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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   22080 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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W wasn't even a neocon. Although the Bushes like 'compassionate conservatism', they were really just the wild Northeastern Establishment reaching it's dead hand forward into the 21st century.

The neocons were a core part of Movement Conservatism, from the beginning. They had no special connection to foreign policy and the weight of anti-war sentiment coming down on them was more a creation of left wing anti-war media than something central to the neocons themselves. While Reagan's three legged stool makes clear the neocons weren't the only part of the conservative movement, Trumpism has also abandoned the other two legs: the social conservatives have been thrown under the bus on abortion and the business conservatives/fiscal hawks have been shown the door both in rhetoric and actual practice.

The Old Right/Paleos have essentially entirely won the battle and so the Conservative Movement is dead. The Conservative Movement in America was something that grew out of the collapse of the Old Right in the face of the Eisenhower Presidency as essentially another path for opposing the New Deal Consensus. While the. Social base of the MAGA movement allowed for this revival of Paleoconservatism, the base of the New Right in the suburbs is moving Left too rapidly for the New Right to ever revive, so Movement Conservatism is essentially dead. Evangelicals will continue their deal with the devil and Business Conservatives will dither over what to do: go to the Democrats and just pray their socialist wing can be kept under control or try to influence MAGA to be more friendly to them.

But the old Movement is 100% gone.

the social conservatives have been thrown under the bus on abortion

Trump gave them the best win they could get from a President: removing the Supreme Court's federal restriction on pursuing their politics. If they can't win on a state level and abortion likely ends up codified like in every other industrialized nation (albeit with more restrictions) then maybe that's on them?

On gay marriage: okay, the party seems to have totally folded there.

abortion likely ends up codified like in every other industrialized nation

This will happen very quickly after most of the boomers are in the ground as any look into pro-life vs pro-choice by age demographics will tell you.

How have the social conservatives been thrown under the bus on abortion?

But the old Movement is 100% gone.

Good? The old movement already lost twice to Obama, and then to Trump in the primary. It is non-viable in the current political environment, and any forseeable future environment, as the Republican party, at least. The National Review and David French can wail and gnash their teeth on the daily until the cows come home, but the world has changed, and they need to deal with that fact.

It also elected Reagan, twice, took Congress back for the first time in 40 years and gave us probably the most conservative policy decade since the 1920s, elected both Bushes four times in total, and won the House nine times (I'll let you guys have 2016, although I think that really was still momentum from the Conservative Movement), the Senate ten times, and brought Republican control of state legislatures and governor's mansions to a numeric height unequaled in a century.

It's not so clear that failing to beat Obama meant it was 'non-viable', although I know that's the self serving story MAGA likes to tell itself.

Reagan did some great things, and genuinely had a vision for the future. He also left office more than a third of a century ago. Bush Sr. is notable pretty much only for beating up on a couple of tinpot dictators and largely failing on the domestic front. Bush Jr is notable for being completely eclipsed by his VP, embracing the idiot wing of the GOP, finishing up his daddies work in the most expensive fashion possible, and entangling the nation in a festering quagmire of a war that wouldnt succeed in its objective of killing one guy until the next president and genrally being an enormous suck of lives and treasure; domestically he passed a terrible education bill and a few minor tax cuts while overseeing the regulatory idiocy that led to the 2008 financial crisis.

None of this is worth celebrating- good riddance to it.

elected both Bushes four times in total, and won the House nine times (I'll let you guys have 2016, although I think that really was still momentum from the Conservative Movement), the Senate ten times, and brought Republican control of state legislatures and governor's mansions to a numeric height unequaled in a century

And what did the Right get from all that, in terms of concrete outcomes? And I mean wins, not just "well, the left didn't get as much as they could have otherwise."

Why should the right be satisfied with "well, you didn't lose as quickly as you could have"?

Failing to beat Obama after the 2008 financial crisis.

Did any 1st-world governing party except Merkel's CDU survive that? Post-2008 German politics is hilarious - the 60% or so of the electorate who want Merkel out keep trying to vote her out (including by punishing her coalition partners) but she keeps finding a new coalition partner willing to trash its relationship with its own voters for four years running the German foreign ministry.

It also elected Reagan, twice, took Congress back for the first time in 40 years and gave us probably the most conservative policy decade since the 1920s

This is true, and the 80s were a real success. They also ended 34 years ago. It's notable that in your summary, your detailing of concrete outcomes stops there, in favor of detailing process "wins".

It's not so clear that failing to beat Obama meant it was 'non-viable', although I know that's the self serving story MAGA likes to tell itself.

Because it allowed Blue Tribe political and cultural victories to snowball victories to the point that the term "Blue Tribe" became a necessary part of the lexicon. since the 80s, its wins were pyrrhic at best, to the point that the best option currently available to its constituents is to organize behind an analogue of 1990s-era Bill Clinton.

The movement you are eulogizing played a significant role in the destruction of America as a viable political entity. We will be paying for its mismanagement for decades to come.

W wasn't even a neocon. Although the Bushes like 'compassionate conservatism', they were really just the wild Northeastern Establishment reaching it's dead hand forward into the 21st century.

