The Potomac's Not River In Egypt

Harold Meyerson has a particularly odd editorial posted this morning in the Washington Post, insisting conservatives are in denial:

On their journey through the stages of grief, conservatives don't yet seem to have gotten past denial.

Republicans may have lost, conservatives argue, but only because they misplaced their ideology. "[T]hey were punished not for pursuing but for forgetting conservatism," George F. Will, conservatism's most trenchant champion, wrote on this page last week.

Their mortal sin, in this gospel, was their abandonment of fiscal prudence.

They doffed their green eyeshades and gushed red ink. "The greatest scandal in Washington, D.C., is runaway federal spending," said Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, the true-blue conservative who is challenging Ohio's John Boehner for the post of House Republican leader.

Holding conservatism blameless for last week's Republican debacle may stiffen conservative spines, but the very idea is the product of mushy conservative brains unwilling to acknowledge the obvious: that conservatism has never been more ascendant than during George Bush's presidency; that the Republican Party over the past six years moved well to the right of the American people on social, economic and foreign policy; and that on Nov. 7 the American people chose a more pragmatic course.

I bed to differ with Mr. Meyerson, on several points. First, while there are doubtlessly some conservatives in denial about why Republicans lost, it seems most of those reside inside the Beltway. From the Rove-influenced push for an ineffectual Mel Martinez to be RNC Chair, to an all-but-rigged push to install the same failed leadership into power on Capital Hill, it is the Beltway drones that seem to be in denial over why Republicans lost, not the rank and file conservatives in the rest of the country.

Denial is a stage of grief that most conservatives that I have come in contact with (either online or in person) skipped right past. In fact, most conservatives seem to have been rather pragmatic and have avoided the grief process altogether.

If you want to see an acute application of political grief for comparison, I suggest you instead look to prominent liberal personalities after the 2000 and 2004 elections.

Michael Moore was so depressed by Bush's 2004 win that he couldn't get out of bed for three days. Actor Vincent "Private Pyle" D'Onofrio "Lost his ****" and had to be treated by paramedics because of Bush's 2004 win.

Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, actor Alec Baldwin, former Kennedy Press Secretary Pierre Salinger and film director Robert Altman were just some of the liberal voices who were confirmed to have said they would leave the United States because of electoral results, though Salinger was the only one to follow through on his "threat."

Some liberal in past elections were so distraught over past elections that new psychological conditions were the result, with the serious Post Election Selection Trauma and satirical Bush Derangement Syndrome as a result.

No, Mr. Meyerson, most conservatives outside the Beltway were disappointed with the results of the election, but we understood why we lost.

The nation is unhappy with the way the War in Iraq is being fought. The nation is disgusted with greed in the form of pork-barrel politics symbolized by the Bridge to Nowhere, and runaway federal spending a Republican Congress and President supported. The nation was dismayed with how slowly and ineffectively the federal government reacted in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and by corruption both financial and sexual as personified by Jack Abramoff and Mark Foley. Immigration and stem cell controversies also alienated voters.

As for Meyerson's asinine statement, "that conservatism has never been more ascendant than during George Bush's presidency" I have but a simple two-word reply: Ronald Reagan.

But for all that Mr. Meyerson got wrong in his fundamental misunderstanding of the conservative mind, he did get something right when he concluded that Republicans ran a 2006 campaign "devoid of new ideas."

Hopefully, the conservative base will be able to reverse that course in elections to come.