Have to quibble with you here regarding GWB. He and his cronies spun up a reality-free narrative about Iraq – WMDs, possible 9/11 involvement – to justify their delusional crusade to make the Middle East a haven of democracy.
Of course, compared to the current wingnuts GWB was a sober realist.
Maybe, flavors and viewpoints differ.
But the divide over abortion is the reason why America can not have a middle of the road party.
No, everyone thought Saddam had WMD, the CIA, MI6, the Mossad, Blix (UN)- and Saddam bragged he had them. It was not a scam.
In fact in the past he did have them, he used them against his own people, and after Kuwait there were a lot unaccounted for.
So, GWB quite rightly threatened Saddam with force if Saddam did not let Blix in to search for them.
However, when Blix said “I can not find any”- that is when GWB went off the rails and invaded anyway.
Thinking that pre-Blix Saddam had WMD was not wrong, and that is when Congress gave the Okay. Invading anyway after the UN said “Nothing here!” that was the wrong part.
However, they did find those missing WMD later- rotting & rusting, buried beneath the desert, of more danger as environmental hazards than weapons.
And then there were the mysterious truckloads of stuff Saddam sent out right before he let Blix in- WMD? Gold bars? His porno collection?
Exactly. Sane conservatism is basically a mindset that is questioning why the status quo needs to change, and to what degree. And when the status quo does need to change, sane conservatism questions the necessity of the government itself to directly enact that change versus market mechanisms or more indirect methods like subsidies or tariffs.
Sane conservatism is not necessarily racist, or anti diversity, but rather questions the degree to which prioritizing those things takes priority over things like property rights, liberty, etc…
Sane conservatism should be eminently practical. Science and pragmatism over ideology, I’d think.
Sane conservatism asks the question whether social programs are worth the cost.
Sane conservatism would engage in a debate, and then work out a compromise. Sane conservatism would agree to the same set of generally agreed upon facts before starting a debate. Sane conservatism wouldn’t put ideology or religion ahead of science or pragmatism.
Ideally the two parties would meet and even overlap some in this sense- it used to be that the right-side of the Democratic party wasn’t necessarily more liberal than the left side of the Republican party- there was overlap, especially at a national level. A California Republican and a Texas Democrat might have been pretty similar, for example.
But with the GOP retreating from the middle into insane science-denial, religious-based nuttery, and general obstructionism, that overlap isn’t there anymore- the less conservative Republican is up there with the coelacanth these days as far as rarity is concerned.
However, legal interpretation… could come before science and pragmatism.
~Max
I would make it simpler and say that “sane conservatism” consists of not saying and/or doing things that, ten years earlier or so, your own party would have publicly proclaimed to be insane.
I think you have to go further back than that, maybe before 1994. But, the problem with your formulation is that, 10 years from now when Liz and Mitt take over, they may seem insane by the conservative standards of today (what, you’re following the science? Crazy! Where are the dog whistles??).
This gets into the corollated question of why conservatism lost its sanity. At a fundamental level (as opposed to policies) I believe what happened is that the advantages Democrats had over the Sane Republican party were simply becoming too great. They had to change, either by moving to the left to attract moderate Democrats, or becoming crazy to attract the nuts, and they chose the latter. IMHO a GWB / John McCain / Mitt Romney / Liz Cheney style Republican party is no longer viable. If the Republican party is to ever return to both sanity and viability, they’d have to move further to the left and become like they were back in the times of Eisenhower and Nixon.
In other words, IMHO, there are two viable versions of the Republican party. There’s Trump style and Eisenhower style. The GWB / Cheney style is no longer viable, and would lose consistently to the current version of the Democratic party. That’s the fundamental issue faced by Republicans.
I agree. None of their policy positions are all that popular (reduce taxes on the rich, reduce social services, eliminate abortion – I don’t think any of those poll at above 40%) so they’ve instead gone with white identity politics and fear of the other and have been successful with that.
After Clinton was elected, the Gingrich-led deficit-hawking could have been a sane policy-oriented response, particularly with the unpopularity of the proposed health care reform. But the problem with trimming government is that people get less of (or none of) things they like from the government, and the benefits are too far off or too ephemeral to compensate. So Gingrich & company had to weld their fiscal initiatives to a core of social grievance-mongering, and here we are.
Well, yes. And Bill Clinton was quite capable of delivering a federal budget without running a deficit. Granted, a booming economy (which certainly had some bubble aspects at that time) helped. So Gingrich and the predecessors to the Tea Party movement (which in turn gave birth to the Trumpists) had to run on culture war issues and (as you say) grievance-mongering.
But I say again, Bill Clinton and the rest of the neoliberals were basically Rockefeller Republicans.
I know – how despicable of Clinton to steal the GOP’s only good policy idea!
I’m not old enough to remember the Rockefeller Republicans, but having briefly read about them, I do think that you’re correct that that particular part of the electorate did become Democratic in 1992. At that time it was probably a temporary thing, likely a backlash against Bush Sr. raising taxes after promising that he wouldn’t. But then Gingrich, as you note, rather than trying to win them back in 1994, went in a different direction, and now here we are. The sane but greedy people lost control of the tiger they were trying to ride, and who knows how this will end.
Yes. And a big chunk of Democrats become more conservative. And so we got the neoliberals.
