One of the things progressives must do as we keep our eyes on the prize of ’08, is catalog and communicate the extensive list of failures that have been caused by years of conservative governance. How can a governing ideology that says the best government is no government (or as little as possible) successfully meet the needs of our great nation? It can’t, of course, and The Big Con, a new blog offered at The Campaign for America’s Future, is a great source for exposing "the big lie" of conservatism.
In the spirit of these words from Yellow Canary (12/12/05 diary): "....one of the uses of dKos....to simultaneously refine and amplify the political will," I would like to recommend The Big Con to all Kossacks as worth a visit. It will amplify our knowledge and understanding of the many ways conservatism has failed. ..http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/... And there's more:
Rick Perlstein, currently writing at The Big Con, is a long time student of conservatives in action (and the author of an acclaimed 2001 biography of Goldwater). Though he never thought of himself as one of them, he says that he once was inspired by the conservatives he knew, seeing them as "principled" and "endlessly determined."
But no more. Perlstein, and the rest of us, have all seen the results of the 2002-2006 years of total conservative domination of the government. "Conservatism has been killing Americans," Perlstein now concludes. What once looked like principle to him, "now looks like mania."
The flaws inherent in conservative ideology are obvious of course: it is a movement driven by its scorn for the very government it proposes to lead. Combine that disdain for government (and for the governed) with conservatism’s excessive faith in free market fundamentalism and here’s what we’ve got:
-corporate excess,
-a bloated, not a smaller, government,
-cronies replacing professionals in civil service jobs
-lobbysists writing the laws,
-govt. money used to reward campaign contributors.
It’s pay-to-play politcs all the time and politics trumps performance in every case.
We all know the names of the specific failures by heart, and The Big Con revisits each one from Iraq, Katrina, and Gonzales, to the rotting infrastructure in our cities and the current developing story of the failure of our FDA to protect our food supply. It examines all of these through a very specific lens: conservative government’s failure to govern.
And it isn’t just incompetence that creates the failures. Robert Borsage, also writing at The Big Con, makes it clear that it is their ideology itself that builds failure into the very act of governing by conservatives. Their belief in the imperial presidency; their absolute conviction that the president is above the law; their need to often operate in secret (because they know they're breaking the law, and because they do realize that theirs is a minority position and does not represent the majority of Americans). All this fosters lies and the obstruction of justice, and ultimately leads to disgrace.
Is there a more classic example of the above scenario in action than the Bush administration lying the country into the Iraq War?
I will conclude here by citing a third Big Con writer, Isaiah J. Poole, on the one thing conservatives have been successful at: souring the voters on the very idea of government, and making them believe it is a liberal failing. Says Poole: "Just as there is an ornery man in every bar who rails about liberals, progressives need to go into those same bars and rail about conservative failure in ways that hit home with the majority of people who are its victims."