Is the Conservative Movement
Dead?
The Miers nomination causes
friction within the GOP
The question these days around Washington is: How
can the Bush Administration recover from such a multitudinous
barrage of so much bad news, compounded by even worse coverage
of these troubles by an old and agenda-driven media? That may
be what the New York Times is lavishing its ink upon, and
what George Stephanopoulos and Chris Matthews are politically--who
knows, maybe literally-- salivating over, but bedrock conservatives
are concerned about something else entirely.
Principally--and that is the optimum word here--conservatives
wonder what has happened to the bedrock principles of conservatism
that were founded and nurtured during the 1950s through the 1990s,
have gone? Has the pioneering work of such conservative icons
as Buckley, Reagan, and Gingrich gone for naught, in this, the
beginning of what was supposed to be GOP dominance for decades
to come? Right now, the political reality would seem to say exactly
that.
Reinforcing this belief--or head-shaking disbelief--among conservatives
and Republicans in general recently were two of its most astute
and prolific members, Robert Bork and Bruce Bartlett. Recently,
Bork, who has one of the most fertile legal minds in the country,
penned a scathing critic against President Bush’s choice
for the Supreme Court, Harriet Miers. (http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007424)
In his article, Bork not only pans Harriet Miers as having no
redeeming qualities for the highest court of the land, but Bork
also speaks to the larger issue for conservatives--and I would
include myself in this--that being the fracturing of the conservative
movement.
Says Bork: “With a single stroke…the president
has…widened the fissures within the conservative movement.
That's not a bad day's work--for liberals. The wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq aside, George W. Bush has not governed as a conservative
(amnesty for illegal immigrants, reckless spending that will ultimately
undo his tax cuts, signing a campaign finance bill even while
maintaining its unconstitutionality). This George Bush, like his
father, is showing himself to be indifferent, if not actively
hostile, to conservative values.”
In the article written by former Reaganite and Heritage Foundation
fellow Bruce Bartlett, the reader was greeted with this singular
item that went directly to the heart of the argument: “The
truth that is now dawning on many movement conservatives is that
George W. Bush is not one of them and never has been.” Bartlett
then goes on to list what can only be described as a litany of
offenses against conservatives perpetrated by Bush, and the foundation
and ideals of conservatism, and its principles.
The apex of the offense to conservatives is without question
the elevating of Harriet Miers as a nominee to the Supreme Court.
If Bush persists in pushing Miers, or if Miers does not have the
clear sense to withdraw her nomination, it is a pulsating and
strengthening reality that the inconsolable fragments of the Conservative
and Republican Party will simply stay home come Election Day.
In this, I would agree. The possibility of Republicans staying
home in 2006 and 2008 grows larger everyday. President Bush has
been praised for his absolute loyalty to his friends, and more
specifically, his White House staff.
But where is his loyalty to the millions who were willing to
forgive such “unconservative” governance like Campaign
Finance Reform, and the Medicare Drug benefit bill, or letting
the liberal lion of the Senate, Ted Kennedy, author the No Child
Left Behind Act in 2001? The GOP electorate was willing to forgive
and overlook such liberal-like behavior, because the domestic
issue of our lives has been--and will be--the courts that hold
such sway over our lives through its activism.
In regard to Miers, electing to opt for loyalty and stealth over
originalism and judicial breadth has shown that President Bush
has not seriously considered the wishes of his party. Even with
Judge Roberts, conservatives were asked to trust Bush, and so
they did. Now, they are asked to do so again, only with a nominee
so vacant and bare in the confines of judicial philosophy and
constitutional law that some GOP Senators are actually asking
the White House for more paperwork on Miers, and citing her answers
to written Senate questions as “inadequate.”
If President Bush will not withdraw Miers as a nominee, or Miers
will not or does not have the grace and sense to know that she
stands at a crossroad of conservatism, then the GOP en masse must
persuade Bush to act, and the persuasion must be swift, and definitive.
But the “persuasive act” may be one of severe consequences.
If conservatives opt to stay home next November, then Democrats--who
even now openly gloat over their electoral prospects--will capture
seats in both chambers of Congress.
More importantly, Democrats will unquestionably seize the momentum
going into the 2008 Presidential election.
The only way I see around this scenario is to tell the President,
and the Republican elite in Washington in no uncertain terms,
that staying home is exactly what will happen…by design.
If the Republican majority in Washington cannot unite around true
conservative values and principles--the Supreme Court being the
most obvious and pressing--then perhaps the GOP needs to spend
another few decades wandering the political wilderness in order
to rediscover it’s roots all over again.
It took over 40 years to regain the House of Representatives,
and now Republicans may lose it along with the Senate chamber,
and ultimately the Presidency. While Bush has been stellar in
his foreign policy endeavors, he has been well less than that
in regard to domestic issues.
The Supreme Court is the one issue that casts a large and politically
supranational authority into the future, and it is here that conservatives
recognize that the real ideals of conservatism must begin; for
when you here the words “traditionalism,” or “originalists,”
or even “constitutionalist,” associated with a prospective
jurist, they are just code for conservatism.
If the conservative mandate to govern into the foreseeable future
falters, the Miers nomination will be the watershed moment in
this current history that will be looked upon as the beginning
of the great conservative unraveling.
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