Unhappy Conservatives

subject to debate by Katha Pollitt

After You, My Dear Alphonse

[from the October 20, 2003 issue of The Nation]

What's the matter with conservatives? Why can't they relax and be happy? They have the White House, both houses of Congress, the majority of governorships and more money than God. They rule talk-radio and the TV political chat shows, and they get plenty of space in the papers; for all the talk about the liberal media, nine out of the fourteen most widely syndicated columnists are conservatives. Even the National Endowment for the Arts, that direct-mail bonanza of yore, is headed by a Republican now. Never mind whether conservatives deserve to run the country and dominate the discourse; the fact is, for the moment, they do.

What I want to know is, Why can't they just admit it, throw a big party and dance on the table with lampshades on their heads? Why are they always claiming to be excluded and silenced because most English professors are Democrats? Why must they re-prosecute Alger Hiss whenever Susan Sarandon gives a speech or Al Franken goes after Bill O'Reilly? If I were a conservative, I would think of those liberal professors spending their lives grading papers on The Scarlet Letter and I would pour myself a martini. I would pay Susan Sarandon to say soulful and sincere things about peace, I would hire Al Franken and sneak him on O'Reilly's show as a practical joke. And if some Democratic dinosaur lifted his head out of the Congressional tarpits to orate about the missing WMDs, or unemployment, or the two and a half million people who lost their health insurance this year, I'd nod my head sagely and let him rant on. Poor fellow. Saddam Hussein was his best friend, after Stalin died. No wonder he's upset.

For some reason right-wingers do not take this calm and broadminded view. Maybe they didn't get enough love in their childhoods, or maybe they're in more trouble than we know. In any case, they've taken to lecturing the opposition on manners whenever it shows signs of life. Ted Kennedy says the Iraq war was "a fraud made up in Texas" and Bush complains that he's "uncivil." "Not civil," Condoleezza Rice agrees, "not helpful." Well, excuuuse me! In National Review, Byron York obsesses about anti-Bush websites and the "one long bellow of rage" that is...MoveOn.org? David Brooks, the New York Times's new conservative Op-Ed columnist, mourns the passing of the culture wars, which were about ideas, and wrings his hands over the "vitriol" of the new "presidency wars," which are just about hating Bush as "illegitimate...ruthless, dishonest and corrupt." Exhibit A: Jonathan Chait's eloquent, shrewd and not at all vicious New Republic essay on why he hates President Bush (among other things, his triumph is an affront to meritocratic principles--well, it is!). Even Ann Coulter is worried that "the country is trapped in a political discourse that resembles professional wrestling." Gee, is this the same Ann Coulter who wrote that Timothy McVeigh should have driven his truck into the New York Times headquarters, whose bestselling polemic Treason argues that liberals are Commie-loving traitors who hate America? The Prozac must be working.

As Brooks, at least, acknowledges, the right is in a weak position when it claims to be shocked, shocked, shocked by liberal speech today. Remember when Newt Gingrich blamed Susan Smith's drowning her children on Democrats? ("How a mother can kill her two children, 14 months and 3 years, in hopes that her boyfriend would like her is just a sign of how sick the system is, and I think people want to change. The only way you get change is to vote Republican.") Never mind that Smith had been molested as a young girl by her stepfather, a South Carolina Republican Party activist with close ties to Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition. Remember when Gingrich called the Democratic Party "the enemy of normal Americans," and Dan Burton, chairman of the House Reform Committee, called President Clinton a "scumbag"? (Committee spokesperson Will Dwyer defended this epithet as "straight talk.") During the Clinton years you could turn on the TV and watch Jerry Falwell hawking videos "proving" that Vince Foster was murdered--a view promoted repeatedly by the Wall Street Journal editorial page and even entertained by Brooks's Times colleague William Safire. (And Foster's was only one of the many murders the President was supposed to have arranged.) You could hear Rush Limbaugh declare, "Bill Clinton may be the most effective practitioner of class warfare since Lenin"--Bill Clinton, the best friend Wall Street ever had!

Ancient history? It was only two years ago that Richard Lessner of the Family Research Council asked in a press release, "What do Saddam Hussein and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle have in common?" Answer: "Neither man wants America to drill for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge." Just this September, Tom DeLay accused Ted Kennedy of "extremist appeasement," charged that "national Democrat leaders this year have crossed a line and now fully embrace their hostile, isolationist extreme" and called opposition to the Miguel Estrada nomination "a political hate crime." (You'll notice--a small but telling point--DeLay continues the Gingrich-era intentionally rude substitution of "Democrat" for "Democratic.") Coulter's Treason sits on the bookshelves alongside right-wing ravings with titles like Bias, The No-Spin Zone and Useful Idiots (in which Mona Charen cites yours truly as "demonstrating the reliable theme of America-loathing that informs much leftist thinking" because I didn't want to fly the flag after 9/11). Very high-minded, very rational!

