Why Conservative Thinking Doesn’t Work, Part 4: Putting Ideology Ahead of Public Opinion

    One would think that in a vibrant, responsive democracy, when the people have strongly-held views, government leaders would be eager to put them into effect.  But that thinking rarely operates when conservative ideology is concerned. On issue after issue, conservatives in office follow their ideological preferences, not only when they run counter to human needs, not only when they fly in the face of fact, but also when they are heavily unpopular with the American people.       

     Reputable polling organizations find that conservative positions are out of touch with the views of most Americans on a host of issues. Here are some recent examples, as illustrated by the findings of the Gallup Poll. 

     In 2010 the Dream Act was favored by the American people by a margin of 54 to 42 percent.  It would grant legal status to young people who were brought to America as infants or small children, have stayed out of legal trouble and who go to college for two years or serve in the military. It won by 14 votes in the U.S. Senate but conservatives stopped it on a filibuster. 

     A much larger percentage of Americans are in favor of a “path to citizenship” for illegal immigrants if they have been in the U.S. a “long time, pass a criminal background check, pay back taxes and a penalty, and learn English.” A whopping 87 percent agreed in a 2013 Gallup poll. Only 12 percent disagreed. The Senate passed an immigration bill with these provisions by a wide majority with support from both parties, but conservative opposition in the House of Representatives has prevented it from even being brought up for a vote in that chamber.

     In 2013, Gallup found 53 percent of Americans were against overturning Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that gave women the right to an abortion. Only 29 percent wanted the decision reversed. The same year found 78 percent in favor of legal abortion under “all” or “certain circumstances” and only 20 percent wanting to be “illegal in all circumstances.” Yet that is what conservatives, especially social conservatives, want to enforce. In 2013, over 50 new restrictions on abortion were passed in states where conservative legislatures hold the majority.

     Gallup asked Americans in 2013, “Would you vote for or against a law that would require background checks for all gun purchases?” 83 percent said “for” and 17 percent said “against.”  Conservatives in the U.S. Senate blocked the majority from passing just such legislation with a filibuster.  

     Conservatives continue to battle against contraception, even though 89 percent of Americans feel contraception is morally acceptable and only 8 percent do not. Even Catholics think so, by a margin of 82 to 15 percent. Conservatives tried to use opposition to contraception to invalidate Obamacare. Meanwhile, 98 percent of American women report using contraception at some point in their lives.

     58 percent of Americans were in favor of legalizing marijuana against 38 percent opposed.  This is even though just 38 percent said they had ever tried it and only 6 percent said they had used marijuana in the past month. Most, including those who do not use marijuana themselves, seem to think this legal war is an exercise in futility.

     In 2014, Gallup found Americans supported same-sex marriage by 55 to 42 percent. In 2013, 52 percent of Americans said they would, if given the chance, vote to make marriage equality the law in all 50 states, versus 42 percent who said they would vote no. The trend is also noteworthy.  From 1996 to 2008 the percentage for marriage equality grew by an average of 1 percent a year and the percentage against fell by 1 percent a year. But since 2009 the momentum has accelerated. In ’09 opinion as sampled by Gallup was still 57 to 40 against. In the ensuing four years the liberal view gained 3 percent a year and the conservative view lost three percent a year, producing the current 8-percent margin in favor. Conservatives, of course, continue to ignore the rapidly gathering national consensus and remain against marriage equality.

     Conservatives fought for the 2013 “Sequester” budget cuts to public services, even though 56 percent of the American people felt if they were adopted “the economy will get worse.”  Conservatives instead cast their lot with the 30 percent who disagreed.

     Conservative congressmen, led by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, orchestrated a government shutdown in late 2013 to try to stop the implementation of the Obamacare health program. The Quinnipiac University Poll found that Americans opposed the shutdown idea by an overwhelming margin of 72 percent to 22 percent.

     Prominent defense conservatives such as Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham decry the idea of negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, and 47 Republican senators signed a letter sent to the ayatollahs of Iran telling them not to negotiate with America. Meanwhile, the CNN Poll found Americans support direct negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program by 75 percent to 20 percent.    

     A 2013 Kaiser Family Foundation poll on deficit reduction asked people what they thought ought to be cut “if the president and Congress decide to reduce the deficit by reducing spending.”  Lopsided majorities were against any cuts to public education, Medicare and Social Security, and strong pluralities were against cuts to Medicaid and health insurance subsidies. Yet education is one of the places where conservatives made major cuts in the recession, and the others are consistently mentioned in conservative proposals to cut, privatize and voucherize.

     The people support clean campaign finance practices, and liberals are fighting to overturn the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court ruling. In that case, the court’s conservative majority, by a 5-4 vote, threw out forty years of law and held that unlimited corporate political contributions were fine. A 2012 Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll found that 62% of registered voters disagreed with the Citizens United decision. Yet conservative leaders continue to back it.  

