WASHINGTON — You’d think that with the left’s recent
descent into the anti-Bush fever swamps (Bush knew about 9/11, Bush
went to war for Halliburton, Bush hates gays and women, Bush =
Hitler), Republicans would be walking with a spring in their step
and a song in their heart. Alas, it hasn’t panned out that way.
Karl Rove and others have come to dream of an ever-bigger tent,
which invariably means sticking it to true blue conservatives.
Don’t believe me? Take a look at the prime time line-up at the
upcoming Republican National Convention. New York City Mayor
Michael Bloomberg, Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Pataki, John
McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and Secretary of Education Rod Paige are all
in prominent slots, making the following question entirely
rhetorical: Could the GOP fete its liberal wing any more
extravagantly?
These RINOs know their power. “Whether I’m speaking, I’ll leave
that up to them,” Schwarzenegger told the L.A. Times a few
weeks before the schedule was announced. “If they’re smart, they’ll
have me obviously in prime time.” And that’s exactly where the
event planners have stuck him.
In fact, as widely noted, one of the most conservative speakers
at the convention is a Democrat, Zell Miller. If Miller had an “R”
next to his name instead of a “D,” he would not have had a
snowball’s chance of making this line-up. Those conservative
Southern values wouldn’t jive with the kinder, gentler,
compassionate conservative agenda of the Republican Party, circa
2004.
In practice, this agenda has meant talking like conservatives
and spending like drunken sailors. But this convention lineup
signals that the GOP has stopped even pretending. There is no
traditional conservative on board to advocate spending cuts. Or to
argue for the elimination of wasteful agencies and cabinet
departments, as Dick Cheney once did. There is no one to plead for
school vouchers or serious social security reforms.
It is not that liberal Republicans should not get their time in
the spotlight, but imagine what would happen if Alan Keyes or Pat
Buchanan showed up on the convention floor. One doubts they’d feel
welcome. After all, GOP lore has it that George H.W. Bush 1992 loss
was due not to his alienation of conservatives, but rather to the
“angry white man” speech that Buchanan delivered. Arguing that
there was a culture war supposedly outweighed Bush’s lying
lips.
GRANTED, THE LINEUP DOES leave some more pragmatic liberal voices
nervous. Resident commie Washington Post columnist Harold
Meyerson writes that the Republican convention “will showcase the
party’s otherwise marginalized moderates — Arnold Schwarzenegger,
John McCain.” Fortunately, Meyerson has reliable doubts that “the
convention planners really believe that this late in the game they
can fool anybody,” because, after all, the Republican campaign is
all about “exploiting homophobia, provincialism and cultural
insecurity. Or, as they put it, values.”
George W. Bush, we’ve been told, is a much different animal than
his father. For three years now we’ve heard from every mainstream
news outlet that the Republicans are seeking victory through
appeasement of the rabidly provincial Huns who make up the
conservative base. Bush’s liberal turns in many areas of policy are
all smoke and mirrors, according to folks like Meyerson, and Bush
gains little independent support for such overtures. (And nearly
$600 billion for prescription drugs is one hell of an overture.) So
what gives? Why such a lurch to the middle?
It’s simple, really. You can thank David Corn, Michael Moore,
Howard Dean, and the rest of the Bush Haters for the lack of
conservative voices this year. The pure insanity that has afflicted
liberals across the nation these last few years, and the ferocity
of their opposition to George W. Bush, has most conservatives
convinced that whatever Bush is doing wrong, he must be doing
something right.
Who, among Republicans, would want to stand alongside these
maniacs in opposition to any Bush Administration policy, no matter
how far it strays from fiscal sanity? Who wants to risk being used
as “See, even Republicans don’t like Bush” fodder by lefty freaks
like the guy Washington Times reporter Bill Sammon writes
about in his book, Misunderestimated, holding a sign at a
protest that read, “Impeach the Court-Appointed Junta and the
Fascist, Egomaniacal, Blood-Swilling Beast”?
And so, as conservative principles are abandoned by Republican
Party, conservatives hold firm for fear of handing the country to
radicals like Kerry and Edwards. We accept the great leftward shift
because to speak out against it would feel like playing into the
hands of the lunatics like Michael Moore and Harold Meyerson, who
claim that this country is about a goosestep away from being a
fascist state.
Does it matter who speaks at the Republican Convention? For
those who believe in something more than crass politics, it should.
For those who believe the conservative movement stands for
something, it does.
Liberals are always going to be top heavy with crazy, flailing,
conspiracy-theorists. Every Republican will always be a right-wing
extremist to them. Accepting the basics of their hysterical
arguments against conservatism by blacklisting conservatives from
the Republican Convention may make a few liberal Republican
senators feel more at home, but it bankrupts a philosophy and
vision that we once thought could change the world for the
better.