Welcome to the forum! Yeah, I think it’s one of the best places to have an intellectual discussion.
Yeah. The Dixiecrats, even though they are no longer confined to the old South. Coming to a Trump rally near you, even those rallies taking place in the upper Midwest rather than the Deep South.
I think we’re currently in the final stages of that realignment, accelerated massively by the 1/6 insurrection and what happened to Liz Cheney. The big question, IMHO, is not so much where each group will land on the spectrum. Rather, the question is just how big the Romney / Cheney segment of the Republican party was, and if that group being kicked out of the GOP is enough of a blow to keep the Democrats from suffering a double loss in 2022 and 2024. I’ll admit to having no good guesses on how that will turn out. I am hoping that the VA elections this fall will be a preview that comes out in favor of the sane side.
Absolutely, that’s true.
But I’m not talking about the Dixiecrats. I mean those affluent, highly educated urbanized liberals, readers of the New York Times, who loved Bill Clinton (seriously – check out Maureen Dowd’s stuff from those days).
As they became more and more affluent, especially during the 80s, they became more conservative. Bill Clinton came along, and basically gave them permission to be essentially conservatives, while still calling themselves liberals.
I’m not putting Clinton down. He was a Lyndon Johnson-level political genius. But he was basically a conservative.
They’ve been riding that tiger since 1964; when Johnson backed the civil rights act, and the parties started switching places on the issue of race.
Johnson thought at the time (correctly) that he was handing the South to the Republicans by doing so.
That’s certainly not to say that all the Republicans were racist, in 1964 or since – certainly in 1964 the Civil Rights Bill was backed by large numbers of Republicans (and opposed by a lot of Democrats). But the party decided, on some level, to encourage racist voters to vote Republican; and has wound up, inch by inch, bit by bit, defending open Nazis. They were far enough from that originally that it’s taken nearly 60 years to get them there; but it’s a very sneaky tiger.
I used to be a Republican and moderately conservative, and switched parties in 2016. Maybe I was insane prior to 2016, as I would find ways to excuse what I saw as increasing insanity in what was then my party. I thought the items below were sane, and were comfortably within mainstream conservatism at the time. But it seems that the current Republican Party and “conservatives” in general reject most of the below on some grounds. Some of the below is something that liberalism would accept, I think. I was moderate/center-right in my views. And the Republican Party is no longer a place for someone like me:
Keynes is moderately conservative in what he advocated for the economy. He said that when the economy went into recession or depression, it was Government’s job to provide stimulus in order to get the economy jump-started back to growth. I agreed with that, and still do.
Lowering trade barriers with other countries, and being part of multi-lateral trade blocs is moderately conservative, good for the overall economy, good for world peace, cooperation, and the spread of democracy. I believed that when I was a Republican, and still do.
I supported a strong military to deter authoritarianism and communism, and to protect our NATO allies. I think this is moderately conservative. I still believe in that.
I supported the individual right to own guns, but thought that universal background checks, and some ban on assault rifles, was a good thing. I think this is moderately conservative. I still believe in that.
I supported the Fed in the use of monetary policy, as much as possible, to combat market panics and economic recessions. I think this is moderately conservative. I still believe in that.
I supported a market economy to the extent it was possible. I thought regulation should exist to tame the excesses of a market economy, but no more than necessary. Examples: Some minimum wage is allowable, some environmental regs, OSHA, FDA, etc, are all necessary, but shouldn’t be overly weighing on business owners. This is moderately conservative, and not insane.
I have never wanted single-payer healthcare. I support private delivery of healthcare. And with strong subsidies and regulation, I support private health insurance. I think a stronger ACA, if it was implemented in a way that was similar to Switzerland, would get us to UHC, and would be a good thing for this country. This is moderately conservative, and not insane. I have shifted to the left some on this issue, after watching how Trump attacked the ACA, but my support of a stronger ACA still remains.
I eventually (about 8 or 9 years ago) accepted the reality of climate change. I think certain regulation and government incentives, along with joining with our world partners, would help us control this threat. It’s not insane, and this is an area where I have shifted to the left from a previous position.
I have never been a big supporter of unions. But in the absence of unions, there needs to be stronger government regulation and protection for workers.
I used to think that during normal times, normal economic times, our government should try and run a surplus. I now think it’s OK to run a deficit during normal times, as long as the rate of borrowing is less than our GDP growth rate. I would generally support smaller deficits than either party seems to be willing to deliver right now, but I will accept some borrowing even during normal times in order to provide things that this country needs (more safety-net, more infrastructure, etc). This is an area where I’ve shifted some to the left.
I have always supported infrastructure spending at some level. That’s not insane, and I’ve not changed in that regard. Government has a place in making sure society has basic good infrastructure.
I’ve always believed in a right to vote. And that’s one area where Republicans seem to have veered away from that view. This is a cornerstone of Democracy.
20 years ago that might have been defensible. Today, it’s clear that climate change is an existential threat and any sane leadership should be doing something about it.
The nature of the solutions might differ, of course. Sane conservatives should be fighting as hard as they can to remove the implicit and explicit subsidies that fossil fuels get. And to the extent that conservatives have transitioned from free trade promoters into mercantilists, they should be using tariffs to coerce other countries into meeting emissions standards.