Is the Conservative Movement Dead?
Last night I went to a meeting of the Robert A. Taft Club, and according to the two speakers, the conservative movement is "brain dead."
One was Bruce Bartlett, author of Impostor : How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy, and the other was Don Devine, president of the American Conservative Union. Now they made a good argument for why Bush is not a conservative, and neither were Nixon, Ford, H.W. Bush, or Eisenhower (I would argue that Bush is a model pre-Johnson Democrat). However, if the conservative movement is "brain dead," neither Bartlett or Devine make a suggestion or an argument on how to revive it. They continued to bicker about William F. Buckley and the National Review (a who-said-what-and-when-and-to-who argument), but it seemed that those in the crowd under the age of 30 really just wanted some guidence.
Knowing where we came from is important, and since no one can really agree how modern conservatism really even got started, it is hard to figure out where to go from there. This generation needs a Russell Kirk, an F. A. Hayek, a William F. Buckley.
One was Bruce Bartlett, author of Impostor : How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy, and the other was Don Devine, president of the American Conservative Union. Now they made a good argument for why Bush is not a conservative, and neither were Nixon, Ford, H.W. Bush, or Eisenhower (I would argue that Bush is a model pre-Johnson Democrat). However, if the conservative movement is "brain dead," neither Bartlett or Devine make a suggestion or an argument on how to revive it. They continued to bicker about William F. Buckley and the National Review (a who-said-what-and-when-and-to-who argument), but it seemed that those in the crowd under the age of 30 really just wanted some guidence.
Knowing where we came from is important, and since no one can really agree how modern conservatism really even got started, it is hard to figure out where to go from there. This generation needs a Russell Kirk, an F. A. Hayek, a William F. Buckley.
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