The Conservative Challenge

We have won a great victory, we are told. George W. Bush secured a majority of the popular vote for president and Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress with larger majorities than any time in recent history. Your editor has spent most of his life earning his bread as a political consultant and can assure the reader what conclusion any rational political advisor will draw from this success. The New Dealers were right: spend, spend, elect, elect works.

It is too depressing to waste energy on that record but conservatives simply must face the facts. While we had to support his election given the alternative, non-defense discretionary government spending has increased under President Bush by more than twice the average of the last two Democratic presidents. On top of that, he and the GOP Congress have enacted a huge new entitlement, which Democrats could never have accomplished, equal to the total unfunded liability of Social Security -- plus one half again -- in a Medicare that was already in actuarial crisis.

This record was achieved against the united opposition of the conservative movement, at least that part of it concerned about limited government. The sad truth is that conservative organizations are mostly unable to mobilize their troops against a Republican president who says he is conservative, no matter how he performs. We saw that with Richard Nixon too and George Bush I. Perhaps proposing to raise taxes or to directly support abortion are exceptions but the GOP leadership knows that also, so is more sensitive to these matters. It also knows how to stage those issues politically to make it look like they are doing much more than they are -- for example pushing a marriage amendment verses limiting court jurisdiction on marriage, which only requires a majority to win. Most important, they know our groups cannot deliver against them and tend to take us for granted.

The basic conservative strategy for the past twenty years has been to lobby Republican legislators and executives to support our principles, backed with whatever activist base will push such efforts. This policy has been an abject failure. We were able to organize the largest conservative coalition ever created against the Medicare prescription drug bill, in terms of numbers of organizations involved, but this massive effort could only produce 25 votes in the House and 9 in the Senate. It has led to the loss of the GOP presidential nomination at least twice. Sure, the House Republican Study Committee has reorganized around a new leadership of the conservatives who opposed the drug bill and they will be more active -- and presumably effective -- in rounding up votes. Yet, they too will need at least an acquiescent president to be very successful. Whether a victorious president will change his positions on Medicare, education, farm policy, transportation and the rest of big government conservatism is unlikely at this late date.

Most conservatives will respond that President Bush will move right in a second term when he does not have to seek re-election. That does him a disservice. He is a principled man and will likely stick to the same path, especially since his four years have been ratified as a mandate by a majority of voters. It is difficult to see how the battle to limit government can be won in Washington through traditional lobbying, although the movement should try.

Our problem is that two GOP presidents in a row have refused to make a case for limited government and this has deprived our troops of sound arguments for it or even to think less government is possible. The attack of 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq and the overrepresentation of neocons in the mainstream media have defined conservatism in the public mind as aggressive action on foreign policy. Young conservatives, especially, have no passion for limiting government, even though polls show a majority of young and old support a smaller government with limited responsibilities over a large government that attempts to solve additional social problems. They support small government in a way but they do not care enough to do anything about it.

If the conservative movement is to be successful in limiting government interference in peoples’ lives, it must literally re-create a mass movement that can contest for the soul of the GOP, as we did between 1960 and 1980. Rebuilding conservatism at the grass roots is a daunting task, indeed, and few in Washington want to contemplate it. We have not even tried in recent years, depending on media, direct mail, the Internet and lobbying. Revitalization will require determined young conservatives, but it can be accomplished. As in 1960, the nation has just gone through an election where the most important issues were not even raised by either candidate. The accompanying chart, based upon official government sources, clearly demonstrates the crisis facing the nation. In fact, it unlocks the secrets of the politics for the whole 21st Century. Those who can read it can master events, as did the earlier generation of conservatives.

This chart proves that Medicare and Social Security will explode in less than 20 years and eat up most of the U.S. budget. While Mr. Bush says he wants to substitute private accounts for perhaps 2 percent of current Social Security contributions, this is much too small to avoid the collapse. Indeed, the challenge will be to keep his private accounts from being added on top of the current system to make things worse. Mr. Bush promised in the election not to cut benefits and it is important to remember that his original prescription drug bill was revenue neutral over the long run. Yet, when Speaker Dennis Hastert called it dead on arrival, the president let Congress write the bill. Social Security is peanuts compared to Medicare and almost every GOP candidate in the election promised not to touch it. Indeed, most promised to expand health care to the non-elderly. History could easily repeat itself with more spending rather than less as a result of otherwise sound proposals.

The fact there are problems of enormous magnitude facing the nation that are documented by government trustees and will be ignored by all smart politicians until they explode creates an opportunity for a rebuilding conservatism speaking the truth. This will be difficult but not more so than it was to go from the hard truths of Barry Goldwater to the success of Ronald Reagan, which took sixteen years. Conservatism, then, spoke the truth even though it was unpopular. We have been spoiled since 1980 by our success and it is time to get back to the business of conserving America's ideals. The fact that no one has the courage to say the government will run out of funds and will either be overwhelmed by the inflation required to solve it or actually suffer bankruptcy, allows a new conservatism to have a compelling program that will not be co-opted by the political sophisticates. That way, we can build like we did before, out of sight of the smart media, and reappear just before we are ready to win a nomination once again for a real conservative.

The second chart from the official trustees of Social Security and Medicare actually presents a precise political roadmap to plan a political strategy to confront the coming collapse. Lucky George Bush will escape without a scrape (unless Iraq drags on too long). While there will be budget squeezes earlier, entitlement costs do not exceed income until 2016, at the end of Hillary Clinton's second term (if she or the GOP do not speed the date to destruction with another new program). Whoever succeeds President Clinton will be overwhelmed in 2018-19 when Social Security crashes and Medicare exhausts its assets. So, the 2016 election will be the last chance for reform before the deluge. That gives us only 12 years.

In 1965, following the disastrous Goldwater defeat, your editor wrote a paper giving the bad news to conservatives that it would take two decades to build their movement in a way that would lead to political success. It was a discouraging message (and only a few years off the mark) but conservatives then had the courage to start building a movement that was worthy of its principles. At its conclusion, Ronald Reagan did change America, actually reducing non-defense discretionary spending by an average of one percent a year during his presidency and reducing total domestic spending including entitlements from 17.9 to 16.4 percent of national wealth, unleashing private and community creativity to reverse the New Deal centralization trend and create an enormous prosperity, at least for a while.

Lobbying the president and the GOP Congress is fine but this will not save the nation from bankruptcy. Only a revitalized grassroots conservatism can. Nothing less is worthy of a movement pledged to restore America to its founding principles.

Donald Devine, Editor.

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