Dionne nails it

For sheer precision in what is too often a wholesale muddle of political definitions, E.J. Dionne this morning is indispensable:

Obama will ... be the conservative in 2012, in the truest sense of that word. He is the candidate defending the modestly redistributive and regulatory government the country has relied on since the New Deal, and that neither Ronald Reagan nor George W. Bush dismantled. The rhetoric of the 2012 Republicans suggests they want to go far beyond where Reagan or Bush ever went.

I argued a similar case in the run-up to the 2010 congressional elections; I argued that Democrats, in this incontrovertibly center-right nation, should exploit the majority's professed preference for a philosophical conservatism by declaring themselves the true conservatives (in that they were merely "defending the modestly redistributive and regulatory government the country has relied on since the New Deal").

I about got my head handed to me by a progressive community that, I discovered, preferred lofty labels to pragmatic victories.

Why, Democrats, I was informed -- rather, had stridently screamed at me -- should never ever recoil from their sacred duty to advance the noble Progressive Cause as progressives; even if their cause, at that painful moment of late 2010, entailed little more than "defending the modestly redistributive and regulatory government the country has relied on since the New Deal" -- that is, an essentially conservative cause.

My sense of the righteous was that if keeping the tea-sipping barbarians at the electoral gates meant expropriating the enemy's bragging rights to "true conservatism," then by all means expropriate with a passionate cunning, especially if one's progressive ass is running in an organically conservative swing district. It wasn't as though these Democratic candidates would have been lying; indeed, they were campaigning as the true conservatives -- see conservation of Social Security, Medicare ... -- in a minor epic of sweeping radicalism on a fevered rampage.

Our traditional labels have entered a fluid state of subtle transformation; and if Democrats are to protect their cause, they'll need to explain the profound conservatism underlying today's progressivism. 

And with that, I'm taking my daughter to the mall so she can go 'tweenly radical with her assorted gift cards. God help me.

Comments

[John Duffy]

Dionne is probably the best columnist in America, with Jon Alter his only competition.

PM, I'm not including bloggers in this assessment, only those who have national columns and are asked to opine on TV.

It's profoundly sad that they are so head and shoulders above their fellow villagers.

[You Don't Say]

I suppose it depends on whether the populace now defines conservatism as EJ did or as Boehner, et al, now do: cut government spending.

As for the mall, get a good cup of coffee, assuming you drink it, and find a bench outside each store. She'll have a great time even if you don't. ;-)

[Ansel M.]

PM, your Commentary is almost always my first read of the day, but I happened to read Dionne first today. I hadn't gone far into his piece before I realized that he was writing about the same idea you were expounding a year ago. To the best of my knowledge, you were stating an original concept back then, and I accepted your idea as eminently sensible. The main problem I could see with most Democrats adopting a "conservative" label is that mass hysteria and confusion would ensue among the electorate. In any case, it's great to see someone in the mainstream media finally catching on!

[Jimiskin]

I've been saying for years that we are the true conservatives. It's pretty damn radical to try to do away with the consitution, you know.

[Peter G]

Language shapes the debate and I often take progressives to task for their howls of outrage every time a cherished social program is referred to by the right wingers as some sort of welfare. That's exactly what those programs are no matter how they are funded. Social Security, Medicare are exactly that. When progressives allowed the word welfare, enshrined in your own constitution, to be turned against them so successfully that even they resent it's use I realized that it was only possible in a center-right country. By their dirty words shall you judge them.