George Will: new Congress is *more* conservative

[lwcon]

George Will calls the new Democrat-led Congress more conservative than the one it replaces.

Hmm, is he right?

Consider first that Democrats are the coalition of the nuanced, which the media takes as license for two flip-flopping memes:

• The Democrats are following the country in its inexorable move to the right
• The Democrats are at least as bad as the Republicans as polarizing wackos, with a weary country wishing for a political middle-ground.

Both of these stories continue to be more appealing to the MSM than the one the American voter figured out after six years of outrageous malfeasance and a needless war that's spiraling way the fuck out of control:

• One party has a lot of reasonable statesmen and -women; the other is full of incompetent, nest-feathering hypocrites.

Even Bush seems to understand this.

Okay, but is Will right? Are the new donkeys just DINOs?

Carville seems content to think so, as he props up Jesus' failed senatorial candidate, Harold Ford — fan of football, girls, and Bush's torture bill.

But listen to Senator-elect Jim Webb (D-VA), and you'll hear a man with conviction about economic fairness, perhaps the most definitive liberal cause.

Yeah, but is Will right?

Actually, I'd say he is... if conservatism means fiscal common sense and a return to the values of our forefathers.

Who isn't more conservative than the party that hotwired the American economy, drove it into the ground, and stumbled away from the wreck, with its arm around the quivering neck of a buff, young page?

With Hastert's announcement that he will not seek a leadership position in the new Congress, House Republicans will have no choice but to reconsider how their behavior in recent years — particularly their ravenous appetite for pork — is related to having had leadership that was light on the ballast of ideas.

So, yes, it seems evident that progressivism is the new conservatism.

Can we expect the George Willses to keep that in mind as Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats' quasi-majority in the Senate try to fix what the GOP has done to our country? Not. Likely.


___

Hey, the liberal light is always on at the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy. Please stop by and say "hi!"

[begin_within]

1. Hopefully in one sense - that they will control spending!

[GreenPartyVoter]

5. Yes, I think you are right. More conservative, too, about when to use the military.

[Ishoutandscream2]

8. Yes, on that line, I completely agree

That was, many moons ago, considered a "conservative" trait. The Reagan and Bush repigs dropped the ball on that one.

[KingFlorez]

2. Grasping at straws

[queenbdem87]

3. This is why the Progressive movement sprang from traditional conservatives

because progressives believe in many of the same things such as fiscal responsibility, end to corruption, and social liberalism.

[Bucky]

4. In some ways, Will's right. Webb ran to raise minimum wage & expand health coverage.

These are very conservative concerns--it's about conserving the dignity of work, protecting families from the depredations of expansive ("liberal" if you will) corporate America that wants to downsize the working class and rob communities of good jobs.

Almost all Democrats are running as deficit hawks, limiting the intrusive power of the federal government from digging into our personal lives. That's clearly more conservative.

Democrats support Affirmative Action, which began as a conservative (and more effective) alternative to a quotas system.

Democrats are against militaristic doctrines of the neocons. We seek to conserve American lives, America's overseas reputation for championing human rights, and America's Bill of Rights. We want to help families have health coverage--and what could be more pro-family than that? We want to preserve a decent standard of living for our seniors, the generation of people who helped build this country's industrial might and provide our secure shores.

We want to protect the environmnet from the ravages of pollution and global warming. Anyone who doesn't want that doesn't deserve the name conservative, for there is nothing they can conserve if we let them destroy the planet. You wanna call that conservative? Okay, I'm a conservative.

[underpants]

13. Great post

especially the part about affirmative action.

[Nickster]

6. Well, if the Dem Congress is more conservative than the Republicans, that would

then mean it is ok for the Southern states to start voting for Democrats. It would be ok for all of those disgruntled GOOPers to join the party of sanity since they are only following their conservative beliefs and values.

Dubya can only prove how Un-Conservative he is when he starts shooting down one bill after another from the newly reinforced conservative movement that is embodied by the Democratic party. That'll just hurt the conservative cred of every remaining neo-con.

Pelosi is the leader of this newly conservative House, so that "San Francisco" values crap doesn't stick anymore does it? Either the House is now a hippie nirvana or it's the new bastion of conservatism, but it can't be both.

Let them keep saying Congress is embracing conservatism, it can only backfire on them if we smash it back in their face. They're trying to blur the line between Democrats and Pukes, so the general public forgets all about the nasty neo-cons. Notice how there is zero talk about the Democratic Revolution compared to 1994?

Truth is how many radical conservatives got sent packing and how many of our candidates won?

[rock]

7. Actually I agree if you mean the classic meaning

and not the code meaning that the republiCONs use.

[gratuitous]

9. Whatever makes George feel better

But it will be nice to remind Mr. Will how "conservative" he said this Congress is when they're causing him to wail and gnash his teeth about having to pay a fairer portion for his outsized share of our society.

[lwcon]

10. Exactly

When all is said and done, no way is he going to stand by that assessment.


___

Hey, the liberal light is always on at the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy. Please stop by and say "hi!"

[harlinchi]

11. More conservative but less Republican! n/t

[underpants]

12. LOL I was just about to post on Will's rantings over the last three weeks

He has been on this theme for the last three weeks trying to take credit for the Democrats' win.

His main point is that this was NOT a refutiation of conservatism why no it was an affirmation of conservatism (looks down nose) everyone knows that!

The problem with all this is -if these candidates were so conservative and so great why couldn't they find a home in the Republican party? Has that party gone so off kilter that they are completely irrelevant in the foreseeable future? Why couldn't Heath Shuler be heard in the supposedly conservative caucus? Why did Webb "come home" to the Democratic party?

Will is at this point a cartoon character but he does serve a purpose-HE was the first to say that Democracies might not be able to find a home in a Muslim society this was echoed the next week by Bush with the now famous "some people say that Democracies can't work in a Muslim country" (a long google search showed that Will was the first to mention that and it was clearly meant to be used in that speech).

[lwcon]

15. Will Watch

On the advice of fellow DUers, I started doing these occasional "reviews" of George Will columns. He was said to be the most articulate advocate that conservatives have.

To me, he seems to be an Arlen Specter type -- a sometimes rational guy who can't escape the clutches of his other personality, a big-time winger enabler.

If he's not their best spokesman in the MSM, I wonder who is...?

___

Hey, the liberal light is always on at the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy. Please stop by and say "hi!"

[Jack Rabbit]

14. Semantics

George Will is a conservative. Rush Limbaugh is a right wing moron.

Bill Clinton, who never described himself as a conservative, had a better claim on the word than George W. Bush, who always describes himself as conservative.

Conservative has for some time been the most abused term in the American political lexicon. There was nothing conservative about Jesse Helms or Tom DeLay. There is nothing conservative about gutting the Bill of Rights or establishing kangaroo courts in the Military Commissions Act. There is nothing conservative about muddying the separation of church and state, or flatly denying there is any such thing.

So in this respect, I think Will could be right. I would very much like to see the conservatives reclaim the Republican Party. They can start by reciting this line from forty or fifty years ago when it was the one thing they had right: Deficits matter. They will do themselves a service to reject the charlatans who think they don't and get back to Everett Dirksen's colorful expression of common sense: A billion dollars here and a billion dollars there; pretty soon, you're talking about real money.

[Norquist Nemesis]

16. Keep thinkin' like that, Mr. Will. Next you'll be voting Democrat! n/t

[Infinite Hope]

17. But it is not more rightwing...

we knocked off some of the most rightwing members of Congress and replaced them with Democrats. Some, like Yarmuth in Kentucky, are fairly liberal overall. The Congress took a marked shift to the left.