Dan

Calabrese

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January 24, 2008

Fred Thompson Wasn’t a Conservative Champion, But Then No One Is

The end of Fred Thompson’s presidential campaign – in case you didn’t know it had ever begun – has brought cries of the fall of the republic among much of the conservative blogosphere and on right-wing message boards.

Thompson didn’t attract a lot of national attention, but a great many doctrinaire conservatives were FredHeads because they considered Thompson the “one true conservative” in the race. Well, one of two if you count Duncan Hunter, who dropped out the day before Thompson.

The rest of the Republican field is so unsatisfying to self-described conservative purists, many see little reason to bother showing up to vote, and little difference between any of them and either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.

The leading lament, in the wake of all this, is that the Republican Party has turned its back on true conservatism, and has become little more than a big-government party with a bit more of a pro-military, pro-business bent.

Let’s consider the possibility that the converse explanation is true. The Republican Party hasn’t turned its back on conservatism so much as conservative leaders have failed to earn the party’s leadership mantle.

The Republican Party believes in one thing – winning. When a conservative president was carrying 49 states, the GOP was a conservative party to its core. There’s a reason you hear so much Ronald Reagan talk these days. He was the last conservative politician in America to not only set a conservative agenda but achieve it. He did it in California, then he proposed to do it for the whole country. And when he got the chance, he succeeded a lot more than he failed.

This year’s field of candidates did not include any conservative whose achievements would recommend him for such a mantle of leadership. But then, if you went looking for a conservative like that in the entire country, who exactly would you find?

Conservatives had a golden opportunity to fundamentally alter the governance of the nation when they won control of Congress in 1994. It became a super-golden opportunity in 2000 when they won the presidency too.

They failed. Spending is not under control. Tax rates are lower, but the tax code is fundamentally what it was under Bill Clinton. The nation has made no progress on energy independence. Health care works pretty much the same way it did back when Hillary Clinton almost made it the stepping stone to institutionalized socialism. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are the same big-government monstrosities Franklin Roosevelt created in the 1930s. Even conservative successes, most notably those in foreign policy, are run from rather than embraced by leading conservatives – because they don’t poll well.

What if Republicans, in the six years they controlled both Congress and the White House, had seized the initiative on these issues? What if they had limited federal spending increases to just the rate of inflation? Or actually cut spending in real terms? What if they had truly reformed and simplified the tax code? What if they had enacted free-market reforms in health care and entitlements? What if we were actually drilling our own domestic oil resources?

There is no doubt in my mind that if the Republican Congress had brought these reforms to George W. Bush at any point in his presidency, he would have signed every one of them. And if that had happened, the congressional leaders who spearheaded the reforms would, today, be heroes of the conservative movement. One of them would be heading for the GOP nomination by acclimation, and there would be no hand-wringing about how we have to settle for squishy moderates and vote for a lesser evil.

The time for a conservative leader to emerge and shine was when the GOP ran the show in Washington. But they elected leaders, like Dennis Hastert in the House and Bill Frist in the Senate, who may have had conservative voting records, but didn’t seize the opportunity and change history. They tolerated big-spending committee chairmen like California’s Jerry Lewis, and pork-barreling pigs like Alaska’s Don Young, because they had seniority.

You can’t tell me there were no true conservatives in those majorities. There were plenty of them. Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey were policy visionaries, and the ideas Gingrich is putting forward today are fascinating. But when he had the most power to enact the most change, he didn’t get it done. Neither did Armey. Neither did Trent Lott, who was one of the conservative Young Turks of the House before he became a historically inconsequential Senate Majority Leader.

Conservatives should have changed this country after 1994, and especially after 2000. They had their chance. I realize they didn’t have absolute power, but they had no business controlling Congress for 12 years, and controlling Congress and the presidency for six, and achieving so little.

Fred Thompson, as a presidential candidate, declared his support for conservative ideas. But he was part of that Republican majority, and he never turned any of those ideas into reality when he had the chance. Neither did any other conservative when he or she had the chance.

If the conservative movement wants a conservative nominee, it should take care not to waste its next shot at power. There is a reason the Republican Party is not about to nominate a great conservative champion. None exist.

This is Column # DC146.  Request permission to publish here.