Welcome Instapundit readers. I also have written about whether Obama is a socialist, which is a good companion to this post.
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That seems like a joke question, but it’s an apparently serious belief of Bruce Bartlett, a former supply-sider and Bush Administration official who has flipped sides and joined the left.
I’ve known Bruce for decades and he’s a fun guy to hang out with, but he’s gone hard left in recent years, pimping for a VAT and urging GOPers to sell out on health care.
But now he is officially crazy, because he wants us to believe that Obama is a conservative, or at least a moderate conservative.
Bruce cites five reasons in his article for this bizarre hypothesis.
1. “His stimulus bill was half the size that his advisers thought necessary”
This is a rather strange assertion. Obama flushed $800 billion down the federal toilet on a fake stimulus, but we’re supposed to believe he’s a “moderate conservative” because he didn’t waste even more of our money.
2. “He continued Bush’s war and national security policies without change and even retained Bush’s defense secretary”
Okay, maybe this is true. I’m not competent to make any sweeping judgments on foreign policy.
3. “He put forward a health plan almost identical to those that had been supported by Republicans such as Mitt Romney in the recent past, pointedly rejecting the single-payer option favored by liberals”
This is an indictment of Romney and other squishy Republicans, not a sign of Obama’s moderate conservatism. Obama has radically expanded the role of government in a sector that already has been screwed up by government intervention. If this is conservative, I’m a communist.
4. “He caved to conservative demands that the Bush tax cuts be extended without getting any quid pro quo whatsoever”
Bruce is simply wrong. Obama wanted all of the “middle class” tax cuts extended, and he had to strike a deal with GOPers about “tax cuts for the rich.” To be fair, Obama’s position was at least somewhat moderate at the time, but he’s since come out of the pro-tax closet as part of the budget negotiations.
5. “And in the past few weeks he has supported deficit reductions that go far beyond those offered by Republicans.”
Bruce must be smoking crack. If Obama really wanted maximum deficit reduction, he could have supported the Ryan budget or the Republican Study Committee plan, both of which contained more deficit reduction than anything Obama has ever supported. But Bruce is making it seem as if the conservative position is maximum deficit reduction when the real goal is restraining the size of government. By Bruce’s absurd logic, doubling all taxes would be the conservative choice since “deficit reduction” theoretically is maximized.
I actually feel guilty about this blog post. I suspect Bruce doesn’t really believe what he writes and is just seeking attention. But I couldn’t resist.
I think it depends on how you define “Conservative”. In America, the common definition is nowhere close to the Cato definition. Most people think a Republican is conservative. But we all know that rarely lines up with true conservatism. Obama is no Bernie Sanders though… as the Fox news crowd would have you think.
There is an alternate hypothesis which I believe explains the similarities between Obama and Conservatives much better. That is: BOTH parties have moved significantly to the Left in past decades so that today’s so-called conservatives would indeed be considered lefties back then, and lefties of the past (listen to JFK speeches on youtube, for example) would today be labeled right wing radicals.
Well, I used to think of the Brewers as an American League team so nothing really surprises me anymore.
Meanwhile, the 5 bullet summary, that places all other minutiae and distractions of American political life into perspective:
– US growth trendline was already sub-par at 3%, pre-Obama
– Now teetering towards permanent and irreversible European style 1-2% welfare state growth trendline
– World on average growing 4-5%
– 3+ Billion people growing at 6-10%
– Americans accustomed to standard of living 500% above the world average
Can Americans really afford Useful Idiocy?
I don’t believe by any strech of the imagination is the Ryan budget going to fix anything and Quite honestly I’m supirsed the Cato institute would support it. Going to the Obama question ” is he a conservative”? I would say no he is not he is very much a moderate, unfourtunately he is also very ineffective in pushing across his ideas. The American public has distanced themselves from him and I think the majority of independents ( like myself) will not vote for him in the next election. All in all he has abandoned his base and that will bite him in the butt in 2012. Then we have to deal with one of these republicans who won’t get anything done. It’s a petty really.
