Greg, do you really think a majority of the voters will vote for a "tax and spend" party, as we Democrats have been labeled for so long. People seem willing to do anything to solve our national problems, but only if they can have a tax cut along with it. That's like me agreeing to go on a diet, but only if I can continue to eat my double slice of apple pie ala mode every day. I'm not sure yet that our voters are ready to accept that paying taxes is good, not bad.

Hoppy in Sacramento

It's interesting that the American people did not support Bush's tax cut.

It's telling that in this debate over whether Republicans are the party of ideas, the two conservatives to respond so far have summarily dismissed the first five chapters of the book as unworthy of comment (Niskanen) or offered baseless incantation (Bartlett, who proclaims Republican ideas as more popular without bothering to name any of them).

I actually like and respect Bartlett, who is an independent thinker and is willing to buck conservative orthodoxy, but so far only Anrig has offered any actual ideas, and his conservative critics (those that have bothered responding at all) have offered lazy responses.

Stuart, In the book I make clear that it was John Yoo's conceptualization of the unitary executive doctrine, work that was facilitated by the Federalist Society, that greased the skids for sidestepping the Geneva Conventions. The evolution of the unitary executive idea is complex -- I cite several of Sunstein's papers on the subject. But, as David Cole has written, in the view of Yoo and some other Federalist Society members, the idea amounts to Nixon's claim that "when the president does it, that means it's not illegal."

To be fair, you're far from the only person who is confused on this issue. Other people have also claimed that the "unitary executive" theory means "the President can do what he wants" -- which is incorrect. "Unitary executive" means that the executive branch -- whether agencies or prosecutors -- is under the President, rather than acting independently of the President. It says nothing about the extent of that unified power -- whether it is unlimited or non-existent or somewhere in between. That's a distinct issue, which is why Sunstein says:

The most important point is that the claim for the unitary executive is not a general claim about the President's power to act on his own or to contradict the will of Congress. You can believe in a strongly unitary executive branch while also believing that the President cannot make war, or torture people, or engage in foreign surveillance without congressional authorization. You can also believe that the president can do a lot on his own, or a lot in violation of Congress' will, while also accepting the view that Congress can create independent agencies and independent prosecutors.

I have to say I find Greg's anti-conservative screeds refreshing.  They hold nothing back, are well-argued and manage to convey contempt without hate, which is hard to do.  I wholeheartedly sympathize with that contempt as well.

However, I have my doubts about progressives turning the widespread failure of conservative governance into a lasting majority anytime soon.  There are a number of reasons for this:

• First, the failure of conservative policies has been clear for some time, yet conservatives have gotten stronger and stronger until quite recently.  Democrats have been hammering away at Republican economic policies for the better part of 25 years and, as Jonathan Chait argues, crackpot Republican ideas still dominate the debate about economic policy.  To quote Dick Cheney, "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter."  I suppose it can be debated whether they matter economically.  I think it's pretty clear they don't matter politically.  Had the Iraq War not happened, it is perfectly plausible to think that conservatives would still be very strong, even if they screwed up Hurricane Katrina and even if they caused a recession.  Fundamentally, the conservative decline is about the failure of the Iraq War.
• Second, tarnishing the conservative "brand" will be a lot harder than tarnishing the "liberal" brand was 30 years ago.  Many people describe themselves as conservative even as they dissociate themselves from the sort of "movement" conservatism that has failed them.  The only way "conservative" will end up being an insult the way "liberal" still can be is if there is a great upheaval and people are a lot worse off than they are now.  We may complain about inequality and inadequate health care and many other things, but the fact is that America in 2007 is still an exceedingly wealthy society.  Fundamentally, as long as that is the case, being seen as "conservative" won't be so bad.
• Third, Greg thinks of "progressives" as people like him - smart, levelheaded, pragmatic people with good values who are concerned with good government.  Trouble is, progressives contain within their midst many radicals with ideas as nutty as the movement conservatives.  And as long as those people are prominent, there will always be a rather large group of Americans who will be seriously turned off.  You know who I mean: the kind of people who think American military action by definition is bad.  Capitalism is evil.  Anything corporate is suspect.  And so on.

Pointing out that conservatives have no clothes is absolutely necessary and it will help at the margins politically.  But just as conservatives were wrong to attribute their political success over the last 30 years to their ideas (many other factors were much more important), progressives shouldn't think that the failure of those ideas will necessarily spell conservative doom.

I agree that performance seems irrelevant these days, or Reagan would not be revered.

