Good points,
Phil. The way Packer allows Brooks, unrebutted, to slam
limited-government conservatism as both un-American and unpopular
tells us more about what's wrong with conservatism than Packer
intends.
This recent descent of the GOP Establishment into confusion goes
directly back to Brooks and his
"National Greatness" idea, which amounts to a white flag on the
limited-government philosophy advanced by conservatives in the
Reagan and Gingrich eras. Brooks' argument has never been examined
in terms of its provenance in the aftermath of Clinton's 1996
re-election.
If you will recall the 1996 primary field, Republicans rejected
two limited-government candidates -- Phil Gramm and Steve Forbes --
in favor of that fossilized specimen of Nixonian pragmatism, Bob
"It's My Turn" Dole. Remember that Dole had been Gerald Ford's
running mate in 1976, when the GOP rejected Reagan's conservative
insurgency.
Dole was never a conservative, and had undermined Gingrich and
the House Republicans during the 1995-96 budget battles. Dole never
managed to ignite any excitement in the '96 presidential campaign,
which was effectively over by Labor Day, and ended up with just 41
percent of the vote. And from this lackluster performance, those
moderate Republicans who had supported Dole derived an odd lesson.
Clinton's re-election, they said, proved that limited-government
conservatism was unpopular and untenable as a political
platform.
Huh? How does the defeat of a moderate Republican prove
conservatism untenable? And what about the fact that nearly all
those radical mean-spirited right-wing House Republicans were
re-elected? The fact that the GOP was able to maintain its
congressional majorities in '96 didn't dent the consciousness of
the Dole people, who blamed Gingrich and the right-wingers for
their man's defeat.
The "National Greatness" idea put forward in the wake of the
Dole debacle (Brooks' version of this argument appeared in the
Weekly Standard in March 1997) was an attempt to lend a
patina of intellectual credibility to the Republican retreat from
conservatism. All that has transpired since -- including the GOP's
2006 defeat and John McCain's nomination this year -- is mere
denouement of the Republican establishment's jettisoning of
old-fashioned limited-government philosophy after '96.
topics:
John McCain, Conservatism
