Where Do Obamacons Come From?
Posted on October 31st, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
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Peter Suderman poses the question:
If McCain is not a real conservative, then shouldn’t principled conservatives be justified in refusing to vote for him?
They should, but I take Joe Carter’s point, which is more or less the point I have been making for months, that there is not really a conservative argument for a vote for Obama. Anti-McCain arguments are abundant, and this is what almost every Obamacon argument is, because it has to be. As I said yesterday, the most credible pro-Obama argument that can be made is that the GOP must be held accountable and Obama is not McCain, but I still don’t think that is a persuasive case for casting a vote for Obama, much less urging others to do likewise. You have to believe strongly that a McCain Presidency would be an intolerable disaster for our country, but for the most part the people who are most inclined to believe this about him are not the ones going over to Obama. Many have hedged their Obama endorsement with paeans to the “old” McCain whom they once liked and their alleged Obama endorsements are filled with disappointment that McCain has let them down, as if to say, “I can’t believe you’re making me do this.” Pretty clearly, the Obamacon phenomenon is on the whole not really an endorsement of Obama or anything he proposes to do, which is why most of the endorsements coming from the right cannot withstand much scrutiny. That’s the whole point: the Republican ticket is so unappealing to these people that they will vote for its defeat in full knowledge that there is little or nothing to say on behalf of the man they’re electing. That is how complete Republican failure now is. Imagine how much worse it might have been had the Democrats nominated another “centrist” Southerner.
Endorsing Obama is a vote of no confidence in the Republican Party, but in a weird way it is also an expression of what is probably utterly misguided hope that the Republicans will learn from the defeat and adjust to new political realities. It is also a failure of imagination to the extent that Obamacons sometimes rhetorically ask, “How much worse could it get?” It could get much, much worse, and Obama endorsers have put themselves in the odd position of taking on some responsibility for what is to come while having absolutely zero influence, but if it doesn’t bother them I can’t get very worked up about it.
Everyone who is voting Obama to punish the GOP thinks that there is some small chance that the GOP might change its ways. The diversity of views among Obamacons reflects how many different future directions are expected, guaranteeing that many will be disappointed, but it also reflects how badly the GOP has failed on multiple fronts that it is simultaneously losing so many prominent and obscure Catholic pro-lifers, libertarians, foreign policy realists, moderates and small-government conservatives, among others, to a Democratic nominee who genuinely is the most liberal of any they have had since 1972. Under normal circumstances, a vote for Obama ought to be unthinkable for almost all of the people on the right who have endorsed him, but the GOP has failed so badly that it has made the unthinkable mundane and ordinary. It’s reaching a point where the report of another Obamacon endorsement is no more remarkable than when the leaves start falling in autumn. Far more important in the aftermath than coming up with new and amusing ways to mock the Obama endorsers is an effort to understand and remedy the profound failures that made this phenomenon possible before a major realignment does occur.
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20 Responses to “Where Do Obamacons Come From?”
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“It is also a failure of imagination to the extent that Obamacons sometimes rhetorically ask, “How much worse could it get?†It could get much, much worse, and Obama endorsers have put themselves in the odd position of taking on some responsibility for what is to come while having absolutely zero influence, but if it doesn’t bother them I can’t get very worked up about it. ”
Thank god someone has finally said the truly obvious.
I must say that I am a tad surprised that you join in the chorus claiming that Senator Obama would be the most liberal president ever. I see little evidence for this. For instance, and perhaps I’ve mentioned this before, his health-care plan was well to the right of that proposed by Hillary Clinton. And, as you have pointed out, the guy is no peacenik. As I type, he is explaining to Wolf Blitzer that troop drawdowns in Iraq must be done slowly and that any savings will not be “immediately available” for domestic spending. Liberalism should be made of sterner stuff. I don’t gainsay that no true conservative should feel completely comfortable with him, but I don’t see him as re-weaving the fabric of America either.
I really think a lot of what comfort there is on the part of the “Obamacons” stems from their appraisal of his famous “temperament”. Should a terrible attack on the US occur, it is difficult to see him deploying our troops as rashly as happened in Iraq. Should a Katrina-like catastrophe happen, it is hard to imagine him ignoring it until the bodies were decaying in the street.