Liberals have the ugly choice of learning to use psychologically effective words, the equivalent to Newt's list, with which to tarnish conservatives, or to be perpetually beaten by PR.

I don't understand -- I've already explained that, as liberal scholar Cass Sunstein points out, a theory of unlimited executive power just isn't the same thing as the unitary executive theory. Your response is, "John Yoo said such-and-such." This makes no sense unless you're assuming that anything said by John Yoo counts as a part of the "unitary executive" theory -- and, moreover, that anything said by John Yoo as to that "broader" theory somehow disproves the much narrower and entirely distinct concept of who controls the executive branch of government. I don't see how either assumption is defensible.

To be sure, I haven't read your book or John Yoo's. Perhaps Yoo does try to justify unlimited executive power as an extension of the unitary executive theory. In that case, what you should be trying to do is show that John Yoo was wrong, rather than eliding the difference between Yoo and other conservatives who have supported the unitary executive theory, as if Yoo's overreaching proved the invalidity of all "conservative" thought. Otherwise, if, as in the post above, you fail to distinguish between distinct theories, it looks like you're claiming that people who questioned the constitutionality of the independent counsel statute somehow contributed to Abu Ghraib, which is an enormously unfair non sequitur.

Here is my question - why are we discussing conservatism as though it is a sane, rational philosophy. Does any thoughtful person really believe that the civil service should be politicized and the jobs be doled out as political spoils? That's not only irrational it borders on the truly insane. No sentient person wants to depend on a political boss for fire or police protection. The idea of political patronage, mercenaries, ending public education and privatization ignores all lessons and wisdom learned since the enlightenment and pretends that those conditions never existed. Collapsing bridges? Privatize it - never mind that the bridge was built by private contractors with public monies, lease the bridge to a private company and charge those who can afford to use it - those who can't afford it can swim across. Halliburton and Bechtel cheat the government in Iraq? Then by all means hand them the contracts to rebuild New Orleans. Tax cuts don't generate more income for the government - that is so obvious and so elementary - cuts = less income - and yet this craziness is discussed as though it has merit and is worth debating.

"God" talking to and through republican politicians is delusional - it's crazy talk. When people wander the streets and the parks "talking to God" and telling others that God has given them messages to give to the public, we give them a wide berth, we avoid them, we medicate them if we can - and yet conservatives claim the same conversational skills with an imaginary friend and we pretend that it's perfectly normal and in some cases makes that person special and "right for the job".

Conservatism is failing because their so-called ideas are so disconnected from reality, so absurdist as to call their sanity into question and so bereft of humaneness and empathy that they have to fail. They have failure built into them because as Anrig points out there is nothing there but failure.

"conversational skills with an imaginary friend"

It goes further--failure to announce that you have such a friend, and converse regularly with Him (never her??)is a generally accepted disqualification for any elective office beyond the most local.

I can't agree with this. We are talking from Reagan onward, and he was no neo-conservative. The Neo-conservatives hatched and developed during this period, and the problems they cause are in the time frame you refer to. But I think the point here is that movement conservatism, that started with Buckley and others back with Goldwater has been a generalized failure.

BradtheDad --

Conservative economic policies are about protecting established interests -- they favor those who have much (and fear losing even a little of it) at the expense of those who have little but want to create more. For that reason, the most profound consequences of conservative failures are generational.

For the most part, the generation(s) of voters who put conservatives into power didn't, won't, or haven't yet, felt significant consequences from those failures. They've been protected by (now disappearing or weakened) middle class and working class economic and social protections and, to a lesser degree perhaps in each succeeding generation, by the unprecedented, unprecedently broad, (and still, in some aspects, lingering) prosperity built up during the last liberal era -- the post-war boom years of the 50s and 60s.

It is the under-30 generation that is already now reaping -- and will reap to a much greater degree in the future - the consequence of our failure to build on and sustain the public investments of that liberal era, our squandering of the opportunities provided by that era, our weakening or dismantling of economic, civic, environmental and consumer safeguards, and, of course, the huge amounts of debt we now depend on as a replacement for, and a diversion from our loss of, that once broadly experienced (as opposed to today's much more narrowly experienced) prosperity.

It is that younger generation, and the consequences they will suffer -- especially as they are faced with the conflict between meeting the needs of their Baby Boomer parents and grandparents (who will, the financial industry projects, retire with half the individual asset wealth of their WWII generation parents) and providing for the future of their children -- that will, by necessity, lead us back to progressive policies.