The Pendragon's Hall

There was an article at Townhall.com entitled "Ron Paul Isn't That Scary" this morning. The gist of the argument is that Paul, while excessive, is at least a traditional conservative--committed to libertarian principles and limited government. Huckabee, described as "compassionate conservatism on steroids," is considered a much bigger threat. I do not like Huckabee--he supported Bill Clinton and is so far left on illegal immigration he should not be counted a true conservative. But Paul, Buchanan and their ilk are no longer good role models. The Pendragon is in the middle of reading Michael Gerson's book "Heroic Conservatism," which is essentially the case for compassionate conservatism and the subtitle of the book says it all: "Why Republicans Need to Embrace America's Ideals (And Why They Deserve to Fail If They Don't)." I have long considered myself a realist, but am beginning to realize why George Bush resonates when he speaks as a compassionate conservative. For too long conservatives have been content to allow the Left to define them as hardhearted individuals committed only to economic expansion. This isn't true of most conservatives anyway, but it does ignore a certain trend in electoral politics--Reagan and Nixon both ran on limited government campaigns yet the government actually expanded. Bush ran on a platform of using government to benefit the people and he has done that in many ways. The party of Reagan and Nixon needed to be redefined--but in reality Bush drew from more Republican springs than either of his predecessors. Reagan, the former FDR Democrat, had inherited the old-school Democrats' mistrust of the Federal government. Bush inherited the strains of Lincoln and TR Republicanism with a healthy dose of Federalism thrown in. This school of thought viewed government as a tool to accomplish certain ends--not the most important one, but one of many. It was, as Saint Paul wrote, "an instrument appointed by God to do good and punish evil." So for all the platitudes spouted by libertarians in conservative clothing, there are deep roots for compassionate conservatism and the country will have lost something if Bush's legacy is squandered by those who live with romantic nostalgia for the Reagan days. Gerson rightly notes that it is a tragedy that the two-party system has devolved into a party friendly to religion (the Republicans) and one hostile to it (the Democrats), thus making politics even more polarizing than usual. An equal tragedy will be if the religious party has to live with the label of hardheartedness that has dogged it for years.