[…] Update: Dan Mitchell asks, “Is Obama a Conservative?” […]
[…] DO THEY MAKE DRUGS THAT STRONG? Arguing that Obama is really a conservative. […]
It’s bizarre that Bartlett only short years ago wrote a book that called out Bush for not being a genuine conservative — where he was largely on point — but now thinks that Obama is, simply by virtue of the fact that there are people to Obama’s left. If this is how we define conservative, the term has lost all meaning.
By this logic, if a Republican president slashed funding to the Department of Education instead of abolishing it outright as many on the right would prefer, he is then a liberal. Bartlett has officially gone off the rails.
I wrote my own commentary on Barlett’s absurd column here:
http://togetrichisglorious.blogspot.com/2011/07/bruce-bartlett.html
“Going to the Obama question ” is he a conservative”? I would say no he is not he is very much a moderate”
As we in the upper midwest tend to sometimes say…uff da. Moderate? We are in DEEP trouble if the guy who shoves a reorganization of the health care industry, nearly 1/5 of our economy, down our throats. He also nationalized a chunk of the auto industry, messed around horribly with our banking system, and happily runs yearly trillion-and-a-half deficits. If the tea party hadn’t squawked about that one, he’d probably have happily jacked it up to 3 trillion a year. He demonizes big companies of all stripes and those who build them and make them work and provide jobs for everybody that isn’t part of the government gravy train (and them too, through the highest taxes he can push through).
As someone implied above, I wish today’s liberals were like JFK. Heck, under those circumstances I might even BE one. But not today. Not even a chance. Obama DEFINES liberalism today, except he doesn’t seem to fetishize and/or exhalt homosexuality. And hey, if he gets another term there’s always time for that later.
Obama is basically a fascist. That may be congruent with the European definition of “conservative” but not the American one as I understand it. As far as Bartlett’s logic goes, I would ask if, hypothetically, Harry Reid wanted the country to jump off a 20 story building and John Boehner did not want to jump at all, if Barack Obama “moved toward Boehner’s position” by suggesting we jump off an 8 story building, would that make him sane? My answer is “no.”
Obama is very liberal in areas that conservatives care about. But, equally, conservatives care about those areas in large part because Obama is liberal in them. There’s a REASON foreign policy is going to be a completely dead issue in 2012 – and it’s that there’s just not that much daylight between Obama and the Republican candidates on what to do in Afghanistan. In fact, let’s take that further – let’s imagine that, right after the nomination, Obama had launched an aggressive “cut spending, slash the defence budget, cut taxes, bring all troops home, peace in our time, under no circumstances offend any muslim anywhere” policy.
Given his (very scanty) record and his (very conflicted) campaign promises, he might well have done so. In this alternate world, conservatives might quibble over his fiscal policy, but it wouldn’t be a major campaign issue. Instead, conservatives would be incensed at his recklessly liberal foreign policy – even as liberals were upset at his treacherously conservative fiscal policy. There would be no Tea Party demanding a sane fiscal policy…but there would likely be a very similar group, demanding a sane foreign policy.
In modern American politics, both sides of the spectrum look to the president, find an area of disagreement, and focus on it. When Bartlett was a conservative, the then-President Bush wasn’t nearly conservative enough, “Compassionate conservatism” was just a code phrase for “big government liberalism”! (Bartlett had a point…) And now that Bartlett is batting for the other team, well…same deal all over again.
I agree with the comment that Obama is really a fascist, or of we must be polite, a corporate state supporter. He has a whole army of rich rent seekers like Immelt marching beside him. Unfortunately, fascism only works for a while and usually requires a war to keep up motivation. Mussolini was the most successful fascist and it worked for a while in Italy but Italy began as a poor country.
let’s see here, over the last 2.5 years we have witnessed:
– a HC plan designed to be a stalking horse for nationalized HC.
– obscene spending as a % of GDP.
– the complete destruction of priority and the rule of law in the US Auto/UAW “restructuring” (which after all the bumbling and idiotic things these clowns have done is BY FAR the worst).
– the backing of a non-democratic regime in Honduras.
– the continuous and unrelenting demonization of business in the US.
– road maps for “investment” in uneconomical high-speed rail and “green” jobs.
