Category Archives: conservatism

Tanking

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A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll says Bush’s approval rating (finally) has dropped below 40 percent

The poll shows that Bush’s approval rating stands at 39 percent, a new low for the president. In the last NBC/Wall Street Journal survey, which was released in mid-September, 40 percent approved of Bush’s job performance while 55 percent disapproved. In addition, just 28 percent believe the country is headed in the right direction, another all-time low in Bush’s presidency.

Strikingly, much has happened in the time between those two polls — many of them seemingly positive events for the White House. The president delivered a prime-time speech from New Orleans, in which he promised to rebuild the Gulf Coast. He also made several more visits to the region, to examine the damage caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Furthermore, he saw the Senate confirm John Roberts to the Supreme Court, and he nominated Miers, his White House counsel, to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor..

I’m hardly objective, but I believe all the trips to the Gulf just make him look desperate.

The Dems should be happy that 48 percent say they’d prefer a Democrat-controlled Congress, as opposed to 39 percent who want to keep the Republicans in charge. I’m not sure the Dems have done anything to deserve their improvement in the polls, but there it is.

Along these lines, David Ignatius has an interesting column in today’s Washington Post:

Watching the Republicans floundering over the past week, I can’t help thinking of a school of beached whales. The leviathans of the GOP have boldly swum themselves onto this patch of dry sand, and it won’t be easy for them to get back to open ocean….

…What’s interesting is that most of these wounds are self-inflicted. They draw a picture of a party that, for all its seeming dominance, isn’t prepared to be the nation’s governing party. The hard right, which is the soul of the modern GOP, would rather be ideologically pure than successful. Governing requires making compromises and getting your hands dirty, but the conservative purists disdain those qualities. They swim for that beach with a fiercely misguided determination, and they demand that the other whales accompany them.

The bickering over the Miers nomination epitomizes the right’s refusal to assume the role of a majoritarian governing party. The awkward fact for conservatives is that the American public doesn’t agree with them on abortion rights. A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll in late August found 54 percent describing themselves as pro-choice and only 38 percent as pro-life, roughly the same percentages as a decade ago. …

… Bush squandered this opportunity by falling into the trap that has snared the modern GOP — of playing to the base rather than to the nation. The Republicans behave as if the country agrees with them on issues, when that demonstrably isn’t so. The country doesn’t agree about Social Security, doesn’t agree about the ethical issues that were dramatized by the torment of Terri Schiavo, doesn’t agree about abortion. Yet, in a spirit of blind partisanship, House Speaker Dennis Hastert announced last year that bills would reach the floor only if “the majority of the majority” supported them. That notion of governing from the hard right was a recipe for failure.

Righties have a pathological need to believe their point of view is the majority point of view, and that we lefties represent a few bitter enders camped out in a commune for aging hippies. I’ve written about this before. Whenever you pin a rightie in an argument, he or she always falls back on the “oh, yeah? Well, most people agree with me” defense. Except, most people don’t.

And I think the GOP could get away with a lot as long as most middle-class Americans felt safe and complacent. But these days nobody’s feeling safe or complacent. People are getting scared, and pissed off, and they’re looking at Washington, and seeing … Republicans in charge.

And a few Dems have been coming forward with something that looks like an actual agenda, something I hope to write about tomorrow.

Hooey; or, Why Paper Money Is Unconstitutional

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“I told the people on the campaign trail that I’ll pick somebody who knows the difference between personal opinion and the strict interpretation of the law. You might have heard that several times. I meant what I said.” — George W. Bush

“For now, I’ll sit the Miers fight out until I know with some certainty that she’s a vote for our values.” — Gary Bauer

We’ve known for a long time the “interpretation of the law” speech is hooey. During the Terri Schiavo episode the social conservatives made it clear they have no regard whatsoever for the constitution, federalism, separation of powers, or the rule of law. They want what they want, period, even if they have to pull on their jack boots and stomp all over democratic principles to get it.

