Hiding from the Past
By I also thought this was one of the best lines of the debate. It gets to the heart of the problems with what passes for “conservatism” in this country.
The vice president, I’m surprised to hear him talk about records. When he was one of 435 members of the United States House, he was one of 10 to vote against Head Start, one of four to vote against banning plastic weapons that can pass through metal detectors.
He voted against the Department of Education. He voted against funding for Meals on Wheels for seniors. He voted against a holiday for Martin Luther King. He voted against a resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela in South Africa.
For all of its claim to be a historical generated movement that is respectful of the past in the way that Democrats aren’t, the American conservative movement tries desperately to cover its tracks every four or five years. No modern conservative wants to be associated with the arguments that conservatives were making in 1950, or 1960, or 1970, or 1980. This is especially true in matters of race relations; even Trent Lott now realizes that nostalgia for the 1950s and 1960s is political suicide. Yet, at the time, conservatives fought tooth and nail, from every political orifice, against any hint of progress in civil rights and women’s rights. This is not forgotten; it is intentionally obscured.
Jonah Goldberg and other young conservatives would like to think that some sort of greater “conservative” ideology motivates the Republican Party. To this point, they make astonishingly indefensible readings of Burke, Hayek, and other members of the conservative “canon”, all the while trying to maintain that conservatives in 1950 thought the same thing that they think in 2004. This project takes conservative amnesia one step further; they are no longer simply forgetting what they were for ten years ago, they are actively trying to hide the evidence that they’ve been forgetting.
The Democrats should use this line of attack, especially against Cheney. Remind people of the things he argued twenty years ago, and how indefensible they are in hindsight. President Bush is also vulnerable; the Texas Republican Party is stuck in some kind of bizarre time warp that includes elements from the 1850s, the 1950s, and presumably the Republican vision of the 2050s. Kerry and Edwards should continue to hit them hard on these issues. Our record is better than theirs, and easier to defend.