Even the Conservatives are running away from Bush.

Thanks to Steam for this pointer.

The November 8th, 2004 issue of The American Conservative, a magazine that has as an editor the likes of Pat Buchanon, is publishing commentary stating the positions of the staff on the upcoming election. Normally, this would be a no-brainer.

But not this year.

Scott McConnell writes that he is supporting… John Kerry. And his reasons for doing so are well reasoned and accurate, without a hint of radicalism and groupthink that is so rampant in political publications. An excerpt from his letter:

Bush has behaved like a caricature of what a right-wing president is supposed to be, and his continuation in office will discredit any sort of conservatism for generations. The launching of an invasion against a country that posed no threat to the U.S., the doling out of war profits and concessions to politically favored corporations, the financing of the war by ballooning the deficit to be passed on to the nation’s children, the ceaseless drive to cut taxes for those outside the middle class and working poor: it is as if Bush sought to resurrect every false 1960s-era left-wing cliché about predatory imperialism and turn it into administration policy

This is not what I expected to hear from a newspaper targeting the conservative public, but the magazines Mission Statement makes it clear they are not with the hawks that have taken over the executive branch:

We believe conservatism to be the most natural political tendency, rooted in man’s taste for the familiar, for family, for faith in God. We believe that true conservatism has a predisposition for the institutions and mores that exist. So much of what passes for contemporary conservatism is wedded to a kind of radicalism—fantasies of global hegemony, the hubristic notion of America as a universal nation for all the world’s peoples, a hyperglobal economy. In combination with an increasingly unveiled contempt for America’s long-standing allies, this is more a recipe for disaster.
Against it, we take our stand.

This is a well spoken, well thought out statement. At it’s core, it describes what, to me, really defines conservative thinking. And what, alas, the current administration has left in the dust in it’s pursuit of power and fortune.

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2 thoughts on “Even the Conservatives are running away from Bush.”

  1. Pat Buchanan has never liked the Bushies (though he was willing to tolerate Bush’s dad in 1988 and, after a major series of concession, in 1992.) In 1996 and 2000 he ran, siphoning off votes that would likely otherwise have gone to the Republicans.
    Keep in mind though, that Pat Buchanan is still Pat Buchanan. I’ve been disturbed by how readily he’s been accepted by some people given that, well, he’s still about one shade off brown off from Mussolini. Right now, he’s publically praising the America First committee as an “anti-war” movement.
    If you’re not familiar with “American First,” I’d suggest picking up Philip Roth’s new book, which is about one of America First’s more prominent members, the one who, in a speech given in Des Moines, IA on September 11, 1941 said
    “The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt Administration.”
    The American Conservative is also kind of a fringe magazine among conservatives: Commentary, the Weekly Standard and the National Review are all backing Bush. (The American Standard speaks more for the Southern religious right.)
    But, for someone whose credentials are more conservative than neo-fascist, you can find at least one formerly prominent figure who is deserting the Republicans, period.

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