Death of conservatism gorefest!

And what can be said of the sheer vulgarity of leading conservative voices, on the blogs and on the radio? When I began in conservatism, in the mid-70's, the leading voices were men of class: Jeffrey Hart, William Buckley, Milton Friedman. Now it's Ingraham, Levin, et al. Good grief what a degeneration.

What motivated my recent decision to register Republican (having just reached voting age last year) was not fantasies of Iraqi democracy, or promises of limited government and tax cuts. I registered Republican because they have generally championed cultural and social conservatism for the better part of the 20th century. Yes, I know there are pro-life Democrats. Yes, I know that Republicans sometimes use issues such as abortion and gay marriage as "sticks" to keep people voting Republican, and don't intend to actually do something about it.

These pro-life Democrats, however, are consistently at odds with the rest of their party and with their party's platform. It's pretty hard to pass pro-life legislation as a Democrat when you face constant opposition from your own side, just as it's hard to pass environmental legislation as a Republican. Inevitably these Democrats give up and toe the party line on abortion and other issues - so voting Democratic, for me, is not an option.

And while Republicans are sometimes insincere about abortion and gay marriage, they have been able to get bans on partial-birth abortions and anti-gay marriage amendments added to state constitutions. So the argument that Republicans have never been able to pass meaningful legislation in these areas doesn't hold water, either.

The truth is, the Republican party, as long as it remains at least nominally conservative, will never win if the culture of America is overwhelmingly liberal. We sometimes tend to forget that people of America decide what form the government takes, for better or for worse - not intellectuals or politicians. If the culture of America is lost, then conservatism in America is, too.

In my opinion, conservatism is better served, at this moment, by directly engaging the culture. We need conservative teachers, professors; conservative doctors, conservative actors, conservative priests, conservative directors, conservative artists and musicians. Most of all, conservative mothers and fathers. These people shape current and future generations think and feel about the world more than perhaps intellectuals and politicians, who are often unnoticed by the average uninformed American. Right now liberals have an almost unbreakable control on media and education - by changing this we have a better chance that later generations will be more conservative, and hence willing to even consider the Republican party no matter its faults - or at least their rejection of it will be grounded in conservative principles.

"And what can be said of the sheer vulgarity of leading conservative voices...Ingraham, Levin, et al. Good grief what a degeneration." Jack

Jack, I'll tell you what can be said, this: you're on the wrong blog to sell an absurdity like that. Never, ever have I heard Ingraham, et al. being vulgar in public. Perhaps the hard truth they tell is vulgarity to you.

Like sexual immorality in general, Hollywood filth, vulgarity and calumny are staples in liberal circles; it's the "in thing" to drop F bombs and g-ds at parties, meetings and casual talk. Take John F. Kerry (please)! He's called John Fing Kerry for a reason. And the Clintons--just ask their one-time confidant, Dick Morris, about the potty-mouth couple.

When a conservative pol, OTOH, says s.. of a b....in private, after provocation, it's all over the yellow journalism papers and airwaves for a week.

that politics matters more than governing …
a doctrinaire failure to adapt to new circumstances, new problems …
“and now I feel estranged,” he said. … I don’t feel it’s true, fundamentally true”…
sclerotic consertive Think Tanks
true believers versus reformists

These all resonate with me. I'm looking forward to reading the whole Packer article.

But I can't help but note that many voices that DO seem "true, fundamentally true" are in the reformist mold but don't think they have the answers, just the diagnosis. They're calling for the people who have made politics their vocation now to make governance their vocation and to work on real answers, because the problems are too complex and numerous for pundits, county seat lawyers, and other crunchy cons with day jobs to solve. We'll probably recognize a solution, and we'll surely be trying to distinguish real solutions from new political mantras.

Meanwhile, over at the liberal ranch, I see no signs of intelligent life. They too have concluded that politics matters more than governance. They've gotten more Congressmen and Senators with "D" after their name mostly by running guys like Jim Webb and Robert Casey, Jr. who in small measure break the liberal mold. But I'm not hearing anything "true, fundamentally true" from over there.

Maybe the problems are intractable, and that's why mere politics is winning.

