Perhaps uninhibited by a victory they seldom thought possible, liberals wasted no time at all, upon the election of Barack Obama, in writing the obituaries for their vanquished opponent ideology. Numerous claims that the U.S. was now a "center left" nation were speciously advanced in print, but none so boldly as Sam Tanenhaus’s essay in the New Republic, unambiguously titled, “Conservatism is Dead,” which actually began with a dialectical observation about the past that subsequent paragraphs seemed to foreclose for the future: “In the tumultuous history of postwar American conservatism, defeats have often contained the seeds of future victory.” How true.
Although Tanenhaus’s analysis was historically rooted, his conclusion was premature in the extreme. He argued that, having forsaken the meliorist principles of Burke and Disraeli, American conservatism had transformed itself into a Marxist-style all-or-nothing warrior politics, abetted by intellectuals and at the mercy of “revanchist” impulses, chiefly being suspicion of big government, resentment of cultural “elites” and an unwavering faith in laissez-faire capitalist dogma. These impulses, said Tanenhaus, culminated in the presidency of George W. Bush but now, definitely with the election of a Hyde Park liberal and the dual failure of trying to transport democracy to Babylon and Milton Friedman to Wall Street, depleted themselves as electoral forces.
That was one year ago, before town hall meetings, “tea parties,” Glenn Beck, Going Rogue and countless other examples of demagogic affronts to what Tenenahus, borrowing from Whittaker Chambers, termed the “Beaconsfield position” of classical conservatism, named for Disraeli’s earldom. (Queen Victoria’s favorite prime minister, it should be noted, inaugurated more social reforms favorable to the industrial working class than his Whig rival Gladstone ever could or that Marx and Engels were prepared to stomach from an arriviste Tory.)
Scott Brown is closer to the Beaconsfield position than he is to the “movement” politics of the Tea Party, however much the latter faction chose to ignore this glaring discrepancy. Indeed, no Republican who spoke as effusively of the late Ted Kennedy as Brown did at his victory celebration on Tuesday night could ever truly be mistaken for second coming of Sarah Palin. And yet, is there any doubt that revanchist impulses helped this unknown state legislator dislodge a 50-year partisan hold on a Senate seat in one of the “bluest” states in the union?
Timothy Noah of Slate points to one irony of the Massachusetts upset that was unforeseen by the liberal establishment: Fifty-six percent of those polled by Rasmussen Tuesday said that healthcare was their top priority while fifty percent of the same sample pool professed to want no healthcare bill at all over the one now in consideration in Washington. Even if these voters are misinformed as to what is in the Washington bill, they can afford to be as the recipients of a popular statewide health plan, carpentered by former Massachusetts governor and presidential hopeful Mitt Romney (another centrist Republican), which has served as a tacit model for ObamaCare and which the senator-elect is said to support.
Was it hubris or stupidity, then, that caused Democratic establishment to pin the hopes of its most ambitious piece of domestic legislation on a regional electorate it presumed to have the interests of the entire nation in mind? The only conclusion that can be drawn from Brown’s victory is that healthcare was not an overriding concern for most Americans until it was turned into a controversy that begat a political liability. The president has compounded the problem by going back on his word to make the debate over a sweeping social reform transparent (broadcast live on C-Span) rather than occlusive. He has also intimated that voters hostile to his plan need only wait until it’s implemented, with or without their consent, before appreciating its full effects. (“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, except those of us too dumb to wait.”)
The special election also reflects a justifiable animus against Democratic vices. No voter in Massachusetts wished to listen to John Kerry, spousal heir to the Heinz ketchup fortune worth an estimated $750 million, sound off about Brown’s five residences, two of which are adjacent condominiums in a low-income neighborhood. Nor did any constituent want to be treated as if a special election were no more meaningful than a game of touch football at Hyannisport, and that campaigning out in the cold quite was too uncomfortable for the designated heir of the party apparatus.
Of such incidents are revanchist impulses rekindled.
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