Conservatives And Bush

Yesterday, I asked the Northern Alliance to comment on the question - how will the conservative base react to President Bush's free-spending ways?

I went to the 2000 caucuses without any delusions about Bush's conservatism. While it's a time-worn principle for the media to call anyone to the right of Roger Moe a "Paleoconservative", Bush has clearly been no such thing at any point in his career. Oh, sure - he's a social conservative in all the ways that make the social conservative crowd happy; pro-death penalty, pro-life. There's nothing wrong with that - except the myopic notion that being socially conservative makes one conservative in any other way. He's also a conservative in the way that I expect any president to be; he favors a strong military (and acted on that belief even before September 11, thank God).

But he, like his father, has never been a fiscal conservative. Which was why I supported Steve Forbes for President, until the moment George Bush was nominated.

Will the conservative base defect in droves? Well, on the one hand:

• I think the real conservatives - the ones we'd have called Buchanan conservatives four years ago - were already marginalized and driven out of any serious influence in the party well before the 2000 GOP convention. Have they gotten any more intransigent? Well, the ones that care about defense and prosecuting the war on terror had better not have, since maintaining the safety of this nation is job #1.
• Conservatives are, if nothing else, realistic. Of course, to seriously ideological conservatives, "realism" is dangerously close to "pragmatism", a notiong that serious ideological conservatives like Jason Lewis sniff at - the idea of, if not selling your soul, at least negotiating bits and pieces of it away for short-term gain, in this case trading ideology for votes. "What difference does it make if you win the election, if you sell you political soul to do it" is an accurate paraphrase. It's all or nothing at all to these people. And yet, what is the option? Staying home and giving a John Kerry a better shot at winning? Because...
• As dismal as Bush has become on the spending front, there are two crucial things to remember:
  1. Spending can be undone; Americans killed by terror can not be brought back to life.
  2. If he pays lip service to fiscal conservatism, then it's more likely we can make him cash the checks his lips are writing.
  Bush may have triangulated his way out of conservatives' good graces in order to win some liberal votes - but that's un-doable, just the same way Bill Clinton had to reign in his inner (and his wife's outer) liberal in 1994. Does anyone really think Kerry can be won over through any means?
• And getting Kerry elected - even if through the back door, because conservatives stayed home out of misplaced ideological purity, more or less the wal Algore lost in 2000 due to Nader's influence - would give us results that should be unacceptable to Americans of all stripes, not just Republicans; the War On Terror would be come another law-enforcement exercise; the military would be plunged into another Clinton-era set of doldrums; worst of all, we'd have a Massachusetts Liberal at the helm.

I think frequent correspondent James "Oughtta Be A Blogger" Phillips has the right idea, when he writes:

Essentially, it is as if conservatives are in a Chinese restaurant. They look at the menu and order Beef Stroganoff. It ain't on the menu folks, and no matter how loud you scream you want it, the waiter ain't gonna bring it. So get over it.

I am going to vote for Bush. But I will think twice before I give him money again. My money is going to go to the Congressional and Senatorial candidates who can and will say "no" to their own President.

Absolutely.

Now, neither of Minnesota's Senate seats are in play for this election. All the house seats are - and none of them have especially heated up yet. Being a District Four resident "represented" by Betty McCollum, it's a moot point - even a Rockefeller Republican would be a big improvement.

But that may indeed be our best shot at curtailing the President's spending; making sure we elect Congresspeople who know that defense is the top priority, but who aren't afraid to go toe-to-toe with the President on the B-list issues like spending.

What do you think?

SIDE NOTE: Mark from Classically Liberal notes:

I think the number of conservatives sitting on their hands will be a pretty small percentage, less than 5%. I get the feeling that for all the carping about Bush and his (rather serious, in my opinion) flaws this is mostly healthy venting. I find it unlikely that when push comes to shove in November that conservatives would rather de facto vote for the Democratic candidate by staying home.

No argument.

Posted by Mitch at February 2, 2004 05:05 AM