The interesting thing about modern conservative thought is that it transformed during the 15-25 years that it predominantly held power in the US, roughly 1980-mid 2000s.

It began this period with a set of ideas that it claimed had not been tested in policy before. The claim was not that these ideas were articles of faith or allegiance, or that failure to adhere to them made you a socialist - otherwise the entire US prior to the 1970s would have to be socialist. The claim was that these ideas would produce better results in the real economy. And because they were attractive to many, and some were plausible, and many were while not new at least things that had not been tried in decades - like determined union-busting, tight controls on spending, unregulated free markets as the solution to every problem - these ideas were adopted by populist politicians promising results - not asking for a vote based on adherence to the ideas because the ideas were inherently good, but based on the idea that their performance in the real world would be good.

And they failed. In most regards, the period of conservative dominance (and even during the Clinton administration conservative ideas held sway) has been a failure compared to the previous policies that were pursued. Economic growth has been smaller, even if recessions have been fairly shallow up until this one (and a good argument can be made that this one reflects the saving-up of a lot of trouble from earlier in the conservative regime). Inequality has risen greatly. The country spent a lot of the new resources that were released from rising productivity on building mansions for the very wealthy, and very little of it on things of social usefulness, like education, reduction of poverty, scientific research, and productive economic development.

Some few conservative-leaning policies proved to be effective. The Volcker interest rate maneuver that Reagan inherited and continued was effective in halting inflation, albeit it at great and very unequal economic cost - falling most heavily on the unemployed who were out of work when investment was extremely low. That’s almost it for successes, in fact.

The list of failures is long. Tax cuts do not pay for themselves. Overseas wars are not quick and cheap. Deregulation in every industry does not result in superior performance and service. Union-busting makes it harder for workers to negotiate a fair share of commercial profit. Treating capital gains income preferentially causes inequality and leads corporate executives to make decisions that give them great personal gain at the expense of their corporation. Removal of high progressive income tax rates makes it easy for corporate executives to take money out of their corporation in income instead of reinvesting it in the business. Lack of oversight of industries leads to massive corruption and economy-wide damage like the housing collapse. Free trade agreements tend to be structured to benefit corporate interests and not workers and this unsurprisingly hurts equality. Allowing public corporations to be run as the private fiefdoms of their executives hurts investors, employees, and the economy as a whole. The list goes on and on.

Now because they failed, they had to change their line. They had to move to claims that were more qualitative and less quantitative. The things they espouse become more articles of faith than ideas with even a hint of empirical support. The claim that they would work has been tested and found to be incorrect. There is no evidence that they worked that can be brought out. So the evidence has to be ignored, and these days it often is. We don’t look at whether the conservative period was better or worse than the period preceding it, because to do so is to acknowledge that it was worse.

Policy prescriptions moved too. (In fact, Bush made at least two enormous Keynesian moves during his Presidency, and arguably three: the big tax cuts, Medicare Part D, and perhaps the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan. Now I think two of those were stupid-Keynesian because they were extremely expensive for the economic return - tax cuts mostly go to rich people and get saved, wars don’t create any lasting value. Medicare Part D was wastefully written, and amounted to a giveway to drug companies, but at least it served a useful purpose.)

This is no surprise. No political force in a democracy that attaches itself to anti-empiricism can long survive, because people like experimentation in policy - they like empiricism. In fact, empiricism marks American politics more strongly than liberalism or conservatism or any previous divides. The reason America has succeeded is because America has experimented with different policies, judged their results, and changed course accordingly. This is how America came to lead the world. Anti-empiricism, on the other hand, is almost totally discredited, to the point where it is almost too obvious to note. Prescribing policy that you proclaim to be right without also claiming that it will actually work would be an unspeakable act in politics, one that would virtually guarantee a loss in an election.

So, again, the original biggest claims - that conservative economic policy would generate higher growth and that would mean higher incomes for everyone than the alternatives, or previous policy - were empirically tested and found to be completely incorrect.

And here’s the thing: people noticed. They noticed that conservative policies failed, and they kicked out the people responsible and elected Democrats, especially that one Democrat who was always standing behind a big sign saying “Change”. Because people really don’t like big, overarching economic ideas that don’t work. And they noticed that conservative ideas don’t work. They may not know why, and so when they’re asked questions about economic subjects they don’t really understand, like the deficit or public spending, they will often say things that sound like support of conservative policies. But that’s not how they voted. They kicked the conservatives out. They noticed that their economic policies do not work.

Now when are the Democrats going to notice?