Politico reports that unnamed top Republican and conservative leaders are headed to the Batcave after the election to figure out how to save the party and the movement. This doesn't look promising:
The meeting will include a "who's who of conservative leaders -- economic, national security and social," said one attendee, who shared initial word of the secret session only on the basis of anonymity and with some details about the host and location redacted.The decision to waste no time in plotting their moves in the post-Bush era reflects the widely-held view among many on the right, and elsewhere, that the GOP is heading toward major losses next week.
One of the topics of discussion will be how to fashion a "national grassroots political and policy coalition similar to the out Reagan years," said the attendee, a reference to the development of the so-called New Right apparatus following Jimmy Carter's 1976 victory and Reagan's election four years later.
"There's a sense that the Republican Party is broken, but the conservative movement is not," said this source, suggesting that it was the betrayal of some conservative principles by Bush and congressional leaders that led to the party's decline.
But, this source emphasized, the meeting will be held regardless of the outcome of the presidential race. "This is going on if McCain wins, loses or has a recount -- we're not planning for the loss of John McCain."
Either way, Sarah Palin will be a central part of discussion.
These guys are dreaming. They really are. In what sense are the same people who dragged the conservative movement and the GOP into this slough of despond and dispossession to be trusted to get us out of it? It sounds to me like they'll be trying to pour old, flat wine into new wineskins. Now, we don't know whose on the invitation list, but I'll bet you my next paycheck that it doesn't include a single man or woman who hasn't been to these things a thousand times before.
Look, I won't deny -- who can possibly deny? -- that Bush and the Republican Congress betrayed some key conservative principles. But the idea that all we need to do is to get in touch with our inner Ronald Reagans and it'll be morning in America again for the Republican Party is ridiculous. What is needed is a creative attempt to reinterpret conservative principles for changing times. I hope I'm wrong, but my sense is you aren't going to find much creativity or constructive dissent in that Virginia Batcave, but rather a lot of the same old guano.
UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan points to polling data showing that the GOP has lost younger voters. Is anything anybody at the Batcave summit says likely to result in policies that will get them back? The (36-year-old) head of the Dallas County GOP, one of the good guys, told me and my colleagues at the paper that it's a massive challenge to the GOP right here in Dallas County to get young people interested in the party. He said, for example, that older Republicans just do not understand how much the environment means to young people. I thought of that at dinner the other night, listening to a 21-year-old Republican who plans to vote for McCain saying that the GOP's tone-deafness on the environment makes it hard even to begin making a case for the Republican Party among her peers.
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RJohnson:
Duhh. It's our job to ensure the future.
That means passing on the better ideas and beating down the bad ones.
Any defeatist kind of talk or actions doesn't "work" for me. No way, no how, no way in hell.
Us humans have few jobs on this earth that matter, but setting our young people right IS one of them. Defeat? The only defeat that actually exists is to stop fighting for what's right.
Well, two things. There is not going to be a draft because no one in office wants to commit suicide.
Second, no one is going to seriously talk about penalties for abortion because that would be even surer suicide.
An idea does not have to be intellectually defensible. It merely has to appeal to enough voters.
As a 25 year old, allow me to advance a tenuous point. Traditional GOP wedge-issue and Reaganist politics falls flat with my generation because of the ironic environment in which we've grown up.
One way to interpret the ironic tendency of my generation is to see it as an extreme sensitivity to and aversion from kitsch. Perhaps this is a reaction to the highly-kitschy-on-all-sides baby boomers, or the eighties, or consumerism or postmodernism or - I guess there are many possible explanations.
Whatever the cause, this ironic tendency makes the current wedge-issue political propoganda (democrats are guilty of it, the GOP is EXTREMELY guilty of it) fall completely flat with my cohorts. It doesn't make us angry - it just makes us embarassed, and we change the channel, or turn off the tv and go online where we are free from the barrage in the first place.
The same can be said of Reaganism - the way it is presented and pushed is so kitsch-symbolism heavy and utopian and ideas-lite that it rings cloying and oversimplified. We can't even take it seriously enough to give it any real thought.
I've noticed that the older generations like to say that us young and ironic types are self-centered and incapable of real engagement and will be the downfall of the nation. I think this notion is so prevalent because the actual reality is too unpleasant for you older folks. That reality is that my generation is more European-style post-political than any that came before it. We are sorely aware of all the ideologies that failed in America and abroad (leftist and rightist ideologies - most people I know are left-sympathetic yet are very much burned by divorce and failed families and adults acting like children), and we are inured to the romanticism that goes along with these ideologies. We believe that human and physical reality defies ideological understanding, and we thus favor empirical and pragmatic approaches to policy and problems. We comfortably take what we need from libertarian, capitalist, and socialist ideologies without entirely conforming to any of them (ideological mash-ups!). This is why Obama has a foothold with us - when it comes to policy he responds with calm, consideration, and pragmatism whereas the GOP responds with embarassing ideologically-motivated boilerplate.
As long as the GOP does not move past its morally, aesthetically, and intellectually outmoded romanticism, it will not get my generation back.
The Republican Party that began in the Reagan Era has become like the Democrats who keep endlessly harking back to the New Deal. And I agree completely with Rod that the same folks in the Party who created this mess will create an even bigger one if they are given the reins of power again. They had the Presidency and control of both Houses of Congress and brought our country to the brink of total disaster.
Thank you, Mike. You expressed it better than I could. I should state for the record, though, that I am a gen-Xer. I find it is really difficult talking to my parents (boomers) about politics for the very reasons you expressed. I'm left leaning, but pragmatic and not wedded to any particular ideology. Every time we discuss political issues, they spend half of the conversation accusing me of believing this or that ideology ... of being just like people from this or that era ... of being aligned with this or that group. It is absolutely maddening. I can't disparage the corruption of a politician on their 'side' without them bringing up some democrat (usually from the past) who did something vaugely similar. It doesn't matter that I agree with them when they disparage corrupt democrats. That isn't the issue. I can't attack ANY incidence of poor or irresponsible governence by republicans without them denying it and viewing it as a personal attack. This, to me, is the biggest part of where conservatism went wrong, it ceased to be about how to effectively govern, and started to be about whether or not you were on their 'side'. From what I have felt and what I have seen, conservatives will continue to lose the young as long as they continue to prize loyalty over competent, good governence.
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