E.J. Dionne: Conservatives used to care about community. What happened?
By E.J. Dionne Jr., Thursday, May 24, 3:24 PM
To secure his standing as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney has disowned every sliver of moderation in his record. Hes moved to the right on tax cuts and twisted himself into a pretzel over the health-care plan he championed in Massachusetts because conservatives are no longer allowed to acknowledge that government can improve citizens lives.
Romney is simply following the lead of Republicans in Congress who have abandoned American conservatisms most attractive features: prudence, caution and a sense that change should be gradual. But most important of all, conservatism used to care passionately about fostering community, and it no longer does. This commitment now lies buried beneath slogans that lift up the heroic and disconnected individual or the job creator with little concern for the rest.
Todays conservatism is about low taxes, fewer regulations, less government and little else. Anyone who dares to define it differently faces political extinction. Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana was considered a solid conservative, until conservatives decided that anyone who seeks bipartisan consensus on anything is a sellout. Even Orrin Hatch of Utah, one of the longest-serving Republican senators, is facing a primary challenge. His flaw? He occasionally collaborated with the late Democratic senator Edward M. Kennedy on providing health insurance coverage for children and encouraging young Americans to join national service programs. In the eyes of Hatchs onetime allies, these commitments make him an ultra-leftist.
I have long admired the conservative tradition and for years have written about it with great respect. But the new conservatism, for all its claims of representing the values that inspired our founders, breaks with the countrys deepest traditions. The United States rose to power and wealth on the basis of a balance between the public and the private spheres, between government and the marketplace, and between our love of individualism and our quest for community.
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/conservatives-used-to-care-about-community-what-happened/2012/05/24/gJQAsR8inU_story.html?hpid=z2
regnaD kciN
(26,044 posts)It was easy for them to support "community" when that word implied a Leave it to Beaver suburban existence. When it includes non-whites, gays, single-parent households...not so much.
Populist_Prole
(5,364 posts)Nasty mean old white guys screaming at the changing world from their ever shrinking bubble.
DirkGently
(12,151 posts)Last edited Fri May 25, 2012, 10:07 AM - Edit history (1)
EFerrari
(163,986 posts)unless you mean, they were clannish.
Zorro
(15,740 posts)That asshole declared that government was the problem, and that's been the mantra embraced by the Republicants ever since.
Their mission has been to cripple government to "prove" that belief.
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)As one that does not admire the 'conservative tradition' like old EJ does, I reject his theory that they 'used to be good'. I mean, when? Going back to Abe?
EJ is sort of conservative himself if you ask me.