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For Conservatives, Mission Accomplished

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  • For Conservatives, Mission Accomplished

    Very interesting op-ed on New York Times website I noticed today:

    Op-Ed article by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge says conservatives groups in America have out-organized, out-fought and out-thought liberal America over past 40 years to become predominant force in American politics at every level of government; says Democrats have many excuses for this, but fact is that right has simply been far better at producing agenda-setting ideas; says Democrats are wrong to think things will change if Pres Bush loses re-election; says right has history of advancing its agenda even under Democratic executives, and it has organized itself for much longer battle; says liberals have enough brain and brawn to match conservative America, but conservative movement is more dogged, and more ruthless in its cause (M)


    For Conservatives, Mission Accomplished
    By JOHN MICKLETHWAIT and ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE

    Published: May 18, 2004

    Last week Washington was the site of the biggest birthday party you never heard of. The occasion was the 40th anniversary of the American Conservative Union, and the guest list included all the grandees of right-wing America, from Senator Mitch McConnell to Phyllis Schlafly to Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association to, of course, President Bush.

    In his speech, the President promised that "for our blessed land the best days lie ahead," and was greeted with several foot-stomping ovations and cries of "Four more years!" But the real flavor of the event was captured by what the president called the "fine group of decent citizens" gathered at the tables in front of him — members of the N.R.A., the Heritage Foundation, the Family Research Foundation and countless other groups that make up Conservative America. One man wore a tie with the Ten Commandments; women carried handbags in the colors of the American flag; and when the narrator of a film about the conservative union used the phrase "right-wing nuts," the room roared its approval.

    This is the type of partisan anniversary that only one side of America pays attention to — the side that watches Fox News Channel (the host for the evening was that network's Tony Snow). Yet every Democratic politician in the land could have learned a great deal by attending. It would be going a little far to say that the A.C.U. ought to have celebrated under a banner labeled "Mission Accomplished," but it is because of such groups that the right has out-organized, out-fought and out-thought liberal America over the past 40 years. And the left still shows no real sign of knowing how to fight back.

    To consider the ground that liberals have ceded, one must look back at the union's founding in a cramped living-room in 1964, a few days after Lyndon B. Johnson had thrashed the first fully paid-up conservative presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater. Back then, the self-styled "Mr. Conservative" seemed to come from another planet. "When in all our history," asked the political theorist Richard Hofstadter, "has anyone with ideas so bizarre, so archaic, so self-confounding, so remote from the basic American consensus got so far?"

    Fast forward to today. A Republican Party that is more conservative than Mr. Goldwater could have imagined controls the White House, Congress, many governors' mansions and a majority of seats in state legislatures. Back in 1964, John Kenneth Galbraith smugly proclaimed: "These, without doubt, are the years of the liberal. Almost everyone now so describes himself." Today, a Gallup poll tells us, twice as many Americans (41 percent) describe themselves as "conservative" than as "liberal" (19 percent).

    Democrats have come up with all sorts of excuses, from the evils of Richard Nixon's "Southern strategy" to the "stolen" election of 2000. They usually ignore the fact that the right has simply been far better at producing agenda-setting ideas. From welfare reform in Wisconsin to policing in New York City, from the tax-cutting Proposition 13 in California to regime change in Baghdad, the intellectual impetus has, for better or worse, come from the right. As President Bush bragged at last week's party, the right is "the dominant intellectual force in American politics."

    Yet many Democrats insist this will change once Mr. Bush is ejected from the White House. This shows how little they have learned. First, the right has a history of advancing its agenda under Democratic executives (welfare reform came about under Bill Clinton). More important, it has organized itself for a much longer battle. Whenever it has been forced into retreat — as after Watergate — the flame has burned eternal at places like Heritage, the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute, and at their smaller cousins in virtually every state.

    Brains are nothing without political brawn. That's why the American Conservative Union disciplines Congressional Republicans by rating them according to their purity (the average rating for House Republicans has risen from 63 percent in 1972 to 91 percent in 2002). Yes, liberal environmental and abortion rights groups rate members of Congress too, but those figures are more effective as fodder for conservative attack ads than as a way to keep Democrats in line.

    There are other battalions of foot soldiers, too. Americans for Tax Reform, which had a table at the dinner, rigidly enforces the party's pledge not to raise taxes. Focus on the Family (which has a campus in Colorado Springs so big that it has its own ZIP code) concentrates on promoting family values. Sometimes these groups feud — Cato libertarians have plenty of differences with Focus on the Family's social conservatives — but as all the back-slapping at the party showed, they share a sense of movement.

    In theory, liberals have more than enough brain and brawn to match conservative America. The great liberal universities and foundations have infinitely more resources than the American Enterprise Institute and its allies. But the conservatives have always been more dogged. The Ford Foundation is as liberal as Heritage is conservative, but there is no doubt which is the more ruthless in its cause.

