I’d always said to my husband that one good reason not to support Obama — or at least regard him with skepticism — was that Andrew Sullivan, the conservative Catholic, supported him. My skepticism is increased by knowledge of other major conservatives flocking to Obama. There are so many of them that they even have a name: the “Obamacons.” These Obamacons are the biggest argument for me against the claim that Obama is a “progressive.” Believe it or not, some idiots on the left have actually deluded themselves into giving him the passing grade on progressivism.
From The New Republic’s current issue, we have Mr. Right? The Rise of the Obamacons, an exploration of some of these conservatives and why they’re supporting Obama.
The article, written by a conservative who has not defected from the Republican party, begins with quoting Obama’s interlocutor from The New Yorker, Larissa MacFarquhar, when she did a profile of him: “Larissa MacFarquhar came away with the impression that the Illinois senator was an adherent of Edmund Burke: ‘In his view of history, in his respect for tradition, in his skepticism that the world can be changed any way but very, very slowly, Obama is deeply conservative.’”
So much for hope and change.
Some other excerpts:
Conservatives of almost all ideological flavors (even, gasp, some supply-siders) have been drawn to Obama–out of a genuine affection and a belief that he may actually better embody movement ideals than McCain.
those of us on the right who pay attention to think tanks, blogs, and little magazines have watched Obama compile a coterie drawn from the movement’s most stalwart and impressive thinkers. It’s a group that will no doubt grow even larger in the coming months.
Milton and Rose Friedman’s son, David, is signed up with the cause on the grounds that he sees Obama as the better vessel for his father’s cause. Friedman is convinced of Obama’s sympathy for school vouchers–a tendency that the Democratic primaries temporarily suppressed.
Libertarians (and other varieties of Obamacons, for that matter) frequently find themselves attracted to Obama on stylistic grounds. That is, they believe that he has surrounded himself with pragmatists, some of whom (significantly) come from the University of Chicago [Apostate: The University of Chicago is famously conservative, especially in its academic economists]. As the blogger Megan McArdle has written, “His goal is not more government so that we can all be caught up in some giant, expressive exercise of collectively enforcing our collective will on all the other people standing around us in the collective; his goal is improving transparency and minimizing government intrusion while rectifying specific outcomes.”
How substantial is the Obamacon phenomenon? Well, it has even penetrated National Review, the intellectual anchor of the conservative movement. There’s Jeffrey Hart, who has been a senior editor at the magazine since 1968 and even wrote a history of the magazine, The Making of the American Conservative Mind; and Wick Allison, who once served as the magazine’s publisher. Neither man has renounced his conservatism. Both have come away impressed by Obama’s rhetorical acumen. This is a particular compliment coming from Hart, who wrote speeches for both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
But, if you’re looking for the least likely pool of Obamacons, it would be the supply-siders. And you can even find some of those. Take Larry Hunter, who helped put together the economics passages in the Contract with America and served as chief economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He concedes that Obama is saying the wrong things on taxes but dismisses it as electioneering.
All emphases are mine.
Filed under: Socio-Political
my guess is he’s conservative like oprah’s conservative. a sort of capitalist do-gooder like oprah. he’s got that facebook founder on staff, had visted the google campus (and wowed them) early in his campaign, and has attracted a lot of VC/Hedge fund types. you know, the ones into social venture capital and microlending.
he’s long been pro school vouchers and his anti-nafta stand is a ruse, meant to pander to the racist left: pro union/anti-immigration/ US jobs at the expense of globaization crew.
bono fits this mode too
I’m a blithering idiot and I have nothing better to do with my time than troll Apostate’s blog. And oh yeah – I have a small penis.
How much of a problem do you think it is if Obama is a fiscal conservative, as long as he’s socially progressive? In my mind, the Republicans are led by social, religious conservatives who are fiscally irresponsible. It’s not surprising that some fiscally conservative Republicans are defecting.
