How Conservative Can Bush Be?

Frum says that is the key question in today's political climate. Excerpts:

America in 2004 is a less ideologically conservative country than it was in 1984. The partisan map has been trending Democrat for a dozen years: Dick Morris points out that Minnesota is the only state in the Union that has grown more Republican since 1988. Conservatives sometimes forget that George Bush won 500,000 fewer votes than Al Gore in 2000; the Bush political operation can never afford to let that fact slip out of mind.

What has changed since the 1980s? Many things, but here are the four most important:

1) The Democrats have moved rightward on economics. After the defeat of Hillarycare in 1994, Bill Clinton gave up the attempt to enact major new federal programs - and reaped an economic boom and re-election in 1996 as his reward. His example has been noted. Voters just aren't as scared of a Democratic presidency messing up the economy as they were when memories of Jimmy Carter were fresh. That leaves upper-income voters free to vote for the Democrats' lifestyle liberalism.

2) The American family has weakened. One of the most portentous facts in American politics is this: married women vote Republican, single women vote Democratic. And since 1990 the proportion of US women who are now married has dropped by more than two percentage points.

3) Hispanics are voting their interests rather than their values. Hispanics as a group are culturally conservative, but economically needy. Their values suggest that they ought to vote Republican - but their hopes for more government aid are pushing them toward the Democrats.

4) The growing African American middel class, meanwhile, is voting its values rather than their interests. African Americans did well in the 1990s: The median income of married black families is now reaching $50,000 - more than enough to make them net losers from government redistribution. Yet these voters have not rethought their traditional loyalty to the party of Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.

Bush has earned his political success by understanding these trends and adapting to them. Where he can hold onto traditional conservative principles, he does – as he did on taxes. But where he cannot safely uphold conservative principles, he is not prepared to suffer martyrdom for them. On domestic issues, Bush is not a conviction politician of the Ronald Reagan/Margaret Thatcher type. He is a managerial politician of the Eisenhower/Ford type – a dealmaker, a compromiser, coping with an adverse political climate. If he could be more conservative, he would. If he has to be less conservative, he will be that too. He’s not steering in some new direction. He’s steering to avoid hitting the guardrails on a suddenly very narrow stretch of road.

So let me suggest that Daniel is posing the wrong question. The question is not, "Is Bush a Conservative?" It is, "How conservative can Bush be?" An honest answer to that second question may be a good deal less reassuring than the answer to the first.

I think Frum may be onto something here. Some said that the 500,000 vote difference probably wouldn't have occured if the news media hadn't called Florida for Gore so quickly thus depressing Bush voters in the other time zones. If those voters went out and voted, Bush might have gained a plurality of the votes but still not a mandate by any measure.

The country is divided pretty evenly as seen in the popular vote for the Presidency in 2000 and in the outcomes of the Congressional races in 2000 and 2004.

I find some critics of the new prescription drug plan annoying in that they complain about the deficits yet complain that the Medicare prescription drug benefit isn't big enough? What's with that? At least some critics who don't like the deficits say the new benefit is a budget buster and should have not been passed. I suppose political consistency is a bit much to ask for in an election year... or any year for that matter?