Picture of Dorian Red America

Exodus 16:35 (roughly paraphrased)

And the conservatives ate manna for forty years, until they came to their senses.

Only thought-did they get the sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads, or just ill-tempered sea bass?

What was that definition of insanity...repeating the same things and expecting a different result?

Why expect people who have been in the same rut for 40+ years to jump that rut?

There is a valid question here. Should conservatives concede that the world is really different now and form new policies while maintaining a conservative approach. The other approach would entail trying to convert more people to the older conservative way of thinking. Fully embrace Reaganism. Deregulate, cut taxes, increase military spending and do not worry about the debt.

Steve

"It's kind of like Andrew Ridgeley exulting in his future career prospects now that he's shaken loose of that loser George Michael."

Oh snap!

I kind of think that some of this will depend on how Obama actually governs. If he just does the partisan thing more nicely than other politicians, I suppose the same old same old will continue to reign and these guys will have a point - we have to win. However, if Obama really does govern differently it could open the door for looking at our political process differently. I think we need to stop looking at the process of winning, losing and compromising. Instead, we need to look at our nation the way we approach marriage. If we do the win-lose-compromise thing in marriage, the marriage will not last. But if our primary purpose is serving the good of the marriage/nation, we approach things differently. We work from points of agreement to find solutions instead of working from our favored solutions and trying to force agreement. We narrow down our "will not compromise" down to a very, very short list and become more tolerant of doing things in ways we don't particularly like if it means the marriage will come out better. We must take the concerns of the other side seriously and actually address them rather than ignoring, attacking or ridiculing them. If we could move to this model of self-governance, this country really would be a better place. If Obama can lead us towards this way of doing things, great. If not, then expect more conferences like this to gain more and more traction. But I think the public is sick enough of the divisiveness that we have a real opening to do things differently and marginalize these old players. Time will tell, I suppose.

Considering our current economic crisis, one of the causes of which was that idolized conservative practice called deregulation, I am not so sure our current "conservative" movement can truly call itself that. Rod has alluded to this many times in his blog, and I agree that if we are truly thinking of a "conservative" movement we may need to look further back than the Reagan years. It seems to me the only difference in our current liberal and conservative movements is which excesses they worship as their gods. For liberals it is the absolute right of the individual; for conservatives it is the absolute right of the free market and capitalism. To me neither of these can foster or serve a true sense of conservatism, because someone who is truly conservative does not worship excess but rather caution and restraint. Until our modern conservative powers that be stop trying to worship both the God of morality and the god of money at the same time, their ability to reach those Americans whose support they are courting will elude them.

And, as there is about as much chance of a conversion and reformation of the American culture as there is of the earth standing still in the heavens, things are going to stay pretty much the same in Washington for a long time.

The portrait is really starting to show signs of age. In fact it is probably in almost as bad a shape as the one I have hidden in the storage room.

According to this article, you may have grossly insulted Andrew Ridgeley by comparing the crowd at this conference to him. Looks like Ridgeley's living a good life, and has better long-term prospects for a bright future than these guys.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-441592/Loser-laugh.html

Sorry -- "discarding the with some years" should be "discarding those with some years."

Rod said: [...And they conclude that the problem with Republicans this year is that they weren't sufficiently Reaganist? And now they're slap-happy to be free of those pathetic RINOs that were holding the movement back?...]

This is a problem that conservatives have with the whole Reagan-hagiography thing. Victor Davis Hanson took a stab at it back in January.

[..In short, Ronald Reagan has been beatified into some sort of saint, as if he were above the petty lapses and contradictions of today's candidates. The result is that conservatives are losing sight of Reagan the man while placing unrealistic requirements of perfection on his would-be successors.

They have forgotten that Reagan - facing spiraling deficits, sinking poll ratings and a hostile Congress - reluctantly signed legislation raising payroll, income and gasoline taxes, some of them among the largest in our history. He promised to limit government and eliminate the Departments of Education and Energy. Instead, when faced with congressional and popular opposition, he relented and even grew government by adding a secretary of veteran affairs to the Cabinet.

Two of his Supreme Court appointments, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy, were far more liberal than George W. Bush's selections, the diehard constructionists, John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

Reagan's 1986 comprehensive immigration bill turned out to be the most liberal amnesty for illegal aliens in our nation's history, and set the stage for the present problem of 12 million aliens here unlawfully..]

I came of age during Reagan's presidency as the son of a Reagan-Democrat in NYC, and I loved "The Gipper". As a matter of fact, I became a Republican, in large part, because of him.

IMHO - If conservatives don't take off their rose-colored glasses while they continue to swoon down memory lane, they'll probably be left wandering around in the wilderness for a long time and never quite understand why.

I've got to do something about this not-putting-the-handle-in-the-first-line business. (See above.) That was, in fact, my post just above.

Anyone have any Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee they want to get rid of ?

Your servant,

Lord Karth

I think Obama won in large part because so many people are so tired of this kind of zero-sum game politics. Obama says it's time to move past the red state-blue state thing. I agree (and I voted for McCain, by the way). Can't conservatives find a new voice that's not obsessed with using government as a tool to change folks to our way of thinking (and morals and religious views -- admit, you would love for that to happen) but instead about making government work effectively? In his victory speech, Obama acknowledged government can't solve all our problems. He's right, of course. Why can't we apply conservative principles of hard work and efficiency to our government? Reagan was much more about that than about social issues, as I recall. I think Lord Karth is heading the right direction on this one, even though I may not agree with all the points in his comment. *Those* are the issues we need to be debating.

Michael Bates has it right: this "how do conservatives need to change to be successful?" meme is stupid.

Conservatives have never been in power. They weren't in power with Reagan (I agree with those who say we look back with too much rose tint) and the sure as hell haven't been in power since.

Apparently it has not occurred to Rod and the others here that W was never a conservative -- something which I've been screaming since 1999, to no apparent avail. Calling W a conservative does not make him one -- no matter how often it is repeated.

It remains to be seen whether or not the newly shorn Republican party might actually manage to become conservative, but to this point I've never seen any evidence of it.

Let us not conflate conservatism (the desire to conserve tradition in all necessary things: the good, the true, and the beautiful is a nice starting place) with the Republican Party. They are NOT the same things.

Perhaps the right thing to start with would be the proper naming of things in the first place. If we're pointing to the GOP's demise and talking about how to resurrect conservatism, we're talking apples and oranges.

