"Insanely conservative" is how one leftist poster (who seemed to have a lot of like-minded company) described Obama in a recent thread on a forum site I frequent thats primary topic is non-political and whose membership, I'd hazard to characterize, is comprised of people far less politically aware and sophisticated than that of the many political sites and blogs I read.
I sit and I think about that phrase as a descriptor for Obama, and I try to wrap my head around it. It seems to me that to hold a belief like that is only possible if you know absolutely nothing about what it means to be "conservative" or "liberal" (it hurts me to use liberal in this context and I must note that "progressive" is the more historically correct term for the ideological pedigree in question, but in the popular mind, Republicans are conservative and Democrats are liberal).
I can only assume from the context of the thread that Obama is "insanely conservative" because in many practical matters of governance they see him to be "Bush 2.0." Indeed, he failed to close Guantanamo, renewed the Patriot Act and used it with much vigor, practices rendition and greatly increased the use of drone strikes, and has presided over unprecedented domestic surveillance.
Unfortunately for these people, they are under quite a misapprehension if they think these are conservative policies. Bush was a Republican, true, but he was not particularly conservative. He had mostly big government, statist instincts. Obama's first opponent, John McCain, is notable for being among the most moderate of all Republicans, most willing to cross the aisle and work hand in hand with Democrats (per McCain-Feingold), but during the election it was
he that was presented as some "insanely conservative" war-monger for wanting to continue Bush's policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Romney, likewise is a man of very modest, mainstream, moderate instincts. In any other era, a decent, middle-of-the-road sort of guy with good business instincts. Again, he was portrayed as some sort of radical conservative in the election. We badly needed someone with his sound business and managerial experience. Not a former community activist and lecturer who's never held a real job in his life.
There is nothing conservative about the Patriot Act. In fact, when you think of surveillance states in the real world, you're kidding yourself if the nations that come to mind aren't predominately leftist: Great Britain -- more video cameras per square mile in London than any city in the world, and you can get sent to jail for speaking an uncivil word about a protected minority. Even its so-called "conservative" parties are basically on board with leftist, globalist fads. The old Soviet Union (and the current Russia), China, North Korea. Cuba. These are places where you expect your words to be monitored and incorrect attitudes to be adjusted.
There's nothing conservative about foreign wars of choice. Taking out the Taliban was one thing, but in going in for the long haul, Bush was following much more in the footsteps of the liberal Presidents who led us into the bloodiest foreign wars of our history: Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson.
Taft, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Eisenhower, and Reagan were notable for keeping us out of bloody, ruinous conflicts. Nixon came in with Vietnam going full force after being initiated by Kennedy and escalated by Johnson. He's often vilified in conjunction with Vietnam, but the truth is, he deescalated and ended the war.
Violations of constitutional rights -- the Patriot Act, rendition, Guantanamo Bay -- are not the intellectual heritage of conservatism. They're the intellectual heritage of Wilsonian progressivism. I don't think any high school courses cover it at all today, but under Wilson's rule during WW I, there was widespread suspension of constitutional rights and suppression and even imprisonment of political dissenters. And of course FDR's incarceration of innocent Japanese-Americans is infamous.
Obama did indeed end the war in Iraq. Arguably "losing the peace" in doing so. But he loses any cred for being a peacemaker by the facts that casualties in Afghanistan multiplied under his leadership, he led us into undeclared war in Libya, and executed U.S. citizens without due process -- including a 16-year-old American boy.
So, when people call Obama "conservative" for his "Bush 2.0" behaviors, what they're really talking about is that Obama acts like Bush when Bush wasn't acting like a conservative. But how about in other areas? Can you really call a president "conservative" when they've presided over a radical re-imagining of our health insurance and health care systems? Is it "conservative" to blatantly ignore immigration law and grant blanket de facto amnesty to millions of illegals? Is it "conservative" to restrict drilling on federal lands, to oppose the Keystone pipeline, to saddle coal power plants with ruinous regulatory burdens (that's a promise he kept -- to destroy the coal industry and make energy more expensive), to preside over an EPA that dubs carbon dioxide, a fundamental atmospheric gas and a vital part of the plant life cycle (and by extension all life) a pollutant?
Is it conservative to support increasing the capital gains tax, even though it wouldn't result in more revenue, in the interest of "fairness?"
Finally, there's nothing "conservative" about the man that believes
this:
"If you look at the victories and
failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the
court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in
previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to
vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long
as I could pay for it Id be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured
into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues
such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as
radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasnt
that radical. It didnt break free from the essential constraints that
were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its
been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that
generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what
the states cant do to you. Says what the Federal government cant do to
you, but doesnt say what the Federal government or State government must
do on your behalf, and that hasnt shifted and one of the, I think,
tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights
movement became so court focused I think there was a tendancy to lose
track of the political and community organizing and activities on the
ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers
through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we
still suffer from that."
