Okay, I’ll say it. I really like Joe Scarborough. He’s one of the very, very few Republicans out there who isn’t determined to destroy virtually everything conservatism was supposed to be about and replace it with populist nonsense. He takes endless amounts of shit for this by the fuckhead blogosphere, which is rather fond of populist nonsense.No one who followed Scarborough’s career in Congress (1995-2001) can doubt his conservative bona fides. In fact, he was one of the most conservative members of the House, going so far as to join the cabal that finally toppled Newt Gingrich for not being conservative enough. He consistently held the line on taxing and spending (an anomaly for Republicans these days) and questioned the evangelical foreign policies of the Clinton and early Bush years.
The Last Best Hope: Restoring Conservatism and America’s Promise is, in part, a powerful indictment of the Obama agenda and what its ramifications are for America generally and its economy in particular. If you’ve been reading my writing since the 2004 election season, you’ll be familiar with Mr. Scarborough’s arguments and thinking. It’s just easier to get it in the 200-odd pages of his book than to go through five years of my nonsense.
But Obama didn’t emerge from a vacuum. In fact, he owes his entire presidency to the excess of the Bush years and the abandonment of conservative principles in American politics. Republicans did't lose power over the last two election cycles as much as they spent a decade pissing it away.
This book is important in that it actively separates conservatism from Republicanism. In the last decade, the two are decidedly different things. Conservatism is about principle and Republicanism is about the winning and retention of political power without regard to principle. Republicanism became ascendant in 2001 and within eight years, it all but destroyed the Republican Party and deservedly so. When self-declared conservatives spend money and fight wars in ways that make liberals shudder with envy, there should be no place in politics for such conservatives.
Scarborough makes the point that, in foreign and military affairs, Colin Powell was a conservative and the rest of the Bush administration were Republicans. Remember what the “Weinberger-Powell Doctrine” was? A clear mission, popular and congressional support, an easily definable exit strategy, and the use of overwhelming force to make the victory as clean and clear as possible. All of the above are conservative principles. Now look back on the presidency of Bush the younger and search for those things. Take a fucking lunch because you’ll be gone awhile.
The economics of Republicanism speaks for itself. In fact it differs from Barack Obama’s fiscal philosophies only in degree. President Obama spends a trillion dollars where President Bush might have only spent a hundred billion, but under most circumstances, a conservative wouldn’t spent a dime. The kind of spending of Bush engaged in –“Hey, how about the federal government picks up the tab for grandpa’s hard-on pills” – not only made Obama possible, it him almost palatable to the general public in ways that he never otherwise would have been.
Like most Republicans, Mr. Scarborough makes far too much of Ronald Reagan. Reagan was not the paragon on conservatism that he’s made out to be today. As governor of California, he passed the biggest tax increase in the state’s history until that time and signed the most liberal abortion law in America. As president, he raised taxes more often than he cut them, including doubling the payroll tax.
However, Reagan wasn’t an angry conservative. He didn’t sputter like Boehner or whine like Sarah Palin. In smiling at his enemies, Reagan beat them almost every time, and somewhere along the line Republicans forgot how to do that. And it's going to be awfully difficult to beat candidates like Obama unless they remember how to do it again.
Of course, Joe Scarborough has endless shots taken at him for working for MSNBC and because he actually tells the truth on a fairly regular basis. But what the professional Republican class forgets is that Scarborough was never particularly good at being a hack, and now he’s out of politics completely. There’s a perfectly good Senate seat in Florida that I’m fairly confident that he could have tomorrow if he wanted it. But he’s been fairly upfront about not wanting it.
And maybe that’s for the best. Maybe more than ever before, conservatism needs voices like Joe Scarborough’s and books like The Last Best Hope, lest Republicanism take over completely. If that happens, look for a long line of Barack Obama’s, one after the other, occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Besides, how can you not like a guy who says "fuck" on morning television?
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