Just look at 1964. Goldwater was blown out and every organ of the press did the same thing: pronounced conservatism dead. You had Nelson Rockefeller and John Lindsay trying to be like JFK for the GOP in 68. This is the template that I imagine these folks are working off. The big difference is that McCain was not a thinker like Goldwater and conservatism has not been on the outs for decades. But this template still might work.
I don't see any reason why a leader like Jindal or even Romney couldn't win on an old-school, small-government, defend the border, type message. To me though, the party should get back to Taft and stop messing around overseas all the time. I'd like to see a GOP candidate call for shutting down bases in Korea, Japan, Germany, etc. and bringing the troops home. You'll see that Obama will be every bit as much of an internationalist as Bush and Clinton were. Bush called for a humble foreign policy but 9/11 caused him to chuck that line of thinking. Obama will intervene is whatever corner of the globe will call for it - and the left won't protest it at all. Principles mean nothing, it's all about power. The GOP needs to get back to being consistent on principles.

Joel said: "To me though, the party should get back to Taft and stop messing around overseas all the time. I'd like to see a GOP candidate call for shutting down bases in Korea, Japan, Germany, etc. and bringing the troops home."

Me too, but unfortunately, American hegemony over the entire world is the only thing the GOP actually believes sacrosanct. We did already have a GOP candidate like that: Ron Paul. And despite the fact that he was the only Republican in the country that anyone under-30 and non-Evangelical actually liked, he was purged, dooming the party with the youth vote.

Karth said, "We also need to get away from the college-for-everyone paradigm. Slice central-government funding for colleges and add it for tech-ed and vocational-ed programs. If we absolutely must have central-government student aid, let it at least go towards encouraging people to take up the skilled trades that the Republic needs. Better to have well-trained plumbers, welders or pipefitters than "sociology" or Retailing majors."

Of course the question has to be asked of Karth, "are your kids in there too? Do you see your grandkids going to tech school with the never-do-well's brats?"

Karth defines the problem with consverative ideas right here, right now.

I'm considered a craftsman in a couple of different mediums. I do construction. I'm one of the luckiest persons alive because if I don't have the skill I know the skill when I see it when it comes to the trades. While at the same time I can see the changes in the trades happening and I can appreciate what's gained and lost by those changes.

Karth wants to prepare a large portion of the population for yesterday's jobs in tomorrow's world. Is that smart or what?

We're in a transition point right now in construction. All of the jobs out there are either automated or in the last stages of being automated. The number of know nothing jobs are declining every day.

Weldors like machinests are becoming more like IT jobs than work for men like they were. That's because those jobs are more about installing information into a computer and then monitoring the computer.

Heavy equipment operators are becoming more like that too. In the cab of that crawler or grader is a computer. At each end of the blade of the machine is a GPS unit. The computer reads the inputs from the GPS and calculates the amount of cut based upon the program installed. That program is the blueprint and there are no paper copies. The operator now steers and monitors. Tomorrow he might not be required to do that.

Truck drivers now have GPS too. They also have computer operated transmissions that calculate the optimum gear for maximum power and economy. Their brakes are all anti-lock which is about computer control of the most critical thing a truck driver does. That job also doesn't have a future. Every day the newest version of trucks do more and the driver is responsible for less.

Heck, look at the men and women you see out there digging powerline post holes. If they're in the city a computer program using GPS has decided where the hole has to be dug. Other computers have located the buried utilities. And what they're digging the hole with is a pressure washer and a vacuum cleaner.

You heard me right. One person is using a high pressure washer wand that cuts into the dirt. The other person is sucking up the water and loose dirt with a vacuum. They will dig the hole faster and cleaner with no threat to the buried utilities.

That job like that of the weldor, the machinest, the heavy equipment operator, the truck driver, and heck, even the trash man are all one step away from being done one hundred percent by automated equipment.

And Karth wants to eliminate the concept of college for the masses and encourage educating the underclass for these jobs.

Jim, I learned to climb poles at seventeen in the Army. I advanced to cable splicing in Viet Nam. We were twisting and soldering if you know what that is. That was 1966. I know and have taught telephony. Those jobs will be completely off the face of the planet within ten years.

As for degrees, earlier this year I sat in a conference room with a couple of phd's and two b-whatevers. The conversation and meeting was about something I had created. I was the wise guy that injected into the conversation I was only one in the room without a high school diploma. http://www.hobartwelders.com/weldtalk/showthread.php?t=29447

Karth was wrong. And I guess that makes you wrong too. Those jobs won't be here in the very near future.

Allow me to give you an example. When I came home from Nam I went to work at GTE. In Nam I was a shoe (get it worker) because I could splice by myself, slipping my own tubes, twenty five to thirty pair an hour. At that time, early 69, shoes were getting a couple of hundred pair an hour in spurts. When I left the trade in the late eighties I was capable of doing a twenty one hundred pair splice by myself as a contract splicer, it had to test a hundred percent, in a twelve hour day, open to close.

What's interesting about that is those twenty one hundred pair splices had to be done every six to eight hundred feet. In the early eighties I was introduced to one of the earliest applications of fiber optic toll cable in Las Vegas Nevada while overseeing the construction of a three thousand pair cable job. Today fiber optic cables are spliced every mile or so. It takes a couple of hours. It's almost a hundred percent automated. And they can carry the traffic of thousands of those same twenty one hundred pair cables.

If you drive out HWY 380 out of the metroplex you will see repeater installations built within the last seven or so years in a state of disrepair every fifty miles or so. The reason is technology has extended the spacing between repeaters for fiber optic cables. It's a hundred or so miles now.

You look at automotive techs. It's all about reading codes and exchanging parts. A/C techs, they're evolving into reading codes and exchanging parts. It's true of everyone of the trades anymore. That code reading is all about having a good basic education in computers.

The problem with computers is everyday someone is upgrading computers to replace techs.

I don't know what your son with a tech degree does. But I'll bet the hat against a hair that it isn't what it was two years ago and he knows it won't be the same in three years. There will be less jobs because technology will replace them.

Rod, this is a very useful post. No one is criticizing the individual members of the Bozell gathering ... but rather suggesting that discussions of the conservative future include newer, fresher voices as well. We get that, Rod. Great point.

Rather than offer my own thoughts, allow me to cut/paste below comments by four others that made sense to me.