    Now, perhaps, a few liberals are waking up to the task that confronts them. Americans Come Together, a group backed by the billionaire George Soros, already has 20 offices and 450 employees in Ohio alone. John Podesta, a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, has founded the Center for American Progress, which Democrats are calling "the liberal Heritage." But it still seems that liberals are purely reactive. Barry Goldwater may have been strong meat, but at least he had ideas. By contrast, Americans Come Together's entire raison d'être (like that of the John Kerry campaign) remains negative: to send Mr. Bush back to Texas.

    "There is no such thing as spontaneous public opinion," Beatrice Webb, the great British leftist, once said. "It all has to be manufactured from a center of conviction and energy." The American Conservative Union is just one of many such centers on the right; it's a lesson that liberal America seems unable to learn.


    John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, writers for The Economist, are the authors of "The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America."
    “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
    - John 13:34-35 (NRSV)

  • #2
    Your celebrating the birth of the one party system in the United States?
    And you critisize us commies.... You shame The Reagan!
    Eventis is the only refuge of the spammer. Join us now.
    Long live teh paranoia smiley!

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    • #3
      The Reagan.
      Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.
      "Hating America is something best left to Mobius. He is an expert Yank hater.
      He also hates Texans and Australians, he does diversify." ~ Braindead

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      • #4
        I've been saying this for years, but no one listens to me. But when the NYT says it, oh, it's news.
        Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree...

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        • #5
          What, the Conservatives are better at the game than Liberals? Who doesn't know that?

          And Tass, The Reagan has blessed the Conservatives making them the party of choice for the common man .
          “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
          - John 13:34-35 (NRSV)

          Comment


          • #6
            It's like a vicious nightmare.

            But if history is an indicator of things to come, the scales will swing back the other way in the future. I only hope things don't get much worse before that happens.
            To us, it is the BEAST.

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            • #7
              Che, surprised his credibility is less than the NYT.
              This gets funnier and funnier.
              Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.
              "Hating America is something best left to Mobius. He is an expert Yank hater.
              He also hates Texans and Australians, he does diversify." ~ Braindead

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              • #8
                Curse this blessed land!

                Comment


                • #9
                  /me makes a list and checks it twice, then sends it off to some gun-toting anarchists.
                  Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree...

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                  • #10
                    I read that as well yesterday. The notion that conservatives have greater party cohesion and that conservatives interest gorups are a much better oiled machine are correct.

                    As for ideas-well, given that Liberals won, it should not be a surprise the main "new ideas" are onces coming form conservatives attacking the status quo.

                    As for reality:

                    Liberal ideas are still very powerful-the march of gay rights and it's backlash is one major social event going on, NOT driven by Conservatives. The trully radical conservative ideas have failed to pass, like getting rid of entitlement programs (they have only grown under this admin)-they are limitng abortion more and more but lack the strenght to kill it totally.

                    These guys term conservatives ideas "fresh" while liberal ideas are simple "reacitve"- the bulk of the conservaitve agenda is a reaction to the liberal victories of the 60's and 70's. Welfare was a new idea-welfare reform is a reaction by conservatives unable to kill it, trying to make it more palpatable. I see very few trully NEW conservative ideas, such as school vouchers and religious charities getting government money, thought that innitiative has not advanced much.
                    If you don't like reality, change it! me
                    "Oh no! I am bested!" Drake
                    "it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong" Voltaire
                    "Patriotism is a pernecious, psychopathic form of idiocy" George Bernard Shaw

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                    • #11
                      this . . . . . . .




                      sucks
                      A lot of Republicans are not racist, but a lot of racists are Republican.

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                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar
                        Your celebrating the birth of the one party system in the United States?
                        And you critisize us commies.... You shame The Reagan!
                        actually when the Democrats implode they will shatter into their constituent groups. Same thing that will happen to the Republicans, but there are fewer constituent groups.

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                        • #13
                          down with the party system!
                          B♭3

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                          • #14
                            New ideas? How about this: kill all conservatives.
                            Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree...

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by chegitz guevara
                              * chegitz guevara makes a list and checks it twice, then sends it off to some gun-toting anarchists.
                              Santa Guevera and his gun-toting elves. Gonna wear his Red suit and distribute the wealth of toys to all the good little commie boys and girls.

                              Meanwhile capitalist conservative Scrooge.....

                              "Just puttin on the foil" - Jeff Hanson

                              “In a democracy, I realize you don’t need to talk to the top leader to know how the country feels. When I go to a dictatorship, I only have to talk to one person and that’s the dictator, because he speaks for all the people.” - Jimmy Carter

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