Clicking on banner ads enables JWR to constantly improve
Jewish World Review March 21, 2001 / 26 Adar, 5761

Jonah Goldberg

Jonah Goldberg
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Roger Simon
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports


Republicans should be cautious of 'compassionate conservatism'

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- ONE of the biggest political clichés, popularized by Ronald Reagan no less, is the old joke about how an optimist is someone who, when he finds a pile of manure under the Christmas tree, exclaims, "I'm getting a pony!"

But what people never think through is that even if you get the pony, you still have to deal with the big pile of manure in your living room. Which is to say: There's a downside to everything.

Conservatives don't seem to understand this yet. It seems like every major conservative in America is Christmas-pony happy about the new president. Just this week, The New York Times ran another front-page story explaining how ultraconservatives adore Bush (and implying, therefore, that maybe normal people shouldn't).

This administration is "more Reaganite than the Reagan administration " says Ed Feulner, president of the very conservative Heritage Foundation. Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, a leading right-wing activist group, told the Times: "There isn't an us and them with this administration. They is us. We is them."

In an earlier story about how Bush is a real conservative, Paul Weyrich, perhaps the crankiest of the curmudgeon conservative activists, told the Times, "I personally love this president."

So, yes, there's a whole lot of love going on. But no matter how much you love your pony, you'd better watch out that you don't step in something.

Conservatives need to face the fact that at some point George Bush could be our Bill Clinton. Oh, don't get me wrong. I think GW is a decent and honorable man who, like Reagan, wouldn't dream of removing his jacket in the Oval Office, let alone his pants.

But Bush's "compassionate conservatism" may well end up looking a lot like Clinton's famous "triangulation" strategy. This was the technique whereby Clinton would rhetorically concede a few points to the opposition while pushing through his own agenda and calling it a "third way."

After her '15 minutes': The 'Sista'

So, Clinton criticized Sista Souljah to win over white moderates, but he delivered real substance for his black democratic base. He said he wanted to make abortion safe, legal and rare, but the "rare" was merely focus-group rhetoric. He wanted to "mend" but not end affirmative action, meaning change nothing. He said the "era of big government is over" to placate a Republican House, but he increased funding for programs wherever he could.

It's possible that "compassionate conservatism" isn't so much the Republican alternative to Clintonism, as the Republican version of Clintonism.

The evidence has been there all along: During the campaign, Bush criticized Judge Robert H. Bork and declared that congressional Republicans shouldn't "balance the budget on the backs of the poor." Even the Republican convention snubbed numerous movement conservatives in favor of Motown singers. This was all a deliberate effort to "change the tone" in Washington, i.e. Bush's own "third way."

More recently, Bush dusted off one of his favorite lines from the campaign stump. He says, "As president, my job is to tell every parent to love their children." In his big speech to Congress last month, Bush declared in pitch-perfect Clintonism that he denounced the "old, tired argument: on one side, those who want more government, regardless of the cost; on the other, those who want less government, regardless of the need. We should leave those arguments to the last century, and chart a different course."

Such rhetoric should bother conservatives. Under no circumstances should the federal government tell parents to love their children. In fact, any parent who needs to hear that message from the federal government might need to have his child taken away by the federal government.

More importantly, in regard to Bush's attack on "tired old arguments" about the budget, conservatives never argued from principle that we shouldn't have programs we need because they cost too much money. They argued that we don't need such programs because they cost too much for the people they are trying to help.

Indeed, former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson, Bush's new Health and Human Services secretary, was a conservative reformer of welfare, and his "workfare" programs cost more than the old system. It was George Bush's un-conservative father who declared in his inaugural address that we have "more will than wallet."

Bush's triangulation may be great for the Republican Party; we don't know yet. But we do know that Clinton's triangulation contributed to the Democrats' loss of the House, the Senate and numerous statehouses and legislatures. These actions made the Democratic party seem more about maneuvering and less about principles. More importantly, it made it difficult to understand what the labels "liberal" or "Democrat" mean anymore.

Conservatives, happy as they are about their pony, should avoid stepping in similar problems.



