For Republicans, the base is off

I just today got to the November 19 National Review cover story, by Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru, in which they deliver a stark assessment of GOP prospects for 2008. What I thought was especially interesting -- and valuable -- about the piece was that they didn't simply blame GOP presidential candidates for being so lackluster. They blamed the base for a failure of political imagination. Excerpt:

So while Republicans are depressed these days, their condition is actually worse than they think it is. The deepest cause of the party’s malaise is not the inadequacies of the presidential field. It is that the party’s base is out of step with the public. [Emphasis mine -- RD] On issue after issue, polls find independents lining up with Democrats.

Take the economy. Republicans are much happier with their economic circumstances than Democrats: 81 percent of the former, and only 54 percent of the latter, express satisfaction. Independents are exactly where the Democrats are. At their recent economic debate, however, most of the Republican candidates essentially advised dissatisfied Americans to look up some economic statistics to see how well things are going. The ones who acknowledged public gloom proffered protectionism as a remedy.

Or take global warming. The public thinks it is real and worrisome, but is not ready to embrace liberal policies that would drastically reduce economic growth. Republicans would have an opening here, if so many of them had not persuaded themselves that global warming is a hoax.

If the public debate is confined to a choice between people who brush off public concerns and those who offer bad solutions, the latter group will win. Conservatives, right now, are not offering better solutions. And because the Republican base is not demanding those solutions, the competitive dynamic of the primary is not producing them. For most of the year, the Republican presidential debates have featured barely a word about health care, the public’s most pressing domestic concern. The leading GOP candidates have belatedly put out plans (except for Thompson, who still hasn’t) — to the seeming indifference of rank-and-file conservative voters.

Instead, the competition is taking Republicans farther and farther away from a connection with the public. Giuliani has broken with the base of the party, but only in ways that will not help with the larger electorate. And to make up for those deviations on social issues, he is projecting a bring-it-on bellicosity that conservatives like but that most voters simply do not feel. Romney and Thompson, meanwhile, are fighting over who is the most conventional, paint-by-numbers conservative circa 1987. Creative domestic policy is off the table.

My wife and I have spent a lot more time in various doctors' offices in this past year than we would have liked to, looking after the needs of our two sons, each of whom has particular chronic health issues. It's made us realize how grateful we are that I have a good job that provides excellent health care benefits. And it's made us frightened to think of what would have become of us or our children if I lost my job. Going through this with our children has made us think long and hard about the anxiety so many American families face when it comes to health care. We have a woman who lives on our street who recently quit her nursing job after she became infected with MRSA on the job, and had to spend five days in the hospital taking IV antibiotics. She was put seriously into the economic ditch by this hospital stay, because her insurance was weak. She told me the other day that as an economic matter, she couldn't risk another MRSA infection. So she's walking away from a nursing career.

I'm not saying the Dems necessarily have the right idea for fixing the health care crisis. But at least they acknowledge that there's a big problem here. When I think of the GOP leadership and health care, I get the impression that they believe if they just screech "socialized medicine!" often enough, it will frighten people away from Democrats.

Ponnuru and Lowry conclude:

In past periods of Republican weakness, such as the late 1970s and early 1990s, conservatives were able to revive the party by yanking it to the populist right, especially on taxes. The next Republican revival, if it takes place, will involve a change within conservatism as much as an increase in its power over the party.

Nota bene: National Review says that "a change within conservatism" is necessary to the next Republican revival. Come January 2009, the hard, heavy work begins. Right now, the GOP/mainstream conservative orthodoxy won't admit much deviation, hence the pinched conservative imagination regarding what the next viable conservatism is going to look like. The Great Smashing that will soon be upon us will cost conservatives a great deal, but will at least make it possible for creative thinkers from within the broader conservative tradition to get a hearing.