Whither the Conservative Movement? pg. 15
been involved in helping to push Reagan’s political agenda. The result was the lack of any unifying ideology and the President lost the public confidence, and perhaps the election, based on that point.
Bob Dole is an important connecting figure between the ideological vacuum of GHW Bush and the new ideology of GW Bush. As has been seen, Dole did make some attempts to connect to the body of conservative intellectual literature, or at least to the glory days of Reagan conservatism. The connection was weak, and Dole’s ongoing connections appeared more to be through the shorthand tag “it’s your money”. While the ideological connections for Dole were too weak to be solidly aligned with Reagan, they do not appear to be in line with GW Bush’s rhetoric. The result is that Dole is relegated to having mild ideological connections on the order of GHW Bush, but with the exception that his lazy shorthand method of referring to conservative ideology may have opened the door for an evolution in the guiding ideology of the conservative movement.
GW Bush’s rhetoric has already been noted as having been both duplicitous and lacking any direct ideological connection to intellectual conservatism. The duplicitous nature can be explained by several possible factors. The first is that there is no ideology connected to the rhetoric. The second is that the ideology is stated in one crowd, but simply repackaged to be acceptable to another. A third is that the ideological connection cannot be stated because of implications from doing so.
The first explanation is possible. It basically reduces the rhetoric to a cynical attempt to buy votes by saying what voters want to hear. To be sure, this is a charge leveled against politicians every election cycle. However, there is no way to test it. We simply cannot look into a politician’s mind and tell if they are being earnest or cynical. It
Go to Page 16
Bob Dole is an important connecting figure between the ideological vacuum of GHW Bush and the new ideology of GW Bush. As has been seen, Dole did make some attempts to connect to the body of conservative intellectual literature, or at least to the glory days of Reagan conservatism. The connection was weak, and Dole’s ongoing connections appeared more to be through the shorthand tag “it’s your money”. While the ideological connections for Dole were too weak to be solidly aligned with Reagan, they do not appear to be in line with GW Bush’s rhetoric. The result is that Dole is relegated to having mild ideological connections on the order of GHW Bush, but with the exception that his lazy shorthand method of referring to conservative ideology may have opened the door for an evolution in the guiding ideology of the conservative movement.
GW Bush’s rhetoric has already been noted as having been both duplicitous and lacking any direct ideological connection to intellectual conservatism. The duplicitous nature can be explained by several possible factors. The first is that there is no ideology connected to the rhetoric. The second is that the ideology is stated in one crowd, but simply repackaged to be acceptable to another. A third is that the ideological connection cannot be stated because of implications from doing so.
The first explanation is possible. It basically reduces the rhetoric to a cynical attempt to buy votes by saying what voters want to hear. To be sure, this is a charge leveled against politicians every election cycle. However, there is no way to test it. We simply cannot look into a politician’s mind and tell if they are being earnest or cynical. It
Go to Page 16
© 2004 by Xpatriated Texan
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