Conservative movement at a crossroads
By Nick Ragone | Related entries in News
It’s safe to say that the Republican party — and the conservative movement more specifically — is at a crossroads.
Republicans find themselves completely out of power at the national level, and with diminishing numbers at the state level. They’re leaderless, rudderless, and without a coherent vision. They wield no power, have no influence, and are of virtually no importance to the incoming Obama administration. Not since the time of FDR have the Republicans been of such little significance.
And amazingly, they’re still in better condition then the conservative movement, which lay in shambles tonight.
Birthed by Robert Taft, nourished by William F. Buckley, energized by Barry Goldwater, and legitimized by Ronald Reagan, the movement that defined the second half of the twentieth century finds itself bereft of ideas and on life support. That’s no small feat considering that it produced two presidents (Reagan and George W. Bush), helped a third get over the finish line (George H.W. Bush), and broke the Democrats fifty year hold on Congress — all in the span of a generation. The one silver lining — if you’re a conservative that is — is the 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court, though that could very well change in the next four years.
But essentially that’s where it’s at. So the question becomes: What next for Republicans and conservatives? What is their path back to power?
The conservatives’ reflexive answer for the past 60 years has been the same: cut taxes, beef up national defense, get tough on crime, and emphasize values. It worked for Reagan and George W. Bush, and Nixon too, even though he governed as a liberal. It was a winning formula for six decades, and the right had little reason to stray beyond the playbook.
But as John McCain found out, the playbook doesn’t work anymore, mostly because those issues lack relevance. Cut taxes? Bush did that, and now we’re facing a trillion dollar deficit. Obama ran on a platform of tax hikes for the wealthy, and nobody seemed to care. With the Federal government doling out a trillion plus dollars in bailouts this quarter, it’s hard to see how permanently low taxes work anymore.
Crime? Immigration? Not sure the two words were even mentioned during the campaign. No doubt immigration will heat up again in the future, but law and order doesn’t seem to resonate the way it did during the 60s, 70s and 80s. Willie Horton ads are a thing of the past.
Values seem to have lost all meaning. Twenty years ago George H.W. Bush was elected almost solely because his opponent a. belonged to the ACLU and b. thought it silly to jail school teachers who refused to lead the pledge of allegiance. Today Bush would be castigated for raising either as an issue.
And where does one even start with foreign policy. In the simplest terms, Bush railroaded the country into war and made us pariahs on the world stage. We’re now left with few allies and almost no moral standing. In the eyes of many, we’re the evil empire that Reagan once railed against.
Trying to win elections on these issues is a one way ticket to extinction. The bedrock that served as the foundation for the conservative movement has turned to sand, and everyone can feel it except those standing atop it.
A new set of issues — energy policy, climate change, healthcare and global citizenship, to name a few — are going to define elections of the future, and conservatives need to address these and develop solutions if they want to claw their way back to relevance. Otherwise, life support is going to fail.
www.nickragone.com
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November 13th, 2008 at 10:31 am
I generally agree with your assessment. The one area that I question is the idea that McCain ran as a true conservative. No question McCain’s attempt to use the old Lee Atwater playbook with Ayers, ACORN and Joe the Plumber failed miserably. But one could argue that John McCain A) lacks real conservative credentials B) ran an ineffective campaign that lacked any real focus and C) was between a rock and a hard place with Bush as president and the economy in the dumps.
Given the right circumstances and leadership, the Republicans could come back with a vengeance.
November 13th, 2008 at 11:38 am
I would have gone with “because his opponent looked foolish driving a tank, supported a furlough program that led to a murderer murdering again, and neglected to concede that he might feel more inclined towards capital punishment if his wife was raped and murdered.” Or something like that.
I would also avoid making such sweeping foreign policy judgements. For at least the next 25 years, America will ALWAYS be one moderately substantial domestic terror event away from slipping right back into knee-jerk adventurism. This has VERY LITTLE to do with party ideology.
