On Fri, 2 Oct 2009, SA wrote:
> I disagree, I don't think it's comparable. Eisenhower was not some
> foreign growth that had attached itself to the party from the outside.
He very much was as far as the Taft faction was concerned (which was the faction that had opposed Wilkie and Landon -- but now seemed to be finally getting their shot. If Eisenhower hadn't entered late, Taft was a shoo-in. It was very much stolen from him, not only in timing, but also through extremely legalistic legerdemain with the party rules.
But I think this might be too much inside baseball; maybe we should discuss over coffee or off-list.
>> I think Bush and Obama are completely comparable.
>
> But what about those links Doug posted? That 2003 NR editorial said,
> baldly, something to the effect that George W. Bush is not a real
> conservative.
True, and that was a great editorial to post. But I think both of you are missing a key linguistic and conceptual asymetry here between right and left, which the left has no interest in curing, but which if we knew what was good for us, we would.
And that's the this: the opposite of conservative is liberal. And if the Nation asked the question Is Obama A Real Liberal? they'd not only have to answer it emphatically Yes, so would you and Doug.
The Right has a huge advantage here. Their wing and their center both agree, whether they like it or not, that they share a common identity: they are all conservatives. The only difference is how fierce or how true a conservative they are. Which gives the wing enormous moral leverage over the rest. The center always has to admit they are the less true, less fierce representatives of a common creed. That means they are always implicitly apologizing for their compromises.
But on the left that isn't true. For us, liberals -- the wing we want to influence -- are as much a defining other as they are for the right. And we are for them. We're divided against ourselves internally, in our fundamental categories of thought.
Michael