PIssing Away the Conservative Moment

Since most of the folks I know in cyberspace are liberal, I like to stick something up on my blog once in a while as a reminder that the words "intelligent conservative" are not necessarily an oxymoron.

There have been rumblings for some time from the religious right, some of whom are catching on to the fact, that for all their loud and boistrous political activity for the last 25-30 years, they actually have had very little success in achieving their ends. My own guess is that after Bush, who is, after all, one of their own, even more frustration is going to set in and people are going to either drop out of political activity or become even more radicalized -- like the guy who wants Christians to move to South Carolina so it can secede and become a Christian theocracy.

However, old-style conservatives aren't real happy about Bush either. Paleocons are isolationists at heart; economic conservatives want smaller government not the government expansion that goes along with war -- I have an aunt who voted Libertarian because she's outraged about the Patriot Act. Bainbridge, in the article I've linked to above says:

It's time for us conservatives to face facts. George W. Bush has pissed away the conservative moment by pursuing a war of choice via policies that border on the criminally incompetent. We control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and (more-or-less) the judiciary for one of the few times in my nearly 5 decades, but what have we really accomplished? Is government smaller? Have we hacked away at the nanny state? Are the unborn any more protected? Have we really set the stage for a durable conservative majority?

Then, after voicing a number of complaints about the Iraq War he ends by saying:

What really annoys me, however, are the domestic implications of all this. The conservative agenda has advanced hardly at all since the Iraq War began. Worse yet, the growing unpopularity of the war threatens to undo all the electoral gains we conservatives have achieved in this decade. Stalwarts like me are not going to vote for Birkenstock wearers no matter how bad things get in Iraq, but what about the proverbial soccer moms? Gerrymandering probably will save the House for us at least through the 2010 redistricting, but what about the Senate and the White House?

You bet the soccer moms are going to vote Democrat next time -- this war could end up being a huge set-back for the Republicans, and the longer it lasts, the worse it's going to be. The high oil prices and attendant economic woes aren't going to help, either -- Americans vote their pocketbook when all is said and done. If we can't get out of Iraq while leaving a stable situation behind us, then our economy is going to be in real peril. As Juan was mentioning lately, nobody likes to think we went to war for oil(if we did, we *really* screwed up), but the fact is that gas prices have a real impact on all of our lives -- and the working class and poor that the left is supposed be supporting will feel especially pinched if the Iraq situation spirals out of control.
Politically, if the left is going to get anywhere, it's got to remember its roots are in being the champions of the working class instead of being the Party of People Not Like Us. It may never have a better opportunity than right now to get Bubba on its side.