Andrew Sullivan Endorses Kerry

Andrew Sullivan is a popular and influential conservative writer. He's also gay, which is a curious fact because it's long been obvious that the Republican Party has no place for gays and gay rights. That's probably part of the reason why Sullivan has decided that Kerry not only should be president, but does in fact represent conservative values even more than Bush does.

Sullivan writes:

The conservative "movement" in the U.S. is still firmly behind president George W. Bush's re-election. He uses conservative rhetoric - taking the war to the enemy, upholding conservative social values, respecting religious faith, protecting the family, and so on. He is widely regarded as one of the most conservative presidents in recent history - rivaling Reagan, eclipsing his own father in right wing bona fides. And yet if you decouple the notion of being a conservative from being a Republican, no one can doubt that the Bush administration has been pursuing some highly unconservative policies.

Start with the war. Almost overnight after 9/11, president Bush went from being a semi-isolationist, realist foreign policy president to a transformational one. He junked decades of American foreign policy in the Middle East, abandoning attempts to manage Arab autocracies for the sake of a steady oil supply, and forged a new policy of radical democratization of the Middle East. ... In the 2000 campaign, Bush mocked the idea of "nation-building" as liberal claptrap. Now it's the centerpiece of his own administration.

At home, Bush has been just as radical. He has essentially junked two decades of conservative attempts to restrain government and pushed federal spending to record levels. He has poured money into agricultural subsidies; he famously put tariffs on foreign steel; he has expanded the biggest entitlement healthcare program; and dramatically increased the role of the central government in the matter of education. Apart from modest attempts to privatize some government functions, he has failed to reform a single government program to make it cheaper or more efficient.

I’m not sure that Andrew Sullivan actually understand the concept “conservative.” There’s nothing in the above that inherently contradicts being “conservative.” It’s not required for political, social, or religious conservatives to reform government programs to make them “cheaper or more efficient” — that’s a characteristic of fiscal conservatism, a label that doesn’t necessarily apply for someone to be “conservative.” There’s also nothing inherently “liberal” in nation-building.

There has also been, it's safe to say, a remarkable recklessness in Bush's approach to governance. Was it really necessary to insist that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to detainees in the war on terror? When Osama bin Laden was isolated in the Afghan-Pakistani border, was it wise to deputize the campaign to capture him to Afghan warlords? ... When the Iraqi insurgency was gaining traction, was it sensible to apply the methods in Guantanamo Bay to the hundreds of petty criminals and innocents hauled into Abu Ghraib?

So where is conservatism to be found?

Here, finally, we find something about conservatism. Although social, political, and religious conservatives all have their differences, they tend to find widespread agreement on the need to maintain basic values and principles. That is, in fact, what it means to be “conservative” in the first place — it’s all about conserving values and principles in order to maintain society.

Sullivan above is complaining about the values and principles which have apparently been jettisoned in pursuit of the war on terrorism and that is a valid complaint. Where is the “conservatism” to be found in abandoning the Geneva Conventions or allow the use of torture against detainees? That’s a good question, and conservatives shouldn’t assume that the promotion of conservative principles is necessarily to be found in the Republican Party.

As a side note, I find it interesting that Sullivan is asking for donations to his site because of increased bandwidth costs, citing also that he has “written 300,000 words for the site“ this year alone and thus has put a lot of work into it. Only 300,000? I’ve probably written around 700,000 this year alone. Hey, Andrew, get back to work! :-)

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• 2004 Elections
• Election Polls
• George W. Bush
• John Kerry
• War on Terrorism