Except for the Unpopularity of Conservatism, Conservatives are in Good Shape
I’ll grant Matt Continetti that this is clever:
The administration would like the voting public to believe that the GOP is outside the mainstream. Co-opting centrist Republicans like Huntsman reinforces that notion. But the problem with this argument is that what is “mainstream” changes over time. As unpopular as the Republican party is at the moment, it is actually winning a lot of the debates in Washington. Cap-and-trade has little chance of passing, health care is just as dicey, Americans are concerned about Obama’s reckless accumulation of national debt, Nancy Pelosi is playing defense for the first time in her speakership, and the president has reversed himself on military commissions, abuse photos, and preventive detention. Victory or near-victory in these policy battles hasn’t redounded to the GOP’s benefit because the public still associates the Republican party with George W. Bush’s failed second term, specifically the years 2005-2006 and the recession that began in December 2007.
It takes a while for the public to catch up. When they do – and it may not happen until 2016 – they’ll go looking for someone who, in all likelihood, opposed the stimulus, cap-and-trade, and ObamaCare.
Jon Chait has a more detailed response to this than I can muster, but note that what Continetti is saying here is basically that right-wing policies aren’t unpopular, it’s just that the catastrophic consequences of right-wing policies are unpopular. I’m not really sure what the big political moral of the story is here, but the fact of the matter is that we’re left with the conclusion that conservative ideas about governance are basically unworkable. And I think that is the real problem with the right’s unwillingness to engage in a constructive way on the climate, health care, and tax debates.
21 Responses to “Except for the Unpopularity of Conservatism, Conservatives are in Good Shape”
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May 20th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
BabyGOPper Continetti seemed to go very quiet over the last few years, didn’t he? If there was a conservative pushback against Bush, then he wasn’t part of it.
He can get back to us when he starts shaving.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
If you looked at a complete list of actual things that have happened (as opposed to self-serving predictions on policy battles still in progress or to come), it is pretty obvious that Obama and his congressional allies are wiping the floor with the GOP obstructionists. Sure, thanks largely to the marginal Democrats in the Senate, Obama has had to moderate some proposals, but he has few true losses.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
pseudonymous in nc, of all the agressive personal attacks on conservatives I have seen you make, this has to be the dumbest. Attacking the youth of someone on the blog of Matt Yglesias, who just celebrated his 28th birthday this week, is just lovely.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
This brief passage contains so many logical errors and conflations its hard to know where to begin. Its actually pretty impressive in its own way.
Here, I’ll just point out that in one sentence he conflates policy obstructionism with “winning the debate”, and then signals that general concern with rising debt levels can also be thought of as “winning the debate”. But Americans are also concerned with the issues that Republicans are preventing action on, and tend to broadly favor the Democratic policies they are blocking. So in that sense, Democrats are “winning the debate”. On the other hand, Americans may be concerned with rising debt levels, but it looks like Democrats have successfully passed a debt-laden budget – which according to Continetti’s overly exapansive understanding of what consitutes “winning the debate”, means that Democrats are winning this debate too. His definition is so expansive and vacuous that both Democrats and Republicans are “winning the debate” on everything!
May 20th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
You have to admit, the Republicans make an astoundingly bad governing party but they excel as an opposition party. They are running circles around the Democratic congressional majority and the White House.
One more example: this week President Obama is likely to sign into law former President Bush’s last-minute rule allowing loaded concealed weapons in national parks– a rule that was stopped in the courts. The Republicans stuck it into the must-pass credit card bill.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
The moral is obvious: people don’t associate policy with consequences; they’re two completely independent entities. Whenever a policy fails, it’s always because of implementation, or “lying” on the part of the political leadership. They want stimulus, cap-and-trade, and “ObamaCare” (whatever that may be), but they’ll be happy to damn the whole project in 8 years when it turns out these things have tradeoffs. And even better, instead of reviewing the record and looking at the decade of information and debate on these issues, they’ll claim that they were scammed into all of the downsides of these policies, just like Bush or Reagan “scammed” them into all of the downsides of laissez-faire supply-side economics, when in fact these policies were widely popular as long as everyone was making money.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
since reagan, most of the country’s populace has sided with dems and progressives on most issues.
reagan and conservatives were able to trump that fact by fearmongering on issues like taxes and race and an irrational fear of communism. but the reality was, as illustrated in poll after poll since the ’80’s, was that the public largely supported the progressive agenda for most of the nation’s problems.
conservatives know this and understand it in their bones and that is why they have tried desperately to obstruct those initiatives, as best they could, in any way they could. as the author of the new republic piece notes, if they are so confident that the policies would not work, why not let dems institute them and then suffer the inevitably negative consequences when the policies crashed and burned?
they obviously do not want to go that route because they clearly understand that the probability is that the policies would be both successful and popular.
one need only refer back to the infamous bill kristol memo on health care from the ’90’s, where he stated his belief that a successful health care plan from dems would solidify the loyalty of a generation of voters for dems. it is that same fear that moves conservatives to work against just about any progressive policy initiative.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
rmwarnick,
So let me see if I have this straight:
Obama and his allies get the stronger Senate version of a bill to impose crucial consumer protection measures on the trillion-dollar credit card industry, and the Republicans get an amendment allowing people to carry concealed weapons in national parks.
