Sowing the Wind: Is the Conservative Base Crumbling?

But man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep.

William Shakespeare
Measure for Measure, Act II, Scene II

Often, when I discuss next year’s presidential election with my conservative friends, they seem assured that 2004 will be a repeat not of 1992, but of 1984. Though I confess to being a poor predictor of electoral outcomes, I cannot but feel that their confidence is misplaced. A year will pass between the printing of this article and the 2004 election, and the behavior of the nation’s leading Republican has diluted rather than garnered support for his party. Rotten leadership from President George W. Bush has transformed a once-sure win for the Republicans into a genuine contest. Ever since Bush’s commendable response to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, next year’s election has been his to lose. He may yet accomplish that task.

When candidate Bush, in 2000, painted himself as “a uniter, not a divider,” he did not know how right he was. He has united no one, except perhaps his foes, and he has divided his friends with chilling brazenness. Tax cuts notwithstanding, Bush has no interest in advancing the conservative agenda, nor need he, since the Republicans will renominate him no matter what he does. Their faith in Bush may prove to be the spike on which conservatism is finally impaled. Though the Democrats have painted him as a right-wing extremist, he has governed everywhere but from the Right. At times, it is difficult to understand for whom he is ruling this country. Even on those issues where the American public is the most conservative, the President has defied them.

On June 24 of this year, the United States Supreme Court held that state universities’ racial discrimination against white and Asian applicants is permissible under the Constitution. The American people are conservative on this issue; they recognize, as Justice (now Chief Justice) William H. Rehnquist wrote in a 1979 dissenting opinion, “that no discrimination based on race is benign, that no action disadvantaging a person because of his color is affirmative.” The president, however, warmly praised the Court for ignoring the Fourteenth Amendment’s prohibition of racial discrimination. “Today’s decisions,” he said, “seek a careful balance between the goal of campus diversity and the fundamental principle of equal treatment under law.” One who draws this equation speaks only for a minority of Americans, few of whom would ever vote for this panderer-in-chief.

Moreover, that bastion of Bolshevism the New York Times has reported that Bush is considering appointing Alberto Gonzalez, a diehard advocate of racial preferences, to the Supreme Court. He has also considered elevating Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to the chief justiceship should Chief Justice Rehnquist step down, the Times reports. Justice O’Connor delivered the opinion of the Court this year in Grutter v. Bollinger, upholding racial preferences, and three years before cast the decisive fifth vote in Stenberg v. Carhart, striking down Nebraska’s ban on partial-birth abortion. Conservatives therefore have little reason to expect that Bush will deliver when it comes to the judiciary. True, he campaigned on a promise to appoint Justices in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, but considering that he does not even know Justice Scalia’s first name (he called him “Anthony” and “Antonio” on one occasion), that promise must have been fed to him by a political adviser.