Steve: "Shouldn't conservatives concede that the world is really different now [compared with 1980] and form new policies while maintaining a conservative approach?. The other [and wronger] approach would entail trying to convert more people to the older conservative way of thinking."

Ann: "It seems to me the only difference in our current liberal and conservative movements is which excesses they worship as their gods. For liberals it is the absolute right of the individual; for conservatives it is the absolute right of the free market and capitalism. To me neither of these can foster or serve a true sense of conservatism, because someone who is truly conservative does not worship excess but rather caution and restraint."

Dan Myers: "Reagan and the 1994 Republicans were successful because they found important issues their opponents couldn't address, then came up with popular solutions that fit within their conservative framework. This is one of the challenges facing conservatives today."

Erin Manning: "Far from conservatives having no ideas, I think the problem has been that in the sound-bite world which leaves little room for the articulation of underlying principles, conservatism suffers precisely because its best arguments can't be truncated so much without losing some of their coherence."

RJohnson: "More importantly, are younger conservative thinkers coming along to replace those who have left us?"

The answer, in short, is "yes." Rod Dreher is one example of a younger conservative thinker. So is Ross Douthat and many of the other names recommended on the other thread ("Who should replace Bill Kristol at the Times?"). Many write for NROnline and TownHall.com, to name just two of many popular sites.

RJohnson, the railing against "elites" in the McCain-Palin campaign (which you complained about) was against elites in the news media and the cultural establishment ("Hollywood," etc.). It was NOT anti-intellectualim but rather a rebuke of the intellectual conformity of the cultural, media and academic establishments.

Reagan succeeded because he offered good solutions to the problems at the time. Problems included:
1. US seeming to be losing ground against the USSR and generally weak and pathetic, symbolized by the Iranian hostage situation, and Carter's ineffectiveness.
2. Ultra-high inflation and interest rates, recent long gas lines caused by price controls.

Today's problems are totally different and it seems pointless to "go back to Reagan". If you want a winning program, address the issues that affect everyone including
1. How illegal (and even excessive legal) immigration by poor Mexicans are overwhelming school systems and hospitals.
2. How college is exorbitantly expensive, a true racket. Most people need college, contrary to the excellent Mr Karth.
3. The economic damage done by the finance industry.

What is needed is fresh thinking, not "back to Reagan".

Reaganite: "RJohnson, the railing against "elites" in the McCain-Palin campaign (which you complained about) was against elites in the news media and the cultural establishment ("Hollywood," etc.). It was NOT anti-intellectualim but rather a rebuke of the intellectual conformity of the cultural, media and academic establishments."

It would seem that, at least according to one young conservative you cite, there indeed was (is?) a growing anti-intellectual sentiment at least among movement conservatives.

rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/10/you_should_read_patrick_ruffin.php

"Here's the thing: The Republican Party will be a populist party going forward, or it won't be a party at all. But the more populist it becomes - the more figures like Palin and Mike Huckabee and Tim Pawlenty replace the blue-blazer Republicans of yore - the more it needs an elite capable of preventing it from spinning away into anti-intellectualism, hidebound dogmatism, and pure folly. Yes, sometimes these elites are snobbish and insidery, overly impressed with credentials, overly concerned about what their liberal pals think, overly willing to treat their party's base as an embarrassment. Sometimes the base is right and the elites are wrong. Sometimes you need a better class of elite entirely. But you still need them, and you need candidates who listen to them.

So you might think that David Brooks is too taken with Barack Obama's facility for Reinhold Niebuhr-related jaw-jaw, and too quick to attack conservatives who don't share his views on immigration, say, or the bailout. But if you want Sarah Palin as your standard-bearer, you need a Brooks, or someone like him, at the table when her speeches are being written and her policy positions are being hashed out. You need elites, and you especially need elites who work and live outside the conservative cocoon, and who have a sense of how to talk to people who aren't already persuaded that a vote for Obama is a vote for socialism and surrender. The more populist your party, in fact, the smarter it needs to get - at wooing swing voters, and talking intelligently about policy questions, and yes, even at charming the liberal media - because you know the elites on the other side won't cut it any slack. And a populist party that makes a lot of its elites feel unwelcome - that accuses them of betraying the team when they offer criticisms, and says "good riddance" when they head for the exits - is a party without much of a future at all."

And I would daresay, Reaganite, that the for conservatism to successfully transition into the 21st century there is going to have to be a change in the approach it takes towards the media. You express a clear disgust with the "elites in the news media and the cultural establishment." Yet who is the individual conservatives have turned to time and time again in an effort to fight back against this? Rupert Murdoch, himself an elite in the cultural establishment. Surely when you air your complaints about the Hollywood/entertainment elite you remember that it is Rupert Murdoch who has given us the longest running animated series in history, "The Simpsons," along with other stunning exemplars of our culture such as "Temptation Island," the "Page 3 Girl," "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire," (which gave us the cultural icon, Darva Conger) and other pieces of fine entertainment?

It would seem to me that the attitude towards elites being expressed by so many conservatives such as yourself would seem much more credible if it included a small portion of self-criticism, and a recognition that many of the individuals embraced by conservatives and charged with carrying the conservative message to the public are every bit as elite, plastic, and corrosive to our culture as their counterparts on the left.

Rod blogged about this recently: blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2008/10/help-conservatism-shun-the-con.html. Perhaps as conservatives look outside their enclave to find reasons for their lack of success this election cycle you should also look at those among you who have become the public faces of conservatism to the average American. Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Michael Savage, Michael Reagan, Michael Medved, Sean Hannity...these are the voices and faces that have become identified as the public face of conservatives by most Americans. These are the people setting the agenda for the conservatives in the public square. These are the people touring, filling auditoriums, writing popular books, getting interviewed, and educating "Joe Six-Pack" about what conservatives stand for.

These are your media elite. These are your intellectuals. These are the representatives of the conservative (and, by extension, the Republican) brand.

Are these the best spokespeople for conservatism?

"If Bush isn't a conservative, then why did so many people who call themselves conservative (like, um, me) vote for him twice?"

Rod, I can't speak for you, but the answer to your question for me (like, um, me) comes in two words: Gore Kerry.

That should have been, "...question for many (like, um, me)..." etc.

