E.J. Dionne: "American conservatism is becoming something very different from what it once was"

[Hissyspit]

http://www.nationalmemo.com/dionne-the-rights-stealthy-coup

The Right’s Stealthy Coup

April 2nd, 2012 1:15 am
E. J. Dionne

WASHINGTON — Right before our eyes, American conservatism is becoming something very different from what it once was. Yet this transformation is happening by stealth because moderates are too afraid to acknowledge what all their senses tell them.

Last week’s Supreme Court oral arguments on health care were the most dramatic example of how radical tea partyism has displaced mainstream conservative thinking. It’s not just that the law’s individual mandate was, until very recently, a conservative idea. Even conservative legal analysts were insisting it was impossible to imagine the court declaring the health care mandate unconstitutional, given its past decisions.

So imagine the shock when conservative justices repeatedly spouted views closely resembling the tweets and talking points issued by organizations of the sort funded by the Koch brothers. Don’t take it from me. Charles Fried, solicitor general for Ronald Reagan, told The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein that it was absurd for conservatives to pretend that the mandate created a market in health care. “The whole thing is just a canard that’s been invented by the tea party … ,” Fried said, “and I was astonished to hear it coming out of the mouths of the people on that bench.”

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Note how many deficit hawks regularly trash President Obama for not endorsing Simpson-Bowles while they continue to praise Ryan — even though Ryan voted to kill the initiative when he was a member of the commission. Here again is the double-standard that benefits conservatives, proving that, contrary to establishment opinion, Obama was absolutely right not to embrace the Simpson-Bowles framework. If he had, a moderately conservative proposal would suddenly have defined the “left wing” of the debate, just because Obama endorsed it.

This is nuts. Yet mainstream journalism and mainstream moderates play right along.

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[no_hypocrisy]

1. John Dean (from the Nixon era) was one of the first to disclaim the current

incantation of "conservatism", that its foundation differs from the conservatism of Buckley, or Goldwater for that matter.

[n2doc]

2. More like the Christian coalition+John Birchers have taken over

There is nothing 'conservative' about the repubs these days. They are bomb throwing radicals. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

[southernyankeebelle]

3. When are the Buckleys of the republican party going to start calling these people on the things

that are wrong?

[izquierdista]

4. No, not really

Conservatism has always been about being obsequious to those with wealth or power, not rocking the boat and doing what the clergy tells you to. They've never had any use for the poor, common laborers, immigrants, or the lower classes. They have always been, in the words of John Kenneth Galbraith, "engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

[HereSince1628]

5. Most people don't understand how deliberately libertine philosophy has replaced conservatism.

Last edited Mon Apr 2, 2012, 12:44 PM - Edit history (1)

Economic libertarianism is THE BIG PROJECT of the Koch bros, and a handful of other billionaires.

Over the past 40 years that cabal has turned the essential power of a united people "yearning to be free" into the sharp end of the selfish spear point of neofeudalism--a Ponzi system where being filthy rich insures liberty, and where poverty insures an ethos of everyman for himself hostility. In this Darwininan society, the rich no longer buy influence in government, they supplant government.

Using boiler plate legislative initiatives the Kochs and their various mouthpieces (CATO, ALEC, MacIver Inst. etc) and allies like the Bradleys have promoted this most anti-social form of selfish individualism for half a century. When the dems gave up the progressive tug of war in favor of triangulation (camping among the opponent's ideas), the center of American politics shifted noticeably to the right. The Libertines exploited this change in net vector force and guided the Republican party into the ideological realm of extreme self-interest.

If the activity in state capitals and DC in 2011 suggests anything, it is that the power grabbing rich have emerged from hiding surrounded by an anti-intellectual base vested in the open carry trappings of tough-guy yeoman and rebel militia, led by paid preachers like Paul Ryan promoting as scripture the preposterous antisocialism of Ayn Rand as the god given "Laws of Economics" in order to implement federal, state and local government that favors the rich.

In short, the neofeudalist coup of the republican party, and it's attack on all levels of representative government in America, was and is backed by a legion of blustering individualists led by the disingenuous touting discredited rhetoric for the selfish purposes of the very few. Those few want nothing less than control of absolute power and the absolute riches such power brings.

[starroute]

6. My own theory is that in the 1960s, conservatives got a bad case of radicalism envy

In the 60s, dope-smoking, free-loving radical lefties were seen as hip and cool, while traditional conservatives were total dorks. There were epic battles between the libertarian right and the traditional right in those days, mainly over questions of life-style and attitude.

That split still exists at the edges of conservatism -- as you can see by comparing any random Ron Paul follower with the sweater-vested legions of Santorumism. But mainstream conservatism largely figured out that it was possible to both escape from the life-style arguments and avoid the dork label by rebranding right-wing positions as hip and edgy and confrontational.

This is the in-your-face conservatism of James O'Keefe and his allies. It's the conservatism of campus anti-affirmative action bake sales (the ones that price their cupcakes according to the ethnicity of the buyer). It's the conservatism of Paul Ryan, which starts from the premise that you can create a free-market utopia by trashing 80 years worth of stuff that works. It's the conservatism of Congressional Tea Partiers, who believe that refusing to strike deals is a sign of strength.

The problem with all of this, of course, is that there's no reality to it. It's a funhouse mirror reflection of a distorted impression of some of the more exaggerated left-wing poses of 50 years ago. It's so desperate to escape from the seemingly dorkish values of moderation, prudence, temperance, measure-twice-cut-once and all the rest of the traditional conservative palette that it turns extremism and irresponsibility into values to be embraced for their own sake.

And meanwhile, the radical left has been appropriating the impulse to conserve, to maintain the best of the old ways, and to foster community and mutual support. It's an interesting situation.