Conservatism: Death and resurrection

By Jeffrey T. Kuhner

The triumph of President Barack Obama is a watershed in American history. It marks the end of a rearguard conservative movement that has failed to dominate American politics and society. Yet, as we examine the road traveled—and take stock of the wreckage—we can also chart a new course that will eventually redeem us.

Since the 2000 election, Democrats have been obsessed with one goal: reducing George W. Bush’s presidency to rubble. They have succeeded. For eight long years, Democratic leaders and liberal activists have waged all-out political guerilla warfare. Even the atrocity of 9/11 failed to blunt their partisan attacks. Mr. Bush has been denounced as an incompetent war criminal, someone who legitimized torture as official U.S. policy—the “new Hitler.” Democrats have blamed him for nearly everything: the tanking economy, the war in Iraq, Guantanamo, the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, global warming, the fraying of our international alliances, and rising inequality between the rich and poor. In short, Mr. Bush has been demonized; he has been portrayed as a Christian simpleton, a right-wing extremist and a primitive Texas gun-slinger.

This dangerous propaganda has been peddled by the media establishment relentlessly. This caricature obscures Mr. Bush’s real successes and failures. More importantly, it shows the depths to which liberals are willing to go to maintain their hegemony. Since the 1930s, New Deal-Great Society liberalism has been consolidating its grip on national power. With the exception of the Reagan interregnum, the Left has continued its long march through America’s institutions.

For a while, the Bush administration threatened its impending victory. Mr. Bush was pro-life, pro-guns and pro-war. Riding an initial wave of popularity after the 9/11 attacks, he appeared to be politically invincible. With Karl Rove acting as a modern-day Mark Hanna to Mr. Bush’s William McKinley, it seemed as though the Republicans were on the cusp of forming an enduring electoral majority coalition. But conservatives were deluding themselves. Mr. Bush was not a traditional conservative. Rather, he was a big-government corporatist, who federalized education, added a new entitlement prescription-drug program for seniors, racked up massive budget deficits and championed “comprehensive” immigration reform.

Yet Mr. Bush did challenge the liberal status quo—and for this he had to be destroyed. His tax cuts and proposal to partially privatize Social Security frightened those who believed these measures were the first steps toward an ownership society—one that would supplant the cradle-to-grave, welfare state erected by big-government liberals over the past 70 years.

Moreover, Mr. Bush’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq assaulted the basis of liberal foreign policy. Mr. Bush not only believed in the muscular use of American power (a great sin in the eyes of the Left), but in promoting democracy in the Middle East. He understood that multilateralism and global institutions are not effective mechanisms to combat Islamic terrorism; an army of international bureaucrats and diplomats is no match for religious extremists. Military “hard” power combined with self-government and political pluralism is the only realistic option.

Mr. Bush, however, failed to grasp that these policies threatened powerful vested interests—especially, in Washington. The permanent State Department bureaucracy and large elements of the CIA waged a relentless campaign of press leaks against his administration. Democrats on Capitol Hill, along with elite media organs, such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, MSNBC and CNN, declared war on his presidency. They were determined to paint him as another Richard Nixon—a dark, sinister leader who oversaw a lawless administration shrouded in secrecy.  

This brings us to the central question of the Bush years: Why did the liberal establishment hate him so much? After all, he was a big-spending, open-borders Republican. On numerous issues—No Child Left Behind, prescription drugs, campaign finance, illegal immigrants, AIDS funding in Africa—he broke with conservative orthodoxy. Yet none of this mattered.

Why? The answer is a simple one: At their core, liberals—like all political revolutionaries—are obsessed with power. They use slogans and ideals to mask their drive to maintain and expand their control over society. The New Deal, contrary to the prevailing myth, did nothing to engender economic recovery or end the Great Depression. What it did do, however, was establish a new ruling class, a political and cultural elite determined to bring about an incremental (and bloodless) revolution. Liberals are now on the verge of achieving their radical project: the transformation of America into a European-style social democracy, characterized by confiscatory taxation, a nanny state, permissiveness and a transnationalist foreign policy. Mr. Bush’s tax-cutting policies, his muscular unilateralism and unabashed Christian patriotism embodied the last vestiges of a traditionalist America that the Left not only despises, but seeks to abolish.  

Instead of reacting vigorously to this ideological onslaught, Mr. Bush did nothing. He allowed his enemies to frame the terms of the debate. He neglected the basic rule of politics: always be on offense. Instead, he spent most of his time playing defense. It cost him dearly. As conservatives began to abandon him and the public tired of the Iraq war, his presidency crumbled. In 2006, Democrats regained control of both houses of Congress. The final blow came in November with Mr. Obama’s triumph.

The GOP is once again in the political wilderness—a fate it fully deserves. During Mr. Bush’s tenure, the GOP abandoned its principles and passed legislation that rendered it little more than an extension of the Democratic Party. Lacking fiscal restraint and a regard for limited government, the GOP became nothing more than Democrat-lite. And the American people were repulsed. What happened to the conservatives in Congress? Where did they go?

More ominously, the Democrats—building on the big-government policies of their Republican predecessors—now have the votes to pass a series of legislation that will mark New Deal liberalism’s final victory: a trillion dollar economic “stimulus” package, nationalization of the banks and auto makers, government-run health care, federally funded daycare, granting legal status to millions of illegal aliens, and entrenching abortion on demand, euthanasia and same-sex marriage. We have seen the future and it is … Sweden.

The Bush years have shown that a Republican president, lacking a coherent and firmly held worldview, is no match for our dominant liberal elites. But having the right principles—and sticking to them in the face of withering partisan criticism—is only a small part of the solution. Conservatives have a much deeper problem: They are caught in a time warp. They are still living in the 1980s, kidding themselves that a conservative Republican administration can move the country rightward. It can’t. The times have changed. Our age is marinated in trendy post-modern liberalism. Culture trumps politics. And whichever movement controls the cultural apparatus of power will eventually—sooner or later—capture the state.

Liberals dominate our culture. They control the federal bureaucracies, the courts, Hollywood, television, the arts, the universities, much of the media and the Internet, and now the White House and both houses of Congress. For conservatives to have any chance of stopping America’s relentless leftward march, they must retake the culture—one segment at a time. This means that more than candidates (Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, Mitt Romney) or fundraising or grass-roots networking, what is truly needed is the one thing conservatives have neglected for far too long: new ideas.

A reinvigorated conservatism can only succeed if it engages the enemy on the cultural battlefield. The Bush years—and the Clinton years, the Reagan years, the Carter years, the Nixon years, going all the way back to FDR—should have taught us one thing: We are in an ideological battle, a struggle for the heart and soul of America. The Left has been waging this culture war for generations, and the Right, instead of fighting back, has been offering token and weak resistance. It is high time for this to end.

Liberals champion economic collectivism and moral anarchy. Their policies lead not only to anemic growth, permanent high unemployment and unsustainable entitlement programs, but to the mass murder of unborn children, the destruction of the family and the appeasement of Islamic fascism. One need only look at Europe—Sweden, in fact—to see the disastrous consequences.

We have seen the future and it does not work. If conservatives have the strength of their convictions, they will win. But to win, they must first fight. And sadly, for too long too many conservatives have been too stupid, too cowardly or too corrupt to fight the culture of death that is modern-day liberalism.

It is time for our rebirth: Who wants to join us?

-Jeffrey T. Kuhner is the editor of Reflections and a columnist at The Washington Times.