You know this is going to be one heck of a campaign season when the
Democratic front-runner is being forced to prove he’s more compassionate
than the Republican one.
Try as he undoubtedly did, Al Gore couldn’t quite make it through his
campaign announcement without revealing his defensiveness about W’s
presumptuous appropriation of the compassion theme. Bush has definitely
gotten Gore’s goat, and maybe even his family farm — tobacco and all.
It’s a beautiful thing.
Gore took an unmistakable shot at Bush when he said, “I want to do it
the right way, not be letting people fend for themselves or hoping for
crumbs of compassion, but by giving people the skills and knowledge to
succeed in their own right in the next century.”
As I wrote last time, I am no longer upset with Bush for coining the
phrase “compassionate conservatism” because I don’t view it as an
apology for conservatism proper. I just think Bush has devised a way to
beat Clintonian liberals at their own game of political marketing.
Part of Clinton and Gore’s unscrupulous genius has been to steal
Republican ideas, such as balancing the budget and welfare reform,
leaving Republicans not only empty handed but also on the defensive.
How dare Clinton/Gore veto welfare reform twice, only reluctantly
pass it the third time because it was so close to the election and then
claim credit as if they had originated the idea. But what’s worse is
that they got away with it.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If they can steal
the budget and welfare issues, then why can’t Republican Bush steal
compassion? If you don’t know, I’ll tell you why: because compassion is
liberalism’s Holy Grail. Since my childhood days, I have witnessed
first-hand liberalism’s claim to an exclusive possessory interest in
the virtue of compassion.
Today, that claim persists. But now it goes even further. It’s not
enough that liberals have a monopoly on compassion and that
conservatives are bereft of it. Conservatives are not just unfeeling,
they are affirmatively mean-spirited, wanting to deprive children of
their school lunches and the elderly of their Medicare benefits.
Just as liberals, such as Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw,
are generally too blinded by their own bias to recognize that it exists,
they are incapable of conceiving that conservatives can be
compassionate. They are so inebriated with feelings of moral superiority
for their self-perceived compassion and tolerance (for everything but
conservatism and everyone but conservatives) that they view us on the
right as moral reprobates.
I’m not exaggerating. Liberal moral superiority is the unstated
presumption that underlies every political debate. If you have the
naivete to doubt it just get the transcripts of Rosie O’Donnell’s
assault on Tom Selleck, Geraldo’s twisted eulogies of Susan McDougal and
demonizations of Ken Starr or any of Charles Grodin’s painfully mindless
sermonizing monologues.
Well, I for one am just about tired of it. How incredibly shallow of
them to presume to know what motivates our ideology. It must never occur
to them that it is an abiding love for our fellow human beings and our
heartfelt desire that they be allowed to shine in the light of political
freedom.
Well, Clinton and Gore started this fight, or at least, exacerbated
it. As they have lived by the polls, so they must die by the polls. They
made their own twin bed by vilifying and lying about Republicans. They
have thrived through nearly two terms on unbridled political
exploitation. They have pitted class against class, race against race,
gender against gender and everyone against evil Republicans.
Unfortunately for them, it appears that W is a quick study and is
going to turn the tables on them, using a play right out of their
corrupt playbook. The only difference will be that he won’t have to be
deceitful, because conservatives are compassionate. Hopefully, through
his political adroitness, he will once and for all neutralize their
scaremongering and force them back to the table to debate the merits of
the issues, rather than the emotions surrounding them.
If Bush is successful at exposing the notion that conservatives are
uncompassionate for the myth that it is, liberals are going to feel
intellectually homeless for a season. That is because their ideas, with
the exceptions of the ones they’ve stolen from us, are bankrupt.
After the 2000 election, if Republicans indeed are victorious, maybe
they can finally demonstrate their bona fides to liberal Democrats by
throwing them “crumbs of compassion.”