This is funny because I hear many times a week that he is the reincarnation of Karl Marx. People just don’t know what to think of him.
Apostate, I love this series.
Also, re what Deeleigh says about “socially progressive,” let’s look at these two articles for contrast.
http://www.barackobama.com/2007/08/27/the_outsiders_insider.php
“It was the fall of 2005, and the celebrated young senator [Obama]— still new to Capitol Hill but aware of his prospects for higher office — was thinking about voting to confirm John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice. ”
http://wizbangblog.com/content/2005/09/22/hillary-clinton-3.php
Hillary Clinton [on her "no" vote on Roberts]: “My desire to maintain the already fragile Supreme Court majority for civil rights, voting rights and women’s rights outweigh the respect I have for Judge Roberts’s intellect, character, and legal skills.”
OMG he’s not a social progressive either. Have a listen to his Father’s Day sermon.
He’s better on some social issues than others – and I wouldn’t necessarily call him a feminist. That’s why I was hoping Clinton would get the nomination. But, frankly, I like(d) both of them as candidates, and I’ll vote for him with some enthusiasm.
As for the Father’s Day sermon, he makes some good points. I was raised by a single mother, and I hate it when single moms are blamed for all of society’s ills. In most cases, the mother is the one taking responsibility, and the father is missing, as he says. In some cases, children are better off with a single parent rather than caught in the middle of a bad marriage (as in my family, actually), and that’s seldom acknowledged. Even so, I’m having trouble finding fault with the points he makes there.
Certainly, whether or not there’s a father around – particularly in black families – is not just an issue of personal choices. An appalling percentage of black men end up in prison, and often for very little reason. But, he’s right; the problem isn’t just with society. It is something that can and should be addressed from the inside as well. He makes some excellent points about taking responsibility and about having high expectations.
Although the sermon was certainly pro-family, it was done in a positive way. I didn’t hear anything in it that was explicitly anti-woman or that implied that men and women needed to take on traditional roles in the marriage. In glorifying the role of fathers, he wants to make being an involved father more attractive to young men. It was a father’s day sermon.
He doesn’t even get into the god talk until the last couple of minutes.
I found it pretty inoffensive, actually. But then, I’m politically middle of the road and I can tolerate a certain amount of religious posturing, even though I’m not religious myself.
Here’s the thing about Burke: everyone fucking claims him. Like all really useful philosophers and political economists, there’s something for everybody in his work. Sullivan’s a nut for Burke, but so are neo-cons, paleo-cons, crunchy-cons, libertarians, liberals, and even some progressives. Being attentive to Burke is not a bad thing for anyone involved in public policy or governance. Being a fanatic, which Sullivan is, is bad; but that’s true of any thinker.
I think it’s easy to read too much in to this. Obama is a centrist and a community-organizer in the Alinsky tradition. Given that latter, he’s going to be far more skeptical of government and institutions than your average politician. But he doesn’t seem to view government as illegitimate, which would be more in tune with libertarians and modern conservatives. More to the point, I think that a number of conservatives see his moderate stance on social issues and then parse his policy issues to a point where they can excuse them away or get on board.
Obama is simply not a left-liberal or progressive. He’s certainly not going to set social rights back, but he’s not going to propel them forward, either. His tax plan is actually pretty good for the first four quintiles, and quite progressive when addressing the top 1%. Is he better than McCain? Yes. Better than Edwards? Not by a long shot. But he is what he is, a religious moderate and political centrist. He’s never hid that, which is why until his speech on race I was cautiously okay with him (for a while after it, I was pretty enthusiastic). Obama is great on some issues, okay on some more, and “meh” on others.
Oh, and regarding his Father’s Day speech: he ain’t wrong, in a lot of respects. Just because conservatives say it doesn’t mean it’s illegitimate. I recommend reading Jason DeParle’s The American Dream for a more in-depth look.
This speech is promising from a policy standpoint. Not scintillating, but not lackluster, either.
