Reply #1: Because this administration is the apotheosis of Conservatism, and so reveals it for what it is [View All]

[bread_and_roses]

I don't believe this mantra about "real" conservatives we keep hearing. Conservatives have always espoused the virtues of capitalism and the "Free Market," always opposed safety net programs, always fought progressive taxation, always favored union-busting and cheap wages and de-regulation of everything. And if they were Isolationist in Foreign Policy re: war, they had no problem with the exploitation of Third-World people by US Corporations. If they were "environmentalist" about US National Parks, they had no problem with polluting the rest of the world with industrial pollutants.

Even where their "Libertarian" leanings should - or even occasionally did a very, very few of them - lead them to ally with Progresives on issues of personal freedom, are they or have they ever been on the forfront of those fights? Did they lead the fight to de-criminalize abortion? Are they on the front line demanding an end to the insane and racist "Drug War?" Did they lead the effort to get prayer out of schools, even? Where were they in the Civil Rights movement? In women's fight for equality? Did they even cringe at the unholy alliance of "Conservatism" with the Religious Right? No.

No, this Administration is the very apogee of De-Regulated Free-Market Capitalist exploitation, greed, and Social Darwinism which has always been the basis of Conservatism.

This is not an attack on the OP, btw - if your point is that there is an occasional Conservative who occasionally acts in accordance with some actual principle I won't quarell with that. But I keep hearing this blather about "real" Conservatives as if they have ever stood against any oppression except "oppressing" unlimited profit via regulation or taxation or spending on social welfare?

*edit to clarify last sentence