“Conservatives” who advise liberals

(Note: this entry had an error as originally posted relating to my characterization of Clinton’s legislation, and has now been fixed.)

Richard Lowry in his syndicated column informs Obama that he will be a much more successful president if, as happened to President Clinton after the 1994 congressional elections, he has a Republican instead of a Democratic Congress:

A Republican Congress would give him a handy foil and force him, right in time for his reelection campaign, into strategic bipartisanship. The Republican takeover in 1994 seemed the end for Bill Clinton. Long after Tom Foley had been forgotten, though, Clinton signed major bipartisan welfare-reform and deficit-reduction bills, while making incremental steps on health care that were popular and sustainable.

Thus Lowry tells Obama how to be re-elected, how to use a conservative Republican Congress as his “foil,” and how to keep moving America toward nationalized health care step by step instead of in one gargantuan shot, while also pursuing some conservative-sounding measures like the Republican welfare reform bill that Clinton signed. But that welfare reform did nothing to discourage the number one cause of poverty and dysfunction in our society, illegitimacy. It encouraged it, by adding yet another layer of government bureaucracy that facilitates unmarried welfare mothers in finding and keeping work.

Lowry is the editor of the supposed flagship magazine of American conservatism, a magazine that was founded for the purpose of stopping the advance of leftism. But here his vocation seems to be that of a centrist political consultant advising a leftist president how to triangulate. Indeed, since Lowry is so eager to help Obama improve his political standing and win re-election like Clinton, maybe he should get a job in the Obama White House. I’ve heard that Dick Morris’s old office is still available.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 12, 2010 07:45 AM | Send