Bury Bush’s Confused Compassionate Conservatism!

[Ed Hudgins]

Bury Bush’s Confused Compassionate Conservatism!

By Edward Hudgins

April 18, 2013 - The George W. Bush Presidential Library is ready to open and the former president is giving interviews doubling down on the mantra that guided his administration: compassionate conservatism.

So it is time to decisively and deeply bury the decayed remnant of the Bush years in an impenetrable political tomb with a stake through its heart.

Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater both wished to limit government and defend individual liberty. Unlike them, Dubya sought to use the federal government as a tool to create a better society in accordance with his vision.

Bush simply accepted that that the welfare state was here to stay, explaining recently that “entitlement was already in place” and “we were modernizing an antiquated system.”

He explained that “The best way … to understand what I meant by ‘compassionate conservative’ is to look at the programs we implemented and look at the results.” Okay, let's do that!

Bush increased the federal budget during his eight years by over 100 percent adjusting for inflation, more than any of his recent predecessors, including Lyndon Johnson. Bush also pushed up discretionary spending by nearly 100 percent as well. So blame him for setting the pace for Obama’s even-greater spending spree.

The Bush prescription drug mandate not only added to the national debt but also set the groundwork and momentum for Obamacare.

The Bush “No Child Left Behind” program to mandate federal education standards on local schools has been fraught with problems, such as “teaching to the test.” Education has not improved because of this costly and intrusive program; in fact, over the past three decades, as federal spending on education has grown, education results have stagnated.

Today Bush argues that he wants to “defend principles and help implement policy based upon those principles.” But “compassionate conservatism” has nothing to do with principles. It’s an arbitrary hash of subjective “feel-good” big-government policies that push America further down the road to Western-European-style welfare state collapse.

The Republican Party is engaged in a civil war concerning which ideas should guide it in the future. The statist policies of Bush and other establishment Republicans—John McCain, Mitt Romney—are to blame for tarnishing the GOP brand, resulting in recent election losses. If the Republicans want to return from the political dead, they’d better bury the Bush legacy for good.

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Hudgins is director of advocacy and a senior scholar for The Atlas Society.

For further reading:

*Edward Hudgins, “GOP Should Invite Social Conservative Extremists To Leave.” April 4, 2013.

*Edward Hudgins, “Obama Offers More of the Same Failed Education Ideas.” February 15, 2013.

*Robert Bidinotto, “Up From Conservatism.” March, 2007.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Ed,

It will be impossible to get the public to feel that the term "compassionate conservatism" is a bad thing. The phrase is very cleverly designed. Nobody can find fault with being compassionate, so they look at people who oppose it and feel: ick.

I think the best attack on this is to break it down into two meanings and alliterate a little for a catchy variation, say, "crony compassionate conservatism." That is what Bush really practiced, as opposed to true "compassionate conservatism" in the sense that conservatives tend to be compassionate and give of their own free will to charities and try to help vulnerable people on their own because they honestly want to.

The Bush kind of compassionate does charity by the government taking from one and giving to another. The true compassionate person does charity by choosing to give, not being compelled to give, and it's from the heart.

In other words, I believe it's worth making a case to expose the propaganda double-speak--and fight it with a "poison parasite" like technique--in addition to arguing against the big-government takeover mentality behind it, rather than fall into the trap of trying to make an argument that ultimately insinuates that being compassionate is somehow a bad thing. This insinuation might be due to the cleverness of the propaganda phrase itself, but it is still there in the public's perception. Ignore it on pain of being ignored.

Here is a pdf from Cialdini and others explaining what a poison parasite is: The Poison Parasite Defense: A Strategy for Sapping a Stronger Opponent’s Persuasive Strength.

Here is an article that discusses it: Persuasion and the 'Poison Parasite' by Sarah Brookhart.

From the article:

Cialdini found that successful counter ads involve the use of effective counter-arguments that call into question the opponent's facts and trustworthiness; mnemonic links to the opponent's ads, a parasitic device which essentially infects the opponent's message by linking its memory and impact to the counter ad; and ridicule to satirize the opponent's ads.

An example of a successful ad campaign that involved all of these elements was the anti-smoking campaign some years ago that featured mock "Marlboro Man" commercials. Those commercials initially looked like tobacco ads, with the same rugged outdoor settings and same macho cowboy characters. But the counter ads then transformed into attacks on tobacco, depicting the cowboys coughing and displaying other health symptoms that result from smoking. This undermined the original ads, as Cialdini said, the satirical ads "preposterized" the notion that smoking was linked to images of male strength and potency.

I believe the phrase "crony compassionate conservatism" could have this kind of firepower in the right hands with the right rhetoric--hands that have mainstream media reach.

And I believe it could be presented with an Objectivist slant.

And further, I believe it would be effective. To what extent, I don't know, but I believe it would kick some serious butt somewhere.

Michael

[Ed Hudgins]

Michael - Using the right words to deliver our message is indeed important. We still suffer form having to explain that by "selfish" Rand did not mean stealing from others. One approach to "compassionate conservatism" is to argue that it's not compassion when it involves compulsion. Voluntary charity is one thing. Forced charity is another.

We at TAS are big on distinquishing crony capitalism from the real deal so I see your point on "crony compassion."

Cheers!

[BaalChatzaf]

What is the old saying? What are the paving stones of the Road to Hell.

Bush is basically a good man, but his wisdom does not match his compassion. When he was POTUS he was in way over his head.

Ba'al Chatzaf