Much as I dread pouring petrol on Cleveland's already blazing river, I note in sorrow that he may have been listening to an Indians game the night Laura Ingraham chose to devote a huge chunk of her talk show c. 2004, to the brilliant tactical maneuver of styling Matt Lauer "Mr. Hair-in-a-Can". It's just that I'm so worried that Cleveland is going to wake up one day, see with what orgasmic glee 50.1% of the electorate spends the next quarter-century kicking movement conservatism in the teeth - while he and his fellow Freepers and Dittoheads, dazed in the trenches, will be reduced to divers variations on "wha'ppen?", the Warner Bros.-cartoon recoil effect ("YAYAYAYAYAYA..."), and mold-encrusted talking points lifted from c. 1994 outbursts off the EIB Network. Never once will it occur to them that the dread Other Side was able, with fingertip ease, to bend the wingers' gun barrels backward, so that the ensuing soot-sodden faces in all the country's hail-follow'd-well-spent Rush Rooms were all the result of friendly fire...

"above all, Obama should absorb what the most thoughtful conservatives already know: that these voters see the economic condition of the country as inextricable from its moral condition."

And he is doing precisely that. Conservatives, of all people, should take the long to very long view of things. The GOP getting kicked in the teeth will be the catalyst for some serious rethinking of what conservatism is and should be.

Re: politics and the upcoming election - are you familiar with the purple people (not one-eyed, one-horned flying variety):

We the Purple: Faith, Politics, and the Independent Voter by Marcia Ford (Author)

amazon.com/We-Purple-Faith-Politics-Independent/dp/1414317174

(see my next post; if I put 2 links in a post, BeliefNet eats it)

Upcoming audio interview with the Marcia Ford, the author of We the Purple: Faith, Politics, and the Independent Voter by Steve Brown on May 30:

stevebrownetc.com/category/podcasts/steve-brown-etc/

Steve is, for lack of a better phrase, a wild and crazy guy, whose shows/interviews discuss contemporary trends/issues/personalities in the church. I was newly-introduced to him by a good friend, and his on-line interview with Frank Schaeffer re: Crazy for God, while contributing nothing I didn't already know, was genial and informative.

Rod writes: "Packer talks about how Richard Nixon and his team perfected the art of wedge politics by practicing what they termed "positive polarization" -- highlighting and exploiting cultural anxieties and resentments to break the Democrats apart."

Rod,

This is no different from the way the modern Democratic Party stokes economic resentments and engages in class warfare. No different from the way they stigmatize cultural and religious conservatives by asserting we're waging a "war against science" and (in the case of our desire to defend traditional family life) engaging in gay-bashing.

They're no different in that they scare older folks regarding Social Security reforms; or, scare African Americans with the prospect of a reversion to the 1950s; or, scare all the groups dependent on government largesse with the specter of cuts in services.

There are intellectuals in both parties with a sincere interest in ideas. At the same time, each party includes in probably equal measure the same kind of political operatives more interested in politics than governance, more interested in the fight than in the purpose.

Has the House of Representatives under Pelosi, or the Senate under Reid, conducted themselves any better than under the GOP? There is no evidence of any such thing. Their approval ratings are lower than the President's.

"In my opinion, conservatism is better served, at this moment, by directly engaging the culture. We need conservative teachers, professors; conservative doctors, conservative actors, conservative priests, conservative directors, conservative artists and musicians. Most of all, conservative mothers and fathers. "

Amen to that. To my mind, the contemporary conservative writer that right-leaning folks most need to read is the Brit philosopher and critic Roger Scruton. He seems to be the one that's doing the best job, intellectually speaking, of tieing all these things together into one very intelligent and cohesive package.

It's worth quoting Rod again:
"Stop watching so much Fox. Stop listening to so much talk radio. It may not tell you what you need to know! Seriously, many rank-and-file Republicans have spent so much time listening to propagandists tell them what they want to hear -- including that liberals are always and everywhere wrong, and generally evil too -- that they are paralyzed when confronted with evidence that the world isn't like they thought."

The conservative movement crowned W. CEO/King of the USA. With few exceptions (Hagel, Paul, ?) the Congressional Republicans went lockstep with Bush. What do we have to show for that this decade? Katrina, $6 per gallon of gas by summer's end, teacher shortage, 4,000+ dead troops, quagmire, more videos from Osama bin Laden, deficits, debt, hyper polarization, etc.

It's time for conservatives to put their own house in order. Conservatives worried about gay marriage? Your own nominee McCain was against the constitutional gay marriage ban. Studies of the red states in the 04 elections showed higher divorce rates, particularly in Bible-belt areas than in liberal states like Massachusetts.

McCain's got sell-out lobbyists working on his campaign like flies on $hit. Now he's considering former CEO, Mitt Romney to be his running mate? People are realizing that CEOs in this country make 42X what the average worker does and get golden parachutes for outsourcing and destroying pensions. CEOs aren't popular.

