Paul Haber tells it like it is - again

How the New Right stole conservatism

Whatever happened to real conservatism? According to Dr. Paul Haber, a University of Montana political science professor and MEA-MFT member, it has been hijacked by ideologues who have forsaken basic conservative principles.

Haber joined the MEA-MFT lobby team to work with state legislators on higher education issues during the 2003 legislative session. He recently published a major article about his experiences in The Montana Professor.

His article, "How the New Right Governs the Last Best Place: Reflections From the 2003 Legislature," calls for "a return to substantive debates between well-considered conservative and liberal ideas regarding where we want to go and how government can best help us to get there."

Haber writes that Montana's legislature is now dominated by the "New Right," a powerful national movement that adheres to libertarian, free market economics and "trickle down" economic theories, among other things.

Haber says Montana's New Right legislators acted in "direct contradiction to some basic conservative principles" in 2003. A hallmark of conservatism is caution, he writes, a virtue in short supply among New Right ideologues who cut taxes and programs with almost religious fervor, without considering how to pay for cuts or the impact on the public good.

Meanwhile, he says, legislators often labeled "liberals" argued against raiding the coal tax trust fund using "classic conservative" language on being prudent about the spending of savings.

One of the most dramatic moments of the 2003 session came when Senator John Cobb (R-Augusta) publicly took his own party to task, saying he was ashamed of his party for cutting essential health and human services, Haber writes.

"All we do is live on ideology," said Cobb, who calls himself a conservative. "We have no new ideas. We just want to cut, cut, cut, and we're just being really stupid about this."

The dominance of the New Right has put Montana "on the extreme edge," Haber concludes. He encourages higher education faculty of all political persuasions to "join with others to improve the public process and return it to a forum for all Montanans to build better lives for our children, our entire communities, and ourselves," he writes.

Click here to read Paul's Haber's entire article on The Montana Professor's web site.

Thanks to Paul and The Montana Professor editor Dick Walton for permission to use the article on MEA-MFT's web site.