R Johnson, most of your post was excellent. You went off track, however, when you included "The Simpsons" among your other examples of cultural decay. The path of Homer is a path with heart. To those taking Lord Karth to task for his assertion that alternatives to college should be expanded, everybody is not suited for college. Intelligence is distributed along a bell curve. Nearly half of the people along that curve simply cannot do the work required, unless, of course, we dumb down the work. Others, some of whom are extremely bright, prefer working with their hands or working outdoors to sitting in front of computer screens manipulating symbols. Whiz-bang widgetry notwithstanding, we cannot eliminate wrench-twirling from the economy, and it seems only sensible to ensure that those who choose to twirl those wrenches get the necessary training to do it well, including the appropriate computer skill, which may surely be taught in less than four or five university level years.

Late to the game here, but this is fascinating. At the "Future of American Conservatism" conference I attended weekend before last, the feel was entirely different from what this get-together seems to have had. The one I attended at Belmont-Abbey College in North Carolina was mostly ISI/Modern Age types (Burke, Kirk, Weaver folks) with some Ron Paul people and some libertarians as well. And guess what? Absolutely NO MENTION of the future of the Republican Party. It's like concern about the GOP simply didn't exist there, bless the Good Lord.

I'm in the process of writing up a mini-report on this conference for Rod -- got sidetracked by the election -- but it would certainly be interesting to compare notes on these two conferences.

Nightstalker:

Kudos for the accurate description of Reagan's approach. He believed in localism as opposed to centralism. Didn't get everything he fought for but was always willing to settle for half-a-loaf if he thought it gained conservatism time to regroup.

But while I agree with your statement in general ("Follow Reagan's lead -- he showed us the way to success"), I also agree with ...

... "Michael" and "Steve" who suggest that the problems of 2008 are different than the ones of 1980. Reagan and his associates applied conservative principles to the problems of 1980 and came up with a program that worked for the 1980s.

Our challenge is to apply conservative principles to the problems of the 21st century ... and construct a program that will win the allegiance of the very pragmatic people that have always comprised the American electorate if not the 20% in the middle that decide outcomes. The result will be something that may look different than many of the policies which Reagan advanced 25 years ago. But it will be fueled by the same philosophical approach he embraced.

"...social conservatives, free market conservatives, and national security conservatives will all be able to work together."

Can we be honest with each other here? The problem facing conservatism is not that it succeeded too little, but that it succeeded too much.

Social conservatives know that every great civilization's end accompanied moral decay. They believe that government should intervene to prevent or reverse moral decay. It is a position that requires more governance, not less, and more government spending on things from prisons to enforcement, not less.

National Security conservatives know that we live in a dangerous world, and that great nations have fallen due to weak defenses. They also know that the best defense is a strong offense, a position that requires more government, more spending on weapons systems and manpower, not less.

Free Market conservatives know that government is a threat to our liberty, that great nations have collapsed when government got bloated and citizens were taxed beyond their ability to survive. They also know that government is by nature slow and inefficient. They wish a government that is small, that spends as close to nothing as possible and therefore taxes as close to nothing as possible.

There is truth in each of these positions, but not one of them is the whole truth. Grover Norquist saw to it that each of these got something, even when it ran afoul of something else. The result is that Social conservatives got two SCOTUS Justices, National Security conservatives got support for wars and missile defense shields, and we cut taxes during wartime for the first time in American history. We now finance our national defense with money borrowed from China, and rely upon activist judges to restrain moral decay.

What's needed today is not a network of flavors of conservatism each pursuing its own interests, but a broader-minded conservatism that takes in the whole picture and adjusts its emphasis to meet the world as we find it. We should have the smallest government possible, but not a shred of government less than is necessary, and we should pay for the government we need rather than kicking those costs to our children. That view, however, is RINO moderate anathema, you won't hear it bandied about at the Dorian Grey fests to come.

Hey Nightstalker, could you make it shorter?

Wow. All these comments, and not one person has even come close to addressing the underlying problem. I don't know if it's ignorance, or more likely a fear of facing the stark truth, which is this. Conservatism is dead, and it ain't ever coming back. And it's not because of message, or policies, or image, or focus, or anything else that can be fixed by repackaging conservatism.

The problem is demographics. Even if all immigration, legal and illegal were stopped tomorrow, the demographic changes that have already taken place in this country doom conservatism for good. Blacks votes about 9-1 for Democrats. Hispanics vote 2-1 or higher for Ds. And about half the babies being born in this country are black or brown. Look at California. It used to be solidly conservative, voting for the GOP candidate in every election from 1950-1990. Tuesday McCain got a little over one third of the vote in California. What's the difference? CA used to be overwhelmingly white, like the rest of America used to be. Now it's minority white. In a few short years, Texas, which is now the GOP big gun, will flip to the Dem side as Hispanics, who are now 60% of the births in Texas, grow up and begin voting. Florida will follow a few years after that. Now add up the electoral votes in those states, and MA, NY, IL, NV, AZ, NM, and explain how the GOP is going to have a prayer of winning the White House.

Everyone talks about how we came back from the smashing defeat of 1964 in 1980. Well, in 1964 America was about 90% white. In 1980, it was a bit lower, but the electorate was still about 90% white. But it has been steadily declining ever since, thanks to legal and illegal immigration. Right now, whites constitute just over 70% of the electorate, but the percentage is dropping at a faster rate than ever. So any hopes of a conservative comeback after 8 -16 years in the wilderness is simply kidding ourselves.

Immigration doomed conservatism.

Some people are aware of these demographics, but they like to whistle past the graveyard. They'll say we just have to show minorities how conservative policies are in their best interest. In other words, we just haven't gotten the message out, but when we do, everything will be fine. But that's not going to happen. Never mind that it presumes that non-whites are too stupid to understand what their best interests are, and just keep getting tricked by the Democrats, which is incredibly racist. It's a stupid strategy to begin with. Poll after poll for decade after decade has shown that the overwhelming difference between white voters and non-white voters is that the majority of whites want a small, limited government that leaves them alone, while non-whites want a big, activist government that helps them. They understand perfectly well the message of conservatism, and they reject it.

Others will point to the Prop 8 results (blacks supported it 7-3) and say see, blacks are on our side when it comes to moral values, and they'll come around. Yeah, well, I guess they didn't notice that blacks also voted 95% for Obama, and have been voting 9-1 for the party of bigger government since polling began. And if you really think conservatism has much of a future by depending on a demographic that comes out and supports an initiative for traditional marriage, while voting for the man and the party who are practically guaranteed to use the courts to overthrow traditional marriage, you are kidding yourself.

It's over.

Demographics are destiny.

