Winning Again

That's what The Shadow-Liner wants to talk to conservatives about, and he starts things off with an excellent post about defeatism. (Read it all!) Here's part:

A sense of history is important at times like these. Society, as Burke wrote, is ". . . a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primeval contract of eternal society." We do dishonor to mankind as a whole--past, present, and future--if we flee before all hope is lost, perhaps even when all hope is lost.

Precisely.

Republicans were rightly booted by the American people. Now it's time to figure out how better to apply our time-honored principles to the problems of American society today. That, I believe, is what my next post will be about. Stay tuned!

Live Dangerously Advocates Living Dangerously

And he's so, so right:

This should be viewed as a war. As in any war troops on the ground are vital. I would of thought that the Surge proved that to us. The internet is there as a tool to help facilitate the gathering of volunteers. A means to get them on board in the first place. Secondly to show them how to meet locally with others, and thirdly how to make a difference in their community. We all need to cultivate that “fire in the belly” that is mandatory to any type of change from the status quo. That “fire in the belly” in an off election year comes best and most convincingly from our belief in our core beliefs as conservatives, that has already bubbled up and we need it to be proudly proclaimed at the top and I might add believed in at the top.

Blogging is great, but we need to match what what we say in what we do. Like our friend Live Dangerously, we've got to be involved in the local party, and from there go out and engage the community. Find out where and when your local GOP meets, meet the candidates, and take the initiative with innovative ways to reach voters we haven't been reaching!

Perhaps we bloggers, who represent a broad cross-section of conservatism in a state where conservatism has no business losing elections, need a forum of some kind to present and discuss new practical ideas for spreading a common-sense conservative message...

Temptation

Conservatives...we're upset. Well, a lot of us are. Barack Obama won. We didn't like John McCain too much, either. The only candidate we really felt any sympathy with got trashed by a mainstream media and an elite culture that, honestly, hates people like her. That was wrong.

But what place should Sarah Palin have in our future?

She's been a fantastic governor. Don't tell me she's incompetent or stupid. She took on one of the nation's most entrenched good-old-boys networks in the country and won. She's charming, good-natured, and has courage and firmness of conviction. Yes, I like her. But I don't get the feeling that she had any thoughts about national politics at all until her phone rang and John McCain was on the other end. Maybe someday she'll be more marketable--yes, we need to take that into consideration--but for right now, what we need is to change the party's brand.

(This is the cue for all the good Ottowa County conservative stalwarts to denounce me as a RINO.)

I read two columns about the future of the GOP, both of which highlighted Sarah Palin: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. for the American Spectator, "Vitality in the Wilderness," and Byron York for NRO, "Palin, the Governors, and the New Power in the Republican Party." First, Tyrrell:

What provoked Brooks's fandango with the Traditionalists and the Reformers was a meeting the former group held in the Virginia hills outside Washington to prepare for the years ahead. As Brooks reports, I was present; his term Traditionalist, however, is misleading. There was more variety within the group than you would find among liberals planning a revival in 2004. There were libertarians, evangelicals, tax cutters, hawkish foreign policy advocates, and others. It was indeed the kind of turnout that could be termed "Reaganite," and there are other meetings coming up. For years the conservative movement has had more variety than the liberal movement, which might explain why only 22% of the American people call themselves liberal while 34% call themselves conservatives. There is vitality on the right, and there will be vitality in the wilderness, though the last time we were out here we only stayed two years. Liberal overreach and incompetence saw to that.

(I'm listening to a week-old Hugh Hewitt show on iTunes right now, by the way, and he's talking to Mark Steyn about how Palin's drawing big crowds and that the movement is still there. Great; we can galvanize the 44% of conservatives so that we can have 44% of people be disappointed every election day.) Look, we couldn't get our message across to Americans, by a 52-47 or so margin. We lost Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia. If the national GOP can't get this, the Michigan GOP at least has to: conservatism can speak to many people to whom we've never, ever reached out. Libertarians, evangelicals, tax cutters, military hawks...how long will we preach to the choir before we realize we need to be preaching on the streets?

Sarah Palin is not the voice of a rejuvenated conservative message; I'm afraid she'll be, for many, a would-be avenging conservative angel. She is the personification of fightin' words for a party whose guns have been out of bullets for a while.

York:

Palin’s re-emergence here left a lot of Republicans wondering whether she would be part of a reformed GOP leadership. Barbour said she “helped the ticket,” but yesterday, during a session with the press, Pawlenty and a group of other leaders seemed hesitant to endorse her candidacy. When a reporter asked whether they would have been comfortable with Palin as president, there was a long silence. “I think Gov. Palin is an extremely talented person, and she’s going to be one of the key voices of the party, for Republicans, for a long time to come,” Pawlenty answered. “All I can say is that John McCain made very clear that one of his key criteria for selecting a VP running mate was that that person was ready to be president on day one. So in his judgment, she met that criteria, and he felt strongly about that, and so we’ll have to defer to his judgment and that process.”

It wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, and none of the others at the table — Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, former eBay CEO and top McCain aide Meg Whitman, and former OMB chief Rob Portman — said specifically that they would have been comfortable with Palin as president.

This is more reassuring. Sanity must reign among the governors and other high-ranking folks if this is going to be a time-out instead of an exile. We need to be looking for the people who can change the image of Republicans as big business shills and cold ideologues. People like Bobby Jindal ought to figure heavily in this.

Conservatives want revenge. We need to calm down, consult our values, pull out the moral compass, and survey the terrain. Then we can move forward, intelligently.

Akindele on the New Direction

This is from last Friday, but reflects my own thoughts quite well. Akindele Akinyemi, Urban Conservative:

I have been warning the Republican Party about the role of minorities in the party. Now all of a sudden all across the nation is how do we get more Blacks into the party. I mean Jesus, we just now figuring this out? Maybe if you put some money behind outreach programs we can go further.

For example, the constant excuses I hear coming out the 14^th District alone in Wayne County is asinine. On one end you want to defeat Congressman John Conyers but will not do any homework to plan, strategize and run the most effective candidate. The excuse is everyone in Detroit will vote for Conyers. You would be surprised of how many people want Conyers out because of his age. Also, there are TONS of young people in Detroit who voted for Obama simply because McCain did not even show up in the inner city. In fact, he did not show up in ANY inner city in Michigan and I can see why. What urban message was he going to convey?

This is so blindingly obvious that only an entire political party could get it wrong. Food for thought. Anyway, it's all interesting...so read it! But the part that concerns us immediately is this:

President-elect Barack Obama has engaged in a brand new electorate called young people. These young people are looking to Obama’s plan for change and have dismissed the core values that has helped us become a nation. What’s worse is that no one in the Republican Party had a TRUE answer for Obama.

If you want young people to join the GOP then you need a reason to bring them to the party.

When we look at how our party is ran is it ran like a natural grassroots operations or is it ran like a telemarketing campaign? We spend more time on the phone than going out in public. We have to get up off our asses and actually walk into the very community where liberal ideology has taken root for decades. No, you cannot send me in, as a Black Republican, to spin the issues either. I simply will not do it so you can sit in the office and work. The real work is OUTSIDE the doors.

There's simply no way conservatives and Republicans can move forward without any excitement from "young people." (Maybe it's because we call them "young people." Listen to me! And I'm 23!) There's an idea that young people are just a lot more liberal, but there are a lot of basically conservative ideas coming from the kids. We youths love localism--anathema to the kind of statism we've been fighting for years. We're concerned about education, health care, and the environment--areas that conservatives have needlessly retreated from for decades. The truth is that the new and innovative solutions are found on the Right, but no politician will give them a voice. We need politicians to find that voice for the general welfare of our citizens, and humanity in general, in opposition to the ideologically-driven special interests of the education establishment and unions.

But the real work isn't in front of the computer screen, or at some Republican Party event. Like Akindele says, it's OUTSIDE! We need to engage the people whose values we know we share, but with whom we've been unable to connect. Maybe that's because the strongest connections are personal, not ideological...and of all people, conservatives should never forget that.

Jindal, Brooks, and the New Direction

Choose your metaphor. I like "picking up the pieces" best. Whatever it is, the Republican Party needs to do it, and fast.

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.

Whither The GOP: A Short History

In the 1930s, the progressive craze nearly destroyed the Republican Party. The twin crises of the stock market crash of 1929 and World War II frightened the nation into accepting enormous amounts of government control, taxation, and spending, and the Democrats owned it all. The Republicans, still embracing the classical liberalism of the 1800s and 1920s, were nearly destroyed, left at one point with 18 senators in total.

The GOP, however, managed to retake Congress once the war ended, but the damage was done. The sweeping new powers of government could not be turned back. Truman continued the New Deal policies, and Eisenhower sustained them. Classical liberalism, now termed "conservatism," was on the decline. In this environment, William F. Buckley lighted a small candle called the National Review, in the hopes of pushing back the lengthening shadow of government control against which no one else resisted. This candle grew into the flame of Barry Goldwater, the first representative of the "New Conservatism" and the first victory over the old conservatism of anti-Semitism, on the one hand, and elitist big government policies on the other. National Review grew in influence among Republicans, but still the GOP tactic of being watered-down Democrats dominated with the election of Richard Nixon in 1968 and the nomination of Gerald Ford over Ronald Reagan in 1976.