If you're against abortion, instead of condemning; adopt or give money towards prenatal/health care and adoption/foster services (*A minority of conservatives deserve credit on this*). Make reasonable work standards for single mothers receiving aid. The constant condemnation has made your movement look like pharisees and scribes.

The power brokers of the conservative movement have insulated themselves. The dwindling Bush-bots have insulated themselves with FOX, Focus on the Family, RUSH, Michael Savage, etc. Insulation from reality is killing your movement.

Conservatives were in trouble long before George W. Bush was elected, and would face most of those same problems even if a more competent Republican had been elected as Chief Executive.

Any successful political movement sows the seeds of its own destruction. If you're SUCCESSFUL at addressing the serious issues of your day, well, those issues disappear, and the people lose interest in them. In 1956, many Americans who'd benefitted greatly from the Democrats' New Deal progams voted for Eisenhower, becaue they were now prosperous and wanted lower taxes.

Well, in the same way, by 1992, crime had been greatly reduced, taxes were much lower, and the Soviet Union had been beaten. So, it's not suprising that people who'd once worried about crime, high taxes, and Communism relaxed and figured it was safe to vote Democrat again. By 2000, if you weren't an ideologue, it was tough to come up with compelling reasons to vote Republican consistently.

George W. Bush has handled a lot of things horribly, but even if he'd handlked them well, the G.O.P. would ace the same problem: people just aren't worried about crime, taxes or foreign invasion any more! If THOSE are the issues you're running on, you're asking for minority status. You need to give people new reasons to vote for you.

Unfortunately, the main reason Bush and Rove have tried to give people is bribery via prok barrel.

Rod,
As a lefty, I look forward to working with the seeds you're planting. I'm not being sarcastic at all.
You should be on MSNBC rather than Bush-bot parrots like Kevin James. (*Check out the Youtube video of this guy not responding to Chris Mathews till after 24 attempts on what appeasement really is - it's absolutely pathetic!*)
Voices like yours and David Kuo's are prophetic for your movement. David Kuo caught on to the fact that the GOP is playing with Evanglicals.
I don't think my movement has a monopoly on truth and I highly value dialog and even competition. Insulation sucks!
I grew up Evangelical Republican. David was kind enough to profile me on his blog. I don't want to just self promote; but, would like to see responses to some of my ideas.
Keep up the good fight!

What we have here is something that periodically and repeatedly happens in American politics...one side of the aisle's pundit cartel gets all full of masturbatory fantasies that the enemy is just about to totally and finally collapse, praise God. It's all contained in the New Yorker's accompanying cartoon, with grotesque caricatures of Buckley, Reagan, Goldwater, etc., to see that Packer, or more probably his editor, was publishing this with one hand.

Alf Landon lost all but two states in 1936 and the GOP caucus in Congress was whittled down to irrelevance. What did the Republicans have in terms of "new ideas" to offer the electorate versus FDR's New Deal? Two years later in the '38 midterms, the GOP was back in play as a national party, only months after there had been serious talk that the Republican Party would either go the way of the Federalists and the Whigs, and whither away, or simply should shut down altogether.

Such nonsense is always spouted after a party suffers a big loss. 1964 was the death knell of the GOP. No, 1974 was. 1980-88 proved that the Republicans had an unbreakable lock on the Electoral College. 1994 meant that Clinton was toast. Etc., etc. We have a false perspective because we live in an era when very few House seats change hands, except in very unusual years like 1994. I think something like a switch of less than 50,000 votes would have kept Congress in GOP hands in 2006. A loss in 2008 would not consign the Republicans to the wilderness for a generation, some comboxers wet dreams notwithstanding.

What issues engage the heart today like law and order engaged the heart in 1968? I'm hard pressed to think of one. There's a lot of free-floating anxiety and unhappiness in the political culture today, but I can't pin it to a single concept. Can you? I see the Democrats' strength now to be based mostly on the fact that so many people are sick of the Republicans, period.

I thought you were talking about the Republicans, and I honestly don't see an issue on that side that engages the heart(Which doesn't really prove anything in general.), but on the Democratic side, there's plenty of issues. It's not just sickness at the Republicans:

1) Iraq. People are pissed about that. Although this is actually should be the least of their worries right now, especially with gas prices so high. One or the other would be bad enough, but both has resulted in, basically, the idea that the Bush administration went and robbed a bank, lying to us and costing us a huge amount of time, effort, and lives, and then didn't steal any damn money. If the war was for oil, and basically that's what everyone decided about 3 years ago...where the hell is the oil?

