The Fall of Conservatism?

[mindstalk]

Optimistic (for most of my readers) article in the New Yorker, on the rise of the modern conservative movement with the campaigning of Nixon, Buchanan, and the now apostate Phillips (though the moderate liberal policies of Nixon's actual government), the high point of Reagan (with lots of positive rhetoric, and accomplishing everything he wanted except for shrinking the government), to the post-Cold War emptiness of not having any unifying factor other than negative attacks on liberals and dreams about shrinking the government, which aren't even all that unifying and have pretty much no chance, since as Reagan realized the voters like their programs. Near the end the author (George Packer) watched a McCain stump in Inez in the Appalachians, where LBJ launched his war on poverty, and where the voters talk openly about not wanting a colored in the White House and being Republican for abortion, but appreciating the government programs that gave them food. Packer quotes or cites a lot of conservatives, especially younger ones but also ones like Frum and Ed Rollins, viewing the current instance of the movement as dying or sclerotic.

Edit: racist lies (via quote-mining and outright fabulation) about Obama

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I'm pleased (and unsurprised) at the conservative ideology is in deep trouble, but disgusted by someone as right-wing as John McCain attempting to make himself look like something other than a hardline Reagan-Bush conservative. I definitely hope he fails in this attempt since in some ways he scares me more than Shrub.