Digg this
| 
Post to del.icio.us
| 
E-mail to a friend
A couple of snapshots, from the reinterpreted past and the ghastly present.
* Chicago's excellent Rick Perlstein, author of Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, argues that fraud, deception, and lawbreaking are essential to modern-day conservatism, and calls to witness what happened when he made his case at a conservative conference in New Jersey in 2005:
"How did this roomful of 'conservative intellectuals,' including those beside me on the dais, respond to my argument that Richard Nixon loved conservatives specifically for their willingness, nay eagerness, to break the law? One of them, another YAF [Young Americans for Freedom] founder, M. Stanton Evans... quipped, 'I didn't like Nixon until Watergate.' Everyone laughed. Because it was - you know - a 'joke.'"
* Having failed at warmaking, Republicans are trying their hands at metaphor, with predictable results, collected by the Center for American Progress. You've probably heard Indiana Rep. Mike Pence's notorious equation of his heavily guarded trip to a Baghdad market to shopping at "any open-air market in Indiana in the summertime."
CAP also found downstate Illinois Rep. John Shimkus: "Imagine my beloved St. Louis Cardinals are playing the much despised Chicago Cubs. Who wins? We know it's the team that stays on the field." ("He's stealing second -- here's the throw -- it's in time -- he's dead!")
And Ohio's Rep. John Boehner likened Iraq to a small plastics and packaging company he used to run: "I have benchmarks every month, but if I didn't meet the benchmarks and if I missed the profit margin, I didn't shut down the business." (CAP: "100 U.S. soldiers weren't killed every month if Boehner couldn't sell enough bubble wrap.")
and otherwise. Recently updated blogs are in bold text.
By no means do political conservatives have some sort of monopoly on corruption (Rod Blagojevich comes to mind).
Squawks such as Perlstein's are emblematic of the ruined political discourse in this country.
JBP
The list of conservatives who have embraced fraud, deception, and lawbreaking would be too long to even attempt to list in a brief blog comment, so I'll skip straight to lawbreaking - Tom Delay, Duke Cunningham, Rick Renzi, The former governors of Ohio and Illinois, Mark Foley, several Bush admin officials, Bob Ney, Jack Abramoff, and numerous others who are also under investigation or in prison.
Lets see, Walker was a Democrat (not charged in office), Blagojevic is a Hard Left Democrat, G Ryan a (sort of) Liberal Republican, Jim Thompson probably won't be indicted-but certainly was a liberal Jack Abramoff a Big Government liberal.
Tom Delay may actually be a conservative as you mention, but many sources claim he was removed from office for attempting to dry up special interest money, which is an old-fashioned Liberal idea. He certainly has no crime related to his conservatism.
RP,
Let me get this straight, when a big government liberal finds someone to follow (some rather dubious)orders, the shame and blame belongs with the guy that follows the orders, and not with his (rather delusional) liberal boss. Makes perfect sense.
Again, the juvenile nature of this claim makes me think political discourse in this country has reached a new low.
Left or Right, we could do with less swindlers, and less childish claims that one side has a monopoly on the swindle.
Jeff -- Does Karl Rove publish his playbook? I don't think so.
I wonder if a distinction might be useful here. Corruption, as in Blago and Daley, is present across the board in politics. But fraud and deception, as in Watergate, as in vote supression under cover of fear of voter fraud, as in dirty tricks like smearing McCain in the 2000 primary, may be another matter.
The need for it is patent -- few recognizably conservative viewpoints even today command majority assent.
There's a deeper issue here, too. I was around for Richard Nixon, and I don't remember a lot of Republicans calling him a liberal *then.* Are you seriously going to contend, John, that you would have as soon voted for Humphrey in 1968 as Nixon? Similarly, when did W quit being a conservative? Why, when he started looking like a loser. This raises another question: can anyone recognizable as a true-blue conservative even govern? (any more than a true-blue socialist could?)
Early on in Bush presidency (a few months after 9/11 if I recall) the Financial Times had a full feature on Bush big-government tendencies, claiming he spends like a French Socialist, one of the first time I saw that in print. Effective nationalization of the Airline Industry, Steel Tariffs, and wild Pork Spending led them to conclude Bush was quite left-wing on many economic matters.
The Chicago Democrats wrote the book on vote fraud. Not sure they are all that Liberal, but vote fraud it surely not a Republican monopoly. Smearing opponents? How about Rahm Emmanuel vs. Henry Hyde? Larry Flynt vs. the Republican Leaders?
Not sure how I would have voted in 1968 (as a 4 year old). But per Tom Roeser, who was good friends with HHH, if Hubert were around today, he would be a Neo-Con.
JBP