Since the election, I’ve heard bickering, mostly on the left, on why the 2010 elections were ruined because of a “temper tantrum” by the right (Vanity Fair even jumped in on the act). Liberals contend the reason conservatives and tea partiers won so large is because of an emotional outburst by Americans. Liberals caution we should move beyond such emotional outbursts because those reactions lack in rational thinking.
There are two points lost in this rhetoric: 1) The Left’s “wave” elections of 2006 and 2008 generally had the same mantra as the 2010 elections (The anti-war and the youth segments voted on a dislike for Bush). 2) The “temper tantrum” theory ignores a long historical view which suggests that the 2006/08 elections are the aberration, not the Tea Party movement nor 2010 conservatism.
First, the left, in 2006 and 2008, largely campaigned against then President Bush. If there was a way to attach a politician to Bush, the left did it. This was largely understandable, it is fairly typical for a two term Presidential incumbent to leave office with the voters exhausted with his/her party. So in many regards, the “temper tantrum” vote against Bush won 2006/08.
The real question, which leads to point two, is this: Did Bush exhaustion leave the electorate similarly exhausted on the ideas of conservatism?
No.
Though I am in the minority in this position.
The most famous essay to emerge post-2008 on the defeat of conservatism was written by Sam Tanenhaus entitled “Conservatism is Dead.” He later turned this into a book. The essential crux was this: The defeats of Bush and McCain heralded the death toll of conservatism as an intellectual movement. This was well prior to the Tea Party movement or any of the major initiatives by the Obama administration:
After George W. Bush’s two terms, conservatives must reckon with the consequences of a presidency that failed, in large part, because of its fervent commitment to movement ideology: the aggressively unilateralist foreign policy; the blind faith in a deregulated, Wall Street-centric market; the harshly punitive “culture war” waged against liberal “elites.” That these precepts should have found their final, hapless defender in John McCain, who had resisted them for most of his long career, only confirms that movement doctrine retains an inflexible and suffocating grip on the GOP. …
All this suggests that movement doctrine has not only been defeated but discredited.
Tanenhaus suggested that movement conservatism was dead. Now in the light of 2010, we can see this assumption was flatly wrong. But something further has also been repudiated, his assertion that “government intervention” is the “universal consensus” for solving our problems (economic and otherwise).
This is problematic because conservatism has often joined with libertarianism in showing strong contempt for the government. If government intervention is the new mantra, it should reflect two things: 1) the death of conservatism, and 2) the rise of liberal thought.
Which brings us to the real problem of not only Tanenhaus, but the temper tantrum theory: America is a center-right country. There was not a massive shift in public ideology in 2006/08, there was an aberration. A brief moment where some conservatives, disillusioned with Bush became moderates, and some moderates briefly became liberal (mostly due to the phenomenal primary race between the then popular Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama).
This proof for this is rather simple. In 2009, Gallup measured the conservative nature of the states. A majority fell within the conservative category. A few points swing in favor of liberals and moderates while conservatives lose ground. However, normality has returned with liberals losing points, and likely returning to their regular 19%.
After that poll Gallup polled individuals and found a similar statistic: 40% of the overall electorate is conservative. The next major group is moderate. Liberals make up only 20% of the electorate.
This makeup has not always been the case. Since the 20th century, it has been quite the opposite. Conservatism, as we know it now, has only existed since the end of World War II. It’s first major electoral push came with Barry Goldwater, and you don’t see a conservatives gain the presidency until Ronald Reagan. In political terms, modern conservatism, as a political ideology, is relatively new. Prior to this, it was simply assumed everyone was liberal in the line of John Locke. (Nash)
Since conservatism’s ascendancy to the top of the political sphere in 1980, it has known nothing but victory, the political setbacks have been few: Clinton, Obama, and the 2006 midterms being the only setbacks during that period of time. In a 30 year span, that is remarkable. (For more history, see The Conservative Political History in America since 1945 by George H. Nash, the preeminent conservative historian, Tanenhaus references a few of the people Nash covers in stunning detail).
What is even more remarkable is that during that time, the last two election cycles are the only instance we’ve seen of a liberal agenda being pushed. Clinton stopped being liberal when he realized he would never get anything accomplished. This can even be seen in the 2008 election of President Obama. After the primaries, President Obama moved quickly to appear like a moderate. The high rhetoric was removed and replaced with moderate solutions (we heard talk of tax cuts and using a scalpel to cut spending). In other words, even the man accused of being the most liberal President since FDR had to ran a moderate general election.
Even more troubling for Democrats is this fact: Conservatives won an election with very high voter enthusiasm. This used to be a bellwether for liberals, as long as voter turnout was high, Republicans would lose. This notion has been shattered in a midterm election. Gallup reported that enthusiasm for the election was the higher than it has ever been.
In other words, conservatism as the predominant political ideology of America is growing, as is the enthusiasm of conservative voters.
The 2010 elections were far from a temper tantrum by the electorate. It was a reassertion of the mainstream political ideology of America: a center-right conservatism. This is bad news for liberals and Democrats who lost many of their conservative colleagues in the midterm elections. Now the their leadership will have more liberals pushing the agenda than conservative ones. In a country where 80% of the electorate rejects liberalism, it is going to take more than a temper tantrum to change the conservative course of American politics. Liberals are going to have to educate voters on why their ideology is better than conservatism. Liberals are already 30 years behind the curve on this point.
Perhaps the real question Tanenhaus needs to ask is: Are we seeing the death of modern liberalism?
