Twisting In The Wind

If anybody had any doubts about whether or not the President's "comprehensive" immigration plan was a really, really bad idea, Jimmy Carter has removed them.

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Is Plamegate Special Persecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, long ago left holding the bag on investigation of a "scandal" that never was, going for broke?

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One thing out of the White House of late that I do have to like is how they put right-wing fussbudget Richard Vigeurie in his place:

Writing in the Washington Post on May 21, Viguerie – a consultant and direct-mail specialist who helped elect Ronald Reagan in 1980 – said: "Sixty-five months into Bush’s presidency, conservatives feel betrayed.

"After the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ transportation bill, the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination and the Dubai Ports World deal, the immigration crisis was the tipping point for us.”

Viguerie also cited the No Child Left Behind Act, the Medicare prescription drug benefit, Bush’s signing of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance overhaul and "the greatest increase in spending since Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society” as betrayals of conservative principles.

"The main cause of conservatives’ anger with Bush is this: He talked like a conservative to win our votes but never governed like a conservative,” writes Viguerie, author of the forthcoming book Conservatives Betrayed: How Big
Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause.

Valid criticisms all, as any reader of this space knows all too well - except that last one. Viguerie has either a truncated memory or a faulty one, because the fact of the matter is that in the 2000 campaign, George W. Bush never "talked like a conservative." Remember "compassionate conservatism"? That was his campaign them back then, and it included No Child Left Behind as well as the prescription drug boondoggle. The third crown jewel was tax cuts, which was necessary to separate himself in conservative perceptions from his tax-raising father. And, tellingly, he kept his promises on all three. Ditto immigration policy, for that matter. So if Viguerie feels betrayed now, it's because he wasn't paying close enough attention sixty-five months ago.

George W. Bush is what he was then and remains today: a "big government conservative." He's never pretended to be anything else. It is, I think, part of Bill Clinton's legacy that so many people perceive his successor to be the one zig-zagging all over the policy landscape when in fact it is Dubya who stands, rooted, while his enemies (and erstwhile friends) buzz and flit all around him. And we must also be honest with ourselves about why we all fell in line behind him in 2000: We wanted the White House back after the long Clinton detour, and GDub was our best shot at doing so. It's easy to kick him while he's down now, the victim of one self-inflicted wound after another; that's the sort of self-serving indulgence that only electoral success provides.

That was the gist of the White House response, which fairly qualifies as devastating:

In an apparent attempt to deflect Viguerie’s criticism by pointing out his dissatisfaction with an unmistakably conservative president, Ronald Reagan, Peter H. Wehner – Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Strategic Initiatives – sent an e-mail message to an unknown number of persons.

The message consisted of a series of quotes from Viguerie in the 1980s, including:

"Just like Jimmy Carter gave conservatives the back of the hand, we see the same thing happening in the Reagan Administration.” (January 1981)

Reagan "has changed sides and he is now allied with his former adversaries, the liberals, the Democrats and the Soviets.” (December 1987)

"The White House has slapped us in the face.” (July 1981)

"Eight years after Reagan’s nomination for president, the conservative movement is directionless.” (August 1988)

Is any of that directly responsive to Viguerie's anti-Bush screed? No, it isn't. But, in his case, it doesn't have to be, because what they put out shows him to be far more ideological than realistic, the sort of conservative that will always keep his own movement out of power through his stubborn, rigid rejection of even the minimally prudent level of pragmatism necessary to win elections and gain the power to get any of the conservative agenda enacted. Which, in the areas of tax policy, tort reform, and the federal judiciary, just to cite three examples, it has been.

The anti-Reagan quotes also bely Viguerie's assertion that "The remaining task for conservatives is to nominate and elect a president who will govern as a conservative.” He'll never do better at that than Ronald Reagan, and if he was pissing in the Gipper's face almost before he was inaugurated, then clearly no GOP president has any reason to listen to him in the future, including the current one. And that, in turn, reduces conservative credibility and clout within the Republican Party itself. Which is why it is imperative for conservatives, ultimately, to recognize that the perfect must not, even now, be seen as the enemy of the good. Or, as Pat Buchanan (ironically) once wrote, "With Republicans, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak; with Democrats, there is no spirit."

Let us also be realistic about the elephant in the birdcage I haven't mentioned: apart from 9/11, Bush the son is most likely a one-termer just like his dad. It was his strong response to the terrorist attacks, the blood-rushing, pulse-pounding, fist-pumping courage and leadership and foreign policy audacity in such stark contrast to the weak, feckless perfidy of his porcine predecessor that built up a reservoir of conservative good will that lasted as long as it did. That's why I say that for the President, the fumes of 9/11 have run out, and a new mission awaits him that he can no longer duck: the liberation of Iran, and with it final victory in the GWOT.

Quin Hillyer has some additional ideas, but this is the one that truly matters, on which George W. Bush's ultimate legacy will stand or fall.

And Dick Viguerie will have nothing to say about that, either.