The excellent Kagro in the Morning Show today (to which I am now addicted, especially the David (Kagro) and Greg (DemfromCT) segment at the beginning), referred me to a nice piece in The Nation by Rick (Nixonland) Perlstein, There Are No More Honest Conservatives, So Stop Looking For One.
Perlstein wonders why pundits and liberals seem compelled to find "reasonable" or "honest" conservative writers and pundits, because he says there simply aren't any. He had hopes for some, like Sean Trende at Real Clear Politics, but Sean failed when he distorted data to write that Republicans could win if they just got more whites out to vote.
Perlstein makes his point mostly by contrast with the '70s when there supposedly were some "honest" conservatives, mentioning James Kilpatrick, George Nash and Kevin Phillips. Even the early George Will, writes Perlstein, was a scathing critic of Nixon on Watergate, and even William F. Buckley engaged in "civil" debate with liberals (of course, while advocating ideas like marooning welfare recipients on an island off Manhattan).
Of course, Will is now, says Rick, where he belongs:
with the haters, hustlers, haters, hacks and conspiratorial lunatics at Fox News—but also, unfortunately, still at The Washington Post, enjoying a handsome living by making up things about Barack Obama and Benghazi and calling climate change a hoax.
And Kevin Phillips has become a kind of liberal -- probably appalled at how the Southern Strategy he helped create -- has been used to destroy the middle class.
But I would go farther than Perlstein.
There are no honest conservatives, because any conservative who is honest would have to cease being a conservative. Conservative ideas have been completely discredited by reality:
Tax cuts don't lead to growth;
tax increases don't lead to economic ruin;
deficits don't lead to inflation;
wars don't lead to peace;
regulation doesn't stifle business;
"self-regulation" doesn't work;
government aid does not lead to dependency;
free market health care doesn't work but costs ridiculous amounts.
and on and on.
I suppose that before Reagan, there was a place for conservatives as a moderating influence on, e.g., spending. But now that conservatives and Republicans have rejected the New Deal Consensus, and with that rejection are trying to kill off the great balance between the free market and government involvement that FDR and LBJ achieved, they have nothing to offer except policies that inevitably lead to misery, inequality and despair for the majority.
Not only are there no honest conservatives. There are no honest conservative ideas.