Jekyll & Hyde? The two faces of Bush conservatism: public opinion--including conservative public opinion--is turning against Bush-style "big government conservatism." It's about time.

Asked to define the term "conservatism" as applied to contemporary politics, most reasonably well-informed Americans would offer a reply focusing on small, non-intrusive, fiscally responsible government. To that description some might add an emphasis on preservation of traditional social institutions and moral principles.

Asked to identify the most significant exponent of modern conservatism, many--if not most--Americans would name President George W. Bush. But a growing number of self-identified conservatives have belatedly concluded that Mr. Bush isn't a conservative in any sense. Some have even concluded that the Bush II presidency has deviated so radically from the conservative path that they look back with ironic nostalgia on the late and otherwise unlamented presidency of Bill Clinton.

Although many conservatives regarded Clinton "as the devil incarnate when he was in the White House," writes former Reagan and Bush I official Bruce Bartlett in his recent book Imposter, the growth in the size, expense, and intrusiveness of the federal government under Bush the Younger has prompted a grudging reevaluation of the impeached and disgraced former president. "In light of Bush's big-spending ways," says Bartlett, "Clinton now looks almost like another Calvin Coolidge," a proponent of limited government.

"As a friend once noted about disco music, it seemed so bad at the time because it was being compared to the golden age of rock and roll," Bartlett continues. "But by comparison to the awful music that came afterward, disco sounds pretty good. So too with conservatives and Clinton. Compared to Ronald Reagan, he was awful. Compared to George W. Bush, he looks a lot better."

While not every conservative would agree with that assessment of the Reagan presidency, a growing number of them would grudgingly admit that Clinton's reputation--at least in policy terms--benefits from what Bartlett calls the "disco effect" when compared to Bush II's performance:

* According to a 2004 Wall Street Journal study, the average annual increase in domestic discretionary spending under Clinton was 2.5 percent; under Bush II, the figure was 8.2 percent--the highest of any president in post-WWII history.

* The nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste has concluded that the Bush II administration has presided over the greatest amount of identifiable "pork barrel" spending in our nation's history--an astonishing $27.5 billion for 13,999 projects in 2005 (as compared to the peak Clinton figure of $17.7 billion for 4,326 pork barrel projects in 2000).

* Mr. Bush has also exceeded his Democratic predecessor on the regulatory front: according to a 2004 study published by James Gattuso and former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, the Bush administration imposed at least 100 "economically significant" new regulations for each year of his first term, as compared to 90 per year during Clinton's reign and 70 per year under Reagan.

* While the Bush II administration has zealously cut taxes and sought to make them "permanent," Bartlett--a devout proponent of "Supply-Side" economics, which encourages tax cuts--warns that the president's unprecedented profligacy is setting the stage for "the largest tax increase in American history. It may not come on his watch, but it is inevitable and will be the direct result of Bush's policies." Within a very few years, unfunded liabilities--specifically Medicare and Social Security--will consume a portion of our gross domestic product equivalent to "virtually 100 percent of all federal taxes, on a present value basis," Bartlett observes. "Unless there are plans to abolish the rest of the federal government, large tax increases are inevitable"

Surveying these and other aspects of the Bush record, John Maggs of the National Journal concludes:

   Based on his actions, Bush has abandoned
   many traditional conservative
   causes. Instead of trying to rein in
   entitlements, he has created a costly
   new one [the Medicare prescription
   drug benefit]; instead of trying to reduce
   the reach of the federal government
   in education, Bush has extended
   it; instead of trying to control discretionary
   spending, Bush has agreed to
   virtually every expansion that Congress
   has sought. Familiar targets of
   conservative budget cutters--farm
   subsidies, job training, import tariffs
   --have all gotten healthy increases
   under Bush.

Social Conservative Sell-out

For many "social conservatives"--especially politically active Christians--issues of fiscal responsibility, while important, are eclipsed by concerns over the assault on traditional morality. For tens of millions of politically active Christians, few if any matters are as important as the movement to preserve the traditional family, which is threatened by the homosexual lobby's push for same-sex "marriages."

Eager as he has been to curry political favor with that constituency, Mr. Bush manifestly does not share their convictions. "I think it is purely political," a close friend of the president told Newsweek, referring to Mr. Bush's conspicuous support for a proposed constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union of "one man and one woman." "I don't think he gives a s*** about it. He never talks about this stuff."

Actually, Mr. Bush does occasionally talk about "this stuff," and when he does so, he expresses views not likely to find favor with his Christian conservative supporters.

"I don't think we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that's what a state chooses to do," Mr. Bush told reporter Charlie Gibson during an October 2004 interview on ABC's Good Morning America. "I view the definition of marriage different from legal arrangements that enable people to have rights. And I strongly believe that marriage ought to be defined as a union between a man and a woman.... Now, having said that, states ought to be able to have the right to pass laws that enable people to be able to have rights like others."

