Opinion
Who Destroyed the Conservative Movement?
By
Feb 24, 2008, 08:30

Historic political victories by the GOP in 1980 and 1994 were preceded by an avalanche of grass roots activism spawned by the disastrous defeat of Barry Goldwater’s presidential bid in 1964.  The conservative ‘movement’ was born in the belly of the largest expansion of the federal government by Lyndon B. Johnson—until the Presidency of George W. Bush.  Now in 2008, the promise of conservatism is absent from the race for the GOP presidential nomination, and conservatives are asking, “What happened?”

An Annapolis-trained engineer and politician, John McCain.  A Liberal Republican former Governor of Massachusetts and a former Governor of Arkansas blamed for destroying the conservative movement in his state, dominate the GOP in 2008.  Authentic conservatives with presidential ambitions like Mark Sanford (R-SC); Phil Gramm (R-TX); Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Arizona Senator John Kyl are not only on the sidelines, but are not even members of what appears to be the least populous club in America—conservatives lusting to become President of the United States.

So, what really happened? 

To some extent a generational change was slower to occur in the GOP than in the Democratic Party.  Ronald Reagan, the GOP nominee in 1980, was born in 1911.  The nominee in 1988, George H. W. Bush, another WW II veteran, was born in 1924.  The nominee in 1992, incumbent President George H. W. Bush wasn’t any younger, and was beaten thoroughly by a young Governor of Arkansas, William Jefferson Clinton.  Bob Dole, the nominee in 1996, was born in 1923 and was again beaten by a younger man.  And in 2000, the GOP exhausted its supply of old men and chose the young George W. Bush, born in 1946.  A generational change had occurred.

In 2008 the likely nominee, John McCain, born in 1936, is not only as liberal as the two presidents from the Bush dynasty, but he appears to have revived the GOP’s love affair with older men.  He’ll run against Barack Obama, born in 1961, or Hillary Clinton, born in 1947.

What we’re seeing is a trend toward younger politicians that is both actuarial and indicative of what makes the American heart go pitter patter.  Even former Sen. Bob Kerry, now president of New School University, born in 1943, announced that he was “too old” to run for president.

So, why is the GOP walking into a generational trap by nominating the oldest man (age 71) to run for president since Ronald Reagan?

The answer is:  Bush 41 and Bush 43 destroyed the conservative movement.

Peggy Noonan made the same observation in an OpEd in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago but she named only Bush 43. 

The damage was done in 1980 when Ronald Reagan was persuaded to take George H. W. Bush as his Vice Presidential nominee.  It's too late to complain about that.  But, here’s the case against his son, President George W. Bush, that should have been made in 2000.

Bush 43's instincts are in line with the Internationalist school of the Republican Left Wing—a throwback to Nelson Rockefeller—and a string of liberal losers who controlled the Republican Party in the 20^th century.  To phrase this in one sentence, "Bush loves government."

But, it's even worse than that. 

Bush is wrong on “making the Middle East safe for Democracy”—a throwback to the messianic Woodrow Wilson. 

Bush is wrong on the unconstitutional intrusive harvesting of private communications--a modern day version of Woodrow Wilson's sedition raids. 

Bush is wrong on tax rebates to stimulate demand and he’s apparently abandoned tax cuts that will not be renewed in 2010 suggesting that he never understood they were necessary.

And Bush is wrong on secondary and postsecondary education that he federalized under one of the most liberal Education Secretaries in the history of the U.S. Department of Education.

Bush’s messianic “War,” the weak economy, expansion of federal power and the federalization of secondary and postsecondary education have put the GOP at a tactical disadvantage going in to the 2008 presidential election.  Whether this positioning of the GOP behind an 8-ball in national politics is permanent, or temporary, is hard to judge.  But, it looks like the long expected realignment of national political life will involve the permanent decline of the GOP, its replacement by a principled third party or a civil war to take back the GOP from the Left. 

If that occurs, it will take years, possibly a generation, for a new cohort of conservative leaders to emerge.

Since 1988, conservatives with ambition, and there were several that showed their faces in Senatorial elections during the presidencies of the Bush dynasty, were forced to support Presidents they knew were hurting the GOP, and who had a reputation for punishing their enemies.  Today, only the disaffected Ron Paul of all the GOP nominees said it like it is.  “George Bush destroyed the conservative movement.”  In his heart, Ron Paul knows from a career in Texas politics that both Bushes destroyed the GOP.

The GOP after twelve years of Bush family leadership may be likened to a family business three generations removed from the founder’s entrepreneurial spirit.  The presiding heir is drunk with hubris, inattentive to his customers, and unaware that his children (enrolled at Yale) are learning the same lessons about Government and Economics that destroyed the Presidencies of Bush 41 and Bush 43.