That secret GOP conservative summit

If Sarah Palin isn't the answer, then I'd really like to know who the future of the Republican Party is. Because as far as I can tell, there isn't really anyone else out there. If anyone says Romney or Huckabee, then I'll start puking. And I have many, many doubts about Jindal. He might be a competent CEO, but he doesn't generate the same excitement/ lacks the political smarts of Palin.

Rod,

Have you invited to this summit? Just curious.

Allow me to offer a few suggestions for an agenda.

Develop a way to be serious about the principle of respecting life instead of offering mere lip service and conflating it with judges. Actually reducing the number of abortions might be a good thing. While they're at it, how about seriously examine what principles allow one to be pro-life and pro-torture. Beyond the double-edged utilitarian sword, I'm not sure there are any.

Next, develop a plan to roll back Bush's big government programs on both domestic and foreign policy. If Obama's tax plan is socialist, then NCLB reeks of Stalinism.

Finally, learn from the other side. Obama made in-roads with his calm demeanor as much as with his rhetoric. Develop a plan to shut up the load mouths and give the bully pulpit to the grown-ups.

I won't gloat, but I must admit that after suffering through umpteen years of the self-righteous, sanctimonious, and narrow-minded bloviations of numbskulls who had the great idea of vilifying the word "liberal" and peevishly and uniformly waging a silly and snide campaign against use of the word "Democratic" as an adjective to describe a quality, characteristic, condition, or person of the Democratic Party (i.e., insisting instead on the "Democrat" candidate, as opposed to the long-accepted "Democratic" adjective], I say: CHEERS!

Gene - October 29, 2008 1:31 PM - Are they really stupid enough to throw the party behind HER? Isn't there anyone in the Republican party that's more intelligent?

Gene, et al.:

Don't misunderestimate (sic) Sarah Palin:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-27/sarah-palins-a-brainiac

Sarah Palin's a Brainiac
by Elaine Lafferty

The former editor in chief of Ms. magazine (and a Democrat) on what she learned on a campaign plane with the would-be VP.

It's difficult not to froth when one reads, as I did again and again this week, doubts about Sarah Palin's “intelligence,” coming especially from women such as PBS's Bonnie Erbe, who, as near as I recall, has not herself heretofore been burdened with the Susan Sontag of Journalism moniker. As Fred Barnes—God help me, I'm agreeing with Fred Barnes—suggests in the Weekly Standard, these high toned and authoritative dismissals come from people who have never met or spoken with Sarah Palin. Those who know her, love her or hate her, offer no such criticism. They know what I know, and I learned it from spending just a little time traveling on the cramped campaign plane this week: Sarah Palin is very smart.

I'm a Democrat, but I've worked as a consultant with the McCain campaign since shortly after Palin's nomination. Last week, there was the thought that as a former editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine as well as a feminist activist in my pre-journalism days, I might be helpful in contributing to a speech that Palin had long wanted to give on women's rights.

Now by “smart,” I don't refer to a person who is wily or calculating or nimble in the way of certain talented athletes who we admire but suspect don't really have serious brains in their skulls. I mean, instead, a mind that is thoughtful, curious, with a discernable pattern of associative thinking and insight. Palin asks questions, and probes linkages and logic that bring to mind a quirky law professor I once had. Palin is more than a “quick study”; I'd heard rumors around the campaign of her photographic memory and, frankly, I watched it in action. She sees. She processes. She questions, and only then, she acts. What is often called her “confidence” is actually a rarity in national politics: I saw a woman who knows exactly who she is.

For all those old enough to remember Senator Sam Ervin, the brilliant strict constitutional constructionist and chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee whose patois included “I'm just a country lawyer"...Yup, Palin is that smart.