     The issue of income inequality continued to gain greater importance as the prosperity of the wealthy surged in the recovery while pay for most workers lagged behind. President Obama pushed for a major hike in the federal minimum wage, from $7.25 an hour to $10.10. A Quinnipiac survey in January 2014 found the American people solidly in support, by the huge majority of 72 percent to 27 percent. Even Republicans agreed, 52 percent to 45 percent.  Nonetheless, conservatives, particularly economic conservatives, and the business community were bitterly opposed. 

     Income inequality could be a ticking time bomb for conservatives. A Pew poll in early 2014 found 65 percent of Americans felt income inequality had gotten worse in the past ten years, and 69 percent said government should take action to reduce the gap. Only 26 percent said government should do little or nothing about it. A 2013 Gallup poll had found that by a count of 59 percent to 33 percent Americans felt the distribution of wealth in the country is unfair and should be “more evenly distributed among a larger percentage of the people.” Another question in the same poll asked, “Do you think our government should or should not redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich?” 52 percent said it should and 45 percent said no, it shouldn’t. Don’t hold your breath waiting to see if conservatives will act to implement the people’s choice on this one.  

     Time and again conservatives have demonstrated they are little concerned with what the people actually want. The cases you have just read provide plenty of examples on issue after issue where the wishes of two-to-one, three-to-one, even up to ten-to-one majorities of the American people are ignored in favor of following conservative ideology and satisfying a small minority of conservative voters at the behest of an even smaller fraction of wealthy backers.  This is a third and foundational weakness that accounts for a good deal of the reason why conservative thinking doesn’t work—it so often ignores the needs, the wishes and the plain common sense of the great majority of the very people it purports to serve. 

     

Why Conservative Thinking Doesn’t Work, Part 3: Putting Ideology Ahead of Fact

One of the main reasons I gave up the views of my conservative upbringing and embraced liberalism was my growing realization that science did not support conservative arguments and that the clear historical record did not back up claims of positive results when conservative policies were followed. Let's look at a few examples. 

Take global warming, or climate change. The scientific consensus is near absolute. The immense amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere by the burning of coal, gasoline and natural gas, deforestation and other human activities is causing massive changes in global climate. These include a spike in temperatures unseen in the past 400,000 years, sea level rise, increasing severity in the power of storms and changes in precipitation patterns, such as the spreading drought in the American West.The conservative argument against this is that it must be a conspiracy cooked up by academics eager to get research grants to prove their theory. Most of the publicity campaign making these allegations is funded by oil and coal companies, who spend lavishly to raise questions about the connection between the use of their products and the deterioration of the climate, but who have not been able to refute the data or the correlation between CO2 in the atmosphere and world temperatures. Imagine how much the fossil fuel giants would pay for just one conclusive study showing any truth to their contention that greenhouse gases and temperature are unrelated. There is a conspiracy all right, but not the one conservatives want to believe in.

     
The ongoing conservative fight against LGBT rights provides us another example of ideology, or perhaps plain old-fashioned prejudice, trumping not only science but the American egalitarian ethic. Some base their case against gay equality on grounds that same sex attraction is a disordered mental state, even though the American Psychological Association (APA) has been clear since 1975 that it is not. Another justification advanced against equality is that gender identification is a “choice.” This, of course, begs the question that even if it were a choice why that would justify denying someone their rights. But here again, speaking of all sexual orientations, the APA finds that “most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation.” Conservatives fought hard to keep the “Don’t ask don’t tell” policy in force in the military, and predicted all manner of catastrophic morale problems if LGBT personnel were allowed to serve openly. They were certain of this despite the track record of twenty-five militaries around the world, including Australia, Britain and Canada, who were already accepting openly gay members without difficulty. “Don’t ask don’t tell” was officially ended in the U.S. Armed Forces on September 20, 2011. Have you heard of any serious problems resulting from this? Neither have I.

Conservative economic thinking holds that cutting taxes, regulations and government spending inevitably leads to balanced budgets and prosperity. But the facts do not confirm this.  The top income tax rate for the wealthiest taxpayers was only 24% in 1929 under conservative Republican leadership, and that is when the economy cratered and the Great Depression began. It was raised to 79% under liberal Democrat Franklin Roosevelt by 1936, and strong recovery took place. Strong recovery also took place in the conversion back to a peacetime economy after World War II under the liberal Harry Truman. During the prosperous liberal Kennedy and Johnson years of the 1960s, the top rate averaged 77%. It was still 70% when conservative Ronald Reagan came into office in 1981. He cut the top rate to 50% for starters and the deficit tripled. He then chopped it to 28% and slashed spending for social needs. During his tenure the rich got richer, the poor got poorer and the middle class stagnated. In addition, banking deregulation led to the Savings and Loan Crash of the late 80s. Bill Clinton raised the top rate back up to 39.6% in the 1990s. The 90s saw the longest economic expansion in American history and the federal budget was actually running a surplus the last three years of Clinton’s administration. Conservative George W. Bush was inaugurated in 2001, removed many regulations and initiated tax cuts back down to a 35% top rate. Once again, contrary to conservative ideological expectations, the budget returned to deficits, and the deregulated financial sector had its worst meltdown since 1929, leading to the Great Recession and the loss of over eight million jobs.

