Conservative. It means absolutely nothing- it really is code for “in the cool club.” I just spent the last hour and some on the exercise bike watching Morning Joe, where Scarborough had an endless stream of guests and snide comments claiming that Romney was the “real conservative choice” and the “true conservative.”
The last guest was Mary Matalin, a Bush/Cheney advisor, and I am now completely convinced that there is no such thing as “conservative” principles. It is a joke, an empty suit- it means whatever you want it to mean, and right now it means double Gitmo, permanent war, hating on liberals, and tax cuts forever. I guess, in that light, Mitt is the true “conservative,” as he has shown himself willing to do whatever and pay whatever it takes to win the nomination. I simply can not believe that the folks who cheerleaded the Bush administration and who are not even flinching about the new 700 billion dollar military budget have the balls to pretend to be conservative, but, hey, it is their party. I hope they keep wrecking it.
But when folks say “conservative,” and they will say it seriously as if it means something, no doubt also invoking the “mantle of Reagan,” just laugh at them. They might as well be talking about phlogiston. Whatever conservative used to mean, if anything, it no longer does. Some video of the “true conservative choice,” taking a break from donating to Planned Parenthood:
The man is a sociopath. When you think conservative, think of the Bush administration and all the wonderful things they have done for the country, because if you vote for the “conservative” candidate, you are going to get more of the same.
Tom
“But when folks say “conservative,” and they will say it seriously as if it means something, no doubt also invoking the “mantle of Reagan,”just laugh at them.”
No problem. I’ve been laughing at conservatives for 44 years now – this certainly isn’t the time to stop.
Jake
Someone already said it – These loons are radicals, not conservatives. Neither are they liberals, despite what Jonah Doucheload and the rest of those shits are now trying to say about Bush.
Cap and Gown
As Digby said a long time ago, “conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed.” . . . “you are a conservative until ‘conservatives’ decide you are not.” Conservatism is tribe, not a philosophy.
Cyrus
I’m impressed and at the same time feel a bit sorry for you, because being conservative obviously meant/means something to you. I’ve linked to this a dozen times and no doubt will continue to do so. It doesn’t say exactly what you’re saying and I’m not sure that you’d agree with it, but it makes a very convincing argument (at least, I think so, but I’m obviously in the wrong position to judge) that Bush actually is conservative if the word has any meaning at all, despite the protests from the right.
Caidence (fmr. Chris)
I may have been saying this for years now, but
is a much better way of putting it than I ever have. Me likey.
Caidence (fmr. Chris)
Kat gets credit for that one. That is a good way of putting it.
I think it’s too generous to imply they have a coherent ideology. Even to imply their mantra is “we want to change everything” is too kind.
michael
It’s actually fun game I’ve been playing recently to take articles on “conservatism” (especially on whether McCain is “conservative enough”) and replace it with “cool” throughout. I’ve been replacing “conservatives” with “cool dudes.”
Novak – Is McCain a Cool Dude?
Levin – I have been an active cool dude when coolness was not in high favor
Try it yourself!
Elvis Elvisberg
Y’know, the funny thing is, as a result of the Bush era, I’ve become more conservative. As in, an admirer of Eisenhower.
He was a cautious empiricist– skeptical of government spending, but willing to increase funding for programs that had proven successful, such as Social Security. Willing to use force if necessary, not jonesing to use it as a first resort. Today, he’d be a Democrat.
Today’s GOP has murdered the word “conservative.” It is tribal, not creedal, as Cap and Gown points out. But as a philosophy stressing caution and empiricism, it’s pretty appealing, after enduring the bizarre mixture of jihadism, corruption, and reality-hatred that is the Bush administration.
Presumably everyone’s seen this before, but here’s the classic Kung Fu Monkey post, “I Miss Republicans.”
dAVE
Here’s a question. Who was the last TRUE conservative president as outlined by John’s definition of conservative? I don’t think it was Reagan, he was really the beginning of those claiming to be conservative today.
