BuzzFlash Reviews
The Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing (Hardcover)
By Greg Anrig
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--Gary Hart, Former United States Senator
"Ending the conservative era requires organizing, yes, but also hard thinking and shrewd analysis. When progressives of the future look back at how they triumphed, one of the people they’ll thank is Greg Anrig. Drawing inspiration from the work of the early neo-conservatives who demolished public support for liberal programs, Anrig casts a sharp eye on conservative ideas and nostrums and shows that many of them simply don’t work because they are rooted more in ideological dreams than in reality. Facts are stubborn things, Ronald Reagan once said, and Anrig makes good use of them in this important and engaging book."
--E. J. Dionne, syndicated columnist and author of Why Americans Hate Politics
From the Publisher:
In The Conservatives Have No Clothes, the respected policy expert and journalist Greg Anrig offers a scathing indictment of right-wing ideology and reveals point by point how and why the conservative agenda produces terrible government. In a series of devastating critiques, he examines ideas and policies espoused by the right and assesses the degree to which they have delivered (or not) on promises to make America stronger and safer, and our government smaller and more efficient.
According to Anrig, conservatives have developed an unusual—and unusually disastrous—method of governing. The first step is to drown out attention paid to a genuine policy problem, like abysmal inner-city schools or Osama bin Laden, with alarms over an imaginary crisis like the failure of all of America's public schools or weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The second step is to trump up reasons why the imaginary problem requires weakening the government's domestic capabilities, as with private school vouchers, or exerting unilateral force abroad, as with the Iraq invasion. The third step is to make up stories explaining why the failure isn't really a failure. The fourth and final step is to leave it to the Democrats to solve both the original problem and the new one created by the conservative policy.
Anrig documents the impact of this sophisticated sabotage on the performance of numerous government agencies, including FEMA, which reverted from a model praised by both parties in the 1990s back into a "turkey farm" for political loyalists under the managerial practices promoted by conservative think tanks. The disastrously inept response to Hurricane Katrina was the result not just of incompetence, but of the right's ideology. Anrig also shows how movement conserva-tism's ideas have inflicted damage on state and local government, causing Colorado's national rankings in education and health care to plummet to the bottom under the constraints of Grover Norquist's holy grail, the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights.
Despite their decisive defeat in the 2006 elections, right-wing ideologues show no sign of calling off their war on American government. The Conservatives Have No Clothes offers more than a powerful condemnation of their past offenses; it is a field guide for assessing and responding to whatever they come up with next.
BuzzFlash:
This is a must-read exploration in the paradox that is right-wing governmental rule, a conundrum that thrives on failure. Written by the Vice President of Policy at the progressive Twentieth Century Foundation, "The Conservatives Have No Clothes" disrobes the myth of competent "conservative" management.
Anrig "explains the Bush administration failed not just because of incompetent individuals, but because conservative ideology inevitably produces incompetent government.
Right wingers aren't really conservative; they are radical wrecking crews.
Table of Contents
Introduction. "We Never Believed in Progress Anyway".
SECTION I: IDEAS FOR MAKING AMERICA SAFER AND STRONGER.
1. "A Heckuva Job"/Politicizing the Government.
2. The Nixon Doctrine/The Unitary Executive.
3. "We Will, In Fact, Be Greeted As Liberators"/Benevolent Hegemony.
SECTION II: IDEAS FOR MAKING GOVERNMENT SMALLER AND MORE EFFICIENT.
4. Lucky Duckies/Tax Cuts for the Rich.
5. Rocky Mountain Lows/State Tax and Spending Limits.
6. Sophisticated Sabotage/ Smart Regulation.
SECTION III: IDEAS FOR REPLACING GOVERNMENT "MONOPOLIES" WITH MARKET COMPETITION.
7. "It Hasn't Worked Like We Thought It Would in Theory"/ Marketizing The Schools.
8. "Tough it Out"/ Health Savings Accounts and Malpractice Reform.
9. "A Sure Loser"/ Social Security Privatization.
10. America's Real Problem—And How to Overcome It.
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