Self-destructive Pseudo-Conservatives

Barack Obama’s chances for reelection are helped by the fact that his opponents are arguing about who among them is the most conservative.

President Obama’s position isn’t particularly rosy. The unemployment figures are dropping too slowly and the economic recovery isn’t very robust. Gasoline prices are rising, things in Afghanistan are falling apart and a new war threatens with Iran. And despite all that, compared to his Republican challengers, he’s leading in all opinion polls. At this point, a Republican victory in November is hard to imagine no matter which of the candidates he faces.

The Republican primary election is proving to be suicidal. The individual presidential candidates are tearing each other apart and they’re doing so with increasing aggressiveness. The aggression stems from the fact that Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul are vehemently arguing which of them is the one true conservative. And the fact is, they’re all just pseudo-conservatives.

Haunted by the Powers of Darkness

American historian and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Hofstadter analyzed the “pseudo-conservative revolts” of the American right in a series of essays written between 1954 and 1965. “Pseudo-conservative” is Hofstadter’s designation for a politician who claims to champion traditional American values and institutions, but who unconsciously works for their abolition because he defends them against more or less fictitious threats. The pseudo-conservative feels himself haunted by dark powers.

He complains daily that his individual liberties are being increasingly removed by the government in Washington. He sees his own nation as being weakened to the point where it could fall victim to a conspiracy, yet at the same time sees it as so powerful that it is capable of imposing its will on the entire world. He despises the “socialism” practiced in the European welfare states and opposes all forms of their social assistance. He views every action by the government in Washington with distrust. He demands a transfer of power and responsibility from the federal government to the individual state level.

Demand for Constitutional Changes

Whether it’s Romney, Santorum, Gingrich or Paul: All of them claim to want to preserve American institutions and all would weaken them if they were given the power. That goes especially for the core institution of American political life, the Constitution. America’s Founding Fathers made changing the Constitution a difficult process and they did so for good reason.

Changes or additions to the Constitution must be ratified by a two-thirds majority in the Senate and House of Representatives as well as by three-fourths of the states. The numerous rash calls for Constitutional amendments challenge the political consensus of the American people and beg the question: What could be more contrary to conservative principles?

The current Republican candidates are outdoing each other in their calls for specific amendments to be repealed. Ron Paul, for example, wants to withhold American citizenship from children of illegal alien parents even if they are born in the United States and thereby advocates removal of an amendment that came into force in 1868 at the end of the U.S. Civil War.

Repeal of the National Income Tax

Rabid Catholic Rick Santorum has gone so far to say one of John F. Kennedy’s speeches made him want to “throw up” because Kennedy favored a strict separation of church and state as required by the First Amendment. [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/29/opinion/a-sorensens-view-on-santorum-and-the-jfk-speech.html] And all four candidates more or less call for abandoning the national income tax by repealing the 1913 amendment establishing it.

Pseudo-conservatives in America had a moment of triumph in 1964 when Barry Goldwater was nominated to run for president at the San Francisco convention. Goldwater was a declared enemy of the welfare state, advocated doing away with Social Security as well as the national income tax and stood in opposition to any healthcare reform whatsoever. At the peak of the Cold War, Goldwater claimed the American people had more to fear from their government in Washington than they did from the communists in Moscow.

A Weak-principled Opportunist

Goldwater was too radical even for some Republicans. During his acceptance speech at San Francisco’s Cow Palace, one prominent Republican conspicuously walked out: George Romney, governor of Michigan. Romney favored the concepts of a minimum wage, improved unemployment insurance coverage and developmental assistance. In Goldwater, Romney saw an enemy of the civil rights that were sacred to him.

George Romney, a man of principle, left the convention hall accompanied by his 17-year-old son, Mitt. Mitt Romney’s website now contains a newspaper report from 1964 that reads as if young Mitt not only accompanied his father in walking out of the Cow Palace, but he also walked out of the convention carrying the same principles as his father.

Many Republicans accuse Mitt Romney of a lack of principles. He’s considered a master flip-flopper who changes his opinions without hesitation if they’re no longer what the majority favors. As governor of Massachusetts, he introduced mandatory health insurance but now says he’s an opponent of “Obamacare.” In all probability, Romney will most likely be the Republican running against Obama in November.

Romney is far from being a second Goldwater. Goldwater was a fanatic for principles where Romney Jr. is a weak-principled opportunist. He’s also a pseudo-conservative. A real conservative holds fast to proven principles and doesn’t use them as bargaining chips depending on which way the wind happens to be blowing. If the 17-year-old Mitt learned anything at all from his father, he has long since forgotten it.