Reading the Tea Leaves

Here is a bit from an article by Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times entitled "How Reagan ruined conservatism":

Battling my way through Sarah Palin’s book, Going Rogue, last weekend, I began to wonder how American conservatism had come to this. Ms Palin’s book is smug, lightweight, nationalistic, entirely free of original ideas. How has this woman become the darling of the American right? How has she become so popular that some bookmakers make her the favourite to win the Republican party nomination in 2012?

And then I realised – the rot set in with Ronald Reagan.

This might seem an odd conclusion, since President Reagan is a conservative hero who won two presidential elections. But the ideas that are now known as “Reaganism” are, in fact, profoundly subversive of some of the most important conservative values. Traditional conservatives disdain populism and respect knowledge. They believe in balancing the government’s books. And they are pragmatists who are suspicious of ideology. Reagan debased all these ideas – and modern American conservatism is still suffering the consequences.

...

The damage Reaganism did to conservatism extends well beyond the Palin effect. The late president also became associated with a couple of bad ideas that helped make the administration of George W. Bush such a disaster. The first was fiscal incontinence; the second is the view that the key to a successful foreign policy is a rigid distinction between good and evil, and a strong military.

The Republican party – with Ms Palin to the fore – is currently decrying the huge deficits being run by the Obama administration. But this is a recent conversion. Ever since the Reagan years, the Republicans have been the party of deficit spending.

Conservatives once believed both in lower taxes and in balancing the budget. Under Reagan, they simply became the party of tax cuts, without any commitment to fiscal responsibility. Dick Cheney, George W. Bush’s vice-president, admitted as much when he told a cabinet colleague: “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” A mystical belief took hold that if you just cut taxes, the economy would grow fast enough to cover the shortfall – or government would shrink, almost by magic. Somehow it would all come right. This drift in Republican thinking was actually profoundly anti-conservative – because it elevated ideology (cut taxes at any cost) over a pragmatic commitment to good governance.

...

The real Reagan was, in fact, rather more pragmatic than the “Reagan myth” that sprang up after he left office. Real Reagan was willing to raise taxes in extremis, and became a firm believer in arms-reduction talks. Today’s American conservatives, who claim the mantle of Reagan, would regard these ideas as treachery and weakness. Reagan was ultimately a successful president. But he left behind a poisonous legacy for the conservative movement.

I think Rachman didn't study history quite enough. There has been a 'rot', an anti-intellectualism, in populist right wing politics in America from time immemorial. The classic era in my mind was that of Spiro Agnew as Nixon's VP who was famous for his William Safire provided quips:

Pointy-headed intellectuals.

Pusillanimous pussyfooters.

Nattering nabobs of negativism.

Hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.

An effete corps of impudent snobs.

This was Agnew in the late 1960s/early 1970s attacking anybody who didn't let Richard Nixon do their thinking for them. These were attacks on anybody who didn't follow "the party line" coming down from Washington. At least the rampant right under Nixon didn't instigate the gulag like Stalin did in Russia, but there was a clear sense that right wingers were ready to open up the concentration camps to clear out the rot of intellectualism and dissent as a public duty "for the good of America".

So the rot and corruption came long before Reagan. It even came long before Nixon. Even long before the ravings of "bomber" Joe McCarthy with his magical "lists" of commies burrowing inside government. The political Right has a long history of attacking anybody for having opinions or a viewpoint.