Final Thought – Most conservative

Filed in National by on April 28, 2009

What president was the most conservative? Now that Dubya is so unpopular, many conservatives are quick to claim that Bush wasn’t really a conservative anyway. But honestly, who can they compare him to? Bush Sr., Reagan, and Ford all passed big tax hikes, as did Hoover. Ford surrendered Vietnam, both Reagan and traveled to Moscow and Beijing to shake hands with communist leaders, and Bush Sr. chickened out of taking down Saddam. Nixon created the EPA, the alternative minimum tax, and expanded welfare. Eisenhower raised taxes on gas, thought social conservatives were “stupid”, and supported the Equal Rights Amendment. Herbert Hoover, Teddy Rooseveldt, and Taft all supported regulation to crack down on monopolies. So my answer here is the famously taciturn Calvin Coolidge, whose laissez-faire policies set up the largest economic collapse in American history.

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X Stryker is also the proprietor of the currently-dormant poll analysis blog Election Inspection.

Comments (15)

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  1. Unstable Isotope says:

    Harding & Coolidge perhaps. I thought conservatives were going to the Hoover model – do nothing while everything collapses.

  2. Unstable Isotope says:

    Plus, Reagan was a pansy who didn’t realize waterboarding wasn’t torture. He’s obviously concerned with terrorist rights and wants Americans to die. He should know that the Constitution is just an inconvenience that should be thrown out when we’re scared.

  3. jason330 says:

    Conservatism, like Marxism, is an ideology that only works on paper.

  4. Art Downs says:

    We should note that Hoover was once one of the most popular people in the nation and was a self-made man and an adventurer as well as a humanitarian.

    What were his two mistakes? Raising tax rates during a downturn and pushing more protectionism. We seem to have heard similar ideas from John Kerry.

    A third major error was the shutting down of the Black Chamber at the Department of State. This was an example of high morals trumping common sense. How many ‘progressives’ have similar ideas re surveillance?

    During the Harding/Coolidge/Hoover era, our leaders seemed to think that scraps of paper called treaties would do more to preserve peace than a credible military. We had a third-rate Army and a fourth-rate Navy. We went on an orgy of scrapping and armor plate was shipped to Japan.

    FDR was an economic disaster but he did recognize a foreign threat. His postwar plans would have assured a Soviet control of all of Europe but he died at the right time. Truman had the brains lacking in FDR and he often sought the advice of Hoover.

    “Progressives” loathed Truman and even ran Wallace against him in a move that could have tipped the scales in favor of
    “Establishment Republican” Dewey.

    Ike was a caretaker who was sought as a candidate by both parties. He easily defeated New Deal hack Adlai Stevenson, a socialite legacy who always managed to talk smarter than he thought.

    Note that it was JFK who gave the people the first relief from ludicrous marginal tax rates that went over 90%.

  5. Geezer says:

    I’ve always enjoyed “alternate history” stories. Thanks, Art, for showing us a world almost like our own, just refracted through the prism of a cracked brain. Highly entertaining. Three and a half stars.

    Bush Sr. did not “chicken out” of taking down Saddam. He, unlike the neoconservatives, understood that Iraq was created in the first place as a counterweight to Iran, which otherwise would dominate the region, and that taking out its dictator without a plan for reconstruction would lead to chaos. He was right, apparently.

  6. Unstable Isotope says:

    So true Geezer. The biggest winner of the Iraq War has been Iran. We took out their pesky neighbor and now they have a huge influence on the Iraqi government.

  7. Unstable Isotope says:

    Art knows as much about history as he does about chemistry.

  8. edisonkitty says:

    Either Art went through a totally different education system than I did, or he is evidence of a system set on total fail.

  9. anon says:

    Art knows his history and he knows exactly what he is doing. He is stitching together selected factoids that have truthiness, in a way that seems to support the narrative he prefers. It is classic revisionist propaganda. It takes a bit of thought to sort out his game.

  10. jason330 says:

    “FDR was an economic disaster “ is not a factoid, it is willful delusion.

  11. anon says:

    “FDR was an economic disaster “ is not a factoid, it is willful delusion.

    True. But the wingnut community has gone to great trouble to implant it as a ‘fact’ so that people like Art may repeat it without being challenged. Art stands on the shoulders of giants.

  12. anonone says:

    Millard Fillmore. He did virtually nothing while in office and then ran again for the Presidency as the candidate of both the Whigs and the “Know Nothing Party.”

    The “Know Nothing Party” eventually dissolved and most of its members became Republicans.

    I am seriously not making any of this up.

  13. geezer,

    I think the chickened out was sarcasm… I could be wrong though

  14. Geezer says:

    DV: Yeah, I know, but it’s another of those wingnut memes that I instinctively challenge whenever I hear it, even in a sarcastic context. The thing I dislike most about conservatism is it’s making me lose my sense of humor.

  15. it’s the first thing to go, next is your moral compass