S. capitalism - was sealed. By not allowing the market to bottom out and instead risking turning a recession into a depression, President Bush has set the nation?s course and now only President-elect Obama can possibly correct it.
The danger of an Obama presidency to institutional conservatism and especially Republicanism is not that it will be socialistic. After President Bush has nationalized the bank, finance, insurance, ?no child? education, elderly prescription drug, and energy industries (probably followed by the auto companies), how much further could President Obama go? The danger to the political right is that President Obama will follow a Bill Clinton-like triangulation and become capitalistic, letting the market hit bottom and work itself out of the mess.
Why might President Obama turn right? First, President Bush will have exhausted every New Deal trick imaginable by the time President Obama enters office in January. The only solution left will be to let the market bottom out ? the only policy that will work - as President Ronald Reagan proved in both 1981 and 1987. Sooner or later, even fighting against his heart, the odds are that President Obama might figure this out. Remember, one of the President-elect?s few sensible advisors is Paul Volker, who as Federal Reserve Chairman led Reagan?s successful effort to wring out the market in 1981.
Second, there will be no money. It is estimated that the Bush Administration has spent $2 trillion on the bailout so far (some of which could be repaid) and is reported ready to spend much more. The deficit for the final Bush year could be the first to total a trillion dollars. It will be impossible to tax the ?rich? enough to make it up. As a result of the current economic downturn, tax revenues are already in decline. One expert estimates that even if Congressional Democrats increased the capital gains tax to what they would like, because of the decline in asset values, it would raise much less revenue (even on static assumptions) than the current rate did last year. Even more important, the entitlement spending explosion will arrive immediately on the heels of the depression. The spending party is over.
Finally, even if the leftists in the Executive Branch wanted to ignore this and proceed, Congress probably would not let them. Certainly, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is by far the most left-wing person ever to hold her office. Her liberalism is very important to her, more so than ideology is for most Republican leaders. Yet, there is one thing more important ? her Speakership. She knows she needs to protect the Democrats elected in Republican-leaning districts in the last two elections to keep her job. Indeed, she previously promised the 2006 Class she would not bring up popular conservative issues for a vote at their expense and kept her word.
Underlying all of this is that America remains more conservative than not. When Pelosi?s own left of center state supported a referendum restricting marriage to one man and one woman, what other proof is required, especially since the most supportive groups were African and Hispanic Americans? Thirty states have now done the same thing. It speaks volumes that in a post election debate with his counterpart at the National Press Club, when the Republican Party chairman was asked how his party could do so poorly and the conservative referenda so well, he disclaimed knowledge of the matter. For Democrats, gays in the military is an unlikely early priority and anything major on abortion is too. Likewise, all the polls show people do not want their taxes increased.
Yes, the Democratic president and Congress will do bad left-wing things. But they will be few, on low-visibility issues and only on what they consider most important. They will push a payoff to the unions eliminating the secret ballot in representational elections because they cannot do without union power. There will be attempts to rig the 2010 election with districting and apportioning tricks. There will be grants to every leftist organization imaginable. Executive Orders on embryonic stem cells and overseas abortions may go but there will not be legislation on major populist conservative issues. Many are worried about the reintroduction of the Fairness Doctrine as a way to weaken conservative talk radio. But Rush Limbaugh has already promised to turn out a million listeners in Washington if they try. It would mobilize the right in a manner not seen in ages. Unfortunately, the Democrats are not that dumb ? at least not in the first two critical years.
The real challenge to the conservative movement is if President Obama and his Congress let the market work and hit bottom, are careful about spending, and keep away from hot-button social issues. Conservatives who understand their philosophy know that this strategy will work and President Obama will be successful and elected to a second term with an even stronger Democratic Congress, when all of their worst fears will indeed come to fruition.
Paradoxically, only the leftist intellectuals who dominate the mainstream media and the universities can save conservatives from this wrenching dilemma. Nobel economic winners Paul Krugman of Princeton and the New York Times and Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia and the Wall Street Journal op-ed page both have encouraged the President-elect to spend and regulate his way out of the economic crisis. They admit the conservatives have been right that the Great Depression lingered a decade because of the New Deal policies but claim it was because Franklin Roosevelt refused to spend enough! Their lesson for President Obama is to spend enormously more and to put much greater controls on business and the marketplace. It is an appeal that would cause any leftist heart to go pit-a-pat.
The left is an incredibly closed world. Study after study has proved that few conservatives exist in the academic or mainstream media universe to provide a counter argument. In a media where self-described progressive David Brooks is hired as the ?conservative? voice of its most prestigious newspaper outlet and its most serious TV newscast, leftist intellectuals just might convince Democrats to go against their survival instincts. In a recent ?debate? with Bill Clinton?s favorite progressive Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne on NPR, both he and Brooks agreed that the only way the Republicans can recover from the 2008 election or even to survive is to become progressives like the Democrats. It must be comforting (and blinding) to believe both left and right must be leftists.
If the intellectual media can convince the Democratic pols who control Congress and the Executive that in fact there is no thinking person to the right of Brooks, why not go for the whole leftist agenda when they have the power to do so? Anyone who knows spending and controls will not work and wants an early Republican revival should shout, Bring on the biased leftist media when we really need them. But it is a dilemma. Do conservatives root for the leftist intellectual program and so prove this philosophy is nuts - and be ready for a big comeback in 2010 - or do they root for President Obama to follow President Reagan, which will result in quick recovery but also a Democratic future as far as the eye can see?
Either way conservatives are pretty much irrelevant to the outcome. The first move is all up to Mr. Obama and Mrs. Pelosi. In that sense, re-electing Mr. Boehner as the GOP leader perfectly fits the situation we are in. Maybe the best initial attack strategy is to play dumb.
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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