The rightwing pundits and blogs have gone apoplectic over the possibility that John McCain could be the Republican candidate for president in 2008. Their complaint? He's not a conservative (see here, here, here, and here for starters). Yet, as I've pointed out, McCain has earned a respectable lifetime score of 82 from the American Conservative Union.
The problem, of course, isn't that McCain isn't a conservative; he's not the right kind of conservative. It doesn't matter how McCain votes on education, welfare, the military, abortion, or a host of other usually considered conservative topics. What matters to the "purity" crowd is a handful of issues, and those issues only:
1. Illegal immigration--boot everybody back over the border!
2. Campaign finance reform--we're agin it!
3. President Bush's tax cuts--can't ever be against tax cuts!
Essentially, all other issues are unimportant, if you listen to enough talk radio (speaking of which, listening to Hugh Hewitt's coverage of tonight's debate was an absolute embarrassment for him. The only thing he didn't do was break out the tears and beg people on bended knee not to vote for John McCain).
But I have to wonder, would Ronald Reagan qualify as a conservative to these folks? They say he would, but look at his record.
1. Amnesty--real amnesty, not the you-gotta-pay-a-fine, follow these rules, etc. type proposed by President Bush. Ronald Reagan signed an actual amnesty bill during his presidency which allowed 5.6 million illegals to gain citizenship.
2. Smaller government--everybody knows that conservatives tout smaller government, right? That's one of those core conservative values Laura Ingraham talks about, isn't it? Well, somebody needs to break it to Laura that Ronald Reagan, who promised to abolish the Departments of Education and Energy, actually created a new federal department: the Department of Veterans Affairs. Not only that, but the federal payroll grew by 61,000 employees under Reagan. That's not smaller government, even for this math-challenged liberal arts major. Reagan also agreed to a massive bailout of Social Security, after declaring that he would like to allow citizens to opt out of it.
3. Tax cuts and tax increases--Reagan signed into law the biggest restructuring of the tax system since John F. Kennedy in 1981. Yet only a year later, Reagan also signed various tax hikes into law. I guess being for tax cuts but also for tax hikes makes one a "true" conservative? It's a hard argument to make.
As Joshua Green said in his fine opinion piece,
The real Reagan, on the other hand, would bring discord to the current conservative agenda. If you believe, as conservatives now do, that raising taxes is always wrong, then it's hard to admit that Reagan himself did so repeatedly. If you argue that the relative tax burden on low-income workers is too light, as the Bush administration does, then it does not pay to dwell on the fact that Reagan himself helped lighten that burden. If you insist, as many hardliners now do, that America is dangerously soft on communist China, then it is best to ignore Reagan's own softening toward the Soviet Union.
The fact is, even Ronald Reagan, the god of the "purity" conservatives, wouldn't be conservative under their definition of conservatism. Talk radio pundits and others cannot bring themselves to admit the truth about Reagan: he succeeded in bringing together disparate groups into a coalition which worked for various common goals. To do so would mean they would have to stop bashing John McCain as "not a conservative" because he doesn't tow their ideological line on their pet issues.
"Purity" conservatives need to reread the history of Ronald Reagan's presidency. Reagan won landslide victories in 1980 and 1984 not only because he had weak opponents (that didn't hurt) but because his rhetoric and philosophies allowed people without much in common to find common cause in the Republican big tent. Instead of sneering at moderates and condemning immigration reform advocates, "purity" conservatives need to ask themselves if they really want to be the Whig Party of the 21st Century.
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