Lots of political yammer about who’s a real conservative and who’s not.
So, how do you tell?
Lee Edwards of the Heritage Foundation's B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies calls the late William F. Buckley, Jr. “the St. Paul of the modern conservative movement in America.” So, what did Buckley have to say about it?
The essence of conservatism is the “proper balance between freedom, order, justice, and tradition,” said Buckley. To achieve such balance, Buckley called for persistent opposition to the growth of government, social engineering, intellectual conformity, the elimination of the market economy, and world government.
Buckley’s “National Review” magazine aggressively championed this conservative ideology in the face of growing liberalism. At the same time, Edwards writes, Buckley argued that “if conservative politics wanted to be successful, it had to steer a middle course between the ideal and the prudential.”
Appropriately, Buckley became a champion of Ronald Reagan’s pragmatic conservatism. He admired Reagan’s stand on conservative values and accepted his pragmatic compromises as necessary to nudge conservative policies ahead.
What did Reagan say about conservatism? “The common sense and common decency of ordinary men and women, working out their own lives in their own way—this is the heart of American conservatism today,” he said.
But, according to Dr. Paul Kengor, author of 11 Principles of a Reagan Conservative, it was “his willingness to compromise and engage in horse-trading” that made him “the most successful conservative president in American history.”
Edwards notes that “during his presidency, Ronald Reagan would often say that he would accept 70 or 80 percent of what he wanted if he could come back for the other 20 or 30 percent later.”
Reagan also felt a traditional conservative’s sense of responsibility. Thus, while he passed the largest tax cut (1981) and the most significant tax reform (1986), he also raised Social Security taxes and corporate taxes to be fiscally responsible.
So, there’s conservative ideology, then there’s effective conservative leadership.
The yammerers about who’s a real conservative and who’s not don’t seem to get the difference.
“What are the characteristics of a ‘real man’ in God’s eyes?” posed the pastor. “Compassionate, faithful, selfless, committed, and courageous,” he answered. Buckley and Reagan saw real conservatives in a similar virtuous light.
Unfortunately, the yammerers have twisted pursuit of virtuous conservative ideology into a shameful political paradigm where it’s better to lose than get a partial win through compromise; where ideologues who get nothing done get accolades, while leaders trying to follow Reagan’s example of horse-trading to move a conservative agenda ahead get primaried; and where casting blame counts for more than winning concessions.
This new paradigm is the antithesis of the “proper balance between freedom, order, justice, and tradition” that Buckley fought for and the "common sense" that Reagan stood for. Indeed, key results among conservatives in Washington are the lack of order and blame game nonsense.
Perhaps nothing personifies the question of who's a real conservative and who's not than effusive blamer, President Donald Trump, and ebullient doer, President Ronald Reagan.
"He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else." ― Benjamin Franklin.
Crawford is syndicated columnist from Meridian (crawfolk@gmail.com)
Saturday, October 21, 2017
Bill Crawford: Who is a real conservative?
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10 comments:
Best article he has written. Substitutes for Trump in the last paragraph would be McDaniel, Bannon and Cruz.
Agreed! Best column from Bill in a long time. Don't Let the perfect be the enemy of the good you fools.
One thing is for sure. Bill Crawford doesn't define a conservative. It's a failed tactic of the left.
No Bill, we get the difference. The RINOs NEVER come back for the 20 or 30 percent so all we get is more profligate debt fueled pork barrel pet project spending that sacrifices our children's future economic well-being for the "compromise" lip service of today. That, Bill, is capitulation NOT courage or leadership.
"This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid's sense of frustration."
--Richard Hofstadter, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," 1964
Other than Reagan, who has made this work? No one comes to mind. A couple of things have changed.
#1 Where is the compromise with - unchecked illegal immigration, all personal failures by any minority groups can only be the result of unfair treatment by the majority, asking courts to rewrite the constitution (and sometimes getting it), the myth of BLM, war on police, trampling of religious freedom, etc. etc.
#2 You cannot get the left to agree to even 10% of what you want. Much less 70-80 %.
#3 National debt doubled under O. Our grand children cannot afford for us to keep caving on this.
The left has gone insane. We have to send the Rhinos home and save the country from the nut jobs on the left.
Trump is not a conservative and never has been.
Trump is a life long democrat.
Until a very large, critical mass of the citizenry becomes educated in economics, history, and how competing political forces operate, and then also adopts the morality that John Adams said our Constitution was meant for, then conservative leadership will never hold for long, because the immoral, uneducated masses will blow with the wind and just vote for another person to undo what the previous one did. This is what the last five presidential elections reflect. I'd love to see John Kelley and Steve Bannon on a ticket. Maybe those two could truly and more swiftly drain the D.C. swamp, and all the state swamps as well could institutionalize the things Crawford outlined so well.
Buckley's amorphous definition could just as well be adopted by a social justice leftie. The 'go along to get along' days are over. This post is meaningless apart from thinly veiling a critique of change agents on the right, however imperfect they are. The porcine GOP establishment abandoned anything resembling conservatism aligned with American ideals long ago. Its failure to act swiftly to overturn Obamacare, secure borders and reject identity politics--not to mention close on sweeping tax reform-- is no longer acceptable. The GOP has become indistinguishable from the big government liberalism of Dems that has left this country in ruins.
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