So no simple task then, this speech on women's rights. For the sin of being a Christian personally opposed to abortion, Palin is being pilloried by the inside-the-Beltway Democrat feminist establishment. (Yes, she is anti-abortion. And yes, instead of buying organic New Zealand lamb at Whole Foods, she joins other Alaskans in hunting for food. That's it. She is not a right-wing nut, and all the rest of the Internet drivel—the book banning at the Library, the rape kits decision—is nonsense. I digress.) Palin's role in this campaign was to energize “the Republican base,” which she has inarguably done. She also was expected to reach out to Hillary Clinton “moderates.” (Right. Only a woman would get both those jobs in either party.) Look, I am obviously personally pro-choice, and I disagree with McCain and Palin on that and a few other issues. But like many other Democrats, including Lynn Rothschild, I'm tired of the Democratic Party taking women for granted. I also happen to believe Sarah Palin supports women's rights, deeply and passionately.

Many of those—not all—who decried the sexist media treatment of Hillary Clinton have been silent as Palin has been skewered in the old ways that female public figures are skewered, as well as a host of sexualized new ways as well. Some feminists have weighed in; “Even the reportedly clear glasses she wears to play down her beauty queen credential and enhance her gravitas can't make up for experience,” writes my heroine Suzanne Braun Levine, former editor of Ms. Oppose her on policy? Fine. But how sad for feminist leaders to sink this low, especially when Palin has worn glasses since she was 10 years old.

Last month a prominent feminist blogger, echoing that sensibility, declared that the media was wrongly buying into the false idea that Palin was a feminist. Why? Well, just because she said she was a feminist, because she supported women's rights and opportunities, equal pay, Title IV—that was just “empty rhetoric,” they said. At least the blogger didn't go as far as NOW's Kim Gandy and declare that Palin was not a woman. Bottom line: you are not a feminist until we say you are. And there you have the formula for diminishing what was once a great and important mass social change movement to an exclusionary club that rejects women who sincerely want to join and, God forbid, grow to lead.

But here is the good news: women, citizens of America's high and low culture, the Economist and People magazine readers, will get it. They got it with Hillary even when feminist leaders were not supporting her or doing so half-heartedly. Yes, Palin is a harder sell, she looks and sounds different, and one can rightfully oppose her based on abortion policies. If you only vote on how a person personally feels about abortion, you will never want her to darken your door. If you care about anything else, she will continue to intrigue you. As Time's Nancy Gibbs noted a few weeks ago, quoting bioethicist Tom Murray, “Sympathy and subtlety are seasonings rarely applied to political red meat.” Will Palin's time come next week? I don't know. But her time will come.

What's the matter, Rod, aren't you invited?

Given her performances in public, if Palin has a photographic memory, it's clearly nothing is developing...

What's the matter, Rod, aren't you invited?

Rod hadn't said anything in this post that he hasn't said before so need dismissing him with such a comment.

I agree with Charles. Palin's time has come and gone; she'll play the John Edwards role the next few years then disappear for good.

Sorry. That was me above.

There hasn't been an official meeting, chaired by party elders, but across liberal blogs and publications (and by that I don't mean the MSM, I mean REAL liberal publications), this 'session' has been going on for many years.

It is certainly natural for movement leaders (like the liberal movement) to get together and figure out how to apply their philosophy to the modern world. This is normal and healthy. What isn't healthy is confusing advocacy with coalition building as has happened with Republicans/conservatives.

I've voted and actively campaigned for a major third party candidate. I re-registered Democrat to vote in primaries. I certainly don't think the Dems are perfect; but hey... it's a beautiful time.

GOP R.I.P. America's waking up to the cronyism, corruption, grandstanding, deregulation, war profiteering, class warfare on the middle class and poor, etc.

