A LESSON UNLEARNED
The airline security bill is the perfect example
of how this war has crippled Republicans ideologically, and
will make them pay politically. The Democratic response to
the 9/11 atrocity, aside from rallying around the President
and the war, was to demand an immediate increase in the number
of federal employees. Their solution to the threat of terrorism
at the nation's airports: federalize airport security. House
Republicans resisted, at first, and then backed down, essentially
agreeing to everything the Democrats demanded. Why? Because
in wartime the conservative Republican agenda of privatization,
free enterprise, and individual responsibility must inevitably
give way to federalization, centralization, and collectivism.
"War is the health of the State,"as Randolph
Bourne put it, and this is a lesson conservatives always
have great difficulty learning.
SPINNING THE
ELECTION
The Republicans naturally had their own spin:
well, we won the New York City mayor's race, didn't we, and
the new Democratic Governor of Virginia is going to confront
a GOP-controlled state legislature. Besides, all politics
are local, and the Democratic sweep (two governorships and
32 out of 34 mayoral elections) doesn't augur any national
trend. While everything, including politics, is indeed local,
the war is having an undeniable impact on the shape of American
political discourse, and the effect of it is unfortunate for
Republicans. The only benefit for the GOP is that it is considered
bad form to seem openly partisan in any sense: this translates
into formal support for the President on international and
national security issues, at least so far. But this short-term
gain is not only temporary, it also paves the way for long-term
Democratic gains.
'FAST-TRACKING'
THE WAR
To begin with, the ball is in Bush's court:
having declared a "war on terrorism," he must now win it.
No matter how many times he emphasizes that this is going
to be a protracted conflict, the President must produce a
few significant victories before Americans go to the polls
to elect a new Congress. As of now, that doesn't look very
likely: the war is stalled, winter is upon us, and the US
is now touting a "Spring offensive" as the moment when the
Taliban will be decisively defeated. Rumsfeld is so confident
that he is talking about "fast-tracking" the Afghan campaign,
as if it were a bill before Congress. Beltway bombardiers
sure have their own peculiar perspective on events, don't
they? When these peculiarities run up against the hard realities
of war, however, Rumsfeld's sunny optimism may generate a
popular reaction that could give new meaning to the phrase
"blowback."
'BLOWBACK,'
AT HOME AND ABROAD
"Blowback"
is CIA-speak for the unintended consequences of US actions
overseas, and is simply a restatement of the law of cause
and effect in diplomatic-geopolitical terms. Actions have
consequences, and so our cold war support to the "heroic"
Afghan "freedom-fighters" led directly to the development
of the Al Qaeda terrorist network. The domestic political
consequences of the Afghan war – equally unintended – could
well have a similarly disastrous result for a Republican President
and his party. Major blowback in the making is the GOP's big
political problem, and the Election Day 2001 is not the only
indication of trouble up ahead.
THE NEW 'COMEBACK
KID'
While Republicans
were reduced to "spinning" their defeat by claiming that the
Democrats won the day by stealing their ideas, a more incisive
analysis was offered by Marshall Wittemann, whose Project
for Conservative Reform is the quasi-official thinktank of
John McCain's presidential campaign-in-waiting. Self-styled
"Bull Moose (neo)conservatives," Wittemann and his fellow
McCainiacs, including Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol,
are watching and waiting for their moment. Like the Democrats,
who mutter that George W. "stole" the election (albeit under
their breath, these days), the McCainiacs also nurse their
own grudges: they are still furious over those phone calls
from the Christian Coalition during the primaries and other
alleged dirty tricks that supposedly snatched the nomination
from McCain's grasp. This war may be McCain's opportunity
to make a comeback.
PROJECT FOR
CONSERVATIVE ERADICATION
Bloviating
in his "Bull Moose" column, Wittemann illuminates why his
"Project for Conservative Reform" really ought to be renamed
the "Project for Conservative Eradication." "The Moose
croons that 'that old time religion' may have Republicans
singing the blues." Aside from the nastiness of Wittemann's
explicitly anti-Christian tone, which rivals the Taliban in
its vehemence, his point is that the "old" conservatism based
on economic and cultural issues is on the way out. He claims
tax issues didn't resonate in Virginia, and is positively
gleeful that Brent Schundler, the "movement" conservative
candidate for governor of New Jersey, was swamped. (The influence
of those bad old Christians, again). Ah, but there was one
bright ray of hope for the GOP, according to this purveyor
of "bull," and that is New York City mayor-elect Michael Bloomberg
– a man who registered Republican only because the Democratic
primary field was too crowded:
"The man
with the coattails was the patriotic conservative reform mayor
of New York – Rudy. Bully!" If he's describing Rudy, then
bully is quite right. But ideologues have trouble understanding
humor, especially the unintentional variety, and Wittemann
barrels right along:
"If
Republicans are smart – and they generally aren't – they
would digest the lessons of '01 and reassess their issue agenda.
Can the GOP embrace a patriotic reform agenda which combines
middle class economic relief and a populist attack on special
interests with a strong national security agenda? Or are the
Republicans wedded to the politics of the base?"
