British Conservatives are Ready to Govern; the GOP is Just Ready to Win

It’s pretty assured that the GOP will gain a substantial electoral victory this November. They are certainly poised to win; but are they poised to govern? Below is British Conservative leader David Cameron’s final election sales pitch. It sounds extraordinary to my American ears, because its tone and content stand in such stark contrast to the reactionary grievance-mongers and malcontents that lead today’s GOP. Watch:

Refusing to impugn the motives of his opponents? Crediting Labor for its strides toward social justice? No villification of government? No mad-lib cliches about tax cuts and getting tough on national security? This is bizarro-world political discourse. Cameron calls several times for a “fairer society”. His centerpiece is child poverty, education, assistance for seniors, worries over income inequality (!!). He also wants to “put more money into improving public health in the poorest areas.” I wonder if John Boehner wants to do that.

Another line that struck me: Cameron says that the hopes for a stronger, fairer society are “alive with us, in the modern conservative party.” That word modern got my attention. By contrast, the GOP has its big CPAC convention this week. They’re releasing a conservative manifesto of their own, called “the Mount Vernon Statement.” Here’s an exerpt, from First Read:

In recent decades, America’s principles have been undermined and redefined in our culture, our universities and our politics. The self-evident truths of 1776 have been supplanted by the notion that no such truths exist. The federal government today ignores the limits of the Constitution, which is increasingly dismissed as obsolete and irrelevant… The change we urgently need, a change consistent with the American ideal, is not movement away from but toward our founding principles. At this important time, we need a restatement of Constitutional conservatism grounded in the priceless principle of ordered liberty articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

So David Cameron not only seeks accommodation with modernity, but a full-throated embrace of it; of the vagaries and vibrancy and extraordinary opportunities inherent in a plural and messy society. Meanwhile, the GOP is, as ever, standing athwart history, and yelling STOP. It’s all 1776, founding principles, Mount Vernon. Our culture has been undermined. The evil universities and the hippies are to blame. We are beseiged by moral relativism. We may engage in the pursuit of happiness, but on our tiptoes, only if it’s “ordered”, only if we heed the GOP’s timeless truths as interpreted by Michael Steele and Mitch McConnell and god-help-us Sarah Palin. We don’t need new ideas for a new age, because there are no new ages; there are no new ideas; just a perpetual “restatement” of 200-year-old ideas, a perpetual dusting off of powdered wigs, an endless modulation and recalibration of the dials of indignance, grievance, loss of privilege, and virulent cultural resentment. We don’t need to reinvigorate our social pact to meet modern challenges; whatever they had in 1776 is probably fine. Urgent change is needed, but it’s the kind that demands of you to plug your fingers in your ears, spin around, and walk directly behind you, indefinitely.

This is pablum, and deeply unserious about the demands of governance. It’s an unabashed rejection of modernity and progress, of the idea that culture and institutions can change, must change, have changed; that history barrels along whether you stand athwart it or not, and your invocation for it to STOP is not brave, not principled; but depraved, petulant, puerile. It’s an affront to all those “in recent decades” who realized that the natural law of the Declaration of Independence didn’t apply to them unless they demanded it be so; it is an unforgivable offense to those that took issue with some of the “self-evident truths” that would have consigned them to a lifetime as part of a permanent underclass, devoid of dignity and humanity, overseen by a scheme of “ordered liberty” that did not include them, a scheme that brought no order, no liberty.

America’s principles have not been underminded by our culture, but our culture was for two centuries undermined by a deliberate bastardization of our principles. A hard-fought “redefinition of our politics” has saved the promise of America’s founding ideals many, many times throughout our history. It would be nice to see a hint of humility and self-awareness and contrition about this from those who wish to lead us. Instead they insist, with a straight face, that we join them in their proud oblivion.