The Case Against Michael Gerson’s “Conservatism”

Matt Kibbe unloads:

They say you can tell the measure of a man by the company keeps, and if that’s so, Gerson’s political heroes ought to cause skepticism amongst conservatives. On a recent Hardball appearance, he spoke approvingly of Franklin Roosevelt, the man who bears most historical responsibility for our current government bloat. Gerson also said that his first political hero was Jimmy Carter. At other times, he has waxed lovingly about the pleasures of hanging out in the pseudo-revolutionary company of coffee shops that idolize left-wing icons, like Che Guevera. Meanwhile, he derides Freidrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. What’s next? Friedman and Goldwater replaced with Keynes and Marx? Gerson’s disdain for conservatism’s ideological forefathers is blatant, and he seems to be inventing his own conservative canon as he goes along.

And indeed, he wants to reinvent the entire idea of conservative politics and what it should stand for. Gerson wants to transform conservatism into a vehicle for emotional and spiritual uplift. He writes that a necessary component of presidential politics is a “vision of justice and hope that includes the whole country,” and warmly refers to his favorite left wing coffee shop as spreading “the brush fires of suburban radicalism.” He worries that the conservative movement’s “emphasis on spending restraint and limited government … [is] hardly morally inspiring.”