How much of a problem do you think it is if Obama is a fiscal conservative, as long as he’s socially progressive? In my mind, the Republicans are led by social, religious conservatives who are fiscally irresponsible. It’s not surprising that some fiscally conservative Republicans are defecting.
It depends what you mean by “fiscal conservative.” I don’t think this concept means what many people think it means, but then, I just read Wikipedia’s article on fiscal conservatism and it left me none the wiser.
My interpretation of fiscal conservatism is the big reason I am anti-Republican. I have always understood fiscal conservatism to be essentially the opposite side of the New Deal. Fiscal conservatives like tax cuts for rich people, and they make these cuts possible by cutting spending on programs for poor people. They justify this by evoking “small government” and “individual responsibility” and “free enterprise.”
I think some people have been fooled into thinking fiscal conservatism means not running up a huge debt. Maybe in some other universe.
So Obama’s “fiscal responsibility” is almost worse than anything else. His social progressivism is meaningless except insofar as it makes his supporters feel warm and fuzzy inside. It’s meaningless because he’s not going to defend either abortion rights or gay civil rights from the Oval Office — too politically risky and not worth the cost.
James, I totally agree with you re Burke.
If the point of my “Obama is a conservative” refrain is not clear, I am doing this because I suspect people have forgotten what the terms “conservative” and “liberal/progressive” actually mean. I think they see a Democrat who doesn’t hate poor people, black people, gay people and women, and they think, “Liberal!” And they see a Republican who does hate poor people, black people, gay people and women, and they think “Conservative!” Yet, these things are not the essence of either stance.
The Republicans are not conservatives. They’re merely raging lunatics hellbent on destruction of whole societies because they don’t believe in a functioning polity.
The Democrats are not liberals just because they’re nicer people compared to the raging-lunatic Republicans.
If you actually examine what each party does instead of what they say and what they call themselves, you can’t escape the conclusion I’m reaching here — Obama is a conservative. The likes of Andrew Sullivan are not trying to co-opt a liberal leader. They are actually factually correct: Obama is a conservative.
Anything truly liberal coming out of Obama right now? It will be quashed by the Republicans. His presidency will be a conservative one.
…….by cutting spending on programs for poor people. They justify this by evoking “small government” and “individual responsibility” and “free enterprise.”…..
apostate. what do you consider are progressive and meaningful programs for poor people? Can you give some examples of govt funded ones that have been implemented successfully?
Sista. Welfare, basically, but also:
Public schools
Scholarships (and other ways of making college affordable)
Subsidized housing
Cheap to free decent childcare
Cheap to free heath care
Public parks and swimming pools
Pensions and retirement benefits (”social security” in America)
Disability benefits
Unemployment benefits
The minimum wage
Homeless shelters
Domestic violence shelters
Public defenders/free legal advice
and so forth
All of these have been implemented successfully in various places – even in America.
There are also a lot of government-administered regulations and agencies that protect the little guy – such as anti-discrimination laws (for which there are easy-to-follow processes that people can initiate without a lawyer) and consumer protection agencies. There are so many of these agencies and regulations that we barely notice. Yet, civic society wouldn’t exist as we know it without them. All this requires government funding – and fiscal conservatives don’t like this stuff – it takes away from tax cuts for the ultra-rich.
I’m a bit confused as to why there don’t seem to be happy mediums between tax cuts for the top one per and taxing them close to 60%. Clearly, the latter is going to get passed down from big corporations to employees and customers, and it’s the small entrepreneurs and their employees who will get stuck for mostly symbolic reasons.
