EDMUND BURKEWho defines conservatism today?
Barack Obama.
How does he do it?
By advocating a particular policy. The conservative position then automatically becomes the reverse.
The most hilarious example of this was when, during the Republican primaries, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel asked then-presidential candidate Herman Cain whether he agreed with President Obama's policy on Libya, which, in the unlikely event you haven't seen it, you can watch here. "I disagree with how he handled it for the following reason," Cain began, before realizing that - troubled by "all the stuff twirling around in my head" - he couldn't quite remember what the Libyan situation was about. After getting his feet a little more firmly on the ground, Cain remained adamant that he disagreed with Obama's Libyan policy though he could not explain anything he would have done differently.
A more consequential example is health care. We must reform health care; we have no choice (more about that in a future post). The President pursued what had previously been a conservative approach, namely, mandating universal insurance coverage through the existing private insurance system, and making it easier for consumers to compare and select an insurance company through user-friendly insurance exchanges. This approach attempts to generate cost savings through competition among private insurance companies. It also attempts to ensure that everyone who benefits from the health care system – and that, quite simply, is everyone – pays his or her fair share. When he proposed the same basic program in Massachusetts, Mitt Romney called it “the ultimate conservative idea.”
Presto! As soon as President Obama endorsed it, a conservative position was instantly transformed into a liberal – indeed, socialist – idea.
It is now a fundamental tenet of conservatism that requiring people to pay, through the private insurance system, for what they receive from private health care providers is unAmerican and unconstitutional.