Friday, August 12, 2005
Welcome to the Republican version of Tammany Hall politics.
From pm carpenter, commentary about David Frum's scathing deconstruction of modern phony conservatives:
Frum....wrote a book about modern conservatism that displeased his right-wing friends more than anyone.
Why? Because he outed them for their past hypocrisy, for what they had become, and for what they’re likely to remain - ideological traitors steeped in big government and big spending. Though a bit dated now, Dead Right (1994) is required reading for anyone interested in an internal analysis of what’s wrong with modern conservatism.
Written from a decidedly libertarian slant, which is admittedly hostile to social conservatism, Frum ripped into the latter as a cynical diversion hatched in the 1980s by economic conservatives who had botched their fathers’ faith. “Mere posturing,” he called all the cultural claptrap - a posture affected simply because “the conservatives failed to do their job”: that of reining in government spending under the Reagan administration.
With the Gipper snug in the White House, wrote Frum, federal spending exploded in a Republican effort to shore up and expand its constituencies (especially farmers, pensioners and veterans) and to hell with the fiscal consequences. Politics trumped policy. And you couldn’t blame congressional Democrats for the big spending, he said of that old dodge. The fault lay directly on Republican shoulders, which relied on supply-side economics to do what less spending should have done. But when the materialistic “cult of Reaganism” fell under attack, conservatives responded en masse by fixating on cultural disturbances (Frum’s timeline; not mine). Hence social conservatism was launched as the Great Diversion, although it was traditional conservatism that had undergone an even greater disturbance. In short, said Frum, Republicans had grown as politically ingratiating as big-government Democrats.
more....
Frum....wrote a book about modern conservatism that displeased his right-wing friends more than anyone.
Why? Because he outed them for their past hypocrisy, for what they had become, and for what they’re likely to remain - ideological traitors steeped in big government and big spending. Though a bit dated now, Dead Right (1994) is required reading for anyone interested in an internal analysis of what’s wrong with modern conservatism.
Written from a decidedly libertarian slant, which is admittedly hostile to social conservatism, Frum ripped into the latter as a cynical diversion hatched in the 1980s by economic conservatives who had botched their fathers’ faith. “Mere posturing,” he called all the cultural claptrap - a posture affected simply because “the conservatives failed to do their job”: that of reining in government spending under the Reagan administration.
With the Gipper snug in the White House, wrote Frum, federal spending exploded in a Republican effort to shore up and expand its constituencies (especially farmers, pensioners and veterans) and to hell with the fiscal consequences. Politics trumped policy. And you couldn’t blame congressional Democrats for the big spending, he said of that old dodge. The fault lay directly on Republican shoulders, which relied on supply-side economics to do what less spending should have done. But when the materialistic “cult of Reaganism” fell under attack, conservatives responded en masse by fixating on cultural disturbances (Frum’s timeline; not mine). Hence social conservatism was launched as the Great Diversion, although it was traditional conservatism that had undergone an even greater disturbance. In short, said Frum, Republicans had grown as politically ingratiating as big-government Democrats.
more....
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