However, whether you are correct or I am, I heartily endorse the sentiments of your last sentence. A week ago I was very confident that sanity in the GOP would ultimately prevail and that they would have, as Buchanan once put it, a “Council of Trent”. With every passing day this seems less likely.
Daniel, you are way overthinking this. The Republicans have utterly failed in the past eight years. and not just in some, we had a rational plan and things went haywire, but in a full-on we threw some crazy ass shit out there and to our utter surprise, it failed to make the world a better place way. Now the time has come to return to sanity. Obama is that sanity, so much more than Johnny “hey, let’s get that crazy bitch from Alaska” McCain.
So, in other words, what you said, but without all the thinky-think.
And I want a taco.
Although Obama has embraced liberal interventionism, I do think Johnny Mac/Col. Kong is more likely to get us embroiled in further wars than Obama. That, and throwing out the old rascals and electing new ones, are the strongest arguments for Obama.
Scheunemann, NoPod, and the rest are not reassuring.
See, this is why I like paleocons.
Calling Obama the most libruhl Democratic presidential candidate is like talking about the smallest bacteria. Sure, relative to each other maybe the difference seems significant, but from a wider perspective…not so much.
The one thing I have noticed about Obamacon endorsements is that they uniformly and in some cases almost exclusively cite the Palin pick as a primary reason. I have often wondered if this is sincere, or if Palin serves as a convenient excuse/cover for a decision that owes to other factors. You might think it isn’t surprising that conservatives aren’t lining up to endorse John McCain (well, it isn’t…). But from what I have seen, those who are actually swinging to Obama aren’t those who would be predisposed against a McCain endorsement. Here I am speaking of people like Duberstein, Kmiec, Buckley, Weld, Adelstein, Powell. Maybe I’m wrong about some of them, but I don’t think any of these people thought to themselves when McCain clinched, “McCain? Are you —-ing kidding me? No WAY I’m getting on that train.”
So the question becomes what pushed them over the edge? No doubt Palin played a role, but to listen to them the pick really was a huge, huge deal. I don’t know why, because I have no idea what might really be behind their decisions, but I just can’t see the veep pick being such an overriding factor. It’s a bit of a mystery.
On the one hand, you have the party which desecrated several of our most hallowed national values (via torture and habeas corpus violations in particular), on the other a bunch of government loving nanny statists. It’s not a very appealing choice, but if one wants to vote for a major party candidate for whatever irrational reason, it’s tempting to go with the non-torturers.
What you don’t address on this is the notion that it’s very possible for a conservative to sacrifice his own ideological views in favor of the person he thinks will be best for the country. There’s no question that Obama’s views are more liberal than almost all conservatives’ views, and that McCain’s views are more in line with conservative views than Obama. You seem to argue that this is the only possible reason, aside from strategically punishing one’s own party in the hope that it gets better, for voting for a candidate. This overlooks simple patriotism: the notion that sometimes the best thing for the country is to put in place a superior individual even if he’s from a different ideological position. You seem to place ideology above patriotism, as if the only possible good that could be done for one’s country would be if someone of one’s own ideological persuasion becomes President. I think this is a patently false presumption, one that history demonstrates is nonsense, especially the history of the last eight years. Now, you may differ in your assessment of Obama from myself and many others, and you are entitled to your opinion, but I think you need to acknowledge that there are plenty of very intelligent people, conservatives, republicans, and others, who genuinely think Obama would make a better President than McCain, plain and simple. This is a valid reason for these people to vote for Obama, and not acknowledging this is a terrible weakness in your commentary on the Obamacon phenomena.
And likewise, let’s acknowledge that there are Democrats out there voting for McCain who think the same thing, for reasons of their own. There’s nothing dishonorable or silly about this. People should be respected if they simply feel that someone from the other party would make the better President, and be better for the country as a whole, regardless of that President will pursue the kinds of policies on some issues that they are against.
“Everyone who is voting Obama to punish the GOP thinks that there is some small chance that the GOP might change its ways. ”
Not so! I think it’s quite possible that the GOP will only sink deeper into the mire– but if they’re not running things, they won’t be able to drag the country along with them.
Endorsing Obama is a vote of no confidence in the Republican Party, but in a weird way it is also an expression of what is probably utterly misguided hope that the Republicans will learn from the defeat and adjust to new political realities.
