Robert L. Borosage launched the Failure of Conservatism conference at the National Press Conference on Thursday with a broad indictment of the conservative movement and with a cautionary note for progressives: “Ideas have consequences.”
Borosage, the co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, borrowed that phrase from leading conservative thinker William Kristol to point out that just as conservatives came to power in the 1980s and 1990s by forging a comprehensive world view that governed its politics and its path to power, progressives need to do the same. He outlined the themes in the commentary he wrote for the Thursday edition of the Chicago Tribune, “The Gipper Can’t Win This One,” and concluded by paraphrasing Reagan’s famous indictment of government: “Conservatism is not the solution to the problem. Conservatism is the problem.”
