Why Conservatives Can't Govern

[babylonsister]

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/03/19/why_conservatives_cant_govern.php

Why Conservatives Can't Govern
Robert L. Borosage
March 19, 2007



'Robert L. Borosage is co-director of the Campaign For America's Future.

Donald Rumsfeld has been axed. Tom DeLay cut and ran. “Scooter” Libby stands convicted. Michael “you’re doing a heck of a job” Brown was tossed. Newt Gingrich disgraced himself. And now the clueless Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, is surely the next to go.

Why this confederacy of dunces? The conservative National Review cover asks plaintively, “Can’t Anyone Here Play this Game?” Time Magazine puts conservative icon Ronald Reagan on its cover, a tear rolling down his face, reporting on “How the Right Went Wrong.” But it’s not incompetence or corruption—although both abound—that fostered the misrule of this conservative administration. And Reagan would feel not dismayed, but right at home with the follies and crimes. Remember: Reagan’s attorney general, Edwin Meese, was disgraced. His national security advisor copped a plea. Oliver North stood convicted. His defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, would have been indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice if George Bush the first hadn’t issued a preemptive pardon.

What is it about conservative administrations that lead them into disgrace and indictment? Incompetence isn’t at the core of these scandals—ideology is.

Conservative presidents—from Nixon to Reagan to Bush—believe in the imperial presidency. They assume that in the area of the national security, the president operates above the law, or as Nixon put it, “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” They operate routinely behind the shield of secrecy and executive privilege, with utter disdain for the law. So Reagan spurned the Congress when it cut off funds for his loony covert war on tiny Nicaragua. And Bush trampled the laws to set up the torture camps in Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and elsewhere. Each would seek to keep their lawlessness secret; and that would foster lies, obstruction of justice and ultimately disgrace.

Second, conservatives are acutely aware that they represent a minority, not a majority, position in America. From Nixon to Lee Atwater to Karl Rove, they play politics and exploit America’s divides with back-alley brass knuckles—from Reagan’s welfare queen to Bush’s impugning the patriotism of Georgia Senator Max Cleland, a Vietnam War hero who literally sacrificed his limbs in the service of his country. They excel in the politics of personal destruction, as Democratic presidential candidates Michael Dukakis and John Kerry discovered. And in the grand tradition of the establishment in American politics, they are relentless in seeking to suppress the vote, particularly of the poor and minorities who would vote against them in large numbers.

more...

[Sammy Pepys]

1. This article could have been a lot better

He keeps bringing up Nixon, but Nixon wasn't really all that conservative if we're talking ideology. There have to be better examples than Tricky Dick out there.

[waiting for hope]

2. This was the best:

"The phrase “conservative misrule” is a redundancy. The two words mean exactly the same thing."

You know, the more I read into this and how the republican party has turned into something else completely - definitely different from the Goldwater days (even my Dad can't stand his own party anymore), the more I see a need for a really strong third party. Green/Independent Whatever....just something to push this Republican pile of crap underneath the rock it crawled from.

[babylonsister]

4. And I imagine there are some conservatives who shudder at being

tagged with the rethug moniker as the party currently is.

[treestar]

3. The imperial presidency paragraph is right on

They tend to be authoritarians, and that is just un-American. So they don't fit.

[Demeter]

5. Republicans Today Don't Believe In Government

They are unrestrained libertines. To govern well, you first have to govern yourself.