BTW, certainly the GOP can keep using Sarah Palin. She's like a tragically retarded cheerleader that can only speak in loose generalities and scripted talking points. She can't talk policy details on most issues to save her life. Her snarky performances are a cross between Rush Limbaugh and Rosanne Barr (my apologies to Rosanne).
She's probably twice as polarizing as Hillary Clinton with no crossover appeal. The $20,000 makeup jobs and the $150,000 wardrobe have revealed - not - a salt of the earth, small town woman; but a diva/Tammy Fay Baker charlatan.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I fail to see how ANY "conservative summit", either this GOP-connected affair or a "WTF" conference, is going to solve or even seriously address the problems conservatives/Traditionalists face. Our problems are not political, but cultural.

Let's be honest: the values that people like us claim to advocate for are utterly at odds with the underlying principles of the society we are surrounded by. Limited government ? Sorry, that one got tossed out in 1917. The continued popularity of entitlement programs, even with the knowledge of their unsustainability, confirms that. It is very, very unlikely the notion of a limited, constitutional government is EVER going to come back, absent the demise of the system as a whole.

Strong national defense ? That depends on what the society needs defending against. The current regime concentrates all of its resources on waging a chimerical "War on Terror" while utterly ignoring the real and actual invasion from Mexico and points south that is structurally altering the demographics of large parts of the country and seriously distorting the national economy. When those elements of the commoner population that recognize the seriousness of this particular problem actually attempt to be heard in the formulation of a lasting solution, they are completely ignored.

Serious social conservatism ? This may be where the most wishful thinking of all takes place. Social conservatism has, at its root, the notion that self-restraint and personal discipline, whether ordered by a Divinity or based on direct Human experience, is a concept worthy of being emulated.

THAT concept, along with its derivatives, (including marriage, the nuclear family, non-consumerism, among others), is fundamentally at war with the basic beliefs of the dominant culture of this country. As pointed out on another thread, the American economy is reliant on consumer spending for 70-80 % of its base. Corporations and the central government rely on that for much of their revenue and much of their political power. Mass advertising and public relations are big businesses.

In sexual matters, the entire mass media and much of the State apparatus, including its legal system, is systematically designed to discourage family formation and maintenance. Normal, two-parent married families exist IN SPITE OF this culture, not because of it.
How many times have I read posts complaining about how hard it is to raise children in this toxic culture ? Has it ever occurred to anyone that those stories are not only true, but the norm, and only to be expected given the cultural expectations that are thrust upon us through the TV screen and CD player every day ?

People, we're a lot further up Dirt Creek than lots of people, including the current leadership cadre of the so-called "conservative movement" seem to realize. And we've been up that creek for so long that the color of the water is starting to not just look normal, but to look good. (I give you, as Prosecution Exhibit A, the nomination and acclamation of Sarah Palin.) NO "conservative summit" is going to do a blessed thing about that, because the participants in that summit are focussed on the wrong thing.

It's not the economy, stupid. It's the culture. Any "solution" to the political problem that ignores the cultural and political substructures underlying the political superstructure will be a bagatelle and will do nothing to address matters.

This "conservative summit" is worse than a crime. It is a blunder.

Your servant,

Mark

I don't understand why the GOP idolizes Regan so much. Yeah he was a good-looking actor who probably brought more rationality to government than any prez in two decades, but remember he tore the solar panels off the whitehouse. What does that say about "progress"?

They all do stupid crap like that but let's just remember for a minute that Regan was a man, not a saint, not a messiah. He did no miracles. His lasting contribution to our society was a flawed economic theory meant to stave off a depression for a couple decades. Well it worked. Well. It worked so well some people decided to follow it blindly as if it were a religion, forgetting that it was only meant to be a temporary fix. Supply side and trickle-down is like running your car on Nitrous, it makes it go real fast but is unsustainable in the long run. Regan knew that, but we seem to have forgotten.

The right needs a smack in the cranium. The conservatives need to realize that abortion and gun control mean very little, even to those who claim that they are central issues, on the central stage. What are the big ticket items and how do your principles differentiate? By philosophy and traditional beliefs, the right should be spanking the democrats on issues of Environment (Conservationism), Economy (Efficiency), Gov't (Small, and efficient), War (unnecessary waste of life and resources). How have they let these positions be taken by the "liberal" democrats? If you ask me, I'd say the parties are swapped in this election. In 2008, it is the democrats running as conservatives and the republicans running as liberal socialists.