Well, they wanted state power, and thanks to the Supreme Court Five, they got it. But unfortunately, running the country turns out to be harder than it looked when Bill Clinton was killing off Hillary's lovers between Cabinet meetings. He made it seem so easy! Now, unemployment is way up, the government's awash in red ink, Iraq is a mess. So, everything has to be someone else's fault--mean liberals who really, really want to win in 2004, Osama-loving pranksters who forward e-mail jokes about the President's IQ, Bill and Hillary, still magically pulling the strings three years after leaving the White House, having thoughtfully arranged for 9/11 before they departed.

They can dish it out, but they sure can't take it.

[Pete C]

Cute piece. But will Gordon think it's brilliant?

[mke]

Originally posted by Alex
Bill and Hillary, still magically pulling the strings three years after leaving the White House, having thoughtfully arranged for 9/11 before they departed.

Well, the whole thing was planned during Bill's presidency.

[Tom Storer]

(chortle chortle)

What an entertaining article! I was delighted to learn that the Family Research Council likened Daschle to Hussein because of their positions on drilling in Alaska! And I wanted to stand up and applaud when, just after hooting that Gingrich had blamed the Democrats for Susan Smith's drowning of her children, in the very next sentence Pollit blamed the Republicans for it!

Too funny.

[jesus marion joseph]

The article at least illustrates a good point (albeit perhaps unwittingly); that American politics is not a spectrum, but rather a continuum, with extremists at either end operating under the delusion that they are at polar opposites from the other, but in reality standing back-to-back, shouting moronic slogans at the tops of their lungs so as to be heard at the opposite end of the "spectrum".

[Monte Smith]

They have the White House, both houses of Congress, the majority of governorships and more money than God. They rule talk-radio and the TV political chat shows, and they get plenty of space in the papers; for all the talk about the liberal media, nine out of the fourteen most widely syndicated columnists are conservatives. Even the National Endowment for the Arts, that direct-mail bonanza of yore, is headed by a Republican now.

I shall sit back and pour myself a martini tonight. Wait! THAT is why I am unhappy! I have to pour my own martini.

[Gary Sisco]

Yeah, a continuum that starts on the right and ends on the ultraright. That's why America flies around in circles all the time. There's only one wing.

[las.vegas.lynn]

Originally posted by Monte Smith
I shall sit back and pour myself a martini tonight. Wait! THAT is why I am unhappy! I have to pour my own martini.

I guess you haven't gotten your share of god's money yet. That philipino houseboy will have to wait a little longer to experience the american dream.

[Underhound]

Originally posted by Tom Storer
(chortle chortle)

And I wanted to stand up and applaud when, just after hooting that Gingrich had blamed the Democrats for Susan Smith's drowning of her children, in the very next sentence Pollit blamed the Republicans for it!

Too funny.

He didn't blame the Republicans for it, he merely pointed out one of the many reasons that Newt was full of it.

[SinginSumo]

Originally posted by Monte Smith
I shall sit back and pour myself a martini tonight. Wait! THAT is why I am unhappy! I have to pour my own martini.

Let me suggest another possibility...

you may be unhappy because you have no feeling of connection with or feeling for others other than those who share your own political agenda.

[walto]

I think it's also that Monte's "vision" is so off-kilter that he generally pours everything down his pants.

you may be unhappy because you have no feeling of connection with or feeling for others other than those who share your own political agenda. - The Mighty Hamhock

You mean, on this board? Sumo poots forth his dime store psychology.

Incredibly enough, us righties do just fine out here in the real world. Amazing isn't it? I have lots-o-libby friends, and I like 'em all. Of course they are not as irritating as a lot of the lefties here. They are more in the mold of folks like Uli.

[SinginSumo]

Originally posted by Scott Dolan
You mean, on this board? Sumo poots forth his dime store psychology.

Incredibly enough, us righties do just fine out here in the real world. Amazing isn't it? I have lots-o-libby friends, and I like 'em all. Of course they are not as irritating as a lot of the lefties here. They are more in the mold of folks like Uli.

Mr. Dolan, have you ever formally studied psychology?