I voted for W, and one of the biggest reasons I voted for him was his firm stance against nation-building. 9/11 was shocking enough to change my mind for a year or two, but before his first term was out I had achieved escape velocity from the Conservative movement of my birth almost entirely because of the war and the whiplash-inducing abandonment of principles that went with it. Torture was fine. Fiscal responsibility was out the window, with the meme at the time being us dumping pallets of hundred dollar bills out the back of airplanes in Afghanistan. Two ruinous foreign wars leading to what were obviously going to be indefinite and doomed exercises in nation-building, based on deliberate lies to the public. Massive violations of civil liberties, "free speech zones", ubiquitous government surveillance. I had opposed Clinton and the Democrats explicitly because I didn't want any of that!

The neocons were a core part of Movement Conservatism, from the beginning. They had no special connection to foreign policy and the weight of anti-war sentiment coming down on them was more a creation of left wing anti-war media than something central to the neocons themselves.

I suppose I was fooled then, because what I remember is The Project for a New American Century and W's administration being notably staffed by neocon true believers in numerous prominent positions, and that they set policy in numerous ways from those positions. I remember those policies defining the era, and I remember the results.

the social conservatives have been thrown under the bus on abortion

The social conservatives have gotten Roe overturned, and are now one of the core nuclei for serious Red Tribe organization in the culture war. W's attempts to support the social conservatives as an integrated part of American society failed categorically. The current strategy seems like a better deal to me, given the present realities. We no longer have any illusions that public morality can be maintained, but that is probably for the best. Better for us to accept our role as the outsiders, to recognize that this nation and its social order are incompatible with our understanding of universal truth.

and the business conservatives/fiscal hawks have been shown the door both in rhetoric and actual practice.

As they should have been, because they have zero credibility with any part of the public any more. Offshoring manufacturing in favor of the "service economy" was supposed to provide broad prosperity. It did not. "Learn to code" is a cruel joke now, but I remember when that was the actual, inironic policy prescription. Fiscal responsibility is a joke after W and the Obama presidency; there will never be a balanced budget, and pretending otherwise is foolish; even if we could maintain it under Republican leadership, which we couldn't, there is no benefit to tightening Red Tribe belts to pay down Blue Tribe's credit card. We let the business conservatives lead, and they consistently led us to failure and to outright disaster. Then when we'd beggared ourselves supporting their defunct ideological prescriptions, they promptly dumped us and defected wholesale to the Blues.

You are describing outcomes, but you are not accounting for the process by which those outcomes arrived.

While the Social base of the MAGA movement allowed for this revival of Paleoconservatism, the base of the New Right in the suburbs is moving Left too rapidly for the New Right to ever revive, so Movement Conservatism is essentially dead. Evangelicals will continue their deal with the devil and Business Conservatives will dither over what to do: go to the Democrats and just pray their socialist wing can be kept under control or try to influence MAGA to be more friendly to them.

The social base of America is dead. The social cohesion you see right now, where cities are haunted by the specter of nation-wide race riots and federal politicians are dodging assassins' bullets, this is as good as it's ever going to be, and it's never going to be this good again. In less than a week we're going to vote in a national election, and no matter what the result may be, social cohesion is going to decrease significantly, yet again. Nor is it going to recover in the next ten years any more than it did in the last ten. The Culture war consumes all other concerns, and it continues to escalate. Red Tribe has a pressing need to mobilize to a war footing versus the Blues, and MAGA is the best option available for achieving that. There is no reason to compromise that mobilization to prop up a social order not only dead but visibly rotting off the bone.

So you agree with me that the Conservative Movement is dead.

I agree with you that a conservative movement is dead, certainly.

Yes, for 60 some years now what people meant when they said 'Conservative Movement' is dead.

Yes, for 60 some years now what people meant when they said 'Conservative Movement' is dead.

And given what that "conservative movement" looked like, how is that a bad thing for people on the right?

Because the entire great desideratum is gone.

The one good thing that has come out of it so far is to get you people to admit you're against everything conservatism has stood for since the 1950's.

Glad to help. But your claim was that Trump killed that movement, and as I pointed out above, it actually killed itself. Trump did not discredit foreign interventionism; his predecessors did that for him. Trump did not discredit fiscal responsibility; his predecessors did that for him. Trump did not establish that personal character is irrelevant in the presidency; his predecessors did that for him. He is the effect, not the cause, and it seems to me that you are speaking as though this all could have gone some other way, if only his supporters had possessed the necessary moral fortitude.

If you want to argue that foreign interventionism was a sound policy, by all means, take the floor. If you want to argue that the fiscally-responsible promised land was just over the next hilltop in 2016 or even right now, by all means make your case. But it seems to me that you are painting the GOP elite with virtues the historical record cannot remotely support. They lost, and they lost for concrete, obvious reasons. What benefit is derived from ignoring or papering-over their failures?

Foreign interventionism made a hell of a lot more sense when we were fighting the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is gone, and you think nothing should have changed? Why?

And yet, it seems to me that my conservative principles find better representation under the current environment than they did under the old arrangement. Why should I mourn this outcome?

W wasn't even a neocon.

Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Doug Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, and Condi Rice were, though. Even W's speechwriters like David Frum were.

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