Night Train: "Conservatism is dead, and it ain't ever coming back. And it's not because of message, or policies, or image ... The problem is demographics. The demographic changes that have already taken place in this country doom conservatism for good. Blacks votes about 9-1 for Democrats. Hispanics vote 2-1 or higher for Ds."

You could not be more wrong! Conservatism is NOT "identity politics." It advances on the inner battlefield where the mind and the soul exist, not on the outer edge of the epidermis that signals race and ethnicity.

Some of the demographics may -- and I emphasize "MAY" -- spell difficulty and even disaster for the Republican brand in the SHORT TERM. But in the long run it is incumbent for folks who believe in the primacy of God and not of man -- and of the dignity of the individual over the imperatives of the collective -- to work with "all comers" and win them over to these truths.

My immigrant grandparents were lifelong Democrats. Some conservatives back in the 20s and 30s saw these immigrants as "threats to the Republic." The grandchildren of those immigrants now embrace conservative ideas and vote Republican.

In California, the turnout among African-Americans was huge thanks to the Obama candidacy. It was also the 4-1 support for Prop 8 among African-Americans that passed that measure to defend traditional marriage. African-Americans have their reasons to support the Democratic Party ... but they are not "liberal" on all issues.

Today's liberal is tomorrow's conservative. The Catholic JFK earned for the Democrats in 1960 the highest support for that party in history from Catholics -- and for understandable reasons. But eventually Catholics realized that big government was not the solution for all problems and, today, they split their support among Republicans and Democrats.

Obama earned for the Democrats in 2008 the highest support in history for that party from African-Americans -- and for understandable reasons. But once Barack Obama passes from the scene -- and African Americans realize that the election of a black to the Presidency and support for big-government programs will not fix their problems -- they will take another look at Republicans and conservatives. I predict that within 30 years the GOP share of the African American vote will be in the 30s and the share for Hispanics will be in the 50s.

"Nonsense.

Immigrants and their children are the best candidates for a conservative message and have it be effective. "

**********************

Uh-huh. Keep telling yourself that. And you'll be telling yourself that 30 years from now, when they're still great "candidates" for the conservative message. It's just a matter of fine tuning the message and creating a way of selling it that appeals to them. Never mind that Hispanics have been voting for the party of bigger government by at least a 2-1 margin for decades. Just ignore reality, and live in your fantasy land of fantasy conservatism. I'll stick with reality. And the reality is that a group that has always overwhelmingly supported the party of big government isn't likely to change. But just keep telling yourself that. Whatever gets you through the night.

"Nighttrain,
I am inclined to agree with you. So what would you counsel, other than throwing our hands up in defeat? Surely we shouldn't just let things get worse and worse as liberalism takes hold?"

************************

I wouldn't counsel anything. Feel free to beat your head against the wall if you're so inclined. I intend to just sit back and enjoy the show. The next few decades should be very interesting, to say the least.

Another interesting read on the future of the right in America from Joe Bageant. Cant say i agree with everything he writes in his latest post but it does make one think.

www.joebageant.com

"Night Train,

You are so absolutely right, there's no future in America for people with your views.

**************************

Chris,
I think what you intend to say with your first remark is that you strongly disagree with my views, and find them disgusting and immoral. Fine. I understand many people hate the truth, and condemn those who speak it as disgusting and immoral. But if you meant that few people share the view that demographic changes doom conservatism, well, you're probably right. But you're dead wrong about the future. More and more people will realize the truth as the years progress.

************************

"For the rest of us, however, so long as the human condition persists conservatism will remain true. The Seven Deadly Sins will remain deadly, the Virtues will remain good, and remembering the difference between the two is the only thing that will safeguard economic and social progress."

***********************

Conservatism will always be true, no matter if no one believes in it. But I disagree that remembering/knowing the difference between Sin and Virtue will guarantee/safeguard economic and social progress. How's that working out for you in California? We barely squeaked out (52-48) a law against two men getting married. And people disagreeing with me are calling that proof that I'm wrong, even as they ignore that blacks voted 95-5 for Obama and the Ds, who will most assuredly use the courts to nullify that law against sodomitical marriages. 8 years ago the vote was 61-39, by the way. And among first time voters of all races in 2008, Prop 8 failed by about 2-1.

So just keep repeating these beautiful fairy tales to yourself over and over, folks. I'm sure if you do it enough times, eventually you'll all live happily every after in your conservative fairy tale.

I love it when people I disagree with get all worked up here, because then they spend many precious moments of their one and only life frothing and typing, frothing and typing. This gives the rest of us a chance to take further steps toward world domination while they're glued to the keyboard. Do keep at it, my friends. ; )

Incredible...

Nightstalker says this:

"Immigrants and their children are the best candidates for a conservative message and have it be effective.

There is nothing racial AT ALL about conservatism and there is nothing anti-immigrant, or any of that crapola."

Then he says this:

"But prudence, morality, and a genuine concern for our fellow man requires us to stop you.

- T Jefferson, A Lincoln, J Kennedy, G Washington, R Reagan, me."

First off, anyone who thinks Linconln and JFK are role models or great presidents doesn't understand the first thing about conservatism.

Second, anyone who says there's nothing racial AT ALL about conservatism, has no business quoting explicit, hard core racists like Jefferson, Washington and Lincoln. The first two bought and sold black people. They also limited immigration to white people. Jefferson wrote at length about how inferior blacks are to whites. Lincoln laughed at the idea of racial equality, and said he didn't care much either way about freeing the slaves - if he could've achieved his primary goal of preserving the Union without freeing them, he would've gladly done so, and if he thought freeing them would make it impossible to keep the Union together, he never would've freed them. He also said that blacks and whites could never live together on an equal footing in the same country, and that he opposed interracial marriage, blacks serving on juries, holding office, etc. He took strong measures to move as many blacks out of the country as he could.

These are all well known facts of history, or certainly should be. Anyone can verify them for themselves quite easily.

Clearly, these men believed that a conservative republic was impossible in a multiracial nation. Lincoln and Jefferson both said so explicitly, while GW the slaveowner prohibited non-white immigration along with Jefferson.

But Nightstalker says that race has nothing to do with anything when it comes to having a conservative country, and then turns around and says he's standing with these men.

This kind of blatant schizophrenia is a secondary factor in why conservatism is doomed.

Nightstalker,

You misunderstand with great vehemence.