The 2004 Republican Party Platform opposed not only same-sex "marriage," but "civil unions," which are the same arrangement cloaked in a political euphemism. Gibson pounced on that contradiction and asked the president to clarify his position. "So the Republican platform on that point, as far as you're concerned, is wrong?" Gibson asked, to which Bush replied: "Right."

Despite this pointed and unambiguous presidential rebuke to their values and views, tens of millions of Christian conservatives dutifully cast their votes for Bush a few weeks later, many if not most of them convinced that once reelected he would emerge as a champion in defense of marriage. That hope appeared to be rewarded when Mr. Bush invited a group of Christian Right leaders to the White House on June 5 of this year to display his support for a proposed constitutional amendment to defend marriage.

That proposed amendment, it must be said, is a flawed and dangerous idea, since--if enacted--it would, for the first time, formally authorize the federal government to set family policy, an arrangement no genuine conservative would support. Were Mr. Bush genuinely concerned about the threat to marriage posed by activist judges who insist on treating same-sex "unions" as the equivalent of marriage, he could use his influence to pressure Congress either to impeach rogue federal judges, or to remove marriage and family issues from federal appellate jurisdiction, as Article III, section 2 of the Constitution permits. Instead, the president cynically used the prospect of an amendment to posture as the champion of traditional morality.

The June 5 presidential speech on the proposed marriage protection amendment was scanty on substantive support for the Christian Right's concerns, and freighted with symbolic disdain for this key element of the Republican political coalition.

Noted one account published in a prohomosexual news service: "Reports were circulating that the president would stand next to the amendment's major right-wing supporters in the prestigious Rose Garden to throw his weight behind the measure. Instead, he stood in front of them, alone, at a podium on an empty dais in a small obscure room in the administrative office building adjacent to the White House. Rather than shoulder to shoulder in the bright sunshine, the right wing's most prominent leaders were scattered at random throughout the small auditorium's 140 seats."

The threat to marriage, Mr. Bush insisted, comes from "activist judges who are overturning the expressed will of the people.... An amendment to the Constitution is necessary because activist courts have left our nation with no other choice." But as we've seen, activist judges can be impeached, or Congress can limit their appellate jurisdiction. An amendment is not only unnecessary, but unwise, and proposing one was almost certain to fail. But a politically exploitable failure may have been precisely what the president desired. Prior to the Senate vote on the proposed amendment, the president said he would not continue to press for one were it to be defeated in the Senate, which it quickly was. Thus, had Mr. Bush been candid in his remarks on June 5, he would have said: "You are here because you strongly support a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a union of a man and a woman, and I am happy to exploit your commitment for my own political advantage."

In fact, Rev. Jerry Falwell, one of the most prominent leaders of the Christian Right, readily acknowledges that the president was acting out of political calculation, rather than personal conviction.

"There is a political side to this," Falwell told Richmond Times-Dispatch columnist Ray McAllister. "The congressional elections in the fall are important" for the Republicans to keep control of the Senate and the House of Representatives, Falwell observed. So for Bush, "this is good politics. It's an excellent way for him to get the good guys on the record and the bad guys on the record."

Losing Gracefully

The White House's apparent indifference to the fate of the marriage amendment seems to be representative of a larger Republican strategy of introducing legislation to address contentious social issues in the serene confidence that the proposals will be shot down in the Senate, thereby providing "wedge issues" for the fall campaign.

Referring to a "string of defeats for key elements of the GOP agenda," the June 9 Los Angeles Times recalled: "Last month, a Republican-sponsored bill to limit jury awards in medical malpractice lawsuits failed in the Senate. On Wednesday [June 7], a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage--a key priority for social conservatives, who are influential within the GOP--was blocked. Similarly, a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning its expected to be debated--and then shunted aside--later this month." Republican Senate Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi seemed to believe that those defeats would be politically useful for the Republicans in the fall: "The conservative base will appreciate the fact that we are trying."

What Senator Lott alluded to--the GOP strategy of picking losing fights on social issues, and using the losses to galvanize its base--former Republican National Committee leader Allen Raymond has made explicit. A high-ranking official in the Republican National Committee for nearly a decade, Raymond was recently released from prison after serving a brief term for his role in a GOP telephone-jamming scheme intended to depress Democratic turnout in the 2002 New Hampshire Senate race. He explained to the June 10 Boston Globe that the party's leadership "is focused on dividing voters to win primaries and general elections."

"A lot of people look at politics and see it as the guy who wins is the guy who unifies the most people," Raymond told the Globe. "I would disagree. I would say the candidate who wins is the candidate who polarizes the right bloc of voters. You always want to polarize somebody." According to Raymond, the Republican leadership seizes on such issues as border security and abortion not out of a desire for genuine reform, but rather because of their polarizing effect. Under this political model, "winning" means keeping the fight going as long as possible, rather than solving problems of public policy.

