Reaching to the Right

When Ralph Nader announced his intention to run in 2004, howls of indignant recrimination came from Democrats and gleeful chortles erupted in the GOP camp (followed by surreptitious campaign contributions). Nader's response to his critics was to say "Relax and Rejoice." His candidacy, he said, would take votes from both sides. Hearing this, Republicans chuckled some more, while on the left there was little in the way of either relaxing or rejoicing. Many - myself included - thought Nader's suggestion that his candidacy might draw votes from Bush votes was proof that the man we'd once respected had gone over the edge, lost in his own megalomaniac world.

But then I got into a dialogue with one of my oldest friends, a lifelong conservative who surprised the hell out of me by telling me that he was planning to vote for Nader. While we're old friends, in matters political to say that we don't see eye-to-eye would be like saying that Al Franken and Bill O'Reilly aren't particularly chummy. (Joe is a regular reader of this column, which he calls "Bolshevik propaganda."). Joe is conservative with a capital C, a die-hard believer in the free market, and a devout Irish Catholic who believes the Pope has moved too far left in his dotage.

So hearing that my friend on the far right planned to vote for Nader caused me to do a spit take that would have put Jackie Gleason to shame. But what I found especially compelling were Joe's reasons for not supporting Bush. Far from believing that Bush's conservatism had gone too far, Joe told me that, by his definition, Bush isn't a conservative at all. My world turning upside down, I asked for clarification of the term.

"Conservatives believe that the role of government should be quite limited, government spending should be kept down, and that people should be free to go about their business with out being hindered by undo restrictions placed on their liberty." Said Joe "Under Bush, the government has gotten larger, government spending has skyrocketed, and thanks to the PATRIOT act, our liberties are being encroached upon more every day."

His definition was suspiciously close to what an educated person in the age of Jefferson might have called "liberalism" Naïve as it might have been, I asked Joe the obvious question. "So why not just vote for Kerry?"

"Because he might win, and I'm afraid of that. But if he convince me that he was willing to bomb Saudi Arabia, I'd not only vote for him, I'd campaign for the man."

This sounded more like the Joe I knew. "Yeah, but why Nader?" I asked "He's even more of a leftist than I am."

"Discounting his overt socialism, I like his position on immigration and his being totally against NAFTA and the WTO is his best selling point on foreign affairs." He said. "But it's a protest vote, and I've spoken to plenty of conservatives who are planning to vote the same way."

My conversation with Joe left me feeling surprisingly elated, because it made me realize how vulnerable Bush's right flank was. After all, it was loss of this voter base (and not those all-night drum circles by the Washington monument) that drove his father from office 12 years ago. Nader won't win any electoral votes, but his proclamation that he would get votes from the right may just hold water as traditional conservatives, pissed off at being played for fools withhold their support from the son as they did the father.

Even an event tailor made to help Bush shore up his crumbling right flank failed to produce any real support. The week long memorial-cum-love fest memorial service for Ronald Reagan served instead to highlight just how unlike Reagan Bush is, both personally & politically. Reagan might have been an actor, but he wasn't a phony. He wore cowboy boots because he rode horses, while to Dubya the boots are just another cheap imaging ploy dreamed up by slick admen. As this facade crumbles, the yawning gulf between the promises that candidate Bush made to hoodwink conservative voters stands in stark contrast to the political landscape that President Bush has created.

More so than their liberal counterparts, conservatives don't like being played off as suckers, and middle America is beginning to wake up to what coastal sophisticates have known all along, namely that Dubya's " I'm just plain folk " persona is an utter fabrication, designed to make a blue-blooded millionaire seem folksy in the heartland. This realization might not help Kerry (who is, after all, a blue blooded billionaire), but it might make voting for Bush so unpalatable that it some conservatives make it a coin toss between Nader and Kerry. As a member of the rapidly growing anyone but Bush party, I can't help but to be cautiously optimistic. And Joe, we may not vote for the same candidate this time around, but at least we'll be voting against the same one.

This article originally run in The Rocky Mountain Bullhorn (www.rockymountainbullhorn.com).

C 2004 Joshua Samuel Brown