Are there any Democrats left in political office that can be described as flat out conservative? I don’t necessarily mean those who are not actively “liberal” or those that are “centrist”, but those with a platform that would be largely compatable with conservative politics in the United States.
Zell Miller (who is soon to retire) is the only one that comes to mind. But how about any state governors or members of congress, or local politicians.
Twenty years ago in much of the South, it was still common to have almost all Democratic tickets in local elections. For instance races for Sheriff or County Judge were often decided in the Democratic primary, not the general election. These same counties would vote heavily for Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, and the politics would be very conservative, but still there wasn’t much evidence of Republicans on a local level. Is this still true of many areas? Or is this a thing of the past now?
Definitely at local levels, especially in the South. There are Republicans in the South that are still acting like Reconstructionists trying to destroy our culture ( of course with the help of typically liberal Democrats too).
Here’s the webpage of the Blue Dog coalition, a congressional coalition made up of Democratic representatives who tend to be fical conservatives, at least. It might be a good place to start.
Would you consider a Democrat who wants to maintain, or possibly even bolster, the occupation of a foreign country resulting from an unjustifiable war conservative or liberal?
Would you consider a Democrat who openly admitted voting to confirm an arch-conservative, anti-abortion Supreme Court justice (Antonin Scalia) conservative or liberal?
Would you consider a Democrat who favors further tax cuts for corporations conservative or liberal?
John Kerry meets all three criteria. I think it makes a good case for considering him a conservative Democrat.
I was thinking a “conservative Democrat” would be…
One who is rated as acceptable by the NRA.
One who opposes Roe V. Wade
One who opposes same sex marriage and civil unions
Supports school prayer…
and a whole host of other things that are part of what we generally consider a conservative idealogy. I know there are libertarian conservatives who oppose that particular definition of “conservative”, and think real conservativism encompasses the credo that if consenting adults want to dance naked, smoke pot, and have group sex in their own home, its their business.
Lieberman and Bayh are more “centrist”, I know Lieberman is pro-choice and favors allowing gay marriage for instance. I don’t think either one would feel at home as conservatives.
I also don’t mean to suggest that only southern Democrats could fit this definition. There may be some pro-labor Dems in the Midwest that are far from being liberal too. Jim Trafficant comes to mind, though he’s a bit too loony to place within any particular political current.
I don’t think we’ll ever settle who is liberal, moderate, or conservative. I just know that 20 or 30 years ago there were still plenty of Democrats that were pretty far to the right and vehemently non-liberal. Did all the people that used to support George Wallace and Richard J. Daley head for the hills when the likes of Bill Clinton and Al Gore came along?
I know many switched parties or became independents, but are there still Conservative Democrat die-hards out there?
In the House, Tim Holden (D-PA, sorry - can’t recall the district number) comes pretty close. I would consider him borderline. He’s probably included in the list of Blue-Dog Democrats that Captain Amazing provided. It’s been a while since I looked at his platform or voting record, though, so he might fit better in the centrist category.
Just for the record, Al Gore and Bill Clinton were members of the Democratic Leadership Council, which was a group of more centrist (to even conservative?) democrats, at least on economic / fiscal issues. In fact, it was formed to make the Democratic Party more corporate-friendly. Of course, this would not satisfy your definition of being conservative on social values. On the other hand, you’ll find most conservatives on this particular message board running as hard as they can to get away from the social conservative stigma (except for a few issues like crime and gun control where the “social conservative” viewpoint doesn’t conflict with the libertarian viewpoint). The socially conservative / economically liberal - moderate point-of-view doesn’t have very many defenders here either.
Unfortunately the answer is probably “No.” It’s just further evidence of how much the Democratic Party has changed. Compared to the Republicans, there is obviously much less diversity of opinion tolerated.
Just think about the Republican Senators from the northeast: Spector, Snowe, Jeffries, etc. All centrists to leftists.
Are you going to provide anything approaching evidence for this silly statement? Like comparisons of how many Democrats voted against major Clinton policies vs. how many Reps voted against, say, Bush’s tax bill. Or are you just going to make unsubstantiated statements?
Oh yes…And, I bet they feel so at home in their party these days. Wasn’t it Snowe (or maybe it was the other Maine Senator) and Voinovich who were the targets of vicious media campaigns and incredible pressure because they actually wanted to limit the second round of Bush tax cuts to levels that bankrupted the country a bit more slowly than what Bush wanted?
This whole premise of the OP is basically B.S. anyway. “I don’t want you to list ways in which they are conservative that don’t matter to me…just ways that do.” Hell, there are plenty of “blue-dog” conservative dems.
As an example on the environment, here is a list of Democrat Senators who voted poorly on these issues in the 106 and 107 Congresses according to the League of Conservation Voters (the numbers indicate their percentage of agreement with LCV in various votes in the 106th and 107th Congresses, respectively):
Lincoln (Arkansas): 31% 32%
Zell Miller: 100% 16% [It seems Miller was good in the 106th before his conversion to the Dark Side]
Breaux (La):
Ummm, wasn’t it Ronald Reagan who defined the Eleventh Commandment for Republicans to be, “Thou shalt not speak ill of a Republican”? Isn’t it the Republicans who are noted for having their propoganda going straight from the RNC Talking Points Memo to every last Republican commentator on Earth to their members who parrot it endlessly everywhere (including this message board)?
What the hell would the Republican Party know about tolerating diversity of opinion? Remember what happened to Howard Stern, and why it happened? The Republicans could give jolly fuck-all about diversity of opinion, they wouldn’t know diversity of opinion if it painted itself purple and danced in the moonlight singing, “Look at me! I’m diversity of opinion!” and then bit them in the ass and hit them over the head with the biggest clue stick in the known universe.
Those numbers wouldn’t prove a thing. The bill that’s presented for a vote is based on the concensus of the officials. If there were 51 extremely conservative Senators and an equivalent conservative presence in the House the tax bill would have passed by the same margin but would have looked a lot different. Probably would have had more front loading on the tax cuts and ended the recession even faster, but that’s another issue.
It sounds like you’re agreeing with me here, except for the part about dissing the OP. Yeah, exactly, there is disagreement amongst the Republicans. Whether Snowe is comfy with her cohorts or not I have no idea, but that is not the question.
By any reasonable standard, this would only make things look worse since Clinton governed mainly from the center while the Bush tax plan was anything but centrist.
You mean, if we had spent hundreds of billions dollars more, we could have ended the recession faster?!!?? Hell, why stop at that? We could have doubled spending, given a year (or more!) completely free tax holiday to everyone and injected a humongous amount of stimulus in the economy. And, if you are kind enough to give me your credit card number, I’ll inject some stimulus into Plan B’s family’s economy too. After all, you are already letting GW run up your credit card bill; why can’t I get in on the action?
Oh, sorry. I somehow thought that tolerance sort of precluded launching vicious media campaigns against people. (To be fair, I think the media campaign was not directly out of the RNC…but rather through one of the Republican’s favorite groups “Club for Growth”.)