McCAIN'S MUTINY
Who can
doubt that McVain is actively considering a second presidential
bid? A lot can and will happen in three years, and the poor
man's Teddy Roosevelt has already positioned himself as a
critic of the President's war strategy, loudly calling for
escalation of the bombing and the introduction of ground troops
in large numbers. The ambitious Senator said this as Colin
Powell was traveling to Pakistan and promising President Musharraf
that the conflict could be contained. While Musharraf expressed
the hope that the war – or, at least, the Afghan phase of
it – would be "short and sharp," the armchair generals among
the Bull-Moosers were furiously demanding not only an escalation
of the fighting in Afghanistan but also the extension of the
war to Iraq, and even beyond. Their strategy, if implemented,
would lead to a regional war in the Middle East pitting the
US and Israel against the whole Muslim world: this is their
idea of a "national security agenda." Yes, and so it is, but
for which nation – the US, or Israel?
A CHORUS OF
HOSANNAS
The Republican
agenda of free markets and individual responsibility can only
be implemented in a time of relative peace. Wartime is not
propitious for tax cuts, deregulation, and the relaxation
of the government's stranglehold on our economic and personal
lives. The momentum is all in the other direction. Opportunists
like Wittemann, the faux-"conservative" who seeks to separate
the GOP from its right-wing base, are already clamoring for
the party to drop its "antigovernment" agenda in the name
of political expediency, if not wartime necessity. A Washington
Post poll [September 27] claims that 64 percent of Americans
"trust the government in Washington to do what is right just
about always" – or, at least, "most of the time." This provoked
a chorus of hosannas from the liberal-left, as well as from
the neconservative McCainiacs. Los Angeles Times columnist
Ronald Brownstein set the tone:
"At
the moment the first fireball seared the crystalline Manhattan
sky last week, the entire impulse to distrust government that
has become so central to U.S. politics seemed instantly anachronistic."
Gleefully
proclaiming the second coming of Big Government, the headline
blared: "The Government, Once Scorned, Becomes Savior." Government
is the modern liberals' religion: they see it as a transformative
institution that can uplift us all and build a heaven right
here on earth. 9/11 was, for them, a warning from the cosmos,
a lightning bolt that illuminated the eternal verities of
statism. Wall Street Journal columnist Al Hunt rejoiced
that it's "time to declare a moratorium on government-bashing....
For the foreseeable future, the federal government is going
to invest or spend more, regulate more and exercise more control
over our lives." Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland
gloated that "There is no real debate over expansion (of government
power) in general. The terror assaults on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon ... should profoundly shake the less-is-more
philosophy that was the driving force for the tax-cut politics
of Bush and conservative Republicans."
GEE, THANKS
Never mind
that regulations forbidding armed private security on airlines
made the hijackings possible, and let's ignore the chilling
reality of a severe shortage of the anthrax vaccine and other
bio-terror antidotes due to FDA regulations and government
diktat. I rather like the
way Paul Craig Roberts put it:
"'There are some things only government can do,' brags
Al Hunt about his beloved. Yes indeed. Only government can
put regulations in place that allow a few barely armed men
to hijack airliners and crash them into buildings while, on
the other hand, spending 30 years maximizing the population's
vulnerability to germ warfare."
PLAY IT AGAIN,
SAM
Conservatives were persuaded once before to lay aside
the struggle against Big Government at home in the name of
pursuing an even greater and more fateful battle abroad: that's
what happened during the war on Communism, known as the cold
war. For the sake of that war, William F. Buckley, Jr., declared,
"We
have to accept Big Government for the duration – for neither
an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged … except through
the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores."
Conservatives,
Buckley opined, must endorse "the extensive and productive
tax laws that are needed to support a vigorous anti-Communist
foreign policy," including the "large armies and air forces,
atomic power, central intelligence, war production boards
and the attendant centralization of power in Washington –
even with Truman at the reins of it all." [Commonweal,
January 25, 1952]
THE NEW COLD
WAR
Simply replace
"anti-Communist" with "anti-terrorist" and the above might
have been spoken by, say, Marshall Wittemann, or even Al Hunt.
Big Government is back – with a vengeance! If you doubt that,
check
out Doug Bandow's column on the rich plate of subsidies
being offered up – by both parties – in the name of "national
security" (although, inexplicably, this libertarian Cato
Institute scholar wrongly labels tax write-offs for business
travel, meals, and other expenses as "corporate welfare").
"A totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores" – surely those
words were a bit of an overstatement, but even so they have
a prescient ring to them. For that is precisely what is being
constructed here, today, with startling rapidity and unanimity.
During the cold war, the Attorney General of the United States
did not have the power to detain anyone without a warrant,
and throw him in prison forever: today, he does.
'DON'T YOU
KNOW THERE'S A WAR ON?'
Once again, conservatives are being asked
to put off the battle on the domestic political and cultural
front to confront an implacable enemy abroad: international
"Islamofascism," as the laptop bombardiers of the wartime
intelligentsia like to call it, has taken the place of international
Communism. Yes, but it's really the same old story. Forget
about radically reducing the size and power of the federal
government – "for the duration." Forget about the cultural
decadence eating away at the very heart of our old Republic
– as Andrew Sullivan delights in saying, "Don't you know
there's a war on?"
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