Doesn't make a lot of sense


Let's see.

According to this article- and other sources, including the sense I'm getting from the comments on this blog, social conservatives are upset with President Bush and the Republican Party because :

1) spending is out of control (a bad thing, I grant- but a primarily economic issue, and one largely driven by security concerns and the war in Iraq, which most of them support);

2) the President and many conservative leaders tried, but failed, to save Terri Schaivo- and by misreporting the case and distorting its facts, the media made Bush, the Republicans, and social conservatives look bad;

3) the President and the Republicans have failed to push doomed attempts to amend the Constitution to prohibit abortion and same-sex marriage;

4) Pat Robertson is a loose cannon, who brings not only "Evangelicalism" but social conservatism into disrepute on a regular basis; and

5) some few Republicans- who almost by definition are retiring from public life and sometimes going to jail- have turned out to be crooks.

They are happy, however, about Mr. Bush's appointments of Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, thereby bringing the conservative bloc on the court to within one vote of overturning Roe v. Wade, ensuring that states cannot be compelled to recognize same-sex "marriages" even if other states legalize them, and provide both a realistic means to address constitutional issues with social import an effective firewall against further assaults on the Constitution and the Western ethical tradition by activist judges.

In order to address these concerns, they therefore are contemplating sitting on their hands during this year's Congressional campaign or even voting Democratic, apparently reasoning that it "wouldn't be all bad" for the Democrats to regain control of Congress- thereby ensuring that if President Bush has a chance to nominate a third candidate for the Supreme Court during the next two years, he or she will not be confirmed, and a golden chance to both reverse Roe and advance the rest of that socially conservative agenda by means which might actually bear fruit will be lost.

None of this is to say that both social conservatives and the American people generally don't have legitimate grievences against the Bush administration and the Republican Party. But more productive course of action for social conservatives- who really have nowhere to go but into exile- would be for them to go to war in the primaries and caucuses this year and in 2008 to advance the agenda they think the Party has lost sight of. A Democratic victory this November will not purge the Party of non-conservatives, but give them a powerful argument for taking the party over. It would also ensure that social conservatives will no longer be taken seriously. The result will be seen as a repudiation of their agenda, confirmation that they are wild-eyed fanatics bent upon a course of rule-or-ruin, and establish them in the eyes of power-brokers within the Republican Party as unreliable allies.

Besides defeating the very agenda they supposedly stand for and squandering the chance to re-take the Supreme Court, that is.

I've watched conservatives long enough to know that, as a movement, they have the political instincts of cats and the survival instincts of lemmings. Can they really be as self-destructive and self-defeating as the pundits- and often they, themselves- claim? For all our sakes, I hope not.

HT: Drudge

Comments

Anonymous said…
I started to pay attention to politics in the Clinton years. Then I thought I was conservative because I thought conservative meant "anti-liberal". It was easy for me to think this because things people like Rush Limbaugh speant most of their time spotlighting how much harm liberals are doing.

Today I don't really know what a conservative is, only I know I'm not one. As far as I can tell, I'm best described as a libertarian that does not celebrate license.

I won't be voting Red or Blue in the forseeable future.
Which, as I observed above, doesn't make a lot of sense, since you'll be effectively voting blue.

Unless, of course, issues like abortion, the direction of the courts, national security, and the direction of the culture don't matter to you. If academic distinctions about political theory which history has long since passed by are all that counts for you, then I suppose it might make sense.

But I think you illustrate my point: the Right tends to have all the political instincts of a cat (or perhaps a hermit), and all the survival instincts of a lemming.

One suggestion, Jeff: when the Supreme Court nominee who would have made the difference on Roe is rejected by a Democratic Senate, don't you dare so much as express your regret. You will have been one of those who made it inevitable.
Anonymous said…
You will have been one of those who made it inevitable.

You can't hold me responsible for the votes of others.

Presidents have to get over 50% of the votes of the Electoral College. This is a wise move. As long as an elector doesn't vote for a Democrat, that elector is doing nothing to help that Democrat get closer to 50%.

It isn't my fault my state has a stupid winner-of-the-popular-plurality-take-all system for choosing electors. It isn't my fault we have so few Representatives and Electors. (The constitution allows no more than one Representative for every 30,000 people. We are not in danger of violating that. Today we have one Representative for every 686,000 people. I think we should have closer to 9000 Representatives. Why not? We have the internet. They don't even have to leave their home state to vote.)
Anonymous said…
My motto is "first do no harm." Voting for Republicans is doing harm, even if it is less harm than voting Democrat.
A 9,000 member House would be far too unwieldy to be practical- and yes, a person who stays home and permits others to do damage is indeed responsible, not for what they have done, but for his own failure to object. He is, indeed, responsible for the consequences.