Whither the Conservative Movement pg 10

specific policy issues rather than on ideology. When he campaigned, he tended to campaign on his record and his personal connection to the voters of Kansas. In short, Bob Dole may have been much more ideologically driven, but he simply did not articulate that message.

Dole did make an important rhetorical shift that may or may not have indicated an ideological shift. Dole moved from talking about “the people’s money” as Reagan and Goldwater had done and personalized the message by referring to government spending as the use of “your money” (Dole, 1996, quote IV.B.2). The context, however, appeared to support the ideas of Reagan and Goldwater, but in a lazy manner. Rather than making a detailed ideological “big picture”, Dole simply used “your money” as a shorthand tag to refer back to the picture drawn by Goldwater and Reagan.

George W. Bush

If Robert Dole was the last of the old conservatives, then George W. Bush is the first of the new conservatives. This perception was heightened by GW Bush’s campaign in 2000 as a “Compassionate Conservative”. It is also born up by his strikingly different rhetoric concerning taxation. There is none of the connection to the higher ideology seen in Goldwater or Reagan, or even the feeble connections made by Dole.

There is, however, a sort of duplicity to his rhetoric. Whenever President Bush speaks to voters, he stresses an ideological connection between taxes and “your money” (GW Bush, 2001a, quote V.A.1, V.A.2, V.A.3; GW Bush, 2001b, quote V.B.1; GW Bush, 2001c, quote V.C.1). This was not the use of “your money” in the way that Dole

Go to Page 11