Was it Nixon? Eisenhower? Bill Clinton? Any ideas?
dAVE
Guess I should refresh before I post. It looks like Elvis E. answered my question before I posted it.
bryanD
Did everyone see the Neoconservatism family tree chart at the Washington Post?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2008/02/01/GR2008020102389.html
Jewish revolutionaries meet arch-Catholic revanchists at this end of the Ratline.
D-Chance.
Conservative used to the the farm on the edge of town. Now, conservative is the gated and heavily-guarded subdivision of millionaires who use the government to condemn the property and move the farm family into a housing project while they build their mansions on the newly-obtained land…
Califlander
That’s been the only constant feature of conservatism for as long as I can remember. As long as you hate liberals, you can be in the club — everything else is trivia.
demimondian
You could make a strong case for Bush I or Clinton as the last “truly conservative” President. Clinton is dinged because of his support for two initiatives (each of which was the pet project of one of his closest advisors): a carbon tax to combat global warming and reduce dependence on fossil fuels (credit to Al Gore, inventor of the internet) and a plan for universal health care, aimed at protecting the health and fortunes of middle America from the rapacious price increases that would otherwise hit them (credit to Sen. Hillary Clinton, currently the much-reviled candidate for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency).
Tell me, John — is it conservative to want to spend money to prevent an avoidable disaster?
Krista
Over an hour on the exercise bike? Good for you!
Watching self-styled “conservative” pundits? Bad for you!
Elvis Elvisberg
It just occurred to me that “the bizarre mixture of jihadism, corruption, and reality-hatred that is the Bush administration” is quite like the corruption of Christianity that’s gotten so popular around here of late.
(1) Loudly proclaim yourself a conservative/Christian, and therefore justified in doing whatever the fuck you want, while ignoring the actual tenets of conservatism and Christianity
(2) Win a couple elections
(3) ??????
(4) Lose!
mark
So John, is this officially your Road to Damascus moment???
Welcome aboard.
Librarian
Conservatism is a psychopathology of people who have never grown up, but who have remained little kids into adulthood, with the attitude of selfishness and “me me me” and “I’ve got mine, screw everybody else.” That’s the essence of conservatism.
Gus
Uh, yeah. Where have you been the last 7 years? I could as easily say, where have you been the last 30 years, but it’s been so glaringly obvious the last 7, you’d have to be blind to miss it.
PK
Being a conservative means hating everyone pure and simple. Throughout all these 7 tortured years of conservatism, what positive humanitarian policies have been created. The response to sep 11 was wholesale hatred and demonization of muslims. Flouting the Geneva convention, creating Gitmo and holding prisoners without trial. Bleeding the treasury dry to reward corporate criminals. Giving massive tax breaks and incentives to oil companies (God knows they don’t need any more money). Uncaring about the poor (Katrina), the sick (SCHIP) and even the poor soldiers who are fighting this miserable war are given no compassion once they can no longer fight (Walter Reed). The only compassion today’s conservatives have is for the zygote and the embryo. The baby can go to hell once its born.
Conservatism means creating hopelessness and despair, pain and suffering for everyone except the rich and connected.
I sound very bitter, but I honestly cannot find one positive thing that has happened in the last 7 yrs, one national achievment where one can point and say-yes that was good for the country.
Binkyboy
How far down will the new Conservatives have to go before the roots of the party are able to wrest control from the radicals and bring sanity back to a once noble party?
And by once, I mean over fifty years ago. Our system of government requires the conservative mindset to offset the “try this and see if it works” mentality of the liberals. Conservatives slow things down, they should demand results, demand debates, demand proof.
I want that back.
ThymeZone
It makes me nervous when you sound exactly like me.
And I agree with someone upthread who said this is sad. It is sad that the conservative movement went off the track. It coulda been a contender.
Perhaps a crushing defeat this November, which is well within the realm of liklihood, will cause the GOP to find a way to remake itself into something … not just respectable, but valuable. The opportunity will be there, whether the party can do it or not remains to be seen.
Meanwhile we Dems have our work cut out for us. First we need to give the GOP that crushing defeat, and then we need to try to keep our own party from getting fat and corrupt and power mad before we’ve had time to do some real good.
Andrew
This is a profoundly strange reading of the situation. Conservatives are not cool, never have been, and never will be. I think they think they are cool, but no one wants to hang out with those douchebags.
