The Era of Reagan is over!
Well it’s finally official. Break out your Champaign bottles and shake them till it hurts. The Republican juggernaut has broken down, and they are in such a state of confusion, they are facing an ideological crisis that is comparable to the intellectual collapse of the Democrats in the ‘70s.
A few days ago, well known conservative NY Times writer David Brooks, you know, that guy with the glasses and the annoying ties, wrote an article called “The Republican Collapseâ€. This comes one year after Tucker Carlson, from the more centrist wing of the Republican party, wrote a similarly themed article, although far less sympathetic. I took the opportunity after Carlson’s article to declare an official pendulum swing. I did not base that declaration solely on Carlson, the sea had changed, Carlson was merely the first sailor to jump ship, and therefore, a strong indicator that the ship was sinking. Today, on the heals of Brook’s article, we see not only the ship is sinking, it’s capsized!
Brooks’ public acknowledgment of the intellectual collapse of the Right, is long overdue. We over here on the rational side of the political spectrum have been talking about the confused Right for decades. They managed to hold on to some sort of unholy alliance by manipulating the holy and merging them with those fearful of government, terrorists, immigration and homosexuals, while controlling the whole damn thing with an epic coalition of America’s top business elite. They all have different interests, the religious want more theocratic rule, the Libertarians want less government, the fear mongers want fascism and the business elite want all the benefits of big government, without any oversight. Sooner or later, an intellectual crisis was bound to happen.
I mean, for God sakes, when the leader of the party argues health-care for poor children in the SCHIP plan wasn’t worth $7 Billion when that much is blown every week in Iraq, there is certainly a conflict of priorities. Republicans seem out of touch with reality on the ground in America.
Brooks cites the birth of Anglo-American Conservatism, and its debatable father, Edmund Burke and how modern Republicans have strayed from these roots. Well this is the death of all political pendulums. They think themselves to death contrasting what they would have liked to achieve and said they would achieve with the realistic nature of power. In the end, all political movements tire of exhaustion, since there is always opposition, always compromise and always disappointment.
Conservatism rarely works well in the driver seat to begin with. Its primary function is to resist change. They work great keeping the radicals from going too far. Change must come slowly, and they serve their best place as the opposition.
The conservatives losing power today are blaming Bush for their untimely demise. Well they should. Had he not started the war and been so radical and “in your faceâ€, they might have squeezed another 12-20 years out of their movement, like the Democrats did out of FDR. Regardless, they can point the finger all they like, it won’t change the fact that they’ve achieved very little to brag about. They started a war, cut taxes for the rich and oversaw the destruction of the American Industrial economy. As jobs flee the U.S., America’s elite grow richer still, while the middle class shrinks. We are not better off today than when Reagan took the helm in 1981. That is the truest test of any movement.
Can the same be said of FDR? Absolutely not! From the depths of the Great Depression to the confusion of the post-Vietnam era, America may have finally lost it’s confidence, but it was a hell of a ride that left America richer and far more prosperous than it had been previously.
What do we have today that the 70s did not bring? Reality TV?
The truth is that many factors are causing our decline. Good leadership is not the end-all answer, but it sure helps. We need people at the helm who will try to solve the health care disaster, the shrinking middle class, the decline of American Industry and the overall dumbing down of our society. If we are headed for an even more global economy as the Republicans keep telling us (and that free trade is good for us, despite the fact most Americans disagree), than we have been ill-prepared by weak leadership, that desires war, tax-cuts for the wealthy and military expansion far more than it cares about the future of this great nation.
Stick a fork in neoconservatism, it’s done.