HOW MANY TIMES?

Or the Decline and Fall of Conservative Thought

(With apologies to Bob Dylan) How many times must some people err, before they are forever scorned? The answer my friend is blowin' in the b.s. , the b.s. of conservative spin.

With the latest news, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and almost 300,000 new jobs created in April, once again the vacuity of present day conservative thought is exposed to anyone with half a brain. How many times have conservatives railed against the failure of the stimulus bill, warned of the dire consequences of budget deficits and looming inflation? Drill, baby, drill, it is perfectly safe, we were told over and over again. Time after time their policies have proven, at best ill-advised, at worst, absolutely disastrous. And yet they continue to pontificate in denial of reality, ignorant of facts, and still have their views propounded widely, often without any critical analysis.

I recently saw a scene from a rather execrable movie from 40 years ago or so, called A Guide for the Married Man, or something like that. I had seen it originally and found it distasteful, and re-viewing part of it, it has now become dated and even more unpleasant than I remembered. However, the scene I saw is reminiscent of the approach that conservatives take nowadays. A character played by Walter Matthau, as I recall, is advising his young associate on what to do if his wife catches him cheating. Matthau's wife walks in on him in bed with another woman and starts yelling at him. Matthau, totally unperturbed and calm, gets out of bed and dresses himself while his paramour does the same. All the time Matthau responds quietly to his wife, denying everything and expressing surprise at what she is saying until he is fully dressed and the other woman has left. Then he tells his wife she must be imagining everything and lo, and behold, the bed is made, the woman is gone and Matthau is fully dressed and his wife begins to wonder if she is crazy and did imagine it. This seems to be the policy of the GOP, especially conservatives. Shortly after the crash Greenspan admitted that his policy of no regulation was wrong. Now he's saying it wasn't his fault, it was congressional policies, etc. With the oil spill, what have conservatives done? Re-evaluated their position? No, criticized Obama for reacting too slowly, never mind that a recent AP analysis shows that the administration reacted quickly, as soon as problems became known. The conservative mantra is something like "Whatever you do, don't look behind the curtain, I am the Great Oz."

Early in FDR's presidency one of his top advisers, Raymond Moley, said to FDR, "You realize, then that you're taking an enormous step away from the philosophy of equalitarianism and laissez-faire?" FDR responded, "If that philosophy hadn't proved to be bankrupt, Herbert Hoover would be sitting here right now."(1) This should be true today, de-regulation and laissez-faire have been shown once again to lead to disastrous consequences, but conservatives won't or can't admit it. Here's a widely quoted remark by "a senior Bush official", which sounds an awfully lot like something Karl Rove would say. Talking to a journalist, the official said that guys like him are "in what we call the reality-based community"--people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality--judiciously as you will--we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out." (2)Unfortunately, the Iraqis didn't quite see it that way and didn't care what Bush's reality was.

The Republican party has been taken over by people who have firmly rejected a reality based view. In case you missed it, two different surveys found almost the same exact numbers, so the following is about as accurate as polling gets. 24% of Republicans say that Obama may be the Antichrist (at least they leave some room for doubt!). 38% say that he is doing many of the things that Hitler did. 45% believe he was not born in the United States, 57% believe he is a Muslim, and 67% believe he is a socialist. (3) How shall I put this delicately? These people are bat-shit crazy.

Even so-called conservative intellectuals are unreliable. I used to respect George Will even though I disagreed with him. However, just within the past 6 months or so I have caught two major mistakes in columns and another case where he took something out of context so as to mislead his readers. Thomas Sowell, who has a Phd. in Economics, is a joke. He "proved" that Barney Frank was responsible for the economic crash by quoting something he said in 2003, ignoring the fact that Barney Frank had no power then since the GOP controlled both houses of Congress. Also, what Frank said then was not inaccurate or dangerous since the abuses hadn't started yet. Sowell's analyses are sloppy and rarely rise above the level of propaganda. The same is true of Victor Davis Hanson, a professor of military history. When he comments about Iraq and Afghanistan, it seems as if his study of military history never included guerrilla war as he makes pronouncements that are ahistorical and border on hysterical. His comments on politics and internal policy are even worse.

The Republican Party needs another Jack Kemp. Someone who actually thinks and tries to devise solutions to problems using conservative policies. He seems to be the last creative thinker in the conservative camp. Now conservatism can be boiled down to a few simple ideas: cut taxes, reduce the size of government, except for defense, and attack/invade countries we don't like. If McCain had won the last election, we probably would have seen something akin to modern day Hooverism and the economy really in the tank. We also would probably have attacked Iran by now, setting off a new oil crisis, dwarfing what we saw in the 70's.

What's truly frightening is that at a time when you can find out the answer to almost any question, when information is available like never before with just a few clicks of your mouse, people seem more ignorant than ever.

(1) The Coming of the New Deal, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., p. 98.
(2)The Fall of the House of Bush, Craig Unger, p. 243.
(3) The Daily Beast, March 23, 2010.