And how in the hell are you going to lower my taxes after spending/losing/writing-off the lions share of $8,000 billion to the financial system in less than 60 days; worldwide...?

Who in the GOP today is facing up to these changes?

Ron Paul and his libertarian allies.

Rod, I apologize for my snark. While I would not be called a conservative by the secret group that's organizing the meeting, I think your voice, and others like it, would be a great addition to what's likely to otherwise be a rehash of 1990s tactics.

May I ask you, Brian, what you would like to see come out of a GOP rethink? What would make you more likely to consider voting for a candidate of the Right? Or, perhaps, can I phrase it this way: What is it about the Democrat* party as currently constituted that excites you? What planks do you think the GOP should co-op lest they risk permanent minority status?

[* I use this formulation not because I am a mouth-breathing dittohead, but because I like to be precise. For the same reason I do not use Liberal, as I consider myself pretty Liberal by the historical understanding of the word, but not at all sympatico with those considered Liberal in current American politics.]

Interesting that at the "Future of American Conservatism" conference I attended this past weekend in North Carolina, very little was said about the GOP at all, either by the speakers or in the Q&A sessions afterwards. I don't believe this was intentional -- it's simply that many of us traditional conservatives just don't care about the fate of the party.

What Mark Schaeber says above is correct: the problems are not political, they are cultural. As Sam Francis wrote in his 1991 essay 'Beautiful Losers: The Failure of American Conservatism,' what we need to do is to focus on the issues of concern to middle America, and stop trying to win over the elites and their allies in the underclass. This will have to be a grassroots cultural effort, not a top-down political one. Here is Francis' closing paragraph:

"A new, radical Middle American Right need not abandon political efforts, but, consistent with its recognition that it is laying siege to a hostile establishment, it ought to realize that political action in a cultural power vacuum will be largely futile. The main focus of a Middle American Right should be the reclamation of cultural power, the patient elaboration of an alternative culture within but against the regime - within the belly of the beast but indigestible by it. Instead of the uselessness of a Diogenes' search for an honest presidential candidate or a Fabian quest for a career in the bureaucracy, a Middle American Right should begin working in and with schools, churches, clubs, women's groups, youth organizations, civic and professional organizations, local government, the military and police forces, and even in the much-dreaded labor unions to create a radicalized Middle American consciousness that can perceive the ways in which exploitation of the middle classes is institutionalized and understand how it can be resisted. Only when this kind of infrastructure of cultural hegemony is developed can a Middle American Right seek meaningful political power without coalitions with the Left and bargaining with the regime."

Strong medicine of the sort we're not likely to want to hear. Still, the beast Francis mentions is considerably larger and more ferocious than it was in 1991 when he wrote this piece, and no matter who wins on Tuesday it will only get moreso in the upcoming months and years. Hence the need for an even more consciously strenuous effort to fight Leviathan from within.

Well Ron Paul had young people flocking to his campaign. Only problem is, the NeoCons that control the GOP wanted to destroy him. Better yet, Paul isn't an enviro extremist which shoots down that theory. Sarah Palin is the most libertarian Governor in the country. She said nice things about Ron Paul and Buchanan.

karlub,
Mostly, Republicans need to stop selling out to war profiteers and and finance thugs who think there is no need for rules or oversight. Plus, we need to take global warming seriously, not by "drill-baby-drill", but by mileage standards and alternative energy.

We also have $hit health care in this country, which is actually turning multi-nationals away from U.S. operations that could employ are citizens. If they open up shop in Canada, they don't have to worry about insuring employees. If we have a single-payer health-care, we streamline an incredibly huge tentacled private bureaucracy. Think ECONOMIES OF SCALE. I've received national health care (several visits with no appointments or referrals required) in South Korea and it was light years ahead of our for-profit-system. The fact that there's commercials for folks in our very own country who have gone bankrupt over health issues is absolutely absurd, especially for a "Christian" nation.

