Shut Up, Crybabies

Glenn Greenwald makes the case against whiny-ass titty-babies like National Review editor Rich Lowry and erstwhile Congressional Republibot Newt Gingrich complaining that Bush and his rubberstamp GOP Congress have tarnished the good name of Conservatism:

The fabled Goldwater/Reagan small-government "conservatism of doubt" which [Andrew Sullivan] hails — like the purified, magnanimous form of Communism — exists, for better or worse, only in myth.

While it is true that Bush has presided over extraordinary growth in federal spending, so did Reagan. Though Bush's deficit spending exceeds that of Reagan's, it does so only by degree, not level. The pornography-obsessed Ed Meese and the utter lawlessness of the Iran-contra scandal were merely the Reagan precursors to the Bush excesses which Sullivan finds so "anti-conservative." The Bush presidency is an extension, an outgrowth, of the roots of political conservatism in this country, not a betrayal of them.

All of the attributes which have made the Bush presidency so disastrous are not in conflict with political conservatism as it exists in reality. Those attributes — vast expansions of federal power to implement moralistic agendas and to perpetuate political power, along with authoritarian faith in the Leader — are not violations of "conservative principles." Those have become the defining attributes of the Conservative Movement in this country.

That is why [conservatives] bred and elevated George Bush for six years, and suddenly "realized" that he was "not a conservative" only once political expediency required it.

This is largely right, and I'd add that there are non-mythical, small-government, flesh-and-blood Goldwater conservatives scattered across America, people who quite genuinely support same-sex marriage, reproductive rights, and the tax cuts—and every one of them I've met hated Bush from the get-go because they saw the Schiavo-style meddling coming from a thousand miles away. The problem for these people is the truth in what Glenn says—that a conservative movement reflective of those principles is truly nonexistent. And they know it.

They're voting Democrat these days.

Related: The Ownership Society.