Lies “Centrists” Tell
On moving to the center
After the humiliating defeat the Tories have suffered, we hear the Wet Tories opine that the UK Conservative Party must move to the center to regain electoral success.
This is so wrong, it’s comical. One wonders if those who say such things are that out of touch or are just brazen liars. Yes, I’m not being very polite. A little history will show why.
The Tories, particularly Boris Johnson, were elected to “get Brexit done,” especially to get control of Britain’s borders and stop out of control immigration, invasion really, and the accompanying crime and stresses on social services. Again and again, the Tories promised to “stop the boats.”
But their actual policy was pretending to try to stop the flood of migrants while actually doing next to nothing . . . except provide them excellent accommodation at taxpayer expense at luxury hotels. In their 14 years in power, they have allowed the UK’s demographics to change more than Tony Blair even dreamed of. I could make this a long post and mention other issues, but that was the biggest Tory failure/betrayal.
It’s doubtful the Tories could have won the election this month anyway. After 14 years in power, people would have been tired of them even if they did a decent job. But betraying their base by moving so much to the center that they became left and by allowing the invasion to grow worse, the Tories asked for the disaster voters inflicted on them. Moving to the center is a big reason the Tories were decimated, but now they should somehow move even more to the center?
Or take the establishment centrist Bush family. They inherited an America with a strong economy and a strong foreign policy thanks to Ronald Reagan. In addition, the country gave the two Bush Presidents enormous good will after the 1st Iraq War and after 9-11. Yet they frittered it all away by being weak and centrist, not to mention untrustworthy. The result was eight years of Bill Clinton, eight years of Obama, and nearly four years of Hillary, which Trump prevented by moving to the populist right. Don’t forget how Jeb!* Bush quickly crashed and burned at the beginning of the primary season in 2016 in spite of being lavishly financed. People were fed up by Bushite centrism by then.
In short, for a supposedly right-of-center party to move to the center is political suicide.
Now there may have been a time when centrist politics were effective politics, when the status quo was attractive. Such was the case with Eisenhower in the 50’s and Bill Clinton (after the 1994 mid-terms) in the 90’s. (He was lucky enough to be POTUS during the high tech boom and smart enough to roll back his Leftism after the 1994 mid-term defeat. Also a Lib/Leftist moving to the center is a different duck than a “conservative” moving to the center. But continuing…)
But the status quo today? Continued invasion? Continued crime? Continued wokeness and racism against white men? Continued inflation? The status quo and the muddled middle doesn’t sell anymore after the Invasion accelerated in 2015 and after the COVID and woke madnesses of 2020.
No, allowing your country and culture to be destroyed just a little slower than the other guys would is not a winning campaign platform. Neither is being slow and timid and “moderate” about doing what should be done. Especially in this political environment, advising right-of-center parties to move to the center is either delusional or dishonest.
I could go on . . . and on about establishment RINOs and Wet Tories and other faux conservatives. You know I can.
But you may have noticed that I put scare quotes around “Centrists”. And you may wonder if I am begging the question of how centrist are “Centrists” really.
If so, you are observant. But you will have to wait for another post.
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* The exclamation point is a now obscure reference to campaign signage that would thus pretend excitement over establishment drudges. So “Kay!” for Kay Bailey Hutchinson of Texas and “Jeb!” for Jeb Bush. I think Jeb Bush’s debacle might have ended that practice.