My point was simply that the conservatism of the past 28 years treated conservatives as discreet interest groups and addressed their concerns narrowly. But they did address those narrow issues, hence continual tax cuts even during wartime (a first in American history) the commitment of billions of dollars to a missile defense system whose concept is flawed and implementation is marked by serial failure, and the appointment of two Justices who can't find Habeas Corpus in the Constitution. I recommend conservatives take a wide view of things, not a "Social" or "Free Market" or "National Security" view of things. Despite the volume with which you are disagreeable, you find yourself agreeing with my main point.

This caught my eye:

But it is a recognition that when unforced by government, people and institutions behave in certain ways, and when you attempt to change that, the results never work out as planned. It's kind of like herding cats. The results are NEVER what you want, and the money, time and lives wasted by the results are simply not acceptable.

Unforced by government we human beings tend to be pretty horrible to each other. We lie, cheat, steal, rape, murder, and engage in all sorts of barbarism to get whatever we want. Our institutions are no better, given the opportunity they would behave no better than the mafia or a drug cartel.

Conservative laws seek to protect us from each other and ourselves, liberal laws seek to make us all better human beings. The former are necessary for a civilized society (the alternative being anarchy) the latter are a fool's errand.

Sadly, however, you neither understand, nor have you ever considered, what the actual goals of conservatives are and what the actual results would be.

To quote the Dread Pirate Roberts: As you wish.

Nightstalker, I never said a word about you being a racist, nor even hinted at such a thing.

I think most of the readers had no trouble understanding my plain meaning, which is that several of your political heroes not only disagreed with your view that race has nothing to do with a conservative form of government, but, on the contrary, believed that it had everything to do with maintaining a conservative form of government.

I'm not too bothered by you having trouble understanding my plain meaning, as you seem to have trouble understanding several posts by others which were equally as clear as mine.

Actually, it appears I disagree with pretty much everything you say, mostly because it appears nothing you say makes even the faintest bit of sense to me.

As you wish.

Sig- He does not argue in good faith. I would not bother.

Steve

"I see you believe that we can't be a melting pot of races and be anything but a managed group of competing racial and ethnic special interests."

********************

It's not just me. Thomas Jefferson said the same thing. Abraham Lincoln said the same thing. Washington believed the same thing. In fact, just about every one of the Founding Fathers believed the very same thing, as did just about every American up until about 1950 or so.

"I reject that utterly and completely and condemn the notion as too hideously racist to comprehend."

**************************

Well, if you find the views of Jefferson, Washington, and Lincoln hideously racist and worthy of only utter condemnation, that's your problem, not mine.

Night Train:

I completely disagree.

Besides, you've been proven wrong so overwhelmingly and so completely by reality and history, that there's no reason to cling to such absurdities.

There absolutely is NO physical or genetic deficiency to any race that in any way should or even could create any kind of "lesser" societal role. In this country, at least historically (don't know about our future, if Obama's "success limitation to prevent envy" ideology becomes law), it does not require even "average" capabilities to be very successful and live fully the American dream.

"Immigrants and their children are the best candidates for a conservative message and have it be effective."

Wrong. While most Vietnamese and Cuban immigrants and their children vote Republican, most immigrants in general vote Democrat, because they're economically liberal.

It doesn't surprise me that most conservatives who listen to college dropout pundits like Rush or Hannity argue for far right candidates, while most conservatives who read National Review argue for candidates to be more inclusive and modern. The former consists more of less educated religious and social conservatives who stress abortion, gays, and guns and live in more isolated communities, while the latter consists of neoconservatives and moderate or independent minded conservatives who stress pragmatism.

Crusader... LOL!!!!

Yes, the secret to success is "be a democrat-lite".

NOT!

Learn from the Europeans?

Oh, for pity's sakes. I'm fed up to here with this "euro-envy" already. I see nothing inspiring there to emulate. Just "leaders" desperately racing after the public hollering "vote for me, I'll be trendy and nice and give you whatever you want..."

Just go be a Democrat, it's what you secretly lust for anyway.

What's the point in being a "conservative" if you have to pretend to be a liberal?

From Andrew Sullivan's blog:

08 Nov 2008 04:18 pm

The Conservative Intelligentsia And Palin
Mark Lilla has a must-read in the WSJ today. (Dislcosure: we were political theory students of Shklar and Mansfield at Harvard together years ago). It charts the collapse of the intellectual right from a pioneering attempt to re-think established nostrums about public policy to ... well the Caribbean cruise now floating around on a sea of denial and contempt:

The Palin farce is already the stuff of legend. [but] John McCain's choice was not a fluke, or a senior moment, or an act of desperation. It was the result of a long campaign by influential conservative intellectuals to find a young, populist leader to whom they might hitch their wagons in the future. And not just any intellectuals. It was the editors of National Review and the Weekly Standard, magazines that present themselves as heirs to the sophisticated conservatism of William F. Buckley and the bookish seriousness of the New York neoconservatives. After the campaign for Sarah Palin, those intellectual traditions may now be pronounced officially dead.

Irving Kristol's bitter capitulation to populism a quarter century ago was the harbinger. It's all been downhill since:

Their function within the conservative movement is no longer to educate and ennoble a populist political tendency, it is to defend that tendency against the supposedly monolithic and uniformly hostile educated classes. They mock the advice of Nobel Prize-winning economists and praise the financial acumen of plumbers and builders. They ridicule ambassadors and diplomats while promoting jingoistic journalists who have never lived abroad and speak no foreign languages. And with the rise of shock radio and television, they have found a large, popular audience that eagerly absorbs their contempt for intellectual elites. They hoped to shape that audience, but the truth is that their audience has now shaped them.

One reason I believe the reconstruction of conservatism will require a generation's work is that the rot has gone so deep among so many with so much patronage. If it weren't for the blogosphere allowing new thoughts and debate to bubble up from below, and outside the Kristol-Lowry-Steyn axis, I'd despair.

07 Nov 2008 07:46 am

Leaving Palinism Behind
David Frum charts a new GOP course:

College-educated Americans have come to believe that their money is safe with Democrats - but that their values are under threat from Republicans. There are more and more college-educated voters.

So the question for the GOP is: Will it pursue them? This will involve painful change, on issues ranging from the environment to abortion. It will involve even more painful changes of style and tone: toward a future that is less overtly religious, less negligent with policy, and less polarising on social issues.

That's a future that leaves little room for Sarah Palin - but the only hope for a Republican recovery.