And we’ve known for a long time that rightie claims of wanting judges who “don’t legislate from the bench” is also hooey. Adam Cohen wrote in the New York Times (April 19, 205),

Conservatives claim that they are rising up against “activist judges,” who decide cases based on their personal beliefs rather than the law. They frequently point to Justice Antonin Scalia as a model of honest, “strict constructionist” judging. And Justice Scalia has eagerly embraced the hero’s role. Last month, after the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty for those under 18, he lashed out at his colleagues for using the idea of a “living Constitution” that evolves over time to hand down political decisions – something he says he would never do.

The idea that liberal judges are advocates and partisans while judges like Justice Scalia are not is being touted everywhere these days, and it is pure myth. Justice Scalia has been more than willing to ignore the Constitution’s plain language, and he has a knack for coming out on the conservative side in cases with an ideological bent. The conservative partisans leading the war on activist judges are just as inconsistent: they like judicial activism just fine when it advances their own agendas.

Cohen goes on to site examples of Scalia’s activism and his uncanny ability to twist the plain language of the Constitution around to mean whatever he wants it to mean. But you knew that.

One of the Right’s new buzzwords is originalism, which dKosopedia explains—

The term originalism refers to two distinctly different ideas: One version, known as original intent, is the view that interpretation of a written constitution is (or should be) consistent with what it was originally intended to mean by those who drafted and ratified it. The other version, known as original meaning, or textualism, is the view that interpretation of a written constitution should be based on what it would commonly have been understood to mean by reasonable persons living at the time of its ratification.

Originalism is only concerned with determining the meaning of a text. Constitutional interpretation is not constitutional construction; rather, construction is the determination of how the provisions of a text apply to a specific question.

The key to originalism is that interpretive decisions made by Judges should be based on facts about the document when it was originally written or ratified, with minimal adjustments for the time or context in which it is interpreted. Under this method, even when a judge sees an issue he is persuaded ought to be ameliorated somehow, if the law as written and interpreted in the light of its original intent or original meaning does not support the end result sought, a ruling supporting that result is not granted. In this manner, originalists contend, alteration of the Constitution remains the perogative of the amendment process outlined in Article V.

I agree with the originalists to a limited extent. Whether the Constitution is or is not a living document, it’s written in English, which is a living language. And language changes; the meanings of words and phrases shift over time, and sometimes can end up meaning something quite different from what they meant a couple of centuries ago. So when you’re dealing with a specific phrase–for example, “high crimes and misdemeanors”–it’s a good idea to find out what that phrase might have meant to a bunch of guys writing a constitution in the late 18th century.

The problem is, it takes someone with at least some scholarly aquaintance with history and legal language to appreciate what those meanings might have been. And we’ve seen in recent years that righties don’t have a lot of patience with scholarship, especially when it gets in the way of their agenda. For example, you might recall the episode, ca. 1998, in which several truckloads of historians tried to explain to the House of Representatives that none of the articles of impeachment they were bringing against President Clinton rose to the level of a “high crime or misdemeanor” as the Framers understood the phrase (one such explanation here). Righties dismissed the scholars as if they were so many annoying mosquitos.

For that matter, continued rightie insistence that the Framers intended for America to be a Christian nation, in spite of the fact that they failed to mention any Person of the Trinity in the Constitution, seems more “revisionist” than “originalist” to me. But let’s go on …

Although I’ve said that I agree the Constitution should be understood in the context of 18th-century language, the unworkability of rigid originalism struck home to me a few weeks ago as I was reading a book about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War–

Chase regularly came to Lincoln and moaned about the spiraling costs of the war and the increasing difficulty of borrowing Wall Street money to pay for the mountains of hardtack, the uniforms, the guns, the soldiers’ pay. Then, one day in the summer of 1862, a visitor from Ohio, David Taylor, told Lincoln there was a way for the government to raise huge amounts of money: by issuing interest-bearing notes, which could circulate as currency or be kept as an investment.

Lincoln grasped hold of this idea with an enthusiasm fueled partly by desperation. Chase told him Taylor’s plan was impossible, the Constitution did not allow the government to issue a paper currency. [Geoffrey Perret, Lincoln’s War (Random House, 2004), pp. 201-202]

I checked. Article I, Section 8, Clause 5, says Congress can coin money. It doesn’t say Congress can print money. That’s right, folks. Y’know those green paper things you carry around in your wallet? They’re unconstitutional.