"Republicans have treated campaigns and politics as a business, and now are treating public policy as a business, looking for the types of returns that you get in business, passing legislation that has huge ramifications for business," insists Raymond.

The "business" Raymond refers to is the use of government power to redistribute wealth from producers in the private sector to politically connected constituent groups. Both parties are engaged in this undertaking, but the Democrats can afford to be candid about what they're doing. The Republicans, on the other hand, still profess to represent the interests of those who want to get government "off the backs" of the productive--but their priorities and policies differ from those of the Democrats only in matters of nuance.

"In the daily business of Washington," comments liberal journalist Jacob Weisberg, "the old pattern remains in place, only with the substitution of these new supplicants and their new benefactors in the GOE As in the old days, lobbyists work the halls of Congress and the regulatory agencies, functioning like carpenter ants to build a federal government ever bigger in size and more intrusive in scope."

Under the Bush-led GOP, summarizes Weisberg, Washington has fallen under the sway of "the curious government philosophy of interest-group conservatism: the expansion and exploitation of government by people who profess to dislike it."

What's to Lose?

With the 2004 election a receding memory and midterm elections looming in November, an increasing number of principled conservatives are beginning to understand that George W. Bush is not a conservative, and never has been one. For many, that realization has been triggered by the president's persistence in seeking amnesty for illegal immigrants; others have become mortified by the size of the budget and trade deficits. A growing number have become understandably disenchanted with the war in Iraq, a venture launched for spurious reasons that has--at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of irreplaceable American lives--installed a post-Saddam regime in Iraq that looks more and more like the anti-American regime in Iran.

A growing number of conservatives, looking soberly at the Bush record, see it as the chronicle of a failed presidency. And many of them are beginning to vote with their checkbooks.

"You see a sense of apathy," a Republican fundraiser in a swing state told the May 22 Los Angeles Times. "People are holding back on their checks." This rejection of the GOP, another party strategist told the Times, is particularly "acute among small-gift donors, who seem especially riled by Bush's immigration policy" "It's very difficult to get low-dollar donors to give money when they see the border is not secured and Congress is not taking action on immigration," he commented.

To make up for a shortfall of campaign cash, the GOP can put a heavier touch on its big-money donors. But nothing can replace an alienated electorate. If grass-roots conservatives become sufficiently alienated, they'll stay home in November, or find third party candidates to support.

Would this be the catastrophe that GOP-aligned commentators and talk-radio personalities insist it would be?

Not necessarily--if conservatives are determined to support constitutionalist candidates of any party, and, more importantly, commit themselves to the unglamorous work of holding their representatives accountable to constitutional principles in non-election years.

Every election year, professed conservatives abound. Very rarely do we find candidates willing to describe themselves as closet liberals who intend to treat constitutional restraints with contempt and who lust to tax, spend, and regulate productive citizens into penury. But once safely elected, that's exactly how most politicians behave--until a reelection campaign beckons and they are compelled to act out the charade of statesmanship once again.

This will continue until a sufficiently large portion of the electorate puts a stop to it through concerted action on behalf of our Constitution. That long-overdue movement may coalesce out of the growing disaffection of conservatives toward George W. Bush.

RELATED ARTICLE: Main Street vs. Empire.

Bill Kauffman, a former aide to the late Senator Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), is the author of several influential books, including America First! Its History, Culture, and Politics, and his latest, Look Homeward, America. A frequent contributor to such publications as Reason, Chronicles, Liberty, and American Enterprise, Kauffman describes himself as "a believer in an America of small, self-governing communities and regions with maximum amount of personal liberty and a minimum amount of interference from Washington and New York."

"I sense a gathering, if inchoate and uncertain, populist uprising against the disastrous Bush Presidency," Kauffman informed THE NEW AMERICAN. "Most of us still care more about our own backyards than Baghdad." Apart from those "fled by IV to a TV," he continues, Americans "are serenely indifferent to Iraq and Irma.... Deep down, many of us still agree with George Washington that the U.S. should avoid entanglements and alliances and military interventions abroad."

The problem is that "such old-fashioned American common sense is absent from the national leadership of the two parties. The last major Republican politician to speak for limited government and a peaceful foreign policy was Robert Taft, that noble spokesman for Main Street in a party dominated by Wall Street and now the military-industrial complex." While Kauffman finds a pair of "superb Taftites in the House--Ron Paul of Texas and John Duncan of Tennessee--there is no real Taft wing of the party anymore." The same is true of the Democrats, whose rank and file includes many people of conservative, localist inclinations but whose leaders "are perfectly comfortable with the Fortune 500 and the American Empire."

The true hope for our country, Kauffman concludes, "lies far from the center: in local communities, in neighborhoods, in small farms and small towns--the classic cradle of populism. A localist, antiwar, anti-empire movement that ignores the fired old left-fight distinctions is waking in the hinterlands. But I don't know what political shape--if any--it will take."

--WILLIAM NORMAN GRIGG