Lincoln would weep Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne tells us if he could look today at the state of his party talking of states rights downsizing government riddled with birthers and nuts. But times change and crises change with them. Lincoln never dealt with trillions in deficits unpopular health care bills and an exploding bureaucracy. And if he could weep what would the Democrats icons say to the current state of their party?
What would Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman say to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi? What would John Kennedy have said to Ted Kennedys deportment and record? Probably nothing good.
Liberals tend to assume that Republicans veered rightward at some point for no logical reason whereas Democrats have remained their sweet moderate selves for decades. Not true. Back in the days when Republicans were more diverse and more moderate Democrats were diverse and more moderate too. There were pro-life Democrats pro-defense Democrats Democrats who knew how to fight and win wars. When Howard Baker defined the Republican mainstream Joe Lieberman would have passed as your typical Democrat not as an outcast despised by his party. Democrats then didnt bow before NARAL worship identity politics or try to lose wars on purpose. Picture John Kennedy giving the speech Ted Kennedy gave on Robert Borks nomination. What might he have said to Teds efforts to undercut our Cold War and anti-terror agendas? Ask not.
Before l980 little divided the parties. Foreign policy was largely bipartisan and social issues barely existed. The Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan belonged to the president but Gen. Eisenhower and Congressman Kennedy both backed them from their inception. The only differences were size-of-government and those were not large. Ike didnt cut the size of the government; JFK didnt expand it. Ike created the interstate highway system JFK reduced taxes. The differences between Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai E. Stevenson and Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon were largely stylistic: as president Nixon governed to Kennedys left. Both were anti-Communist and ambivalent about Joseph McCarthy. Before announcing for president Kennedy told friends that if he werent nominated he might vote for Nixon himself.
What ended this era? The Democrats lurch in the late 1960s to the social and pacifist left. Radical feminists created the social conservatives. Pacifists made Scoop Jackson Democrats into neoconservatives. Identity politics turned civil rights backers into opponents of quotas. Liberal indulgence of social pathologies led to demands for crackdowns on welfare and crime. This dynamic has led to denial by two sizable factions: There are the liberals who wont admit that they enable conservatives power; and then there are the conservatives who wont admit their dependence upon the liberals. Liberal overreach is what movement conservatives need to gain power. Without it they might not exist.
Liberal overreach mobilizes conservatives energizes them gives them fat juicy targets to aim at and drives centrists into their company. They flourished in 1980 1994 and 2010 after high-level liberal excess or failure. They flailed in 1952 and 1964 against centrists who were not their friends but werent enemies either and gave them nothing outrageous against which to organize. Likewise after 1995 they failed to gain traction against President Clinton once he had triangulated signed welfare reform balanced the budget and said adieu to the era of big government. He was re-elected and George W. Bush won in 2000 as a new kind of conservative the old kind being less popular than it had been just six years before.
In 2010 the old kind of conservative returned from the dead given new life by Democrats ambitious stimulus and health care plans. Who pushed the hardest for spending and health care? E.J. Dionne and his allies. And who has made Lincoln weep over his party? E.J. Dionne and his friends.
Columnist Noemie Emery is contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.
Lincoln would weep Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne tells us if he could look today at the state of his party talking of states rights downsizing government riddled with birthers and nuts. But times change and crises change with them. Lincoln never dealt with trillions in deficits unpopular health care bills and an exploding bureaucracy. And if he could weep what would the Democrats icons say to the current state of their party?
What would Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman say to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi? What would John Kennedy have said to Ted Kennedys deportment and record? Probably nothing good.
Liberals tend to assume that Republicans veered rightward at some point for no logical reason whereas Democrats have remained their sweet moderate selves for decades. Not true. Back in the days when Republicans were more diverse and more moderate Democrats were diverse and more moderate too. There were pro-life Democrats pro-defense Democrats Democrats who knew how to fight and win wars. When Howard Baker defined the Republican mainstream Joe Lieberman would have passed as your typical Democrat not as an outcast despised by his party. Democrats then didnt bow before NARAL worship identity politics or try to lose wars on purpose. Picture John Kennedy giving the speech Ted Kennedy gave on Robert Borks nomination. What might he have said to Teds efforts to undercut our Cold War and anti-terror agendas? Ask not.
Before l980 little divided the parties. Foreign policy was largely bipartisan and social issues barely existed. The Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan belonged to the president but Gen. Eisenhower and Congressman Kennedy both backed them from their inception. The only differences were size-of-government and those were not large. Ike didnt cut the size of the government; JFK didnt expand it. Ike created the interstate highway system JFK reduced taxes. The differences between Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai E. Stevenson and Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon were largely stylistic: as president Nixon governed to Kennedys left. Both were anti-Communist and ambivalent about Joseph McCarthy. Before announcing for president Kennedy told friends that if he werent nominated he might vote for Nixon himself.
What ended this era? The Democrats lurch in the late 1960s to the social and pacifist left. Radical feminists created the social conservatives. Pacifists made Scoop Jackson Democrats into neoconservatives. Identity politics turned civil rights backers into opponents of quotas. Liberal indulgence of social pathologies led to demands for crackdowns on welfare and crime. This dynamic has led to denial by two sizable factions: There are the liberals who wont admit that they enable conservatives power; and then there are the conservatives who wont admit their dependence upon the liberals. Liberal overreach is what movement conservatives need to gain power. Without it they might not exist.
Liberal overreach mobilizes conservatives energizes them gives them fat juicy targets to aim at and drives centrists into their company. They flourished in 1980 1994 and 2010 after high-level liberal excess or failure. They flailed in 1952 and 1964 against centrists who were not their friends but werent enemies either and gave them nothing outrageous against which to organize. Likewise after 1995 they failed to gain traction against President Clinton once he had triangulated signed welfare reform balanced the budget and said adieu to the era of big government. He was re-elected and George W. Bush won in 2000 as a new kind of conservative the old kind being less popular than it had been just six years before.
In 2010 the old kind of conservative returned from the dead given new life by Democrats ambitious stimulus and health care plans. Who pushed the hardest for spending and health care? E.J. Dionne and his allies. And who has made Lincoln weep over his party? E.J. Dionne and his friends.
Columnist Noemie Emery is contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.
