Is it ridiculous to say that McCain is not a conservative?
On Saturday afternoon I sent out my
three recent posts on
National Review’s turn toward McCain and McCainism.
A reader wrote back:
This is ridiculous.
LA replied:
What does “this” refer to, and why is it ridiculous?
The reader replied:
It is ridiculous to argue that McCain is not a conservative or that the National Review has betrayed conservatism.
LA replied:
“It is ridiculous to argue that McCain is not a conservative …”
Well, then I’m not alone because millions of conservatives have the same ridiculous belief about McCain. You might reasonably say that in your view, McCain is a conservative. But to say flatly that it is ridiculous to say that McCain is not a conservative suggests that you are not even aware of all the reasons why many people for many years have said he is not.
“It is ridiculous to argue … that the National Review has betrayed conservatism.”
If you’re correct that it is ridiculous to say that McCain is not a conservative, then, yes, my assertion that NR has betrayed conservatism is also false. But if McCain is not a conservative, and if the McCainism that Ponnuru urges conservatives to adopt is not conservatism, then NR has most certainly betrayed conservatism.
LA continued:
By coincidence, just after writing to you, I came upon this at Powerline:
The case against John McCain
The stalwart former senator Rick Santorum makes a devastating case against Senator McCain in this interview with Mark Levin. Mark makes his case against Senator McCain here. I don’t have my own mind made up for or against any of the leading Republican candidates, but Rick Santorum’s voice is one that is especially deserving of serious consideration regarding Senator McCain.
The interview is 10 minutes long. Rick Santorum who served in the Senate for 12 years with McCain says:
“Almost on every domestic issue, he was not only against us, but leading the charge on the other side…. He claims to be a social conservative, but … on a whole host of conservative issues, more often than not, he was with the moderates saying, ‘No no, we can’t have this, this is too divisive,’ and this tells me what kind of president he would be.”
So former U.S. Senator Santorum, who was the number three man in the GOP Senate leadership for six years and directly involved in trying to organize senators to vote on thousands of bills during that period, says that McCain consistently led the charge against social conservative issues. So I guess Santorum is ridiculous too.
The same view of McCain, that he is a consistent foe of conservatism, is widely shared among conservatives. For you to say simply that it’s “ridiculous” for conservatives to have that view is not an argument.
Reader replies:
Forget labels; the question comes down to this: in a war, which candidate would you have lead the country?
LA replies:
You tell me to forget labels, by which you mean conservatism, which happened to be the subject of my article and of your disagreement with me. What you’re saying now is that you don’t care about conservatism (since the word “conservatism” doesn’t point to anything real, it’s just a “label”), and you don’t care about whether NR has betrayed conservatism; what you care about is having a president who will best defend the country, and you think McCain is that man.
LA continues:
Since the reader changed the topic to, “Who is the best candidate to lead the country in a war?”, let’s address that.
I see two problems with this question. First, as I’ve said many times, I don’t accept the premise that we’re in a war. The only thing at stake for us in Iraq is when and whether our forces can leave Iraq. Also, as soon as we draw down our forces, the enemies will return. That’s not a war, it’s a holding action. We’re not seeking to defeat an enemy; we’re seeking to put Iraq in a not totally unacceptable state which will allow us to leave. We’re not doing anything that is actually defending ourselves or our allies. The Shi’ite sharia hodgepodge of Iraq will never be our ally in any meaningful sense.
Nor can it be said that we are in a war when we are leaving unmolested the headquarters of our enemy. Perhaps it’s beyond our power go into the mountains on the Pakistan border. Ok. But if that’s the case, let’s stop jerking ourselves into this fantasy that we’re in a war, we’re in a war, we’re in a war.
Now Giuliani to his credit says that radical Islam is making war on us. But can it be said that we are making war on radical Islam, when we allow members of the religion in whose name the war is being waged against us freely to immigrate into our country?
Second, I reject the assumption, which is typical of Bush supporters in general and neocons in particular, that the “war” is the only issue that matters. That assumption has led to a mindset in which all that matters is gathering around the leader who can keep us safe. “I don’t care about the culture, I don’t care about the economy, I don’t care about the size of government, I don’t care about immigration, I don’t care about this, or this, or this. All those issues must be discarded. All I care about is having a leader who can keep us safe, safe, safe!” This phalanx-like mindset (as I’ve been describing it for years), which abolishes politics along with the intellect, constitutes a major part of what is now called “conservatism” in this country.
And, to return to the original topic, if McCain is indeed a conservative, this, I think, is the “conservatism” that he represents.
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Terry Morris writes:
No; it is ridiculous to say he is a conservative, for all the reasons you mention. Anyone who thinks John McCain is a conservative must be a liberal. Only through liberal lenses could one see someone like McCain as a conservative.
We need a new conservative party; one that displaces the Republican party. In that case McCain and “Republicans” like McCain could comfortably move to the Democrat(ic) party where they belong.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 13, 2008 01:38 AM | Send