So, obviously overall the Republicans came out as the winners.
Um, talk about not seeing the forest for the trees . . .
May 20th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
That seems fairly accurate. Enough people to win multiple elections believed they wouldn’t be catastrophic before; eventually, they’ll be able to win with a new set of catastrophic policies. If they wait long enough, they’ll even be able to win with most of the old catastrophic policies. I don’t know why they would want to, but it will work – hopefully, no sooner than 20 years from now.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Don’t leave out labor and immigration, Matt.
May 20th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Continnetti is right, at least looking to the past, in which the country did accept the right’s policies, or at least the labels (or marketing) they attached to them. “Clean” air, “clean water”, now patient “choice”, have worked in the sense that the country supported the right, even if the label bore relation to the result, or even the intended result. The question today is whether the country, post GWB, no longer buys the labeling, or marketing, of the right’s policies. Or stated another way, did GWB inflict so much damage that at least a majority will no longer buy the marketing, even while a large minority (up to 40%) still do.
May 20th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
I have my doubts that the political game has much to do with the voters or public opinion. Rather it is the opinion of the elites, the upper 5 percent income bracket, that pretty much account for half or more of the vote totals on any bill, regardless of the parties. It is only at the margins that the bottom 80’s interests are considered. Most of the time, the bottom 80 is cared for by their reps the way wolf care for sheep.
Continetti could have just said: rich dicks win most of the battles in D.C. – and he’d be right most of the time. We are, after all, in the biggest “recession” since the depression, and the first and most consistent response of every policy maker in D.C. has been to make sure that the richest sector of the country has all the money they need to tide them over. Health care – outrageous! Those entitlements could amount to trillions by 2050! Banks? Oh, we can whip you up a trillion in the next three months, loan you a trillion more, how about a backchannel trillion, will that help?
Really: who owns America?
May 20th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
I think the problem we’re having here is that the left’s definition of “winning” the right’s definition are much different.
The left considers it a win if a legislative priority is passed that gets close to what we wanted — rarely is legislation perfect, so close is often as good as it’ll get.
The GOP, in contrast, considers it a win if they win the media cycle — alleged “liberal” outlets repeating (oft-reality-challenged) wingnut talking points without question … putting on the defensive a Congresswoman 90% of Americans couldn’t pick out of a line up and don’t really care about that much … getting their folks on the bobble head shows.
So, yeah, when looked at that way, the GOP is kicking ass.
And I say, let them kick that ass. Meanwhile, we’ll get down to running the nation and doing what really matters.
May 20th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
….but the fact of the matter is that we’re left with the conclusion that conservative ideas about governance are basically unworkable.
Well, they’ve got something in common with communism, then.
Great ideas that don’t work. Good stuff for Jr. Kollij profs like Gingrich.
May 20th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
Matt, I think you have the formula a little wrong. Right-wing (people who overthrow a perfectly good 200-year old Constitution don’t get to call themselves conservative) rhetoric is popular with the commercial news media, but the consequences of right-wing policies have proven so disastrous that it doesn’t matter to 2/3 of the population.
May 20th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Forget, please, “conservatism.” It has been, operationally, de facto, Godless and therefore irrelevant. Secular conservatism will not defeat secular liberalism because to God both are two atheistic peas-in-a-pod and thus predestined to failure. As Stonewall Jackson’s Chief of Staff R.L. Dabney said of such a humanistic belief more than 100 years ago:
“[Secular conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today .one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth.”
Our country is collapsing because we have turned our back on God (Psalm 9:17) and refused to kiss His Son (Psalm 2).
John Lofton, Editor, TheAmericanView.com
Recovering Republican
JLof@aol.com
PS – And “Mr. Worldly Wiseman” Rush Limbaugh never made a bigger ass of himself than at CPAC where he told that blasphemous “joke” about himself and God.
May 20th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
rmwarnick and DTM, here’s a NY Times article on guns in the national parks. I don’t really know the details of how these bills are put together, but I was surprised since Democrats control Congress and the White House.
May 20th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
Attacking the youth of someone on the blog of Matt Yglesias, who just celebrated his 28th birthday this week, is just lovely.
Oh, spare me. Continetti is a classic GOP wingnut welfare case who will have a job for as long as Bill Kristol wants his scrotum waxed.
May 21st, 2009 at 5:00 am
[...] Matt Yglesias replies: Note that what Continetti is saying here is basically that right-wing policies aren’t unpopular, [...]
May 21st, 2009 at 5:10 am
[...] Matt Yglesias replies: Note that what Continetti is saying here is basically that right-wing policies aren’t unpopular, [...]
May 21st, 2009 at 12:06 pm
You seem to have missed Continetti’s biggest sleight of hand – “Victory or near-victory in these policy battles” has had absolutely nothing to do with “winning a lot of the debates in Washington”, and everything to do with obstructionism and the structure of the Senate. Republicans have not convinced a single American of the rightness of their positions. They’ve just somewhat successfully stood in the way of an agenda Americans supported and continue to support. If that’s their idea of “victory”, I say let them have it, with huge “Mission Accomplished” banners. Pay no attention to the man implementing policy behind the curtain.
“Im in ur senate, blockin ur billz” is not a debate position, let alone a winning one.