I’m a single-issue voter and that issue is foreign policy. I’m not impressed with the Democrats in general, or with Obama, and I definitely wasn’t impressed with Kerry. But, while I recognize that both major parties are part of a damaging Washington foreign policy consensus, I think over the past several years the GOP has proven itself to be on the radical and irrational fringe of that consensus.
So, since I’m voting to punish the GOP in particular rather than to register a protest against the system in general, I’ve voted for the Democratic presidential candidate. I’m not trying to punish the GOP so that it will change–I know my vote doesn’t really matter. I’m just using my vote to punish the GOP because I believe the GOP deserves to be punished.
I respect my conservative friends who can’t vote for Obama because of his position on abortion. I don’t have strong opinions about social issues in general or abortion in particular, so I haven’t been put in the position of having to choose between slaughter abroad and infanticide at home. If I were in that position I’d probably just not vote.
“Imagine how much worse it might have been had the Democrats nominated another “centrist†Southerner.”
No kidding.
But I am voting third party. If the odds are:
50% Electric Chair,
45% Lethal injection,
5% Freedom,
I’m voting for freedom.
(Disclaimer: I have seen this quote, or at least similiar quotes, attributed to several different people, so I have no idea where it originated, but it did not originate with me. )
I don’t know if McCain is a real conservative or not, but the real problem with McCain is he doesn’t seem to know what he is doing, ever. He flits from one position to another, and his running mate is dumb as a rock. First she doesn’t know what the VP does, now she doesn’t know what the first amendment is, I don’t know how any body could vote for John McCain with her as his running mate. The worst part is that the conservative who say they are voting for McCain are doing it because they love her! What???
I think the of the Republican women who were passed over for the job and instead McCain picked her and I think what? That move told most women all the needed to know about John McCain. McCain obviously has a problem with strong, smart women. He obviously has a problem with women his age who he seems not to respect at all, and for him women are only about T & A! Pretty shocking for someone running for the Office of the Presidency.
“Pretty clearly, the Obamacon phenomenon is on the whole not really an endorsement of Obama or anything he proposes to do, which is why most of the endorsements coming from the right cannot withstand much scrutiny. ”
As a lifelong registered republican and former Marine voting for Obama, I reject that premise entirely. Have you even looked at all of Obama’s policies?
For example, both candidate’s proposal on the war on terror are vastly different. And Obama’s is clearly better (in one man’s opinion). Instead of bombing countries into democracy, Obama is taking a careful and measured approach by tackling the biggest threat to our homeland – loose nukes. Instead of following through on this ridiculous “trustworthy terrorist” theory (e.g Saddam: “Hey Habib, take this weapon that could destroy Baghdad or be used as blackmail against me to America and destroy the infidels”. Habib: Uhhh…sure (wow! look at the power I have now!) and instead, focus on weaponry not accounted for during the breakup of the USSR. Weapons that could be stolen and possibly useful. And weapons that could destroy an American city.
Further, our foreign policy is not helped by alienating the entire world – including our allies.
Please “scrutinize” this critical difference and tell some of us how this has no merit while we make a choice for commander-in-chief.
This is one of the best conservative blogs which is why I visit occasionally. I read Dan’s piece above and while he makes a few good points I think he’s incorrect in saying that all the Obamacons are not voting positively “for” Obama. That may be true of some but you couldn’t really say it of Powell, Will, Weld or The Economist. In fact they have emphasized that his many personal qualities make him ideally suited for the office. Then there’s the surrounding landscape. Given the events of the past few months when large tracts of the financial and manufacturing world have rushed to embrace govt as eagerly as those fleeing Katrina it’s hard to deny that many of the basic tenets of conservatism have proved either flawed or inadequate, or even, shock/horror, have contributed to the mess. There are lots of examples but I’m just going to take just one. The notion of small govt. It’s a central tenet of Larison’s and, allegedly, Boehner’s conservatism but in reality it’s a complete mirage. The Federal budget is around $3trillion, add another $1.5trillion for state budgets and you have total govt spending in the US of around $4.5trillion annually. This is so far beyond the expenditures of any other sovereign state in the world as to make the notion of small govt totally risible. We don’t have small govt and we’re never going to have small govt, so the debate surely is only about the efficient management of that machine. And this has been one of the most egregious areas of failure of the past eight years, and the country knows it. Whether it’s Katrina, overseeing the financial system, directing wars, keeping contaminated toys and food out of the country, minimizing corruption, administering justice: the Bush administration is perceived as a total failure. It largely accounts for loss of the professional and administrative classes who live in the burbs. They know govt is a fact of life and want it run efficiently. In this context Obama’s appeal to “managers” like Weld and Powell is the same basically as Clinton’s appeal to the same constituency. He’ll make a good job of running the govt. and that’s what they and to be honest I want.
