The GOP's War on Compassion

Posted by Kos , Daily Kos at 11:50 AM on June 17, 2009.

As we've seen the last few days, the GOP has dug itself a deep hole with a hostility toward empathy that is shared by few outside its white male base (see here and here). While Democrats see government as a way to improve people's lives (acting on empathy for the less fortunate or entitled), Republicans saw government as the enemy and sought its destruction, leaving people to sink or swim on their own.

It wasn't too long ago that, seeing their deficiencies on this front, that a presidential candidate named George W. Bush and his swengali Karl Rove co-opted the concept of "compassionate conservatism". They had correctly surmised that Republicans were seen as heartless, selfish, and unconcerned with the plight of the less fortunate. Understanding that winning as the part of entitlement and privilege would be tough, they set out to pain themselves as empathetic, or "compassionate" (same thing).

9-11 spared them the trouble of having to reprise that approach in 2004, when the election focused on scary terrorists under everyone's beds. But it's probably a safe assumption that without Bush's adoption of the "compassionate" label, he probably would've never come close enough to Gore to have the Supreme Court select him president.

Now that the GOP is wildly out of sync with America on compassion, and losing the youth, women, and (ethnic and sexual) minority vote because of that value, their biggest hope would be to bring back the "compassion" thing and hope people fall for it again. Yet in a stroke of good luck for our side, Republicans seem to have universally concluded that Bush failed because of his attempts at "compassionate conservatism".

Jonah Goldberg, in the National Review, March 2006, writes about Bush's unpopularity and the root causes of it. Sure, there was Iraq and the economy ...

But in the background there was an even larger problem: compassionate conservatism.

As countless writers have noted in National Review over the last five years, most conservatives never really understood what compassionate conservatism was, beyond a convenient marketing slogan to attract swing voters. The reality--as even some members of the Bush team will sheepishly concede--is that there was nothing behind the curtain. Sure, in the hands of Marvin Olasky and others, compassionate conservatism had some heft. But Karl Rove's translation of it into a political platform made it into a pseudo-intellectual rationale for constituent-pleasing and Nixonian "modern Republicanism."

Notice Goldberg admit what I've been arguing -- that "compassionate" was necessary to win swing voters. Without it, the gulf between Republicans and the electorate is vaster. Yet for Goldberg and other conservatives, that "compassionate conservatism" was a "problem".

Wingnut Herman Cain at Human Events, right after the 2006 midterms, where Republicans got shellacked, losing control of both the House and Senate:

Compassionate conservatism failed America and cost Republicans control [...]

Compassionate conservatism completely betrayed conservative voters and their decades of grassroots activism. Fortunately, all is not lost for the true conservative movement. Every House and Senate seat lost this year is an opportunity for conservatives to re-educate the public on true conservative policy solutions. The coming Republican presidential primary offers a similar chance for renewal and the possible emergence of a genuine successor to Ronald Reagan.

No voter turnout machine put in motion over a three-day pre-election period could have overcome this slap in the face to the Republican Party's base. Undoing compassionate conservatism's wreckage will take years, not 72 hours.

Post-election 2008, conservatives doubled down on their criticism of "compassionate conservatism", like former House Majority Leader Dick Armey:

To be sure, the American people have handed power over to the Democrats. But today there is a categorical difference between what Republicans stand for and the principles of individual freedom. Parties are all about getting people elected to political office; and the practice of politics too often takes the form of professional juvenile delinquency: short-sighted and self-centered.

This was certainly true of the Bush presidency. Too often the policy agenda was determined by short-sighted political considerations and an abiding fear that the public simply would not understand limited government and expanded individual freedoms. How else do we explain "compassionate conservatism," No Child Left Behind, the Medicare drug benefit and the most dramatic growth in federal spending since LBJ's Great Society?

The GOP's "compassion gap" has put them in an electoral hole almost impossible to dig out without radically changing its core philosophy, yet the conservative base and intelligentsia blame 'compassionate conservatism" for Bush's failures, despite the fact that Bush likely got the White House in the first place because of his "compassionate conservative" campaign.

Expect former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman to return from China (where he is now serving as Obama's ambassador) wielding a variation of the "compassionate conservative" message for his 2016 presidential campaign. Whether Republican primary voters are ready to give electability another shot after eight years of Obama remains to be seen. I'd put my money on "no", not when they blame compassion/empathy for the biggest presidential failure since Herbert Hoover.

Tagged as: war, bush, election, rove, gop

Kos is the blogmaster of Daily Kos