Ed Drone
I know! I know!
Conservatives are members of the “He-man
WimmenLibrul-haters Club” and have their own clubhouse and secret handshake and everything! And McCain is “out of the club” because there’s a rumor that he once kissed agirlliberal.Now I understand. It’s just like Spanky McFarland and the Little Rascals, except with disastrous wars, inept management, uncaring policies and incredible mendacity thrown in.
Ed
scarshapedstar
Already on that one, thanks.
libarbarian
Damn skippy.
Now we have “Conservatives” whose mentality is “try this and see if it works…..and if it doesn’t insist that reality had better get with the program, and then try it again”.
But thats the difference between true tempermental conservativism and movement-conservativism.
Davis X. Machina
I guess, in that light, Mitt is the true “conservative,” as he has shown himself willing to do whatever and pay whatever it takes to win the nomination
The dead Vince “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing” Lombardi has done from beyond the grave what a living Jeff Davis, Hitler or Stalin could not do — destroy the Republic.
Throw away your Burke and Oakeshott, and buy a big foam “We’re #1” finger. That’s actually-existing conservatism.
tom.a
In defense of Mary Matalin, she was a Fred Thompson advisor and his campaign style of literally not doing anything is a form of conservation.
andante
If it’s any consolation coming from a very liberal Dem, it is painful for me to see the conservative values being so cheapened.
I disagreed with Barry Goldwater, for example, but I did respect him. Ditto a few others.
My sympathies, John. I’ve had my disappointments with my chosen path, too.
Jake
Thanks, I couldn’t remember the name or the thread.
How about “We want to destroy everything and blame someone else,” as a mantra? But only because the sound of a two year old pitching a tantrum is too difficult to convey in print.
El Cruzado
I wish I could find the link to the speech that Rick Perlstein gave in front of some meeting of conservatives. He said (I’ll paraphrase out of faulty memory) the following to their faces:
“Conservatism is a magic word that is applied by self-proclaimed conservatives to people in their good graces. At the moment there is a falling out they become liberals.”
My Truth Hurts
In other news water is wet and the sky is blue.
OxyCon
What “Conservative” means is “One of the skeletal looking aliens from the movie ‘They Live”
Jack Roy
Crap. If “conservative” doesn’t actually mean anything, that just means the word is going to stick around forever. Like “judicial activism,” or even “change.”
If I recall from my political science classes, there’s actually some content to the notion of conservatism. Books could be written about what it means. Too bad all of these supposed conservatives sneer at anyone ivory-tower enough actually to read books.
jvill
Peculiar clip of the Mittster…
So, passing bills doesn’t count as “getting things done”? Being a successful legislator certainly encompasses many activities, but does it bother anyone else that for Herr Mitt that doesn’t count as “getting things done”? He instead prefers the rather vague nothing of… well… “getting things done”? And how, praytell, does that happen without reaching across the aisle and passing bills?
Me thinks someone’s autocratic tendencies are showing again. And as we all now know, being an autocrat counts as being a good conservative.
rawshark
A conservative politician is someone who wants to repeal the New Deal. A conservative regular person is someone who believes what the conservative politician says is true about any topic not actionable by a politician.
rawshark
It means not changing from a classical form of government. The original conservatives in this country were the Tories.
Svensker
The horrid thing is, apparently 70% or so of Republicans still really like Bush (I think this came from a Sadly No story).
How is there anyone left alive who still likes Bush? Except my brother, of course.
LiberalTarian
OK John. I’m sorry this is hitting you like a ton of bricks. And, although I know you registered as a Democrat, I don’t hold it against you that you are still deep down a Republican. That’s okay.
It’s like your favorite football team started bringing guns to the field and when they had everyone else face down on the field said, “We’re Number One!” That isn’t football.
Practically the whole leadership of the GOP is no longer what they said they were, or even practicing US-style democracy.
But, guess what? You are one in probably 50 million people with the same epiphany. The ideals of conservatism are not dead. There are a whole lot of people who are angry and frustrated about how these folks have made the word “conservatism” meaningless, and committed egregious crimes in the process. But, instead of giving up on conservative philosophical principles, prosecute these bastards and reclaim conservatism!