[Monte Smith]

Originally posted by las.vegas.lynn
That philipino houseboy will have to wait a little longer to experience the american dream.

What?! An immigrant "house" boy?!

Never in the house.

In the cabana, maybe.

[RainyDay]

Speaking of unhappy conservatives, George Will may require surgery to remove his undies from the crack in his butt.

The consequences of direct democracy

CALIFORNIA'S recall -- a riot of millionaires masquerading as a "revolt of the people" -- began with a rich conservative Republican congressman, who could think of no other way he might become governor, financing the gathering of the necessary signatures.
Now this exercise in "direct democracy" -- precisely what America's Founders devised institutions to prevent -- has ended with voters, full of self pity and indignation, removing an obviously incompetent governor. They have removed him from the office to which they re-elected him after he had made his incompetence obvious by making most of the decisions that brought the voters to a boil.

The odor of what some so-called conservatives were indispensable to producing will eventually arouse them from their swoons over Arnold Schwarzenegger. Then they can inventory the damage they have done by seizing an office that just 11 months ago they proved incapable of winning in a proper election under ideal conditions.

These Schwarzenegger conservatives -- now, there is an oxymoron for these times -- have embraced a man who is, politically, Hollywood's culture leavened by a few paragraphs of Milton Friedman. They have given spurious plausibility to a meretricious accusation that Democrats are using to poison American politics, the charge that Florida 2000 was part of a pattern of Republican power grabs outside the regular election process.

Schwarzenegger's conservative supporters have furled the flag of "family values" while mocking their participation in the anti-Clinton sex posse. They were unoffended by Schwarzenegger's flippant assertions that only the "religiously fanatic" oppose human cloning -- not just stem cell research but cloning. These faux conservatives' new hero said that only "right-wing crazies" supported the proposal on Tuesday's ballot to bar the state from collecting the racial data that fuels the racial spoils system.

Some conservatives insist that they have been not empty-headed but hardheaded: They say a Republican governor will markedly strengthen the Bush campaign in California. Perhaps. But Republican governors did not prevent Bush from losing Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania in 2000.

During the coming presidential campaign, California's Republican governor will be busy proving the fatuity of his proposal to solve California's budget crisis by cutting waste, fraud and abuse -- things for which there is no constituency. In 2004, President Bush will not campaign in a California seething with resentment of spending cuts and attempted tax increases advocated by a hugely unpopular Democratic governor. Instead, Bush will campaign in a California in which the Republican governor will be illustrating the axiom that today only a Republican governor can substantially raise taxes.

This is so because the people, in their zeal for majority rule, have mandated, through the initiative process, a two-thirds supermajority requirement for raising taxes. Which means the Republicans' legislative minority is large enough to block a Democratic governor's request for tax increases but probably is not starchy enough to resist a Republican governor's request for -- Republicans believe in recycling, at least of squeamish rhetoric -- "revenue enhancements."

Then again, some Republicans might resist, because their principles need not threaten what is really important -- re-election. Almost all legislators of both parties represent safe seats because the political class has put an end to much of California's politics by using redistricting to protect all incumbents. This is one reason why politics has re-emerged through the recall process, which allows the people to vent against their chosen representatives.

The put-upon people of California, groaning under the weight of decisions taken by California's electorate, have repeatedly taken lawmaking into their own hands through initiatives that mandate this and that allocation of resources. So an estimated -- no one seems able to say for sure, which fact says much about the consequences of California populism -- 60 percent to 80 percent of the budget is beyond the control of the governor and Legislature.

One of the new governor's two noteworthy campaign promises is that he will not cut education, which -- thanks to what the public did in a 1988 initiative -- is roughly 50 percent of state spending. His other venture into specificity during the campaign -- a campaign in which he said, brassily and correctly, that "the public doesn't care about figures" -- was his promise to promptly increase by 50 percent the already $8 billion deficit by repealing the car tax that Davis and the Legislature recently tripled.

A Washington-based Democrat, who was making election-eve get-out-the-vote calls to African-American households in South Los Angeles, knew Gray Davis would be recalled when voter after voter told her, emphatically and specifically, the precise dollar amount that the tax increase was costing him or her. The new governor should repeal it because it is unjust. And because the people deserve to get what they demand. Don't they?

George Will writes for the Washington Post. E-mail: georgewill@-

washpost.com .

[Gary Sisco]

Nah. Ain't any room up in there, what with the broomstick he's had up his butt since the 60s, when he just couldn't possibly have had his important academic work interrupted for a bit of the commie killing he favored so much.