Los Angeles Times
July 28, 2004
BOSTON — One of the secrets of conservative America is how often it has
welcomed Republican defeats. In 1976, many conservatives saw the trouncing of
the moderate Gerald Ford as a way of clearing the path for the ideologically
pure Ronald Reagan in 1980. In November 1992, George H.W. Bush's defeat
provoked celebrations not just in Little Rock, where the Clintonites danced
around to Fleetwood Mac, but also in some corners of conservative America.
"Oh yeah, man, it was fabulous," recalled Tom DeLay, the hard-line
congressman from Sugar Land, Texas, who had feared another "four years of
misery" fighting the urge to cross his party's too-liberal leader. At the
Heritage Foundation, a group of right-wingers called the Third Generation
conducted a bizarre rite involving a plastic head of the deposed president on a
platter decorated with blood-red crepe paper.
There is no chance that
Republicans would welcome the son's defeat in the same way they rejoiced at the
father's. George W. is much mor e conservative than George H.W., and he has
gone out of his way to throw red meat to each faction of the right: tax cuts
for the anti-government conservatives, opposition to gay marriage and abortion
for the social conservatives and the invasion of Iraq for the neoconservatives.
Still, there are five good reasons why, in a few years, some on the right might
look on a John Kerry victory as a blessing in disguise.
First, President
Bush hasn't been as conservative as some would like. Small-government types
fume that he has increased discretionary government spending faster than Bill
Clinton. Buchananite paleoconservatives, libertarians and Nelson
Rockefeller-style internationalists are all furious — for their very
different reasons — about Bush's "war of choice" in Iraq. Even some
neocons are irritated by his conduct of that war — particularly his
failure to supply enough troops to make the whole enterprise work.
The
second reason conservatives might cheer a Bush defeat is to a chieve a foreign
policy victory. The Bush foreign policy team hardly lacks experience, but its
reputation has been tainted — by infighting, by bungling in Iraq and by
the rows with Europe. For better or worse, many conservatives may conclude that
Kerry, who has accepted most of the main tenets of Bush's policy of preemption,
stands a better chance than Bush of increasing international involvement in
Iraq, of winning support for Washington's general war on terror and even of
forcing reform at the United Nations. After all, could Jacques, Gerhard and the
rest of those limp-wristed continentals say no to a man who speaks fluent French
and German and has just rid the world of the Toxic Texan?
The third
reason for the right to celebrate a Bush loss comes in one simple word:
gridlock. Gridlock is a godsend to some conservatives — it's a proven way
to stop government spending. A Kerry administration is much more likely to be
gridlocked than a second Bush administration because the Republicans lo ok sure
to hang on to the House and have a better-than-even chance of keeping control of
the Senate.
The fourth reason has to do with regeneration. Some
conservatives think the Republican Party — and the wider conservative
movement — needs to rediscover its identity. Is it a "small government"
party, or does "big government conservatism" make sense? Is it the party of big
business or of free markets? Under Bush, Western anti-government conservatives
have generally lost ground to Southern social conservatives, and pragmatic
internationalists have been outmaneuvered by neoconservative idealists. A
period of bloodletting might help, returning a stronger party to the fray.
And that is the fifth reason why a few conservatives might welcome a
November Bush-bashing: the certain belief that they will be back, better than
ever, in 2008. The conservative movement has an impressive record of snatching
victory from the jaws of defeat. Ford's demise indeed helped to power the
Reagan landslide ; "Poppy" Bush's defeat set up the Gingrich revolution. In
four years, many conservatives believe, President Kerry could limp to
destruction at the hands of somebody like Colorado Gov. Bill Owens.
When the British electorate buried President Bush's hero, Winston Churchill, and
his Conservative Party, Lady Churchill stoically suggested the "blessing in
disguise" idea to her husband. He replied that the disguise seemed pretty
effective. Yet the next few years vindicated Lady Churchill's judgment. The
Labor Party, working with Harry S. Truman, put into practice the anti-communist
containment policies that Churchill had championed. So in 1951, the
Conservative Party could return to office with an important piece of its agenda
already in place and in a far fitter state than it had been six years earlier.
It held office for the next 13 years.