To people in a fact-centered reality, the above results speak for themselves. The adoption of conservative economic ideas has produced poor results time and time again, while liberal policies have produced a demonstrably superior record of growth and prosperity. Yet conservative thinking remains impervious to facts. They remain wedded to cutting taxes and reducing spending on human needs. They block or roll back environmental safeguards, mocking the science and human health data that testify to their effectiveness. They repeal consumer protections while protecting corporate welfare, tax dodges and immunities. When the facts and evidence refute their claims they remain unmoved, because they believe in them. Putting their pre-set ideological views into practice, regardless of the effect on real people’s lives is one of the defining characteristics of conservative ideology. That is what an ideologue is, and the main reason why conservatives do not seem to learn from the record when it comes to matters central to their core beliefs. They consistently put ideology ahead of fact.

Why Conservative Thinking Doesn’t Work, Part 2: Putting Ideology Ahead of People

     Continuing from my previous post, we'll get into the three reasons why conservative thinking doesn't work. The first is that it puts ideology ahead of people. There is a common thread here: ideology tends to trump all other considerations in conservative thought. They have their preconceived beliefs and they don’t let much of anything-necessity, evidence or the popular will-get in the way if they can help it. They call it “standing for principle,” but what principles are served when millions remain jobless and hungry, or an unnecessary war is launched that kills tens of thousands and maims and scars many times that number?

      The liberal asks, “How do we get good health care to more people,” and then starts figuring out how to do it. The conservative asks, “How do we keep government involvement to a minimum and, if possible under those conditions, improve health care?” The liberal asks, “How do we make the air cleaner for people to breathe?” The conservative asks, “How do we avoid enacting any new government regulations and, if it is possible without them, make the air any cleaner?” By putting ideology before human needs the conservative forecloses a whole range of solutions to problems, solutions which sometimes are the best or perhaps even the only reasonable ones that can work. 

     Medical care for senior citizens stands as a good example. By the 1950s, medical care for senior citizens had reached a crisis stage. There were four times as many seniors as in 1900 and hospital costs were rising at almost seven percent a year. Consequently, only one senior in eight had health insurance. It’s easy to see why. What insurance company could make money selling affordable insurance to the oldest and sickest members of society? Health insurance for older Americans was therefore prohibitively expensive and only the wealthiest could afford it.     

     John Kennedy campaigned in 1960 on doing something about this, but once elected couldn’t get a plan through congress. After President Kennedy’s assassination he was succeeded by Vice President Lyndon Johnson. LBJ won election to a full term in 1964, and the voters also sent an overwhelmingly Democratic congress into office with him. In 1965 they passed the Medicare program, and basic coverage for senior Americans has never been a problem since. Conservative spokesman and later President Ronald Reagan said Medicare would be, “the end of freedom in America.” Instead, it has become one of the most successful and popular programs ever enacted, a true lifesaver to millions of people. Everyone pays into it during their working lives and it’s there for them in their retirement years. 

     Medicare is a great example of liberal effectiveness at solving human problems contrasted with conservative obsession with ideology. Medicare was and is necessary because the private market cannot make money providing a necessary service to people who need it--and all of us who live to a ripe old age will need it. If old folks are to get medical care a government program must either provide it or pay the medical professionals to do so. The alternatives are to bankrupt practically every senior citizen and their family as medical bills mount, or simply to let them die. 

     Medicare shows the liberal ideal of meeting human needs. Conservative opposition shows their ideological approach. It is more important to them to stop the establishment of government programs than to solve urgent societal necessities. They opposed Medicare before it passed, have attempted to repeal it since, and would currently like to take it away a little at a time until it is no longer effective. That is the intent of the Paul Ryan Budget, passed by the Republican House of Representatives in 2011, 2012 and 2013, which would have turned Medicare into a diminishing voucher program. Fortunately for the well-being of 49.4 million American seniors, the Ryan plan was not passed by the Democratic-controlled Senate. But the effort illustrates the general point that the conservative ideology of opposing government action is more important to them than meeting urgent human needs and solving the problems people face.      

     The same prioritization of size-of-government ideology and opposition to society using the democratic process to meet human needs goes well beyond the issue of Medicare, of course. It also includes such matters as job training, scholarships, Social Security, food stamps, immunization programs, Obamacare, and labor, safety and environmental standards. The alternative to government action on these fronts is that people do not get jobs, go broke, go hungry, lose their health, and even die. That is one reason conservative ideas don’t work.