Apparently Chase’s opinion was not some off-the-wall interpretation from one guy. The text goes on to say that Lincoln agreed printing money was unconstitutional, but he did it anyway. And soon everybody was spending “greenbacks” just like coins.

The money thing is not the only little surprise lurking in a very strict interpretation of the text. The Framers had serious heebie-jeebies about maintaining a standing army, for example, and down in Article I, Section 8, Clause 12 wrote that Congress had the power to “raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years.” Needless to say, this provision has been interpreted quite loosely also.

Bottom line: If we woke up tomorrow to find the originalists in charge, the whole dadblamed nation would come to a screeching halt, and we’d spend the next several years working through the Constitution and passing amendments thereto before we could get the critter up and moving again.

The genius of the Constitution is that it gave us a working structure for governance that has lasted these many years. But within that structure We, the People have felt free to expand the role of government as needed to meet changing realities and to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty,” etc.

What the originalists want to do is toss out more than two centuries of hard-won experience and start from scratch. I vote no.

But back to the courts. In spite of Alexander Hamilton’s stern warnings in Federalist #78 that the courts needed to be kept separate from Congress —

In a monarchy [the judiciary] is an excellent barrier to the despotism of the prince; in a republic it is a no less excellent barrier to the encroachments and oppressions of the representative body. And it is the best expedient which can be devised in any government, to secure a steady, upright, and impartial administration of the laws. …

… though individual oppression may now and then proceed from the courts of justice, the general liberty of the people can never be endangered from that quarter; I mean so long as the judiciary remains truly distinct from both the legislature and the Executive….

The complete independence of the courts of justice is peculiarly essential in a limited Constitution. By a limited Constitution, I understand one which contains certain specified exceptions to the legislative authority; such, for instance, as that it shall pass no bills of attainder, no ex-post-facto laws, and the like. Limitations of this kind can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing.

— in recent years the Right has embraced the notion that the judiciary is an arm of the legislature and must follow its instructions. Thus, in the Terri Schiavo case, when Congress tried to legislate what the courts should decide, and it didn’t work, the righties howled about the “out-of-control judiciary.” What they meant, of course, was out of their control.

A variation on this gripe is that since “liberals” can’t win elections they are using the courts to promote the liberal agenda. If by the “liberal agenda” you mean respecting civil liberties and equal treatment under the law I suppose we’re guilty as charged. But I’d like to know exactly how it is we liberals are dictating our evil schemes to the courts and if I can apply for a place on the liberal judiciary steering committee. Sounds like fun.

Anyway, I started out to write about Harriet Miers and got sidetracked. Just read this; it’s a hoot.

Can This Marriage Be Saved?

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The political coalition loosely called “movement conservatism” continues to unravel. James Kuhnhenn writes for Knight Ridder that the resulting political upheaval is forcing the Republican Party to re-evaluate its relationship with George W. Bush.

The conservative rebellion against Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers is widening the split between the White House and Republicans, sowing fears among party strategists that President Bush is jeopardizing 10 years of GOP congressional dominance.

With defiance unseen since he’s been in the White House, Senate Republicans already have reined in the administration on the treatment of foreign detainees, forced it to jettison no-bid post-hurricane reconstruction contracts and given Miers a tepid welcome as Bush’s choice to replace Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

Behind these emboldened stances lie growing unease over Bush’s Iraq policy, dismay at the federal response to Katrina and Bush’s sinking public approval ratings.

The parting of ways signals a loss in Bush’s clout after five years that is likely to have consequences for the remainder of his term and possibly beyond.

For all its famous message discipline, contemporary conservatism was always an improbable beast made up of myriad political movements with often conflicting agendas. Somehow, the movement patched together small-government conservatives dedicated to limiting the federal government’s ability to encroach on citizens’ lives with social conservatives dedicated to using government power to enforce morally correct behavior. It married isolationist paleo-conservatives to neocons–quoting Ian Welsh, “trotskyites who decided that their utopian vision required an iron fist and spilling a lot of blood, and that the rest of the left wing didn’t have the stomach for it – but that the right could be convinced by appealing to their militarism and worship of strength.”

