Conservative

By John Fay

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In the wake of the conclusion of an unpopular Republican presidency, one reporter declared that the Republican party was on the verge of destruction and that it “must have a broadened base and reinforcements, or it is gone, and the Democratic party will come into power for a generation.” The unpopular presidency was that of Ulysses S. Grant, the year was 1877.

Predictions of conservative demise, needless to say, were overrated. Yet such statements sound very similar to what many people are saying today, in the wake of the unpopular Bush presidency and the onset of the Obama administration. I believe the heralds of conservative doom will be wrong once again for the same reasons they were wrong before.

The problem with the naysayers of conservatism throughout the years is that they talk the language of expediency — a language Republicans are not fluent in. In the 1850s, the Republicans were chided for their opposition to slavery because there just weren’t enough Americans who cared. In the 1960s, they were criticized for their small government and aggressive foreign policy stances, in an age of big government and détente.

Today they are ridiculed for their opposition to a popular stimulus package and a popular president. The naysayers declared that the Republicans would be punished by voters for their positions, and they were right. In 1856, John Fremont lost the presidency, as did Barry Goldwater in 1964. The electoral prospects of the party today appear no more sanguine. Yet what the Democrats and other political pundits have always failed to understand is that Republicans are genuinely willing to lose today for the right reasons rather than win today for the wrong reasons.

I think what the opposition finds so inexplicable about such a stance is that it is one so alien to their way of thinking. The Democrats have always promoted themselves as the party of the people, even when the people were simply wrong. For the first 200 years of its history, the Democratic Party was openly pro-slavery or racist. Made sense I guess — so were a majority of American citizens.

It has only been in the last 50 years, as the American mood has shifted on these issues, that Democrats have embraced the idea of “diversity” and “tolerance.” The Republicans, by contrast, don’t wait for anyone’s permission to be noble, be it on issues of race, abortion or wise economic policy. The Republicans are not now, nor have they ever been, the party of the people, but they have always sought to be the party for the people.

Being men of principle is often dangerous politically. By standing up to President Obama, the conservatives may well be consigning themselves to minority status for a generation. So be it. Republicans have always been confident that Americans will have a “sober second thought” on the issues, as Booker T. Washington once said. Fremont was willing to lose in 1856, so that Lincoln could win in 1860. Goldwater was willing to lose in 1964, so that Reagan could triumph in 1980.

It is this loyalty to truth on the part of men such as Dave Reichert, Dino Rossi and, yes, George Bush that has endeared conservatism to me so much. It is why I am proud to say I am a conservative even in the liberal bastion of Seattle. As Lincoln once said, “Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”

Reach columnist John Fay at opinion@dailyuw.com.

Liberal

By Greg Ryan

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America is on the verge of major social and political change. The election of Barack Obama and the way he will govern over the next four to eight years will be transformative.

But the true catalyst, the event that will most significantly define our times, is our current economic crisis. By the time our nation finds its way out of the woods, the political landscape is likely to be dotted with corpses, and the biggest casualty will be economic conservatism as a popular political movement.

Everything is knowable. Despite all the assertions that this disaster has caught the whole world by surprise, the term “housing bubble” has been in the public consciousness for quite some time. Similar warnings about financial deregulation, shrinking real income, wealth disparity, etc., have been with us for some time.

Concocted to silence these premonitions of the death of the middle class was the dishonest ideology of economic conservatism.

On the campaign trail Ronald Reagan liked to joke that, “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” Since Reagan, Republicans have campaigned on the idea that government does not work. When elected, they’ve proven it.

They believe that business is holy and infallible, so they’ve totally deregulated business in almost every sector. They believe taxes — of the wealthy — are theft, so they stopped that too. They think that what is good for CEOs is good for everybody, so they’ve busted the unions. And up until now, they have largely gotten away with it.

This current and inevitable collapse is only the logical end of an economic program designed to elevate the wealthy at the expense of the middle class. Capitalism works, and very well, if it is helped and regulated in the smallest ways. But when you let the system off the leash entirely, it will grow and grow until it finally eats itself.

This is no new revelation. This is the economics of Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. It’s cancer capitalism. It doesn’t work.

Since 1980 and the ascendancy of conservatism, conservatives have gotten away with it. Under Bush, their ideas were allowed to be carried to their full extent, and the nation is feeling the results. Even the beginnings of this crisis were enough to convince the nation to reject the out-of-touch advice of John McCain and vote for Barack Obama. As the situation has worsened, there has been a coalescing of blame around conservative ideas.

But that is not enough to seal the doom of this backward ideology. As we have seen in our politics, the pendulum swings, and failure is often rewarded. Even now, having caused this crisis in the first place, and lost an election because of it, Republicans on the national level are sticking to their guns on economic policy. “Tax cuts are the only answer,” “The New Deal didn’t work in the ’30s,” etc. What they are really doing is positioning themselves for the possible failure of Obama’s efforts to save the nation. Right now they are discredited. But they hope it’s only temporary.

Crushing economic conservatism is up to Obama. It is true that if he fails, the Republicans could be back in — in a big way — in four or eight years. However, it is precisely the mammoth danger of our situation, the profound misery that is developing in the lives of our people and the serious potential for failure on the part of the new administration that gives Obama his golden opportunity.

If he can do it, if the administration can slow down the collapse, if the Democrats can eventually turn the tide and see us back into stable prosperity, they will bury the conservative movement for a long time to come.

Obama could go down in history as one of our greatest presidents, and Bush’s legacy will be cemented right where it is now: as one of our worst. Like happened after the Great Depression, the Democrats could have their hands on the reigns of government for a long time to come. And the battered conservative movement could be tarnished in the eyes of American voters for a generation. Let us hope.

Reach columnist Greg Ryan at opinion@dailyuw.com.

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