Neither the Republican base nor most of the neo-conservative/Republican punditry class are at all enthused by the prospects of a McCain presidency. The gist of their chagrin is that McCain is not a “true conservative,” but a “liberal.” To substantiate this charge, the commentariat point to the many instances in which the Arizona senator “threw his party under the bus” by aligning himself with the Democratic opposition on issues of major import: campaign finance reform, taxes, immigration, and others.
That McCain’s discontents have a compelling case against him is a proposition that borders on being self-evidently true, as far as I am concerned. The evidence just listed is alone sufficiently damning. To it, however, we can add the following gems that hammer the nails in the coffin: his steadfast resistance, born of an uncompromising commitment to environmentalism, to measures -- like oil-drilling within our shores -- that promise to make America less dependent on other countries for its energy supply; his implicit accusation of “racism” against the North Carolina GOP for an ad it ran reminding the public of the twenty-plus year relationship between Obama and Jeremiah Wright, a matter that, by every objective indicia -- like poll after poll -- most people consider of no small importance; and his recent announcement to speak before “La Raza” (“The Race”) in the imminent future.
As far as my understanding of conservatism goes, it is painfully obvious that McCain is no conservative. Yet considering the conception of “conservatism” that can be pieced together from McCain’s critics’ comments regarding George W. Bush over these last eight years, especially but not exclusively their judgment that he is a “conservative,” their consternation over McCain leaves me puzzled.
Let’s consider Bush’s record in relation to the issues with which McCain’s “conservative” critics claim to be so concerned.
- Bush not only didn’t resist the “McCain-Feingold” campaign finance bill, he gave it the authority of law.
- Bush cut taxes, it is true, and this is to his credit. Yet simultaneously he oversaw an unprecedented increase in expenditures on “entitlement” programs of all sorts, thus marking an expansion of the scope of the federal government that eclipsed that for which even Lyndon B. Johnson was responsible. Thus, any praise to which Bush can be said to be entitled because of his tax policies must be severely qualified by this consideration.
- Growth of government under the Bush administration occurred under the guise of “compassionate conservatism,” an expression that Bush, if he didn’t actually coin, popularized. But “compassionate conservatism” is a subtle form of precisely the sort of “class rhetoric” for which McCain had rightly been castigated by his incensed Republican critics for using. The only difference between Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” and McCain’s lament over “tax cuts for the rich” is that the former has far greater potential to damage genuine conservatism considered as a viable moral and political option. In asserting a “compassionate conservatism,” Bush and others who have been taken in by this idiom imply that conservatism generally is not compassionate. Furthermore, for a conservative to be “compassionate,” he or she must favor the utilization of government to the end of addressing peoples’ “needs.” McCain’s class rhetoric is petty compared to Bush’s. In word and deed, the rhetoric of “compassionate conservatism” is destructive of conservatism as a distinctive political tradition.
- In spite of being a “pro-life” president, Bush not only doesn’t reject embryonic stem cell research, he is the first president in American history to extend federal funds for it. For government to refrain from stopping private research is one thing; for it to encourage such research through subsidies is another matter entirely. Federal funding undermines both the moral convictions and the property rights of those Americans who oppose the destruction of human embryos but who are now compelled to subsidize it. Also, federal funding of embryonic research undermines whatever advances the “pro-life” movement has made over the decades since Roe v. Wade, for it gives the practice the official sanction of the United States government.
- Bush is as enthusiastic a supporter of the “McCain-Kennedy” de facto amnesty bill—“comprehensive immigration reform”—as either McCain or Kennedy. Although Bush is usually commended by McCain’s critics for his strength on “national security,” a strength that they measure by his stance on “the War on Terror” generally and the War in Iraq in particular, he has failed miserably in securing America’s borders. Yet while waging pre-emptive wars in the name of “Human Rights” or “Democracy” or “Freedom” is neither necessary nor sufficient to secure America, insuring that criminals, terrorists, and otherwise dangerous people do not enter our country is at least necessary to it.
My hypothesis: McCain’s critics are about as “conservative” as McCain himself.