Time to introduce a bit of Reality here, troops. There were quite a few reasons why Barack Obama won the election. Some, however, are more important than others.

First and foremost, Barack Obama won because of his campaign organization. Probably the most important decision he made during the course of his campaign was his choice to forgo public financing. He was then able to reel in hundreds of millions, while John McCain was forbidden from doing so. This allowed his campaign to locate his prospective voters, identify prospective voters, and get his voters to the polls. Obama's state organizations generally had lots more money, and were therefore able to: a) open and maintain more county-level campaign offices; b) buy more TV ad time; and c) invest in more computerized voter d-basing systems. You win elections by getting your base to the polls, and Obama had more resources with which to do that.

Secondly, the stock-market swan-dive. As a general rule, the majority of voters vote with one eye on their pocketbooks. There used to be a saying to the effect that "when the harvest fails, the king loses his head". The party in power generally gets the credit during times of prosperity, and it gets the blame when things go wrong. I have real doubts that ANY GOP-factioner could have won this year, given the way the bad economic news pushed everything else off the front page.

Third, McCain kept on changing his message. Obama didn't. The only time McCain really started to gain traction was when he started in on Obama's stand on raising taxes. (I find it particularly interesting that a good-sized fraction of the voting populace believed that Obama, rather than McCain, was more likely to cut their taxes.) This consistent approach was beginning to work--notice how the polls tightened in the two weeks before the election. The problem was that Obama had already prepared large parts of the political ground his way.

There are several implications for conservatives/Traditionalists for the next go-round. First, re-establish a simple, basic message that is DIFFERENT FROM Obama's. Limited government. Strong defense. Strong basic institutions (family, faith, local government, etc.).
These will resonate with the average person because they are based on a correct understanding of Human nature. Messages based on facts are serviceable. Lies break under strain---and self-deception (of the Obama or any other variety) is still deception.

Next, get campaign resources in place early. The one non-disastrous development that is likely to come out of this election debacle is the end of "public finance". No sane candidate is going to hobble themselves like McCain did next time around.

Third, a successful candidate must find a consistent theme/message early and stick with it. The earlier he picks the right one, the better. Assuming that Obama is not able to resolve the economic problem in his first term (a fairly viable assumption, I think), it would be possible for someone to run on a theme of "The RIGHT Kind of Change", or some variation thereof in 2012.

Fourth, the next GOP-faction candidate has to come from as far outside DC as possible. A successful second-term governor would suit, provided he/she has a bit more charisma than Pawlenty or Romney.

Finally, Traditionalists need to understand something: politics is not the only game in the house. Long-term, a "revival" of conservative/Traditional dominance in this culture is going to take a decade or more. We have to do what the Left did and begin a new Long March through the institutions if we want to regain control over our culture. Otherwise we may gain temporary (political) power, but we'll never be able to keep it. The idea, after all, is to gain and keep a position we can HOLD.

It's a rather tall order, so may I suggest we get cracking ?

Your servant,

Lord Karth

Nightstalker @ 3:20 AM writes:

"As far as taking away the complete dominance of the brainwashing camps...I mean, colleges and universities...Exactly how does one do that?"

In no small way they're doing it to themselves. With a few exceptions (Harvard/Yale, etc.), most of them are pricing themselves out of the market. Community colleges are becoming more and more popular, and most comm-college types are older, have a few more years in the workforce and are a bit more resistant to the PC garbage the high professors spew out.

I'd be more concerned about the television/entertainment complex. Not everyone goes to college, but almost everyone watches television. The danger here lies in the Oprahfication of the society; the emphasis on emotion and feeling over reason and fact. That's a greater long-term problem, culturally speaking, than virtually anything else.

"The interesting bit here, is that in spite of all the efforts made on the part of the left to brainwash and silence all opposition, the conservative ideals are still easy to sell."

Exactly. As I pointed out, said ideals are based on a more accurate knowledge of Human nature than those of the opposition.

"Pretty much, you can expect immediate and massive tax increases for ALL taxpayers."

Not right away, and not in easily ascertainable forms. Look for the Congress to allow the Alternative Minimum Tax to hit more and more taxpayers.

"Second, various mandates - like the community service requirements to be able to go to school."

This is more likely to induce a healthy cynicism than anything else. Think about it---this is exactly the kind of Goody-Two-Shoes stuff that turns the average child off.

"Silencing free speech, for instance, in the form of an attempt to reinstate the fairness doctrine. This will NOT be what the people thought they voted for. It will, instead, be what we've been telling them all along - that he's a dangerous radical, and the Democrats are hard to the wacko left.

This one is a little tougher to call. I'll agree that an attempt will be made, but I will also wager that it will certainly be challenged, first in the legislature, then in the courts. I predict that this will see the first attempt at a Senate filibuster this next term. Also, the bigger talk-show hosts (Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Savage) will be able to marshall a considerable lobbying effort against this. Savage has already vowed to use his resources to mount a court fight.

"When the economic situation seems perilously grave, Obama's going to be demanding tax increases on emploers, and job killing regulations, and even more driving our productivity offshore."

This I can just about guarantee. Obama may get away with letting the Bush tax cuts for the upper levels expire in 2010. He's also going to try to raise the cap-gains tax. There's even some talk about outright confiscation of 401(k) accounts and rolling them into the Social Security system. If that makes any headway at all, I can PROMISE that there will be court challenges, since this is a de facto wealth tax (not to mention an ex post facto law), and an obvious violation of the Constitution.

Look for a new tax revolt, emphasizing bracket creep, beginning in '10 and continuing through the '12 election if this passes.

"Spending that will make W's libertineness with the budget seem like the epitome of restraint. "

That's going to happen in any event. A savvy GOP-faction Senator or governor will make a great deal of this, particularly if he or she voted against the original bank bailout. And since Obama hasn't said squat about entitlements, he is very, very vulnerable to charges of ignoring that long-term problem.

"People WILL pay attention when it directly affects their pocketbook. Sure, it will make "winning" easy, but it won't advance thoughtfulness on the part of the people."

The thoughtfulness comes later. What will count for more is a small number of clear, simple concepts, directly and repeatedly mentioned.
"He raised taxes." "He bailed out the big banks and raised your taxes to cover it". "He threw your good money after their bad money".
Since Obama's campaign people will claim that Obama is simply cleaning up Bush's problems---notice that Obama went out of his way to say that the problems will take a long time to fix, which is the first step in trying to immunize himself from later policy failure---the astute opposition leader will try to say something along the lines of "Sure, we needed change. Obama gave us the wrong kind of change."