The flame was fanned into a wildfire by 1980, as the big-government policies of James Carter and his predecessors sent the economy into a downward spiral that defied Keynesian analysis, featuring both inflation and unemployment--previously considered an impossibility. The New Conservatism, by now firmly entrenched in the Republican Party, pushed Ronald Reagan into the presidential nomination and then into the White House after a crushing victory over Carter. This new paradigm in the Republican Party tolerated a more moderate George H.W. Bush to ascend to the presidency, then made an impact on the Democrats as Bill Clinton moved his party to the right with his "New Democrats." Newt Gingrich counterattacked by pointing out the big-government policies that Clinton, despite his promises, actually pushed through, and his 1994 Contract With America, based primarily on decreasing government spending and term limits for legislators, unelected a sitting Democratic speaker of the house and retook both houses of Congress. The partisan battles roared on until 2000, when George W. Bush promised to move his party to the left with "Compassionate Conservatism." Winning the 2000 election by a sliver, Bush proceeded to enact several large federal programs while simultaneously paying slight attention to conservatism with two modest tax decreases. This method of taking over previously Democratic territory by moving left worked for a few elections, as Republicans saw unprecedented mid-term election gains in 2002 and even more in 2004.

However, the price was steep. Demoralized conservatives, after having campaigned against Kerry and Gore, found themselves with no one to turn to. The excitement of 2004 evaporated and was replaced by a serious malaise, manifesting itself first in the massive electoral defeat of 2006. While conservatives weren't paying attention, congressional Republicans became first-class purveyors of pork barrel spending and big-government solutions. They became indistinguishable from Democrats, and this shift was led by none other than Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham.

With the presidential primary approaching, consevatives tried to determine their course. Mitt Romney was a successful Republican from a very blue state, but his serious lack of consistency was problematic. Rudy Giuliani seemed solid, but had never held even statewide office, and his pro-choice and pro-gay marriage views were worrying in regard to Supreme Court appointments. John McCain was a war hero and an old stalwart among the conservative ranks, but his 2000 rejection of conservatism, his craving for the media's love, and his decided lack of higher conservative principle were troubling. Huckabee related well with the evangelical element of the GOP base, but outside of his rhetoric, there wasn't much real conservatism to be found. Ron Paul, of course, represented the conspiracist, anti-Semitic, isolationist Old Right. Fred Thompson was conservative in all the right ways, had a good track record, and was a phenomenal speaker, but he didn't have the energy or dedication for the campaign trail.

The result of all this confusion was John McCain, mostly because people liked his toughness and believed him to be the most electable due to his centrism.

We find ourselves today not with a conservatism that fails to excite, but with a GOP leadership that fails to be conservative. This is the fundamental failing of the GOP, that they are trying to steal the Democrats' natural territory--a doomed effort, to say the least--by giving up their own ground. They have failed to be an alternative, so no one is choosing them.

We need to give conservatives a choice again. But how? Tune in for the next blog post!

Today's GOP: The Problem

My little series about the future of the GOP happened, luckily, to coincide with a fantastic but depressing column by Robert Novak about congressional Republicans' latest lunacy:

On May 9, Flake sent Boehner a candid letter: "We need more than individual
members of the Republican leadership to state their opposition to the bill. We
need the leadership to use its good offices to explain the importance of
sustaining the president's veto as opposed to advising members to 'vote their
districts.'"

Boehner, waiting four days before responding, last Tuesday
rejected the "vote their districts" escape for House Republicans: "I believe
they should also vote their consciences, and cast their votes in a manner
consistent with the small government principles upon which our party was
founded." Boehner took the floor Wednesday to speak against the bill.

But nobody cracked the party whip. On the contrary, Minority Whip Roy Blunt voted
for the bill. So did Republican Conference Chairman Adam Putnam, who was seen
whipping votes for passage. House Republicans voted 100 to 91 to approve the
bill (with only 15 Democrats in opposition), assuring an overriden veto.
Similarly, in the Senate, Republicans voted 35 to 13 for the bill, and the only
Democrats opposing it were Rhode Island's two senators.

If you can stomach it, read the whole thing. We've come a long way since 1994! (Although, for my friends who hold the fantastical belief that Democrats are more committed to low spending: I don't know what to tell you.)

As Novak writes, the story of this bill's passage is the story of today's GOP. It is a party currently without a philosophy apart from how best to get elected.

Unfortunately for them, that philosophy is, basically, idiotic. The track record for Republicans when trying to become Democrat Lite--"We'll spend a lot, but not as much as the Democrats because we're small government people!"--they lose. But they don't seem to get that.

