Liberal Wall Street?

One thing that struck me about Craig Shirley's jeremiad in Conservative Battleline was his pairing of the hated "GOP elites" with "their master’s voice, corporate America." It's not the first time I've seen anti-Wall Street sentiment expressed in recent conservative denunciations of where the GOP is heading.

So then I read Dana Goldstein's piece at TAPPED about Fortune Magazine's glowing assessment of Hillary Clinton. Goldstein mentions a few of Hillary's Wall Street supporters -- people like John Mack of Morgan Stanley, Jeffrey Volk of Citigroup, and James D. Robinson III of American Express. And he cites this passage:

Clinton's GOP business supporters say they have other priorities [than tax issues]. Volk wants to see the federal budget balanced. Robinson wants health-care and education policies that will improve American's competitiveness. Hillary Clinton says simply, "It's important not to have a tax discussion separate from [deciding] what are our goals."

Goldstein also suggests that this may be part of a trend:

[Y]ounger corporate types really do have a different set of priorities. They may not be ready to support John Edwards, but they're increasingly calling themselves Democrats.

One can react to this kind of thing with all kinds of populist suspicion, but let's set that aside for the moment. Without wanting to read too much into this -- and it remains the case that the Republicans are the party of big business -- there's an ever-so-faint echo here of the 1950s, when upstart conservatives excoriated the decadent Republican elites, who along with their northeastern capitalist class generally, had come to an accomodation with labor and the social safety net.

Take the historical parallel for what you will.

Labels: Craig Shirley, Dana Goldstein, Hillary Clinton

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 5:20 PM 2 comments

  This Time I Really Mean It

At Conservative Battleline, Craig Shirley says it's time for conservatives to consider declaring their independence from the GOP -- emulating the actions of the "Manhattan Twelve," who, in 1971, confronted Richard Nixon over his deviations from conservative orthodoxy:

True conservatives are now faced with this choice once again. In order to save their ideology, should the conservative movement declare it’s independence from the Bush Administration and the GOP? The arguments for doing so are compelling.

The immigration bill, most conservatives believe, is a sellout of everything they hold dear – the rule of law, justice, freedom and sovereignty. But rather than listen to the grassroots American people, the GOP elites are listening intently instead to their master’s voice, corporate America....

The war has held together the unhappy shotgun marriage of the elitist GOP and the populist conservatives, but the D-word (“divorce”) is now on the lips of many in the movement.

The arguments for at least a trial separation are legion; from steel tariffs to federal mandates to the states educational systems, to the biggest entitlement since the Great Society to the corruption of Republican “lawmakers” and Enron and the GOP K Street walkers, whose main job is to convince GOP lawmakers into doing un-Republican things. Arrogance, ignorance, the unseemly pursuit of power over principles and betrayal of conservatism are the hallmarks of the current GOP.

Shirley doesn't really identify who the "GOP elites" are -- the Bush administration, one supposes, but who specifically, and why should we believe that they will continue to be the party's "elites" in 2009? And would conservatives have as much leverage with a self-absorbed lame-duck as they did with Nixon, who after all was about to seek re-election? What about the candidates for 2008? And what does a "divorce" from a major party mean? A third party?

In fact Shirley is simply calling for the conservative movement to lead the party, as it did in the 1970s. Unfortunately for Shirley, the movement is a lot less coherent now than it was in the days of the "Manhattan Twelve."

At any rate, Shirley and his compatriots got their way on the immigration bill. Articles like this one might serve as reminder not to mistake conservative sound and fury for any actual plan to break with the GOP.

Labels: Conservative Battleline, conservatives, Craig Shirley, Republicans

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:15 AM 1 comments