Obama is actually known to be associated with “neoliberal” economic policies most often identified with Milton Friedman, an influential economist, to put it mildly, who was BIG at the Chicago institution where Obama taught. BO just hired economists associated with Friedman’s neoliberal philosophy and who also used to work for, guess who, Bill Clinton, who everyone seems to think smells worse than a wet dog these days (I always thought he smelled that way, politically speaking). In case everyone is thoroughly confused now, there’s a great explanation of liberal and neoliberal theory here:
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/neoliberalism.html
With respect to the Father’s Day sermon, I’m actually appalled that so few people seem to be freaked out by it. The Democratic presumptive nominee cannot, at this point, speak only to a Christian constituency. Speaking very personally, I found the sermon insultingly exclusionary, typical hetrosexual nuclear family stuff – the assumption of that stereoype pisses me off in a man who may be President and I’d rather he said nothing than that he said that. I accept the fact that political leaders may have religious beliefs but I don’t want to hear about them. And I think that urging black men to buck up and be good Dads and to tell their children to get “A”s instead of “B”s is very, well, Bill Cosby. Yeah, there might be a time and a place for telling people to buck up, but I’d like to hear him talk about economic inequality and racism with respect to the differential arrests and convictions of black men and I don’t hear him doing that. Yet. Ever. What he DOES say totally deflects people from the real issues. Which is exactly the point.
Forgive me going on. I’m feeling really alienated and frustrated.
Actually, my idea of fiscal conservatism is “doesn’t run up huge amounts of debt.” And, once the debt is under control, it would include tax cuts – but not until then. I’d also like to see national health care, but only if it can be paid for at least in part with cuts in military spending. I’m talking single payer health care, BTW – the insurance companies just stand in the way of high quality care and suck money out of the system. Yeah, I live in a wacky fantasy world. Oh wait. No. I live in Canada. (but I’m American, and I vote)
Apostate is right on the money to point out that public recreation, child care, health care, and schools are crucial components of social welfare. Many people tend not to think that way because us middle and upper-middle class folks often use them. I would add roads and public utilities.
There’s a fascinating article in the latest Atlantic about Section 8 and crime. Essentially, the destruction of the projects broke up supportive communities and dispersed criminal activity, instead of eliminating criminal activity. It’s an interesting, and provocative, finding.
There is absolutely a discussion to be had around how services are funded and what they should look like and how they should be delivered. The current structure is ponderous, slow to change to needs, and unsustainable. But that doesn’t mean that those services aren’t necessary.
Of course, I’m a godless liberal who’s paid by Californians’ tax dollars, so everything I say is tainted by self-interest.
Apostate, I guess I was evoking the standard of judging the philosophy by the results as I question the efficacy of ‘welfare’ in helping/supporting disadvantaged groups in liberal democracies. I base my skepticism on the abuse of same that I, as an immigrant have witnessed in Canada and in Europe…..so I guess I am coming from the Hirsi Ali take on this…
… I do not question the need for social services.
…anyway…looks like the progressives are well-intentioned but rudderless and the Republicans are relentlessly focused but with a completely different intent.
Larry Hunter, one of the “Obamacons” and as right-wing an economist as one can be (he helped write the Contract with America) had this to say of his support for Barack Obama:
“The answer boils down to this: It is indicative of how much I value individual freedom and how profoundly important I believe foreign policy to be at this juncture of American history that I am enthusiastically supporting Barack Obama for president despite how profoundly wrong he is on economic and tax policy. (It also doesn’t hurt that McCain himself is only slightly less wrong on economic and tax policy than Obama.) “
You think Obama won’t defend abortion rights in office? He’s got a 100% lifetime rating from NARAL. McCain’s is 0% and he’s stated that he wants to overtun Roe v. Wade.
[...] on the US left have now taken up the task of proving to others (but mostly themselves) that Obama is a conservative! It’s the People’s Front of Judea! Boo! Hiss! Trotskyites annoy me like no other [...]
Obama is a fiscal conservative to the right of Clinton.
He’s not ACTUALLY to the right of Clinton, but he can get away with more welfare reform because of his race which is a good thing. He’s the Democratic reform-centrist that Milton Friedman would have loved.
Fiscal conservatives are up for grabs and Obama will get a lot.
McCain does not understand anything about the economy. He doesn’t even understand supply side.