The Failure of the Conservative Movement? Really?

Let me see if I’ve got this straight. We start with a quote from this Washington Post article, Low-wage workers in the United States are gripped by increasing financial insecurity as they inch along an economic tightrope made riskier by pervasive job losses and rising prices. Many struggle to pay for life's basics -- housing, food and health care -- and most report having virtually no financial cushion should they stumble.Still, they remain inspired by the American dream, with most saying they are more apt to move up economically than slip backward even if they are frustrated now. Most also expect better for their children. Optimism and self-reliance - that's really what the American dream has been about since 1776... heck, since Plymouth Rock. It's inspiring to see, isn't it? But the liberal response is For too long in our country work has not been rewarded as well as investment income has. And our system has become a zero sum game where winner takes all rather than an acknowledgement that we are all in this life together. And therefore, the Conservative movement is a failure. Wait… what?Okay, let’s double check that train of thought:1) Low-wage workers are poor. I’m with you so far.2) Low-wage workers believe in the American dream and the virtue of hard work. From the WaPo article: “the vast majority said they like or even love their jobs and they believe in the power of hard work to transform lives.” I’m still with you.3) Again from the article, the presidential candidates are promising economic “help” for America’s middle class, which will also help the poor. True enough.4) Therefore we can now realize that the Conservative movement has failed. Okay, that’s where you lost me. That last one. Let’s inspect that more closely. Karen, the liberal blogger I linked above, agrees with Greg Anrig’s attack on the GOP from last Sunday’s Washington Post. While Anrig is correct in noting that the public's attitude toward government has changed quite a bit since the Reagan administration, he is wrong to assert that this is a failure of Conservative ideals. To quote Anrig:The single theme that most animated the modern conservative movement was the conviction that government was the problem and market forces the solution. It was a simple, elegant, politically attractive idea, and the right applied it to virtually every major domestic challenge -- retirement security, health care, education, jobs, the environment and so on. Whatever the issue, conservatives proposed substituting market forces for government -- pushing the bureaucrats aside and letting private-sector competition work to everyone's benefit.So they advocated creating health savings accounts, handing out school vouchers, privatizing Social Security, shifting government functions to private contractors, and curtailing regulations on public health, safety, the environment and more. And, of course, they pushed to cut taxes to further weaken the public sector by "starving the beast." President Bush has followed this playbook more closely than any previous president, including Reagan, notwithstanding today's desperate efforts by the right to distance itself from the deeply unpopular chief executive. But in practice, those ideas have all failed to deliver on the promises the conservatives made… But Anrig has engaged in some sleight-of-hand, and Karen the liberal blogger fell for it. Yes, Conservatives have advocated these things, but they have not come to pass! We do not have health savings accounts, school vouchers, or privatized Social Security, so how in the hell can we conclude that these ideas have failed? (It’s like he’s saying that since the Buffalo Bills went to four Superbowls in a row without winning, we can clearly see that it was bad for the to go to the shootout format.) Neither market forces nor competition has actually been brought to bear on these issues. They have only been advocated. Take a look again at that last sentence that I quoted from Anrig. “But in practice, those ideas have all failed to deliver…” In practice? Does Anrig even know what that term means? Let’s be clear. President Bush’s administration bears little resemblance to President Reagan’s, who himself was less of a Conservative than many people realize. Even in 1994, when Republicans took control of the House with the relatively conservative Contract with America, Conservative ideas were never implemented on any scale in the federal government. As I pointed out three years ago, the current administration has had the highest rate of federal government growth since the presidencies of Richard Nixon and LBJ. Don’t you dare cite this administration as an indictment of Conservativism. Karen the liberal blogger says that “people who work hard and play by the rules should indeed have a basic social safety net below which they cannot fall. Their children should enjoy adequate health care and access to a decent education.” But as is noted in the comment section of her post, that social safety net already exists. American children do have access to adequate health care, a decent education. We already spend 21 percent of the federal budget on Social Security alone, according to FactCheck.org. “Even more went for health care, including 16 percent for Medicare and 7 percent for the Medicaid program for low-income persons.” We don’t live in a Dickens novel, Karen. And the fact that some middle class Americans might suffer a bit because they overstretched and undersaved back when houses and gas were cheap, does not mean that the free markets failed, or that government needs to save us. Shame on those Republicans who did not adhere to true Goldwater Conservative ideals, because they are the ones who have set us up for this kind of abuse.Source