The Atlantic's libertarian scribe Megan McArdle, quoted in a NYT story about the rethinking on the Right coming whether or not John McCain wins or loses:
Indeed, to Ms. McArdle, the possibility of a Republican defeat holds a certain romantic appeal. "Younger people are kind of excited about being in the wilderness," she said, evoking the pre-Reagan years when Republican thinkers plotted their revolution at nonprofit organizations and in bars instead of in the Executive Office Building and congressional majority offices. The longer you're in power, the more you want to preserve it. "That's where the Republicans are right now, and it's demoralizing for think tankers." Desperation has a way of focusing the mind. As Ms. McArdle said, "When they're out of power, they have to think in a clearer way."
I know what she means. As I've said repeatedly on this blog, the GOP and the conservative movement has a lot of rethinking to do. In fact, though I'm not going to vote for Obama, I don't know if I'd be more depressed to wake up the day after the election and find out the next president was McCain, or Obama. McCain, simply because four more years of a Republican in the White House only defers the day of reckoning. Maybe.
Anyway, on the Corner, Andrew Stuttaford counters that the political wilderness is only attractive to people who've never been there. That's not a point that's easily dismissable. So let me put it to the conservatives who read this blog -- we do have some, I think:
Do you find it more depressing to think that we might be in the political wilderness post-November, or that we might not be? Explain your reasoning.
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I don't know if I agree with you, but I think the constant hearkening back to Reagan is not very helpful. Reagan did many good things, but he also did bad things or at least questionable things. Besides that Reagan's legacy is very much tied-up in the Cold-War and trying to revive American optimism after the malaise of the 1970s. The situation we have is not the same. Islamism is not the same as the Soviet Union, militarily speaking it's far far weaker, and the malaise of this decade is not like the 1970s.
In some ways it's like liberal film directors who want to graft the paranoia and disillusionment of the 1970s onto modern films. The results of that, so far, have not been particularly successful with critics or moviegoers. It's a different situation and a new Reagan really has no more, or less, place in it than a new Coppola or Stone.
"But the fact conservatives seem to be longing for people and times instead of actual specific policies, would appear to indicate that they do not, in fact, know what they want."
Although I liked Reagan in general, I'm not one of those who thinks he was the be-all and end-all. He was conservative in that he was anti-Communist, anti-collectivist/statist, anti-regulation, etc., and pro-democracy, pro-business, pro-life, etc. These are, of course, generalities, and I have qualms with Reagan policies here and there. But overall, I think you must classify Reagan as broadly conservative.
Conservatism is not based on policies but on principles. The principles stay the same but the policies, unlike those of liberalism/progressivism, can vary according to times and circumstance. I realize that this is difficult for Libs to grasp, seeing that their social and economic plan requires specific policies, (policy being the manner in which they believe the progressive vision will be achieved), but there it is.
"a party will arise from the ashes of the Republicans, but it won't be you guys. It will be the people with the ideas..."
The ideas are there already. The problem is that there is a certain amount of sifting that needs to be done to separate true conservatives from the hangers-on. This is what the 'exile' bit is about. Basically you have in general two large "tendencies" right now in the conservative universe. One on hand you have the neo-con tendency -- that of Fox News, Limbaugh, Hannity, the Weekly Standard, the Bush Admin. One the other hand you have the paleo- or trad-con tendency, which includes the crunchies. This side of the thing includes Roger Scruton, Pat Buchanan, the American Conservative, Chronicles Magazine, and much of what's associated with the Kirk/Weaver stream -- Modern Age, ISI Publishing, the Kirk Center, etc.
Now you seldom hear anything from or about the latter (except for Buchanan) in the media because Fox and the conservative talk guys are almost all neo-con leaning. And even though there is a certain amount of overlap between the two groups, there are also serious disagreements. I think that what the 'exile' could do would be to sort this division out and give the GOP some time to determine which direction it really wants to go. Does it want to continue to go the neo-con direction (which is really a species of liberalism -- a friend of mine has defined a neo-con as a liberal who wants to keep his money) or to coalesce around the social conservative vision, which it often pays lip service to, but doesn't try to advance?
This is no doubt an oversimplification. But it seems to me that if McCain loses, this is what conservatives will have to think about. Don't expect Fox, Limbaugh, Hannity, etc. to talk about this though. They'll be too busy preaching to the choir about how bad Obama is.
The most important thing, however, at least IMO is that conservatives need to stop thinking that their fortunes are tied to the success or failure of the GOP. If we end up distancing ourselves from the GOP, and find ourselves in the wildnerness as a result, so be it. Principle is far more important than party.
which is really a species of liberalism -- a friend of mine has defined a neo-con as a liberal who wants to keep his money
Neocons actually started over here on the left, at least the 'imperialism in the middle east for the benefit for Israel'. The left kicked them out in the 70s, so they wandered over and met up with the Nixon architects who realized that permanent war=permanent executive power.
I'm all for this 'exile' concept, to get rid of exactly those people...the people who think if the President does it, it should be legal, and have spent four decades trying to make this true. They've completely infested the right, and it's completely pointless to point out how 'non-conservative' that idea is.
But, anyway, the thing that gets me...yeah, the exile will hopefully kill the neocons...but it's going to kill the paleocons, too. Or at least shift their 'base' position forward in time an entire generation. They won't argue against any of the stuff you guys are arguing again.
Would you honestly not care if there were 'paleo-conservatives' running around not caring about the already-existing-for-a-decade gay marriage, or whatever. You say 'conservative' is more a 'principle' that actual policies...but politics is policies, and with all due respect, why the hell are you you fighting policies you don't actually care about? More to the point, why are you even in politics if policies aren't important? What do you think we're fighting over, abstract moral principles, or 'what the government is going to do'? If you want to promote abstract moral principles, go join the Lion's Club or something.
Sometimes I think I don't understand you people at all: 'Oh, sure, we'll be in the wilderness for a decade, and all the policies we've spent our entire life fighting tooth and nail will be enacted, and become the new status quo, but eventually some party with our banner will show up, stand on that new status quo, and fight entirely new policies. *shrug* Good enough.'
"You say 'conservative' is more a 'principle' that actual policies...but politics is policies, and with all due respect, why the hell are you you fighting policies you don't actually care about? More to the point, why are you even in politics if policies aren't important?"
The fact that conservatism is more about principles than policies doesn't mean that policies are not important at all. That's a false dichotomy. Likewise, politics is important but that doesn't mean that 'all is political.' That's false dichotomy number two.
"What do you think we're fighting over, abstract moral principles, or 'what the government is going to do'?"
Both, actually, since policy is always based on some moral principle or other. When the principles inform the policies they can no longer be called 'abstract,' right? What's so hard to understand about this?
I just don't understand what the point of fighting something for decades is, only to give up and say 'whatever'.
I know in practice conservatives often fight losing battles, but I never thought I'd see them planning a decade from now, when they've already lost the battles they're fighting and the new conservatives would react in disbelief if you tried to fight them again.
I stupidly imagined conservatives (usually mistakenly) thought they would win their battles. I though they thought that, someday, we'd all see how bad gay marriage would be, or what a bad ideal universal health care would, and just stop. (We've stopped before, like with prohibition.)
But little did I know, none of it mattered.
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