And note that I say "Republican Party." Not "conservatives," or "libertarians," "traditionalists," or whatever the group is calling itself at the moment. It would be difficult to count the number of times friends have told me that they're "conservatives, not Republicans." Well, guess what? A week ago, we got a new House, a third of a new Senate, and a new president, and all of them either had "R" or "D" next to their name. Refusing to kowtow to a political party may help you feel ideologically pure, but it won't help the country solve the problems that you believe conservatism can fix.
Anyway, onto the infighting stuff. David Brooks, in the New York Times:
Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are the most prominent voices in the Traditionalist camp, but there is also the alliance of Old Guard institutions. For example, a group of Traditionalists met in Virginia last weekend to plot strategy, including Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. According to reports, the attendees were pleased that the election wiped out some of the party’s remaining moderates. “There’s a sense that the Republicans on Capitol Hill are freer of wobbly-kneed Republicans than they were before the election,” the writer R. Emmett Tyrrell told a reporter.
The other camp, the Reformers, argue that the old G.O.P. priorities were fine for the 1970s but need to be modernized for new conditions. The reformers tend to believe that American voters will not support a party whose main idea is slashing government. The Reformers propose new policies to address inequality and middle-class economic anxiety. They tend to take global warming seriously. They tend to be intrigued by the way David Cameron has modernized the British Conservative Party.
Moreover, the Reformers say, conservatives need to pay attention to the way the country has changed. Conservatives have to appeal more to Hispanics, independents and younger voters. They cannot continue to insult the sensibilities of the educated class and the entire East and West Coasts.
This was inevitable. Actually, though, this isn't new. The Republican presidential primaries revealed a party without trusted leaders and without strong principles. The candidates seemed designed to stoke the flames of conservative civil war that had been simmering for a number of years. Huckabee, the Southern evangelical who antagonized the other candidates. Romney, the (hypothetically) fiscal conservative with the audacity also to be a Mormon and the black mark of having been governor of the People's Republic of Massachusetts. Thompson, the throwback with no energy for the campaign trail. Ron Paul, the obligatory radical. Giuliani, the fiscal conservative with the audacity also to have a New York accent (not a winner among flyover-type cons). Ultimately we stuck with Mack, who'd at least come in second once in a primary and had something to offer every faction. Just, not enough to make them come out and vote on Election Day. (Honestly, conservatism might be experiencing even more ennui if McCain had won.)
But honestly, do we have to have these two sides fighting, as Brooks describes? Let's ask Bobby: (Via Hot Air.)
And this man said exactly what I've been thinking. As is typically the case in these sorts of battles, both sides are right. Both sides have been right since the GOP presidential primaries, too. No, our principles as conservatives have not changed. Yes, we live in a significantly different world now than we did back in the Seventies. And yes, this means that our policy ideas have to change, even as our principles remain the same. But how?
Well, it won't be easy. I regret to say that I've had a part in this, but conservatives have been casting each other out for years over, often, the littlest things. We may not like it, but if we want to govern a democratic nation, we must convince the majority of people not only that our principles, but our policies as well, have vital importance for their lives. If we can't find common ground even among the Republican Party, how can we find common ground with a simple majority of the American people? We're going to have to get past the silly factions that have characterized the conservative coalition of late.
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