What is Conservatism?

A t Monday night’s Republican presidential candidates’ debate there were several takeaways. 

Most obvious was the imposed calm compared to recent debates.  Without crowd reaction and standing ovations, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich definitely seemed off his game.  Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney was aggressive compared to previous debates and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum repeated his breathtakingly ignorant statement that Iran is run by the equivalent of al Qaeda. 

But the most penetrating moment came near the end of the debate when moderator Brian Williams asked Congressman Ron Paul if Gingrich and Romney were sufficiently conservative.  His answer, “I think the problem is . . . nobody has defined what being conservative means,” cut directly to the heart of the crisis in the modern Republican Party. 

At first glance this statement seems strange.  Conservatism, a philosophy that in its current form dates back to the administrations of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, has been around for six decades.  No Republican politician can consider getting elected without claiming to be some type of conservative.    

It’s no secret that the one person never mentioned in this nominating process is the last Republican president, George W. Bush.  After eight years of bungled occupations, deficits, lobbyists, bailouts, and Katrina, no sane Republican wants the specter of Bush around.  But in this nominating process, it is clear to see that the party is still suffering from its equation of conservatism with Republican electoral victories.    

Four years ago when John McCain was cruising to the nomination and Mitt Romney was considered the conservative alternative and last hope to stop the Straight Talk Express.  National Review endorsed Romney, calling him “a full-spectrum conservative,” persuading readers that “he was no Rockefeller Republican” when he was running to the left of Ted Kennedy.  Radio host and Fox News fixture Laura Ingraham introduced him as a “conservative’s conservative” at that year’s CPAC. 

This time around conservatives have been supporting everyone from Herman Cain to Newt Gingrich to postpone a Romney nomination.  The fluidity of alternatives represented an irrefutable fact about each candidate who found himself in that role:  there were no fundamental differences between them.   

In four years Romney went from being the conservative to the establishment candidate without holding office in between.  If Romney clinches the nomination despite all the foot-dragging from the conservatives who touted him four years ago, expect him to remember their dementia. 

One explanation may be that the Tea Party changed the dynamic.  Whereas the health care model in Massachusetts was barely an issue in 2008, the broader version enacted by a Democratic president in the intervening time has created a hurdle for Romney.  But that can’t explain it all. 

If the individual mandate, the lynchpin of Obamacare, is “socialist,” as the president’s harshest critics claim, then why is Romney not a socialist for enacting his Massachusetts plan and why is Gingrich not a socialist for campaigning for an individual mandate for over a decade?  Why did a Democrat need to enact the individual mandate for it to become intolerable? 

Conservatives despondent over their presidential prospects this year have only themselves to blame.  Whereas conservatism once boasted of intellectuals from Russell Kirk to Richard Weaver, supporting the Republican Party during the Bush years became synonymous with conservatism and even today hostility toward The Other Side is a substitute for thinking. 

Consider what has fueled Gingrich’s recent rise.  When the debates permitted cheering and applause, Gingrich was the man of the hour as he jousted with Fox News’ Juan Williams and CNN’s John King over what was perceived as elitist, liberal media bias.  Almost as if on cue, the South Carolina crowds roared with approval of the take-downs.  Then they rewarded his temper tantrum at the ballot box.  Forgetting that definitions of conservative include “restraint” and “caution” they substitute braggadocio and alarmism in its place.  

Rick Santorum, winner of the Iowa Caucuses, is still positioning himself as a conservative alternative but he is Exhibit A of a water-carrying “conservative.”  Last year during one of the first debates, he was the only candidate to openly identify with Bush and do so positively.  That he has dropped that tact shows that some adviser got in his ear but the fact remains the same.  If the point is to extricate the party from the Bush legacy the party couldn’t pick a worse candidate than Santorum.  He is the face of the big-spending Bush years:  No Child Left Behind, unfunded Medicare expansion, two wars.  Check, check, and check. 

The candidate Republicans should want in a post-Bush, Tea Party era is Ron Paul.  But the candidate without a record of flip-flops and a clear adherence to the Constitution is the one who is widely reviled.  The one candidate who represents the clearest contrast to the Bush era is the one candidate most Republicans, and yes, most conservatives probably wish would simply go away. 

Republicans may have repudiated Bush the president but they are slower in repudiating the scope of his agenda.  By supporting Romney, Gingrich or Santorum, the party is trying to re-live the Bush years without the albatross of Bush himself.  They are trying to have it all.  Wars, low taxes, additional spending, rhetorical support for a small government and an ever-enlarging safety net.  But what they are doing is advocating a philosophy that cannot exist. 

If Republicans win with Romney, Gingrich or Santorum this year, and America is faced with another liberal Democrat after another mess, Republicans will likely wonder what went wrong. 

If only they wanted to see it.

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