2) Health care. With the Democrats actually talking about it again, people are realizing that everyone is in the same boat they are, it's not just some random anomaly that they don't seem to have any health care. People have realized that health insurance companies are not, in any way whatsoever, helpful in providing health care. When they realize exactly how much health insurance companies interfere with any sort of reform, which they will when Obama gets in office and can't seem to do anything about it...well, I hate to use the expression 'first up against the wall when the revolution comes', but, honestly, those companies are going to have to be extremely lucky to walk away in one piece.

3) Mortgage collapse. This situation is only going to get worse, people. People were talking about in February, but in actuality a lot of people's rates changed then...and it's been 90 days...right...now. Within in the next few weeks, watch for another round of news coverage, and watch the pundits come to the realization this isn't going to go away, and it's not going to settle down, it is going to get bad.

The main badness, the one that people aren't seeing, is that even when housing prices start coming down, which could take another year, banks still won't be willing or able to loan to people. There are houses for sale, right now, that won't get sold for five years. At first because they are hugely overpriced, and then because even at sane prices, people cannot afford houses without banks, and banks are in disaster mode and not willing to make mortgages.

We're going to end up with massive homelessness and massive amounts of empty houses just sitting there. When people cannot buy necessary goods that are clearly available because they can't afford them, that's the sort of thing that leads to rioting and lawlessness. Look for, in 2010 or so, places that require homes to be sold or inhabited within six months or they are eminent domained by the local government and resold.

4) We reached the absolute last point we could start implementing mass transit and MPG changes without having a complete disaster when gas peaked...in, oh, let's say, 1995. People have started realizing this, and I, who live in a very conservative small Appalachian town and disagree near-totally with everyone politically, has not had anyone disagree with me that we needed more mass transit in the last five years or so. Everyone wants it, although conservatives delusionally want it without paying for it.

Of course, the Republicans could switch sides on any of those issues. Except no normal person would believe their change of heart, and they'd lose the base that they're been training for decades to hate solving problems with the government.

In repeating my post above without effective challenge (or attribution), Cleveland's just awarded himself, "unwittily" as Dwight Macdonald would say, the first annual Elmer award, sponsored by the Fudd Foundation, and held in the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Park (here's a napkin for that sweet green icing, flowing down your chin).

I'm just happy I was able to ruby my lips and pluck my lashes in time to play Bugs in drag; Elmer's cutest when you catch him in après-smooch blush, an image discernible by my Warnerologist field agents today departing the 1:10 whistle-stop out of Cleveland.

Don't worry - I promise your carrots will grow back bigger and sweeter than ever next spring - right in time for the next big wet one, planted cheekward courtesy of this pro bono Fuddrucker...

DavidTC, I always enjoy your thoughtful, engaging, and informative posts. On the housing market/mortgage problems, why do you foresee many empty homes? My thought is that houses that can't be sold will become available for rent, thereby driving down rental costs.

We are due, I think, for one serious realignment election.

We may well be, but 2008 will not be it. Neither campaign HQ is looking at a win of anything more than 53-47, and probably a lot thinner a margin than that. If the surge had not been as successful in neutralizing Iraq as a wedge issue, and if the Democrats had gotten down to two less polarizing candidates (and the GOP had chosen a more polarizing one), well then we might be looking at a potential realigning election. Too bad the Democrats didn't nominate a unremarkable, white, centrist governor--like they did in 1932. A "realignment" election is one where either an huge identifiable demographic bloc, or a region of the country, or both, which hitherto historically went to one party, switches to the other virtually en masse. That is not going to happen this year. Nor should they--they really are once in a lifetime events. It arguably happened in 1968 (cracking the Solid South) and in 1980 (consolidating the Solid South and flipping northern Catholics), but it is hard to see how that would happen this year.

There is a reason most elections are pretty much like the ones just before them. It doesn't mean the stakes aren't as critical in 'non-realignment' cycles, far from it. It just means we have the historical US norm of a more-or-less evenly divided country between two megaparties.

I think the rumors of McCain's "certain" election defeat are being greatly exaggerated.

The Rove-Bush period of Republicanism were a contrivance, an elaborate fiction, a political fantasy. In 2008, many Americans have come to realize that Rove's clever designs were illusions; that the appealing package he conjured for Bush is, in terrible fact, empty.

We are faced with facing the fact we have let ourselves be conned -- and this is never pleasant.

We can and we must recover, and once again be self-guiding American grown-ups. This is our year to do so.

Honesty and hard work should make you wealthy.

In what way do you mean 'should'? Do you mean that the universe is inherently fair, or do you mean that someone is balancing the scales?

I don't believe either of those concepts is part of Christian thought.