The Support Bush Inspires

Contrary to my previous entry, Glenn Greenwald wrote an interesting post on Sunday that asked the musical question, "Do Bush followers have a political ideology?" His answer was no, they just have a cult of personality around Bush himself. So just as cracks do indeed seem to be appearing in the Republican monolith, we have to recognize that other parts of that monolith are just as (or more?) rabid than they've ever been.

It used to be the case that in order to be considered a "liberal" or someone "of the Left," one had to actually ascribe to liberal views on the important policy issues of the day – social spending, abortion, the death penalty, affirmative action, immigration, "judicial activism," hate speech laws, gay rights, utopian foreign policies, etc. etc. These days, to be a "liberal," such views are no longer necessary.

Now, in order to be considered a "liberal," only one thing is required – a failure to pledge blind loyalty to George W. Bush. The minute one criticizes him is the minute that one becomes a "liberal," regardless of the ground on which the criticism is based. And the more one criticizes him, by definition, the more "liberal" one is. Whether one is a "liberal" -- or, for that matter, a "conservative" -- is now no longer a function of one's actual political views, but is a function purely of one's personal loyalty to George Bush.

Greenwald uses the example of Andrew Sullivan, who has long-time conservative credentials but has split with the Bushies on a few points and has thus been redefined as left-leaning and liberal. Greenwald then goes on to provide a number of other examples:

We see the same thing happening to hard-core conservative Bob Barr due to his criticism of Bush's violations of FISA . Similarly, the minute a Senator with years of conservatism behind them deviates from a Bush decree on a single issue, they are no longer "conservative." George Voinovich became a "liberal" the minute he refused to support John Bolton's nomination; John Sununu is now "liberal" because he did not favor immediate renewal of every single provision of the Patriot Act which Bush demanded, and Senators like Chuck Hagel and John McCain long ago gave up any "conservative" status because of their insistence on forming opinions that occasionally deviate from the decrees from the White House.

People who self-identify as "conservatives" and have always been considered to be conservatives become liberal heathens the moment they dissent, even on the most non-ideological grounds, from a Bush decree. That's because "conservatism" is now a term used to describe personal loyalty to the leader (just as "liberal" is used to describe disloyalty to that leader), and no longer refers to a set of beliefs about government.

Greenwald continues on at length to build a compelling argument that's well worth your time.

As if to prove his point, a correspondent in the comments to Greenwald's post calls him a Bush-hater and dismisses his entire point on that basis alone. It's a pretty useful strategy. Anything Bushies don't like (or don't want to address) can be blamed on personal animosity to Bush himself and tossed away without examination. It's easy to see why they would consider this a compelling strategy--if their support of Bush is based only on personal liking of and attraction to the man, then any negative response to his policies must be based on personal dislike. Greenwald was similarly attacked on Monday by conservative bloggers, and he responded to his attackers in a follow-up post. None of the critics he mentions took issue with the substance of his argument, so if we were scoring this like a high-school or college debate, we'd see that no one has laid a glove on him so far.

It's worth noting a little bit more about what Bob Barr's been up to. During the Clinton impeachment, he was perhaps the most rabid of the House managers, and he was a far-right conservative poster child long before that. Last week, he appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference (the same event where Ann Coulter received a warm response for calling Muslims "ragheads" and considering the assassination of Bill Clinton). Greenwald linked to a reference to Dana Milbank's Saturday column in The Washington Post about that appearance.

"Are we losing our lodestar, which is the Bill of Rights?" Barr beseeched the several hundred conservatives at the Omni Shoreham in Woodley Park. "Are we in danger of putting allegiance to party ahead of allegiance to principle?"

Barr answered in the affirmative. "Do we truly remain a society that believes that . . . every president must abide by the law of this country?" he posed. "I, as a conservative, say yes. I hope you as conservatives say yes."

But nobody said anything in the deathly quiet audience. Barr merited only polite applause when he finished, and one man, Richard Sorcinelli, booed him loudly. "I can't believe I'm in a conservative hall listening to him say [Bush] is off course trying to defend the United States," Sorcinelli fumed.

At least Barr understands what he's up against, as he compares his current campaign to the impeachment trial.

Barr elaborated on his conundrum. "It's difficult," he acknowledged. "It's not about sex, which was very easy to explain."

And there's your modern Republican party, folks. This is the kind of logic (or lack of same) we'll have to confront in the next elections. But, as we noted last night, at least (for the time being anyway) these people make up no more than 39 percent of the population.