I think Daniel’s post was pretty solid, except for the glaring failure to recognize what conradg put so well:
“This overlooks simple patriotism: the notion that sometimes the best thing for the country is to put in place a superior individual even if he’s from a different ideological position.”
Why is this so hard for conservative critics of Obamacons to understand? Would they not understand it and appreciate it if the shoe were on the other foot?
Try to picture this scenario: It’s 2016. Young Bobby Jindal runs a really awesome, inspiring, competent campaign 8 years from now against old Joe Biden, who decides he wants to be president. Biden has a masive experience edge, but it becomes clear over the course of several years of campaigning that his judgment is wanting: He picks Cynthia McKinney to be his VP. His campaign is a drifting, muddled mess, totally lacking in leadership. His policies on the stump are cynically much further to the left than they were in 2008. His campaign is divisive, negative and shallow. He just seems like a desperate old man, not someone who can unite the country and manage the executive office.
Now if that were the case, I imagine you would not be surprised to find many liberals crossing party lines and choosing competence over ideology. In fact you would be right to demand that they do so. And you would win in a landslide.
Ken Duberstein (the ultimate D.C. insider who still whines for Reagan)? Ken Adelman (who pushed for war in Iraq and then when it failed sold-out Bush and all the other neocons in an interview to the New Yorker!!!)? Chris Buckley (just how many children does he have)? And finally, Colin Powell (he told Congress….and the world…that Iraq had WMDs.He let Scooter Libby go to trial and Judith Miller go to jail all the while knowing it was his deputy who leaked Plame’s name)?
None of these men have honor or loyalty to anything or anyone but themselves….this isn’t about policy, or ideas or punishing the Republican party….this is about staying alive in Washington. Why are you even CONSIDERING the motives of these “men”?
I would be curious to know on what basis one could determine that Obama, who has never been in any executive position, would be a good manager.
Teresa: Is Obama’s running mate dumb as a rock? He sure sounds that way to me, at least once you cut through the bluster.
The question isn’t whether Obama would be better or worse than McCain. The question is what happens if Palin becomes president. In 2000, McCain was my man. I can’t begin to tell you how disappointed I was that he was the nominee. I would have voted for him in 2004 if he’d run as an Independent. But there’s no way I’d vote for him with Palin on the Ticket in 2008. He’s 72, and the possibility of a President Palin terrifies me. Obama may lack experience, but at least he attempts to discuss the issues and makes arguments in an articulate manner.
There are times that Palin makes George W. Bush seem eloquent.
I generally think that no matter what McCain did, he wasn’t going to win this year. To win he had to be a centrist. However, if he was a centrist the social conservatives would have either stayed home or voted for a 3rd party. Nevertheless, I wish McCain had done that. He might have lost, but he would have gone out on his own terms. without pandering to a portion of the party that he once referred to as agents of intolerance.
Statements like that one, as well has his focus on fiscal conservatism hooked me. This time around, he’s supporting tax cuts he voted again and courting the same social conservatives he once spoke out against.
I’m OK with Obama. If he’s too much of a lefty, then we can toss him out in 4 years. If he puts lefty judges on the court, who cares? It’s not like any conservatives are likely to retire anytime soon.
m.nolan, on November 2nd, 2008 at 11:10 am Said:
You see nolan just can’t resist personalizing the thing. All the Obamacons he mentions are all various varieties of bad guys just because they’ve chosen to support Obama. A month ago before they opened their mouths he would have said they were all good guys. This obsession with personality along with an addiction to dishonesty, or lack of reality if you prefer, has become one of the besetting sins of conservatism. Until we’re cured of it there’s going to be no hope of recovery. Speaking personally my family have voted GOP for years but not this year. The same is true of most of my Republican acquaintances. Bush, and now McCain, both because of his erraticism and the unbelieveably bad choice of Palin, has simple forfeited the public trust.