– the selection of SCOTUS nominations based primarily (if not solely) on gender/race definitions.
– the continuous employment of czar’s.
– the astounding meddling (WI) into state public sector collective bargaining issues and the actual coordination of counter-strategies.
– the lowest % of private sector experienced cabinet/administration members by a factor of like 3-4x.
– continued turn-coating on strategic allies (Poland, Czech, England, Israel) to support despots.
– no budget for ~2 years.
– using the NLRB to stifle domestic businesses.
– putting blockades and moratorium’s on job killing domestic oil and gas production.
– a DOJ who mandates action only based on class/race warfare – as long as you are the right class/race.
– the entry into another war without the approval of congress.
That is just off the top of my head and obviously (which is scary to think) there is a lot more I am missing. None of this above would be considered aligned with “conservative” ideals that focus on the rule of law, property rights, free markets/small government, and individual liberty. Hard to imagine anyone actually being further left (maybe FDR?) then these radicals.
While I certainly wouldn’t call him a conservative, it is something of a surprise that a Democrat President with a Democrat majority in the Senate has put the entitlement programs up for spending cuts. He doesn’t go nearly far enough, but did any conservative think Obama would put Medicare and Social Security up for cuts? Not if your honest. I certainly didn’t.
I don’t understand the personality type (which Bartlett seems to have) which will do most anything for attention. Could he be the Madonna of the chattering class? Poor dear….
Obama is a conservative the way FDR was a conservative; he hasn’t nationalized the economy or collectivized the farms or slaughtered the Kulaks (yet). So he is really out to save Capitalism from itself.
[…] it’s not just statist politicians making this argument. After making fun of his assertion that Obama is a conservative, I was hoping to ignore Bruce Bartlett for a while, but I noticed that he has a piece on the New […]
Apparently I am the only Progressive here, so here’ my take: I am pissed off at Obama for continuing too many of Bush’s policies, ie: expanding wars, expanding invasion of civil liberties, wiretapping; extending Bush tax cuts, not prosecuting Bush admin war crimes and Wallstreet thugs; bowing to big biz interest at expense of the working class… selling out the working class at every chance; and what kind of leftist puts up SS and medicare on the chopping block??? All my Liberal friends feel the same way. There is no love for Obama (quite a bit of hate, actually).
So how is it a black “progressive” and a retarded cowboy share the same policies? I think Neo-cons and neo-liberals share too much in common: both are just oligarchs who want to screw over the working class, while the media sells us “controversy” and diversion.
so late…
[…] year, I debunked the silly claim that Obama is a […]
Really mito? “Retarded Cowboy”? By what comparison? Until he will reveal otherwise he has better grades than Obama. And Bush graduated from college and grad school when grades weren’t bloated and you had to earn your degree.
From all appearances Obama sans teleprompter is a bumbler, his off the cuff foreign policy with the bowing and missteps (giving an iPod to the Queen of England!) are an embarrassment to everyone except the half-wit left.
Obama is extremely conservative, check out the haircut, that pretty much says it all. He also is trying or did put a nail in the coffin of the baby boomers by disregarding them and using as his frame of reference the eighties and nineties popular culture of diversity, where the baby boomers are just ignored even though they are still there. Obamas lifestyle or the one he puts out to the public eye is old fashioned family man, basically something out of the fifties.
Bartlett is absolutely right. The author of this article is straining like a constipated camel to prove he’s wronmg and fails miserably. Just because he doesn’t want to believe it doesn’t make it false.
[…] policy? Should politicians try to balance budgets, or should they shrink the burden of government? Is it reasonable for some people to call Obama a conservative because he wants higher taxes and claims the money would be used to reduce red […]
[…] P.P.P.S. If you really want to see an example of bizarre name calling, there are some people who think Obama is a conservative. […]
[…] P.P.P.S. If you really want to see an example of bizarre name calling, there are some people who think Obama is a conservative. […]
[…] So does this mean Obama is a closet conservative, as my misguided buddy Bruce Bartlett has asserted? […]
[…] P.P.S. The assertion that Obama is “one of the best Presidents ever” is almost as silly as the claim that he is a conservative. […]