And I would be SHOCKED if, during an extreme economic downturn, immigration and crime ceased to be issues of importance. Poorer people steal more, and unemployed people resent immigrants. That’s God’s rule, not mine.
The issue of governmental financial policy will continue to be a good one for Republicans for as long as democrats deny to acknowledge the components of it that the GOP understands. It may well be the case that simple support for cutting taxes has run its course as an election winner. Some economists will concede that with tax rates and economic growth it’s a matter of rightsizing, not always trying to make taxes less. So sure, Republicans may not be able to get to 50% + 1 by promising tax cuts, but they will continue to be able to criticize wasteful spending and ineffective programs, and as that they want Americans to keep more of their paycheck and give the government less. Think what you want, but I’m telling you right now that this message is fundamentally appealing to most Americans who have paychecks.
We’re in a huge downturn right now, and Obama is about to go on the clock. He best choose policies that will work, because we won’t spend our way out of this mess via additional expensive entitlement programs. If the gov’t just throws huge piles of money at job training programs but unemployment does not go down appreciably as a result, Obama will take the blame.
The length of his honeymoon will be directly connected to American fears about our economic future. So I find the current trumpeting about this election being some sort of liberal revolution to be just so much whistling through the graveyard. As a moderate and a longtime watcher of American politicians, I know how much easier it is to criticize the government than it is to govern.
So now it’s the democrats turn to be blamed for all the negative side effects of every action they undertake that doesn’t work out. Aint that a B?
I would give the democrats no more than 12-18 months worth of blaming the previous administration for the fix we are in. After that, it will all be on them. If things aren’t getting better by the spring and summer of 2010 and are in fact still deteriorating, Americans will conclude that the democrats have as little clue as the GOP did. This IMo is one of the best features of a democracy. Self-correction.
November 13th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Would you consider linking to my blog? We have similar interests. Thanks.
http://thenewrepublicans.net
November 13th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
The problem isn’t with conservative concepts–you can apply a conservative point of view to just about any issue. The biggest problem is that the Republican party, long the political champions of conservatism, turned their back on the concept about 8 years ago and became Democrats who like big business. A practical philosophy of small government, respect for the law, a thrifty fiscal policy, empowering the individual to make their own life better, and a passionate defense of the Bill of Rights can absolutely resonate among modern voters.
The Republicans, in their greed and thirst for power, decided that conservative views no longer gave them the return that they were seeking. I say good riddance. Conservatives (and to a lesser extent Republicans) should take this clear-cutting of Republicans as a golden opportunity.
November 13th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
There are two more dilemmas that come to mind - one for the GOP itself, the other for conservatism in general.
The GOP dilemma is one I’ve mentioned here several times already in the past couple of weeks: It needs to keep not one, not two, but three big groups of voters on board in order to have any chance of winning nationally: the two dominant factions in its base (libertarians and social conservatives) and independent swing voters. Lose any significant portion of even one of these blocs and the show’s off. The root of the dilemma, obviously, is that it’s next to impossible to appeal to all three of these groups simultaneously; their interests and agendas are just too far apart. Even a “pick-any-two” proposition would be tricky, and it wouldn’t be enough to win.
The general conservative dilemma is even more fundamental. If you strip away all the factional and ideological distinctions among conservatives, the bare essence of conservatism is nothing more than the notion that stability (read: the social status quo) is valuable in itself and ought to be preserved as completely as possible for as long as possible.
By this definition, neither libertarians nor socons are really conservative at all - they’re reactionary, looking to restore their respective ideas of the “good old days” when the government was small and/or the culture promoted virtue. Literal conservatives seek to preserve the nation just as it is, warts and all - even including stuff they and/or their predecessors once fought in vain to oppose. Their dilemma is that this amounts to a perpetually losing battle, which is a lot harder to get people excited about than, say, a movement about “Hope” and “Change” whose motto is “Yes, we can.”
November 14th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
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