An Assertion

[forsyth]

The problem with President Bush isn't that he's "not a real conservative". The problem is he's exactly the end result of modern conservativism. "Conservativism" isn't the solution, it's the problem.

Comments

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

In the entire time I've been alive and paying even the barest attention to politics, the Republican party's conservativism hasn't stood for any of those things. At least not in any kind of competent way. They're just words they invoke to try and get people to vote for them. The Republicans have never been for having government out of our houses or bedrooms. They've never been for government restraint, small government (cutting social programs yes, cutting corporate welfare? HA.), deregulation that works instead of just being a giveaway to the current pseudo-monopolies, state's rights as anything but a crypto-racist codeword, and especially fiscal restraint. This is, admittedly, limited to the past slightly less than 20 years, but even so.

You can't have it both ways. The Republicans can't say they're conservative and then say what they do in power doesn't represent conservativism. If we accept the Republicans as the standard bearers of "conservative" in the US, then we should judge it by their actions, not by what they say.

And, on a more tactical level, why are you bothering to defend "conservative"? The conservatives in the Republican party have spent the last almost 50 years doing their damndest to slander liberals and attack the very definition of the word liberal and turn it into a caricature of what liberals actually believe and do. It's long past time we stopped letting them define us, and started defining them. They've made their beds, let them sleep in them.