The party is already fairly broken down when you have Anne Coulter turning Democrat. It is a necessary, but not sufficient, step in the revolution. But, you will not have competent conservatism if these guys are not held accountable for what they did to your party and your country. [And, she wants to say grandiosely, THE WORLD, but since she’s been dinging undergrads for excessive flourish all weekend, she resists. Well, almost.].
Say it LOUDLY. Denounce the collaborators who wrecked your party (and broke your heart), and force the people taking up the gavel to rout out the plumbing cuz the shit is backed up something fierce. Do it in the name of the party, and for gawd’s sake, get GOOD people in charge of your leadership again. When someone like Tom Delay is on TV, call up the station and what possesses them to ask known criminals for their opinions. Your party needs good old-fashioned catharsis, John.
Real conservatives–you know, the ones who believed in all the tenets you voiced yesterday–will cheer. And more than a few liberals will too. We’re good like that. :D Like the bipedal body needs right and left hands to function well, good government needs both right and left minded philosophies.
Oh crap. I gotta get to class. Seeya!
Mark L
Time for Groucho:
“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”
and
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.”
DougJ
And maybe Tom Brady’s defeat on Sunday will cause him to take a vow of chastity.
Pelikan
I’d always heard it as “Phlogiston,” but extra nerd points to you for even knowing it.
Also, what everyone else said. We look forward to being pissed off at you again when your party regrows it’s brain and soul and you jump back in.
Calous
Brits of course take this a bit more literal, see the below picture of the Bullingdon club, an Oxford University student club famous for expensive uniforms and trashing restaurants:
Back row, second left: David Cameron MP, currently leader of the Conservative Party.
Front row, third left: Boris Johnson MP, currently Conservative candidate for Mayor of London.
Calous
So where did my link go?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/07/uk_politics_enl_1172779106/html/1.stm
binzinerator
In John Dean’s book Conservatives without a Conscience he says that conservatism never really had a definition. He writes how he tried to get leading conservatives to define it and none really could.
He mentioned that conservatism never sat upon a solid intellectual foundation as the act of revolution that founded the nation and established its core concepts — liberty and ‘unalienable rights’ for all, etc — was radical, an antithesis of conservatism, so the underpinnings of conservative thought were from the get-go based on either revision or evasion of this fact.
He says that it was this nebulousness that enabled it to be highjacked so readily. Because conservatism lacked a firm anchor or foundation, the right-wing authoritarians attracted to it discovered it was therefore possible to put a pry bar under the meaning and move it.
It sounded like a good explanation to me as to why conservatism can mean what ever the hell the Goper nutters want it to when they want to.
It might provide a clue to the wingnut propensity to move goalposts and insist on making their own reality, too. It’s been part of the whole thing from the get-go.
Interestingly, Dean suggests conservatives if they had existed in the late 1700’s they would have supported England and the monarchy. They certainly would have been opposed to radical, rapid change like a revolution and a social upheaval that something like the Bill of Rights portended. (That social upheaval was delayed some 80 years, when the full import of those radical ideas on paper was put to the test.)
If that’s true about conservatism, then conservatism really is opposed to the ideas the nation was founded upon. It takes a lot of intellectual legerdemain to make it come out like the opposite. Perhaps this trait manifests itself as that infamous belief in a malleable reality (‘we make our own reality’). Up is down, down is up, liberals are fascists, and conservatism is not conservatism, unless of course it is, at least until they don’t like you. Then you’re not.
John Cole
It is phlogiston, I was typing pre-coffee post work-out.
rawshark
Not ‘if’. They did exist and they did support the monarchy. And they have jumped through hoops to make the peasants believe the founding of this country was done by conservatives. You know how they do it? Boston Tea Party. A revolt against taxation. Remove all context, say those words only and the it sells itself after that.
Chuck Butcher
So, W VA just went to Huckabee, all 18 delegates. McCain got 1%.
binzinerator
Yeah, I know. It was only about taxes.
