Running Away from Conservatives…The Victory Lap Ends in 2004
There is an old sport’s adage that goes “you learn more from losing then you do from winning.” This adage holds for all manner of contest, even the political ones. While much is being made of the Democrat’s disarray after their setbacks in 2002, how the Republicans apply the lessons of their election victory should be a source of great worry for the nation’s conservatives. Conservatives, having given the President a mandate to govern conservatively, are poised for betrayal. The Republican Party seems determined to maintain an uncritical confidence in the President, apparently based purely on euphoria. While the President seems just as determined to take credit for that victory, and to lead his Party away from their supporters.
It’s the war, stupid.
There is really no other genius behind the Republican’s victory then the simple intuitive and natural reaction of the American people when attacked. Like a surfer catching a good wave, the Bush Presidency’s only contribution is climbing aboard and riding that wave.
Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” and General George Patton’s “American’s love to fight,” are more instructive and closer to the source of truth for the Republican victory then crediting the Bush Administration. Standing shoulder to shoulder and fighting a “righteous” cause is indeed “the American Way.”
Right in line with that old sport’s adage Democrats are learning their lessons. The Democrat leadership is falling all over itself to stand with the President on the war and “security”, while moving leftward to shore up it’s base. Contrary to that, President Bush and Republican leaders are already showing signs that they have learned nothing from Election 2002 as they repeat mistakes of the past and fail to listen to or respect their base. Instead they appear to be ready to beat a hasty retreat from conservatives and to follow the Democrats leftward.
This retreat from their Conservative base was demonstrably clear just one week after the elections of 2002 as the President and his, all too eager to bash the Right, Secretary of State Colin Powell went after Christian Conservative leaders.
The President and the Secretary of State, having ignored America’s growing Islamic community throughout the 2002 elections, have begun reciting the “Islam is a peaceful faith” mantra again. And the Secretary of State is offering to make even more room in America for Islamic clergy, teachers, and other Muslim “friends” from Afghanistan to Bosnia. While potentially true that Islam can be a peaceful faith, this is far from a decided issue. In fact history is not boding well for that to be a decisive declaration anytime soon.
President Bush has failed to grasp what a great leader needs to understand, and what Christian Conservative leaders Falwell and Robertson have been trying to say. (And Franklin Graham. Franklin Graham has been even more outspoken about the failure of Islamic leaders to criticize and reform their faith, but was not named directly by sources in the Bush administration in their attacks. Well hey; the Billy Graham movement is still too big to go after directly, implication will have to serve for now.)
What Christian Conservative leaders know and the President fails to grasp is that American’s intuitively understand “you are either with us or against us.” On the individual level at which the American people relate to those of the Islamic faith there is no issue beyond that point.
Unfortunately the President has grabbed this first chance to place distance between himself and a portion of his conservative base. Ignoring what the Christian Conservative leadership knows and are saying, i.e. the Islamic faith poses serious problems without internal pressure to reform; the President attacks the messenger in this new post-election world.
President Bush is often characterized as a great conservative President, but perhaps perspective is needed.
President Ronald Reagan, in what has become known as the “Evil Empire” speech, said about the Soviet Union before his Christian Conservative supporters at the Annual Convention of the National Association of Evangelicals (March 1983): "…the Soviet leaders have openly and publicly declared that…everything is moral that is necessary for the annihilation of the old…” and that in the West “…the refusal of many influential people to accept this elementary fact of Soviet doctrine illustrates a historical reluctance to see totalitarian powers for what they are.”
President Reagan, with great clarity, understood the nature of that past conflict. And with personal strength and conviction stood against the leftist multiculturalism that would have shown acceptance until our nations demise. While the current enemy may have taken a different form, is not their leadership bent to the same purpose?
Perhaps speaking directly to this current President, President Reagan said “I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to… remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.”
The signals are there that President Bush and the Republican leadership will continue to follow an expedient course down the wrong path. Once again the light should be dawning for conservatives that their usefulness is at an end…until next time. The Bush administrations criticism of one portion of their political base that was important in the 2002 election victory, and the failure to acknowledge some simple truths about Islam means two things will occur in the future unless important lessons are learned.
First, America will go through more dark days ahead.
Second, 2004 will be the end of the victory lap.
Glenn Jackson is Chairman of the American Reformation Project and a columnist for USA Daily. Glenn is also a former State Chairman for Buchanan Reform and former state Chairman of the Georgia Freedom Party. Glenn also served on the Executive Committee of the Reform Party USA. Glenn holds an MA in Philosophy from Georgia State University in Atlanta.
© Glenn R. Jackson