Who Are The Conservatives?Harold Meyerson has
a column today that raises that issue.
I don't mean the conservatives in revolt over Harriet Miers. I mean the moderates in revolt over Bush's suspension of the Davis-Bacon Act, the law that mandates payment of prevailing wages on federally funded construction projects. In an apparent attempt to ensure that nobody rebuilding the Katrina-damaged Gulf Coast made much more than minimum wage, Bush had suspended the 1931 statute. But last week a group of 35 moderate Republican members of Congress -- hailing disproportionately from Northeast and Midwest states where building-trades unions still have political clout -- told Andy Card that they couldn't support Bush's edict. With a congressional vote on overturning Bush's order scheduled for next week, the president backed down.It is far from obvious to me that the folks in revolt over Miers were the conservatives. As I have said before, they seemed to be the meritocracy more than anything else. Instapundit is a libertarian conservative; what Meyerson would normally term a moderate. James Dobson and Hugh Hewitt (I assume) would generally not get that appellation from Meyerson.
As for the moderate Republicans described here, it would be more apt to refer to them as "liberal Republicans". Ann Coulter has talked about this in her book. The media often refer to "conservative Democrats", but comparatively seldom to "liberal Republicans". Similarly, they refer to "moderate Republicans" more often than "moderate Democrats".
Why? It's a combination of reward and punishment. In the newspaper world, a moderate is praise-worthy. A conservative deserves scorn. Hence, as a Democrat moves towards the middle, she is punished with the term conservative. By the same token, as a Republican moves towards the middle, he is rewarded with the term moderate.
Proof? Here's
a search of the New York Times since 1981 for the term "moderate Democrat", which appeared 293 times in the paper in that period. Searching for "moderate Republican", by contrast,
brings up 1184 references. "Liberal Republican"
appeared 314 times, while "conservative Democrat"
was referenced in 495 articles.