I don’t think ‘if’ either, but if I recall Dean (I read his book a while ago so maybe I’m mistaken) made a distinction between conservatives and tories. I couldn’t see one — I think the conservatives would’ve just called themselves tories then — but as Dean still thinks of himself as a conservative, he’s got a motive to try to differentiate from them.
binzinerator
That hoop-jumping is another example of the shaky foundation conservatism was built upon, and why it was so vulnerable to being hijacked. It rested obliquely on reality, a tenuous connection to bedrock as it were, so when the authoritarians gained control it was easy to pick it up and carry it off. They can plop it down where ever they wish, and it’s not much less connected than before.
It’s proved to be quite self-contained actually, a mobile home of principles, and we are finding that a trailer park can be founded where ever they choose.
Darkness
John, I think what you need is a new term to make it clear to your audience that you are not referring to “conservative” as perhaps the listener defines it but a different!conservative as YOU define it. And then you define it. Then you get to own that new word and the definition. I think Paleocon has already been used (and besides it will turn off the new earthers). So perhaps Olde-Conservative since you believe there once was an ideal under that name that fit.
Honestly, you could pull in Dems with ideal conservativism, let alone moderates. Ideal conservatives (maybe that’s a better name…) would insist that the public’s money is spent wisely. NO ONE would be against that. Trouble is the system rewards largesse by all elected. So you need your new footsoldiers to say true to the cause long enough to fix that.
Ideal conservatives would spend national security dollars wisely. Not on hummers for idaho and not on fancy weapons systems (really just corporate welfare) that don’t work and the bases don’t want. And in the end the military has to spend their own dough to maintain them, cutting resources for the soldiers to do it. I’d be all for that. Ideal conservatives would know/remember that the army does not work well as a police force, because true conservatives learn from past mistakes. Ideal conservativism would prepare for military threats that are likely and would shift resources away from ones that are not likely because they want to save money. I’d vote for that.
The life thing, unless it’s implemented in the order of preventing unwanted pregnancies is tantamount, followed by small government trumps the fed owning every womb, I can deal. Otherwise women revert to chattel under Olde-conservativism.
Let’s see, what else was on the list… You didn’t mention corruption, but perhaps that’s implicit in small government. I like to it listed separately. The government DOES do useful things that the market cannot. Running markets for one by setting up laws to prevent fraud. Those calling themselves conservatives now cannot even bring themselves out of the mud long enough to acknowledge this gravest threat to their much-worshiped capitalism.
I’m a Dem who loves capitalism. You can get me behind a theme of more capitalism any day. That means, no corporate welfare because that upsets the market, damn-it. Regulation to make markets run smoothly. And, for me, capitalism’s most important function is reflecting the cost of a good in its price. That is so critical. It is so critical in fact that if social costs are not included in cost (via taxation) the system goes all to whack (see our current national transport system for example).
I’ve rambled on long enough. I think there is something here… smells like revolution in the air. Oops, true conservatives HATE revolution. Dang. Forget that.
liberal
Darkness wrote,
You’ll have a problem with that. Land (as in “unimproved”), for example, has no cost(*), but it certainly has a price due to demand.
——————————————–
(*)Meaning the cost to keep a given factor in production.
carsick
A few years ago I started declaring that I was a conservative. I vote for the candidate that I feel best can establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defense.
It just happens to be that those folks weren’t and aren’t the Republicans I’ve been offered to vote for.
After being a lifelong Independent, I also declared I was a Democrat in 2004.
Nancy Irving
The one constant in the bundle of qualities denoting conservative is “looker-after of the interests of the rich.”
That has always been true, and always will be true.
All other so-called “principles” of conservatism can change over time.*
*(I just came across a nice example while reading Trollope’s Barchester Towers: conservatives then were adamantly anti-free trade. But that was because the landed interests–the rich–benefited from protectionism in 1850. Also, and entertainingly, the evangelicals were the liberals! Positions on issues can change, because circumstances cause changes in how issues benefit interests. But conservatives always serve the interests of the rich. That never changes.)
sfHeath
“phlogiston”! LOL
I was thinking earlier that Republican primary politics seemed a lot like Calvinball to me…