Cracks have been forming for quite some time. For example, most small-government conservatives were genuinely alarmed when Republicans in Congress tried to intervene in the Terri Schiavo controversy in ways that were blatantly unconstitutional. And the social conservatives revealed they had no interest in the federalist and constitutional principles dear to the hearts of the small-government group. Social conservatives are on a mission from God, after all.

Recently I wrote about an interview of neocon Bill Kristol by Bernard-Henri Lévy. Lévy observed that Kristol had sold out some of his own principles for the sake of the coalition–

Don’t jump to the conclusion that I believe in it, he seems to be saying. That’s just the deal, you understand—supporting a crusade for moral values is just the price we have to pay for a foreign policy that we can defend as a whole.

It’s one thing for a party to take a “big tent” attitude and agree to disagree, but I don’t believe that’s what most movement conservatives have been doing. I think most of ’em have been in denial about the very real ideological differences represented in movement conservatism. Or, like Kristol, they’ve mouthed agreement with views they don’t actually hold as a kind of ideological quid pro quo; I’ll support your agenda if you’ll support mine. But now some are waking up, like the once dewy-eyed bride who finally admits to herself she’s married to a jerk. At long last they’re taking a hard look at the Bush Administration, and thinking, this isn’t what I signed up for.

The question at hand is, are we about to see a major political realignment on the Right, or can the coalition patch itself back together? To answer that question, I think, one needs a clear understanding of whatever it was that has held the coalition together all these years.

Over at Washington Monthly, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson are discussing their new book, Off Center, in which they tackle this question. I haven’t read this book yet, but here’s what they say in their blog post–

In the face of a puzzle like this, the temptation is to search for a one-size-fits-all explanation. In response to Kevin’s post on Friday, a fair number of participants thought they had the single easy answer (“it’s framing!” or “it’s the use of cultural issues as a wedge!” or “it’s because Democrats are bumblers/cowards/sell-outs” or “it’s race”). There were probably a couple of dozen factors raised by one person or another, which strongly suggests that there’s more than one thing at work. To us at least, it also suggests that what’s crucial is how these different plausible GOP advantages actually come together in reinforcing the party’s power.

Our own emphasis lies on the organizational and social foundations of political power, rather than on the character of personalities or particular rhetorical moves. In particular, we think a central source of GOP success lies in the unprecedented (within the contours of modern American politics) capacity of conservative elites to coordinate their activities and operate in a unified fashion.

Movement conservatism is, I think, essentially a faux populist movement controlled and manipulated by conservative elites. These elites have been with us, in one form or another, throughout American history. But IMO the present coalition began to take shape from the white backlash against the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The elites recognized that this backlash was something that could be exploited for their own ends. The elites learned to fan the flames of resentment and victimhood to get “their” candidates elected. They were quick to seize upon fresh issues–e.g., the Vietnam-era antiwar movement; affirmative action; feminism; abortion; gay rights; and the old standby, Communism–to keep the resentment fires burning as anger over desegregation cooled.

As any propagandist will tell you, there is no easier way to unify people than to give them a common enemy.

The conservative elite benefited from the rise of mass media and learned ever more sophisticated ways to take their unified message to the nation. And as they gained greater control of mass media they were able to prevent opponents from getting their message to the American people.

(For years it’s been an ironclad law that no progressive is allowed to speak on a television political talk show without having a rightie goon at his side, shouting him down. I once decided that if I ever saw Joe Conason appear on Hardball and be allowed to finish a sentence without interruption I could die happy.)

The conservative elite can still manipulate mass media pretty much at will and remains a powerful force. But other elements in the political landscape are changing.

One of those elements is support for George W. Bush. I believe it isn’t just some movement conservatives and rightie bloggers who are having second thoughts about his “leadership.” I suspect at least some of the elites may have decided he is no longer useful to them. If so, mass media will no longer wrap Dear Leader in a rosy glow. And if my suspicions are correct, there is no way Bush can recover. That duck is dead.

As for the coalition itself, that’s harder to say. Surely the elites will try to keep it together. Events over the next few months may determine if they can succeed. In particular, if the Democrats continue to flounder around and fail to present a clear alternative to Republicanism, the Republicans will keep the loyalty of voters.

In conclusion–we’ll see.