House and Senate members of both parties understand that earmarks and pork barrel spending for their districts is a way to buy votes and make constituents dependent on them and their built-up seniority and committee membership spots. If all you want to do is win elections, you know that's a tool in your toolbox, and both parties partake generously.

But you have to understand, as well, that high spending and low congressional restraint are exciting on an intellectual level for the Democrats' liberal electoral base. On the other hand, high spending is fundamentally demoralizing to the Republicans' conservative electoral base. So if this is your chosen strategy as a Republican, there's a built-in disadvantage in it if you have an R next to your name.

This is precisely what we're seeing: Republicans are not excited about this election. Why should they be? We have a presidential candidate who is to the left of every presidential candidate we've run since Nixon and Ford. We have a president who defends conservative principles only when convenient, and otherwise seems to take a default welfare-state tack--think No Child Left Behind, on which he worked closely with Senate Democrats, or the Medicare prescription drug benefit, or countless other bills. We have a congressional caucus that punishes members for being too conservative fiscally: Jeff Flake is likely the nation's staunchest and most courageous opponent of congressional largesse, and is deliberately kept out of the party leadership.

Meanwhile, Democrats are winning with very little pandering to political opponents; in fact, they've espoused a platform that is likely more left-wing than any platform since Woodrow Wilson promised to remake American society in 1912. (Perhaps even more left-wing than that.) Why? That is a subject for tomorrow's post.

That's Rich

Frank Rich offers up his usual drivel:

Though Mr. Bush ran for president on “compassionate conservatism,” he diversified only his party’s window dressing: a 2000 Republican National Convention that had more African-Americans onstage than on the floor and the incessant photo-ops with black schoolchildren to sell No Child Left Behind. There are no black Republicans in the House or the Senate to stand with the party’s 2008 nominee. Exit polls tell us that African-Americans voting in this year’s G.O.P. primaries account for at most 2 to 4 percent of its electorate even in states with large black populations.

First, note the eternal Democratic penchant for seeing everything in terms of demographic groups. Don't like Mr. Obama because he's a socialist? Racist! Wait, you're a Republican even though all Republicans are old white guys? If this is change...

Rich is right that the Republican Party doesn't have a lot of blacks or Hispanics, but he suggests that the reason is that the Republican Party is mildly racist. Hilariously, he does so by talking about the struggles of a Republican governor of Virginia who supported busing (which, unlike eliminating mandatory segregation, was a terrible idea anyway), ignoring the fact that Southern Democrats were the major opponents of the civil rights movement (think current Democratic Senator from West Virginia, former Klan leader Robert Byrd) and that Republicans played a major role in most important civil rights legislation from the Sixties.

Honestly, though, the real reason why the Democratic Party is so overwhelmingly supported by the African-American population is that they discovered long ago that they could keep entire demographic groups dependent on them through grievance mongering and race baiting. Frank Rich's column only illustrates this fact. Not only do the Democrats focus on race and sex rather than issues, they actually perpetuate racial divisions and seek to codify them through affirmative action. The Republicans, on the other hand, actually support policies that would help African-Americans and that African-Americans support by wide margins: school choice, restricting abortion, and ending homosexual marriage.

The fact that African-Americans are overwhelmingly Democratic speaks more to the Democrats' manipulative and base tactics than to Republicans' admittedly poor job of reaching out to them.

GOP Adrift, Conservatism Confused

Michelle Malkin notes that a session at the Conservative Political Action Convention will be titled, "Is the GOP Lost?"

First, as far as the GOP is concerned, we do need to be worried. It's troubling that we couldn't coalesce around a single, broadly conservative candidate (unless, that is, Romney does in fact prevail today). I myself have said that I would not vote for McCain in a general election, and I stand by that. There is some talk, however, of starting a new conservative party or simply quitting on the Republican Party, and I can't go along with that. We do not have a parliamentary system, in which we would have influence based on the number of votes we get. It's a first-to-the-finish-line system, and thus you have to build a coalition and there can only be two major parties. Like it or not, the Republican Party must be our vehicle (barring some major switch between the parties, which is not unprecedented).

The only real alternative is to find ways to reclaim our party. The first way is not to vote for McCain in the upcoming presidential race, if indeed he is the nominee; we need to send a strong message to establishment Republicans that they're going to have to listen to us or lose. Second we always need to be working at the local level, engaging in debate and convincing our fellow Republicans of the virtues of a free market, a strong military, and a dedication to family values. I fear that conservatism's ascendancy lulled us into a false sense of security, and now we're discovering that voters' conceptions of what it means to be conservative have become confused. A lot of work went into launching the Reagan Revolution; we'll need a lot more to anchor again a party adrift from the ideals of freedom and human dignity that are too easy to cast by the wayside in favor of, as Rush says, "gutless" liberalism and collectivism.