With as much responsibility as public educators have, they should be payed triple what they're making now. Most folks have no idea that there are teacher shortages around the country. Money talks and BS walks.

For the following, keep in mind that I'm a religious person and church attendee. I think that the Republicans need to drop the moral platitudes - especially when Senators are taking bribes; soliciting sex in airport bathrooms; or sending troops to die so Halliburton can improve their quarterly earnings.

Ben Franklin put it well:
"The most dangerous hypocrite in a commonwealth is one who leaves the gospel for the sake of the law. A man compounded of law and gospel is able to cheat a whole country with his religion and then destroy them under the color of law."

Republicans are actually doing more to give Christianity a bad name than any Hollywood hotshot could. Bush said that Jesus was his favorite political philosopher in the 2000 primaries and then five years later couldn't cut his vacation by a day to oversee Katrina operations.

Perhaps the words of a certain S. Stirling might point a proper direction for the revival of a Traditional/Conservative "movement". (I have taken the liberty of altering a word or two. You'll know when I have done so.)

"We do take this risk. Because we are not content to live as cattle, between our work and our stalls and our fodder...Why does this organization exist ? For memory's sake. To preserve that discontent, not simply as sullen beast-hatred, but as knowledge. That there was once something different, that there may be again. That we are a nation..perhaps no longer the nation of [America], but still a people.

"Always before they have smashed the societies they have conquered, killed their elites and reduced the survivors to isolated human atoms, to be refashioned as they wish. Here as well, to a certain extent, but not completely. And that is the central purpose of this organization. To exist, simply to exist. So long as we do, their victory is not complete."

"What we have done--what we are trying to do--is build a brotherhood that they can wound but cannot kill. Strong and hard they are; if we try to match their strength, we will be smashed. Instead, we must be as soft as water, and as patient. Enduring, that wears the rock away slowly, but, oh, so surely...."

"[W]e must prepare for the worst, that they destroy you in the end as well. Then our quiet war must last, who knows, perhaps a thousand years, to ensure that their [Great] Society joins so many lesser tyrannies in the grave."

THAT is what we, as Conservators of that which is Human, must do; the better to preserve what is real, and American, and Human against that day when the "Great Society" goes to meet its master and inspiration, Satan.

Your servant,

Lord Karth, Human-Conservator

P.S. The quote is from S. Stirling's "Under the Yoke", pp. 357-359.

Then why should the GOP have to upend itself and try to change everything?

McCain is going to lose by about 5%. But that's not the trouble per se. The deeper trouble is more the continued trend since at least 1990 (I think 1969) of 1% increase in liberal lean/liberal Democratic shift within the electorate per year due to young liberal voters replacing their more conservative elders. That process now manifests as an Obama 52% win and ~4% national vote gain for Democrats every 4 years. Presumably that will simply continue until it reaches at least 60%-65% of the electorate. (Maybe more.) It will realign the society/country to Modernity.

On another level, it's the bankrupcy in the electorate of the "ideas"/policies or ideology that Nixon and his political alliance pioneered. Bush Jr./Cheney probably represent the fullest implementation of those policies, which the electorate permitted at a time when the country was not put into existential jeopardy by them. These policies work and find agreement in backwards (i.e. pre-Modern) parts of the country and the world. But they are rejected and evidently fail against post-Colonial Age, post-Cold War, late Culture War realities- against Modernity.

HTH :-)

Thanks, Zach - I hear what you are saying about wanting penalties on abortion, although I think there are probably more who would keep it legal, while focusing on prevention, and support for pregnant women.

Overall, Rod, they are right, and you're full of baloney.

Zach: "Although as a pro-lifer, I do think some penalty should be attached to abortion."

What penalties would you consider appropriate?

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.

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.

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.