Conservative reactions to this speech have been very interesting. They seem to be of two minds about the whole thing. On the one hand, most people think the speech was
well-delivered and
likely to be popular. As Hugh Hewitt put it:
Perfect pitch returned tonight, and the president's looks backward and forward were on target. As Chris Matthews observed, it sounded a little LBJ/FDR-like in its vows about the underclass of the recovery region, but that is exactly why it worked so well: That is what needs to happen, and he identified the best approaches in the empowerment of entrepeneurs and the retraining of the evacuees. The enterprise zone could prove a turbo charged motor to the effort, and the promise of innovation was well delivered.
Finally, the serious notes he sounded on the need to review and improve the emergency plans across the country, and to empower the American military to become the first responder when scale requires it, was exceptionally well delivered. Millions of Americans had to have heard this portion of the speech from this man and concluded that he is very serious indeed about fixing the gaps.
On the whole, very few people think that Bush failed to deliver an effective speech, and many are downright
jubilant at the reaction the speech seemed to get from the Astrodome residents.
All of those interviewed at the Astrodome were black. They were all evacuees from New Orleans. When the first person was asked if she believed the President she said yes. She said that what the President said lifted her up and gave her hope. When the reporter questioned her about the slow response of the federal government, she said they did a good job once they got there and that she blamed the local and state officials, who had not done their jobs. She said they were the ones there when the storm hit and they did not do what they needed to do. Then she got on a rant about the buses that were not used. She later said she blamed Mayor Nagin personally.
However, there is definitely a subset of conservative voices that is less than impressed. Leading the charge would be the conservative blogger
tacitus, with his blistering criticism.
Tax credits for rebuilding is okay. Urban homesteading is okay. The rest of the President's address from New Orleans? Everything one has come to fear within the past five years.
What, then, did we learn from President Bush this evening?
- The Republican Party has come full circle from, "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem," to an acceptance of the primacy of government responsibility for all things.
- We will ignore the deadly lessons of having established a major city at water's edge below sea level in the name of a vapid resolution to rebuild.
- The Federal government cannot run an evacuation and relief effort properly, but it does a magnificent job of televised stage-setting in a disaster area.
- The hallmark of a successful recovery effort is the extension of the state's noodly appendages to the American refugee diaspora. Indeed, thank the Lord that the good people of New Orleans are now within reach of the Departments Health and Human Services and Labor, the Social Security Administration, and the Postal Service.
- Despite its having botched its own efforts, aggressively stymied those of others, and incompetently asserted its considerable power in the opening days of the catastrophe, the lesson of New Orleans is that we need "greater federal authority" for future such events.
- The Federal government is abandoning the primacy of the civil disaster-response mechanisms that generally served us well in the past, in favor of a purely illusory conception of the military as somehow inherently more efficient, swift, and effective.
How apt that we thus begin the rebuilding of a metropolis on muck.
Other
conservative bloggers agree. Some are downright
paranoid.
...which got me thinking. What if the Democrats aren't attacking Bush because they dislike him, or because they're really opposed to regime change in Iraq, or because they equate him with Hitler, or because they really oppose the FBI looking into library records, or because they are really dissatisfied with the federal response to Katrina, but because they know that his Pavlovian, knee-jerk response to criticism is to throw money at anything and everything around him?
So
we appear to have a divide. On the one hand, virtually everyone thinks this speech was a great victory for
Republicans. On the other, quite a few think it was a very bad speech for
conservatives.
As SN points out, the purpose of political parties is to win elections. Does that mean Republicans are justified in abandoning conservative ideals in order to maintain political power? Or does it mean that the embrace of massive spending and ever-bigger government are now conservative values? Can conservatives realistically separate themselves from Republican actions done in their name, or will the conservative movement end up being associated with everything Republican?
I'm neither a Republican or a conservative, so I can't really answer the first two. But as to the third, my vote is a resounding
no. Everything in this country goes into one of two camps, and I don't think conservatives will be any more successful at avoiding blame for Republican actions than liberals were at disassociating themselves from certain Democratic ones. If I'm right, some conservatives should be concerned.
