Comments on: Pseudoconservatism

By: WorldWideWeber

WorldWideWeber — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:49:41 +0000

Responding to your first comment (the second—thank you kindly—arrived as I was composing this): I agree, even with your quibble, although I would put the “also” between “party” and “were.” Like you, I don’t think it would have been a waste of time to hold the hearings in 2006 or 2007 or even now. But I would refer back to my point about how the idea of impeachment has been besmirched, and that the idea needs to be rehabilitated. Holding hearings on the impeachment of Bush and Cheney might have gone some distance in doing so; then again, it may be too soon for another impeachment, and in that regard Pelosi et al. just may be right (gasp!). The public may be for impeachment hearings (barely) at the outset, but where would they be after a few weeks or months of them? And you can say, “It doesn’t matter if they succeed,” but for Pelosi et al., unfortunately, it probably does.

Again, the larger point is that conservatism (true conservatism) needs to rehabilitate itself to the extent that a handful of conservatives could do now what the corresponding handful did in 1974. As usual, I don’t offer a prescription for what to do. I’m just saying. Modern-day Republicans should be ashamed of themselves, and I’m just trying to do my part to shame them.

By: Thomas Nephew

Thomas Nephew — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:25:48 +0000

Meant to say above that between Alterman’s liberalism and your conservatism, I’d choose your outlook. Also, thanks again for writing this.

By: Thomas Nephew

Thomas Nephew — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:20:12 +0000

No, the exchange wasn’t heated, though I was a little nervous and sounded that way.

You’re right that impeachment shouldn’t be a liberal thing; avoiding it shouldn’t be held up as the height of liberal wisdom either. (Not saying that’s your claim).

As Alterman seems to understand it, liberalism is more of a shopping or to-do list than a hierarchy of political goals and (Allah forbid) principles. As you describe it, conservatism should be about upholding our civic understanding of the country.

I’ll quibble with one thing you said: “The impeachment drive against Richard Nixon owed its success to the fact that many members of his own party were disgusted by his criminal behavior and put the political health of the republic above their narrow personal loyalties.”
Insert an “also” right after Nixon, and I’m with you. That is, those members didn’t initiate anything — they had to have their noses rubbed in Nixon’s crimes for weeks before a few of them saw them for what they were. The decision by some few GOP members to do the right thing came only after a lot of other dominoes had fallen — principally that House Dem leadership finally decided to go forward with the process.

To re-engage Alterman (or Pelosi, or Van Hollen, or Conyers): would the impeachment have been “wrong” or a waste of time had the Judiciary Committee failed to gain GOP votes, or pass the articles at all? I don’t think so — the hearings were forever there for all to review, and the failure to pass the articles would have been understood as a partisan failure of the GOP, not of the Dems. (In my opinion.)