To comment on JWR contributor Jonah Goldberg's column click here.

Up


03/19/01: "Traffic" moves propaganda into drug-policy debate
03/15/01: Appeal of 'Sopranos' lies in strict code of honor
03/09/01: Organic claims are cleverly written fiction
03/07/01: Snow job: There the media go again
03/02/01: It's a vision thing
02/28/01: SAT is best measure of general aptitude
02/26/01: Easing the estate tax
02/23/01: Clinton defenders finally admit to his power abuses
02/21/01: Failed dot-coms missed rules of the marketplace
02/15/01: Clinton heeds my Harlem advice
02/12/01: Harlem could be Bill's best move yet
02/06/01: Lying, betrayal essential parts of journalism
01/18/01: How to polarize candidates
01/15/01: Dems never tire of using 'race card'
01/11/01: Taking the celebrity out of politics
01/08/01: Unfairly 'borking' Ashcroft
01/04/01: Want to be more efficient? Increase number of politicians
01/02/01: Whole lotta exploitin' goin' on
12/28/00: Hypocrisy police pounce on Clinton book deal
12/26/00: Sometimes, it's good to be a Grinch
12/21/00: Though symbolic, Bush's diversity sends a message
12/19/00: Gore concedes --- but why did it take so long?
12/14/00: Is 'Queer as Folk' what we asked for?
12/11/00: Election mess hardly a 'civics lesson'
12/07/00: Clinton's tacky legacy
12/05/00: Marriage civilizes the manly beast
11/30/00: Gore's speech more pompous posturing
11/28/00: Rabble-rousing Dems act irresponsibly
11/27/00: Duking it out with democracy
11/16/00: Issues irrelevant to most voters
11/14/00: Gore's us-vs.-them campaign
11/10/00: Dot-com disasters missing brand-name success
11/06/00: Conventional wisdom turns with the polls
11/03/00: Clinton photo, appropriately, hits below the belt
11/01/00: Electoral college ensures democracy
10/30/00: New Yorkers, media letting Hillary off the hook
10/23/00: Gore needs to put first things first
10/20/00: Treatment of Farrakhan glosses over odd issues
10/16/00: Secrets of election can be found in 'Star Trek'
10/12/00: Arafat hardly 'provoked' into violence
10/10/00: Undecided voters may be ignorant, not discriminating
10/06/00: The importance of character isn't debatable
10/03/00: Conservatives are the true friends of science You know why?
09/29/00: Symbolic 'born alive' vote makes sense
09/25/00: Conservatives adopt abandoned liberalism
09/21/00: Ventura's media backpedaling makes fiction of his new book
09/18/00: Tough questions target Hillary Clinton's elitism
09/14/00: Hollywood morality to blame
09/11/00: Specifically, AlGore's detailed plan is meaningless
09/07/00: Time-honored tradition: Insult the press
09/05/00: Scouting out justice
08/30/00: The ADL's historical revisionism
08/28/00: Sitcoms will survive, post-"Survivor"
08/24/00: Candidates' choice of movies shows refreshing honesty
08/21/00: An AlGore victory? Only if dead birds fly
08/17/00: AlGore is doomed, but Dems ignore warning signs
08/15/00: Proud and true: He's a Jew
08/10/00: Exploiting religion would be tragic mistake
08/08/00: Cheney serves up tempting appetizer
08/03/00: Republicans now 'nice,' media still nasty
08/01/00: Presidential campaign could use some anti-metric mania
07/27/00: Government shouldn't subsidize Reform Party
07/25/00: Campaign finance 'reform' gives too much power to liberal media
07/20/00: Hillary slur speaks volumes
07/18/00: AlGore's McCarthyism
07/11/00: 'Survivor' shows hypocrisy of animal rights groups
07/05/00: McDonald's deserves a break today
07/03/00: On July Fourth, time to reflect on America's founding
06/28/00: America bashing becomes international pastime
06/23/00: If Fonda is sorry, let her say so
06/06/00: NAPSTER exposes artists' hypocrisy
04/18/00: Not much difference between TV journalists, TV actors

© 2000, TMS