Why Conservatives Lack Leaders
By Bruce Walker (07/18/08)
Where have all the Reagans gone? That question permeates American conservatism, which a dozen years ago seemed to be overflowing with leadership. It is not intended as a slap at Mitt Romney, a great guy in so many ways, that conservatives only gradually warmed up to him during the Republican nomination season. McCain is positively disliked by many conservatives, and Rudy - remember Rudy? - was liked personally but not philosophically by most conservatives. Within the entire Republican Party there were only a few congressmen, like Tancredo and Hunter, that excited any conservatives at all. What has happened?
Former congressman Mickey Edwards, who Rush has talked about several times recently on his program, is an excellent example of what has happened to the conservative movement in America: An addiction to fame, a yearning for wealth, an itch for power – all these things, which Reagan, already a movie star when he ran for Governor of California, never had – “happened” to the conservative movement and to the Republican Party.
Edwards has a biography that certainly sounds conservative. He was a Republican congressman from Oklahoma for sixteen years. He helped found the Heritage Foundation. He was Chairman of the American Conservative Union. And he has just written a book, Reclaiming Conservatism, which proposes how to bring back conservative values.
But just how “conservative” is this conservative? He writes articles for the Los Angeles Times and appears regularly on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Edwards even writes for The Nation, one of the most leftist periodicals in print.
And, as Rush Limbaugh has noted, Congressman Edwards may present himself as a conservative, but he does not talk like one now. What happened to Mickey Edwards is a microcosm of what happened to much of the Republican Party and much of the conservative movement.
When Edwards was elected to Congress in 1976, the congressional district he lived in was one of the most conservative in America. It had been gerrymandered to put as many conservative Republicans as possible into the same House district. Anyone elected from that district would have to appear to be very conservative or he was not going to win the Republican primary or the general election.
The question was not whether a candidate or a congressman from that congressional district talked like a conservative or not, but rather whether that individual was really a conservative or just another self-absorbed politician. In the case of Mickey Edwards, we have the answer, but it did not come overnight. His conservative rating, according to the American Conservative Union, was 98% for the first half of his sixteen years in Congress. It is hard to fault that.
But over the last eight years in Congress, Mickey Edwards, as they say “grew.” His ACU rating dropped from a near perfect 98% over his first eight years in Congress to a far from perfect 90% rating over his last eight years. While in most congressional districts an ACU rating of 90% would be good, Edwards came from one of the most conservative congressional districts in America. Not only was Edwards not particularly conservative as a Republican congressman his last eight years, but he was less conservative than the other Republican congressman from Oklahoma, Jim Inhofe (now Senator Inhofe.)
His ACU rating the last eight years of his term in Congress was lower than the lifetime ACU rating of any Republican member of Congress from the House or the Senate who is in Congress now. Why does the ACU rating matter? It matters because Mickey Edwards, at one time, was Chairman of the American Conservative Union. How long ago? A long time ago: Edwards resigned as Chairman of the ACU in December 1984, almost twenty-four years ago.
By that time he was the most liberal (or least conservative) Republican in Congress from his state.
But that is not the whole story of Mickey Edwards. Although Edwards was drifting to the Left, he was hardly losing his appetite for politics, and he rose steadily through the ranks of the Republican Party in Congress. As a Republican congressman with lots of seniority and years of incumbency from a very conservative Republican district, Edwards could have stayed in Congress as long as he wanted – right? Is there anything safer than a sixteen year incumbent congressman from a safely gerrymandered district?
It would take quite a bit for Edwards to lose his seat and it did take quite a bit for Edwards to lose his seat. The House Banking Scandal was among the largest political scandals in the history of the federal government. Democrats, who had controlled the House of Representatives without interruption for the previous four decades, picked out twenty-two members of the House who were particularly egregious offenders. The House Ethics Committee, controlled by Democrats, identified eighteen Democrats and four Republicans who were the worst offenders. Edwards was among that special group. He wrote a whopping 396 checks with insufficient funds to the House Bank.
But he still would have held his seat in Congress had he not been challenged in the Republican Primary by four conservative Republicans campaigning against him from the Right. Edwards, who was fourth in the Republican leadership at the time, tried to win votes in the Republican Primary by telling voters about all the pork he brought home or, as he said at the time “It’s not pork if you’re bringing jobs that will be created anyway and you have them in Oklahoma rather than West Virginia.” Ernest Istook, who would ultimately win the primary, responded to Edwards “A pig is a pig no matter whose pigpen it happens to be in.” Edwards ran in a five man primary, but when the votes were counted he did not even make the runoff primary. The sixteen year incumbent congressman got only twenty-six percent of the vote and came in third in the voting (Istook came in second, but would win the runoff primary.)
What did Mickey Edwards do after that? He had, after all, been fourth in the House Republican leadership. He had been chairman, for awhile, of the American Conservative Union. A contrite Mickey Edwards would have, doubtless, been received within the conservative community in a few years. He had a fat pension from his years in the House, a law degree with experience as a law professor, a journalism degree with experience as an editor: He was hardly adrift in a rowboat.
But Edwards wanted more. He soon began working for the Kennedy School of Government and for Harvard Law School. When his marriage ended, he remarried a Democrat strategist. None of this means that Mickey Edwards is a bad man – many people still like him – but it does mean that this former congressman who drifted consistently to the Left during his sixteen years in Congress (which ended, by coincidence, sixteen years ago) is hardly a “conservative leader.”
What happened to Mickey Edwards is exactly what has happened to so many conservative “leaders” since Ronald Reagan. He fell in love with earmarks. He fell in love with the perks of being a big shot in Washington. When conservatism no longer helped him, he no longer helped conservatism. How many Republicans can we name today who are just like that? Too many, it seems.
The pressure of the Left is subtle and constant. Our true champions – Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley, Tony Snow – are rare gems (which is why we miss them so much.) It is sad, but true, that political power is for many people not a way to serve but a way to profit. There is a deep hunger for leadership today. There are many applicants for the job, but as we learned this winter, there are very few people who deserve that mantle.
Bruce Walker
http://brucewwalker.com/
(Printer friendly version) Email: Bruce Walker
