Conservative America

None of this will do the Republican Party any good. It hasn't been conservative for years. Pat Buchanan has it right, it depends what you mean by "conservative":

“The reality is that the GOP remains a house divided. What, for example, is the conservative view of the war in Iraq and the Bush economic policies that cost the party both Houses of Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008? Why did President Bush leave with 27 percent approval? Did Bush policies the GOP once applauded have anything to do with it? Was Bush free trade responsible for the decline of the dollar and the loss of one in four manufacturing jobs? Is globalization still good for America and NAFTA the deal of the century? What is the conservative position on reaching out to Russia, as Barack Obama has done, on bringing Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, and on canceling that anti-missile system Bush planned in Poland? “We’re all Georgians now!” John McCain declared. Are we? What is the party position on a “long war” in Afghanistan? For if America has soured on the war and opposes more troops today, will America be enthusiastic about soldiering on in 2012, after 1,000 or 2,000 more American dead have been shipped home? Do Republicans support negotiating with Tehran, or cutting off gasoline and starting up the escalator to air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities that are today under U.N. inspection?

Will the GOP propose to stimulate the economy with tax cuts after four straight trillion-dollar deficits? Will the Bush line, “They’ll pay for themselves,” still be credible after Bush’s deficits?If the largest federal outlays are for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, defense and interest on the debt, followed by education, housing, homeland security and transportation, where would the GOP use the knife to balance the budget? According to Gallup, America is moving closer to the Republican position on regulations, abortion, guns and union power. But half of all Americans now favor cuts in legal immigration. Are Republicans willing to call for a moratorium on immigration to tighten the labor market and force wages up? Or does the Chamber of Commerce still call the tune?”

The most paleocon trade and foreign policies since heaven knows when (Ford, late of the American First Committee?), the Pregnant Women Support Act on the way while the FOCA has been shelved, the support for traditional marriage (and that on specifically religious grounds), look out for the departure of all the old Clinton hands in the second term and for paybacks to the black base on immigration and on the status of English: the last thing that Obama has ever tried to do has been to “defeat” American conservatism.

On the contrary, he has given it back a voice against those who had hijacked its name for the global “free” market (which must be in labour as much as in anything else) and for the remaking of the world anew at the barrel of a gun to the specifications of some academic blueprint, all the while delivering absolutely nothing pro-life or pro-family, as of course capitalist warmongers never can. All they have left is to bang on against a healthcare proposal which is going to pass anyway. On which they may be right or they may be wrong, but it is hardly in the same league as all the passes that they have already sold. And when it goes through, they will finally have nothing to say.

No wonder that Obama was endorsed by almost all of morally and socially the most conservative Democrats: Bob Casey, Ben Nelson, Jim Webb, Mark Warner, Tim Kaine, Bart Stupak, et al. By General Jim Jones. By the hardly liberal Republicans Dick Lugar and Chuck Hagel, both more or less open supporters. By Christopher Buckley. By the conservative Catholic constitutional scholar Douglas Kmiec. And by Donnie McClurkin, the ex-gay gospel singer whose presence on the Obama team infuriated the Clinton camp.

No wonder that Obama was supported by those who, on the same day, voted in California and Florida to re-affirm traditional marriage, Obama’s own view. Who, on the same day, voted in Colorado to end legal discrimination against working-class white men, allegedly the hardest people for Obama to reach. Who, on the same day, voted in Missouri and Ohio not to liberalise gambling. And who voted for Obama from coast to coast while also keeping the black and Catholic churches (especially) going.

The main part of Buchanan’s article is about the real threat to the Republicans, in an upstate New York Congressional race, from the Conservative Party of New York State. No wonder. Doug Hoffman’s candidacy to which Buchanan’s article refers is only happening because a vacancy has been created by Obama’s appointment of John McHugh as Secretary of the Army. Does that sound like the behaviour of a sectarian Leftist? He may have used them to get where he is, but look at how any number of Republicans (or Tories) have used, and continue to use, social conservatives. Doesn’t exactly make them social conservatives, does it?

The Republican nominee in that race is jaw-dropping. Among other things, she does not share Obama’s support for traditional marriage. She should apply to be on one of David Cameron’s all-women shortlists. South-West Norfolk?

Who is the GOP going to nominate in 2012? Don’t say Mitt Romney, his Mormonism and what they insist is his liberalism make him poison to the activist base. So who? Why? And how far do they seriously expect that person to get?