That's how I interpret the new opinion column by Michael Gerson. I think he wrote it because he thinks the Romney campaign--and more specifically the American right--are going to drag down the entire GOP this year.
Gerson was a deeply embedded insider in the George W. Bush administration. He was GWB's chief speechwriter and one of Karl Rove's lieutenants. Part of Gerson's job was to sell America on the idea of going to war with Iraq.
Gerson's a serious GOP character and a movement conservative. So it makes a splash when he joins the growing chorus of Romney's conservative critics, as he did yesterday.
But Gerson did more than that: he actually attacked the ideology conservatives have been preaching to their rank and file for decades. Gerson's critique sounded kinda like Keith Olbermann, except "theatrical regret" replaces the outrage:
Restoring a semblance of equal opportunity (for Americans) — promoting family commitment, educational attainment and economic advancement — will take tremendous effort and creative policy.
(Gerson admits there's a very real need for government policies to create even the "semblance" of equal opportunity in America. Conservatives have been taught to dismiss that sort of thing as outcome-based "social engineering"--an evil. Here Gerson suggests that such "creative policy" is a necessity.)
Yet a Republican ideology pitting the “makers” against the “takers” offers nothing. No sympathy for our fellow citizens. No insight into our social challenge. No hope of change. This approach involves a relentless reductionism. Human worth is reduced to economic production. Social problems are reduced to personal vices. Politics is reduced to class warfare on behalf of the upper class.
That is what conservatism has become, according to this conservative insider.
But I don't believe the disgust he expresses here is sincere. And if Gerson is merely feigning disgust with his party and ideology for political effect--that's a very good sign for Democrats this fall.
(CONTINUED)
Gerson is expressing disgust with heartless and brainless--but fundamental--conservative beliefs reflected in the Republican agenda. "Yeah, the liberals were right all along--conservatives do despise American employees and their families, we really are practicing class war against American employees. The corollary is that any journalist or Republican voter who gives us the benefit of a doubt about good intentions is a pimp or idiot. A Republican who makes less than $200K a year and supports us? Privately, we think a guy like that is politically retarded. Publicly we tell him he's an American hero."
That turns out to be the real deal behind conservatism, according to Gerson. But I don't think Gerson's sincerely sorry about it. As a member of the GWB administration, he was swilling wine with the creeps and liars and plutocrats who knew it the GOP was always like this. The contempt for the 47% that Gerson criticizes here has always been an essential, barely suppressed basis of conservative ideology. Gerson knows that, he's had lunch with these guys; still does.
So why is he ripping rank and file conservatives a new asshole, if he doesn't really deplore what he's deploring?
Images of a rat scuttling out of sinking ship are probably rushing into your head. There's a lot of that in the GOP right now, a regular "squeak! squeak! get me outta here!" response to the daily news reporting on Mitt.
Yeah, there's that Gerson motive. But it's more than that. Gerson's critique isn't primarily of Mitt. It's primarily a critique of the conservative wingers that have become leading voices in the party challenging GOP plutocrat dominance.
The tea party, the top ranks of the Christian Right, the talk radio conservatives in the tradition of Limbaugh, the angry white guys who aren't millionaires and hate the people who aren't angry white guys... Gerson is criticizing them, their dominance over the champagne conservatives.
I infer that Gerson thinks the GOP is going to lose big this fall. The House, the Senate...
Washington, Republican, conservative insider Gerson wouldn't criticize the deeply held hatreds of the conservative rank and file...if Republicans were five points ahead in the polls. And Gerson wouldn't run this kind of "retraction" of the daily message of conservatism if he thought the GOP was even with the Dems, this fall. There would be no percentage in telling the truth about conservatism, if there was a serious chance for the GOP this fall.
On the basis of that I assume that Gerson is being told there is another Dem tsunami on the way. He's preparing the way for a planned evisceration of conservative multi-millionaires and activists who keep forcing Romney and Boehner to the right, year after year. Gerson wants to blame any upcoming GOP disaster on those guys, the guys to the right of the establishment--thus relieving Washington's GOP establishment of responsibility for a predicted election year debacle..
In my opinion, Gerson's lying about what he personally believes. He never deplored any of that stuff he say deplores in modern conservatism; he was part of the Bush administration and fought on behalf of GOP contempt for fellow Americans.
But the fact that he's now pretending to deplore it--that should put smiles on Dem faces this election cycle.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...