Liberals will agree with this conservative viewpoint

[Lionel Mandrake]

(or most of it):

"How Reagan ruined conservatism" by Gideon Rachman
Financial Times (London), March 1 2010

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d640855c-256a-11df-9cdb-00144feab49a.html

"Battling my way through Sarah Palin’s book, Going Rogue, last weekend, I began to wonder how American conservatism had come to this. Ms Palin’s book is smug, lightweight, nationalistic, entirely free of original ideas. How has this woman become the darling of the American right? How has she become so popular that some bookmakers make her the favourite to win the Republican party nomination in 2012? ...

"The most damaging idea propagated by the Reagan myth is the cult of the idiot-savant (the wise fool). You can see it in the very first line of Dinesh D’Souza’s admiring biography of Reagan, which proclaims: Sometimes it really helps to be a dummy. Mr D’Souza recounts numerous stories in which intellectuals – even conservative intellectuals – disdained Reagan. They scorned his tendency to spend cabinet meetings sorting jelly beans into different colours, and his taste for flaky anecdotes. ...

"Reagan was apparently stupid and often startlingly ignorant – but he was vindicated by history. Therefore, goes the theory, ignorance and stupidity are good signs. They show that a politician is in tune with the deeper wisdom of the people. Once you start thinking like that, it is but a short step to Sarah Palin."

Above are excerpts from Rachman's op-ed piece. Follow the link for the rest of it.

I think Rachman is wrong in blaming W and Palin on Reagan. Most conservatives were intellectual lightweights long before Reagan became president. (William F. Buckley was the exception that proved the rule.)

[Captain Hilts]

1. I saw Dinesh D’Souza at Firehook on Capitol Hill the other day....nt

[zipplewrath]

2. Actually no

The conservative movement we know today was built by some very smart guys, Buckley being the least of them, who successfully separated themselves from the "birchers". They established, through alot of "think tank" efforts the intellectual underpinning of the conservative movement.

However, about the time of Reagan, some conservative political operatives took those views and ran a "re-education camp" with Reagan and made him the face of conservatism. It was the beginning of the end. It was when the connection with the "social conservatives" started and the whole moral majority movement. By the time of Bush II the "solid south" had collapsed, the social conservatives ran the party, the fiscal conservatives found themselves on the outside looking in and the culmination was Palin.

[Lionel Mandrake]

3. Could you be more specific?

Your capsule history of conservatism is provocative (in the best sense) and would be even more so with some additional detail:

1. Who were the very smart guys (besides Buckley) who, in your view, built the conservative movement we know today?

2. Which think tanks did they use to establish the intellectual underpinning of the conservative movement?

3. Which political operatives ran a "re-education camp" with Reagan?

[zipplewrath]

4. A long list

You ask alot of questions. You can start here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_States

You might also be interested in this:

http://www.amazon.com/No-Mercy-Conservative-Foundations-Americas/dp/1566394694

It was between the two campaigns as I recall, that Meese and the others close to him started bringing in conservative operatives like David Stockman to "school" Reagan on particular topics. I seem to remember that STockman wrote about it in his book. I don't have it handy right now though. (It would not be an uncommon thing to do. Presidential candidates often get these kinds of wide briefings as part of prep for campaigns and debates. It was just a tad more strategic in this instance.)

[Lionel Mandrake]

5. David Stockman was director of the OMB from 1981 to 1985.

Before that, he was a congressman (not what I would call a political operative).

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Stockman ...

(begin quote)
Stockman was quoted as referring to the Reagan Revolution's legacy tax act as: "I mean, Kemp-Roth was always a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate.... It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down.' So the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory." ... After Stockman's first year at OMB ... Stockman became disillusioned with the projected trend of increasingly large federal deficits and the rapidly expanding national debt, which he blamed on the Reagan tax cut. On 1 August 1985, he left OMB and later wrote a memoir of his experience in the Reagan Administration titled The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed in which he specifically criticized the failure of Congressional Republicans to support a reduction in government spending as necessary offsets to the large tax cuts, in order to avoid the creation of large deficits and an exploding national debt.
(end of quote)

In short, Stockman was more of a fiscal conservative than a social conservative.

[zipplewrath]

8. No, but Meese and company were

Stockman was one of the "professors" they brought in to teach him conservative fiscal philosophy.

[anonymous171]

6. Conservatism as it exists to today is morally repugnant.

I do not care about their degree of intellectual prowess. The fact that they exalt selfishness and injustice is enough to make me despise them and their ideals. This whole "LOL GOP IS SO DUM" thing is getting old. If they were really THAT dumb they wouldn't outmaneuver liberals all the fucking time.

[Lionel Mandrake]

7. There are different kinds of Conservatism.

The Ayn Rand/ Gordon Gecko type is morally repugnant, no question.

Social conservatism, the dominant type in the USA, wants us all to be God-fearing and patriotic and considers abortion a sin.

Fiscal conservatism has almost vanished.

Few conservatives exalt injustice, though they may practice it.