I didn't say it was going to be easy, nor do I say that the Obama-lovers will play fair. Nor did I promise instant success. But there's no reason not to make the effort. If nothing else, better to die on one's feet than live on one's knees.

Your servant,

Lord Karth

Now that I've gone through the overnight comments and had to weed out several examples of you, Nightstalker, calling people idiots and imbeciles and suchlike, I've decided that you can't help yourself. You are no longer welcome on this blog, and I will unpublish all future posts. Come back when you can discuss and debate without your anger overwhelming your ability to disagree with people.

**The problem with American conservatism is that, whatever it "really" is, having only very tenuous, contradictory, or imaginary sources of hope it always merges and degenerates its many parts into an alliance of occultic beliefs and belief systems that promise magical salvation(s).**

Please. That's so far from accurate it borders on self-parody. Whenever any form of conservatism turns ideological or begins "immanentizing the eschaton" it is no longer conservative, by definition. And you can honestly say this after liberals just elected an archetypical 'magic negro' to the White House? Who's cornered the market on magical thinking here?

"There is also the fundamental trouble that the Constitution of the United States creates a selfcorrecting system of government based in liberal democracy. American conservatism can, like its epitome the Confederacy, win many battles and dominate for long periods of time under this system. Yet it loses every war in the long run. Bill Buckley's famous train never really stops."

There is an element of truth to this, but the flip side of it is that liberalism is by nature self-devouring, in that it has no self-generating, self-imposed limits. It cannot say, "Thus far but no farther," because if it does it ceases to be liberal. Those who are crying "Farther!" become the liberals, while those proposing limits become the new "conservatives." In the meantime, the Leviathan state gets ever larger and more controlling, transferring more and more power to the elites who run it, and everyone, both 'right' and 'left' loses his freedoms. Hence, conservatism's attempt to slow down, if not stop, the train.

Rob G.:"All of Labour's failures are blamed on how badly things the Tories screwed things up. Despite the fact that it's taken some time, however, people are waking up to the fact than Labour's "blame the Tories" defense can't work forever."

Yet the GOP tried the same argument, blaming the current economic problems on Clinton and Carter. For that matter Clinton's name came up many times over the past 8 years as the reason for many problems we have been facing.

We're eight years past Clinton, and yet the GOP still blames him for problems. Why shouldn't the Democrats use the last eight years of Bush as a cover for problems that arise in the coming Obama administration?

The GOP runs as the party of personal responsibility. Perhaps they need to start following their own advice.

I will add to RJohnson. One huge failure of the past administration is the fact that no one wants to take responsibility. We've had an administration that claimed it was conservative, supported by conservatives. We are now in 2 wars, with a huge national debt, having lost an Amercian city [New Orleans] and are in an economic meltdown. Has No Child Left Behind worked? If they are not Bush's problems, whose are they? Bush inherited a huge government surplus. I don't see much that we've gotten for the huge national debt we now have. Things are going to be a lot tougher for Obama than they were for Bush. If conservatism is going to be a force in the future, it has to be honest. Any policy, whether it is liberal or conservative, has to be judged by its results.

Here's another interesting post from Frum's blog about the future of the GOP...

David Frum: Republicans face fraught choice between two roads to revival

Posted: November 05, 2008, 7:45 AM by Kelly McParland
David Frum, Full Comment, U.S. Politics

In the wake of yesterday’s bruising result, the Republican party faces an excruciating and divisive choice between two very different futures.

The first choice is the choice on display at the excited rallies that cheered Sarah Palin all through the fall. This is a choice to fall back on the core base of the Republican party. The base is almost entirely white, almost entirely resident in the middle of the country, moderately affluent, middle-aged and older, more male than female, with some college education but not a college degree. Think of Joe the Plumber and you see the core of the Republican party.

Republicans have won a string of elections thanks to Joe.

Joe came through in 1994, delivering both houses of Congress to the Republicans. Joe was not enough to elect Bob Dole president, but thanks to him the Republicans kept a dwindling hold on Congress in 1996, 1998, and 2000.

Joe rallied to President Bush after 9/11. Republicans owed their gains in 2002 to Joe. And without Joe, George W. Bush would not have won in 2004.

Joe has not changed much over the past two decades or so. But the country has. The Hispanic population of the United States has almost doubled since 1990. The proportion of white Americans with a college degree has jumped from 22% in 1990 to almost 28 ½% .

In order to keep competitive, the GOP has had to win more and more of the Joe vote. Ruy Texeira, perhaps America’s leading expert on the voting behavior of the white working class, observes that George W. Bush won in 2004 by only 3 points – but won the white working class by 23 points.

This year, an economically squeezed Joe did not come through for the GOP. But once the dust settles, many Republican leaders will urge the party to return to the tried and true. They’ll say: 2008 was an unusual year! Iraq, Bush, Katrina, the financial meltdown, and a too-moderate candidate at the head of the ticket: No wonder we lost! But the messages that won for Reagan in 1980 and Newt Gingrich in 1994 and George Bush in 2002 will win for us again. Taxes – guns – right to
life – patriotism – the formula is all there. Stick to it.

If 60% of the Joe vote is no longer enough, nominate Palin – and win 65%. Or 70%. Whatever it takes.

As I said: that’s one path.

There’s another. It’s the path that begins by facing up to the arithmetic that says – Joe is no longer enough. God bless him, he’s
the GOP base, and no Republican wants to lose him. But he needs reinforcements.

George W. Bush tried to reinforce Joe by appealing to Hispanic voters. But that approach failed, and for predictable reasons: American Hispanics are poor – and they vote majority Democrat for the same reasons that poor people of all races vote Democratic. Bush hoped that he could win Hispanics by (1) granting amnesty to illegal immigrants, (2) expanding federal programs like Medicare and federal education aid, and (3) pressuring banks to relax lending standards to help lower-
income workers to buy homes.

But Bush could not get (1) through Congress – and anyway it alienated Joe, whom Republicans still needed. He did (2), but Democrats outbid him, as they always will. And (3) … well we all know how that ended. If Hispanics benefited disproportionately from the U.S. housing boom (as the early data suggest they did), they are suffering disproportionately from the U.S. housing bust.

There will not be an Hispanic future for the GOP for years and years.

But there is another way to reinforce Joe – and that’s the way so old and dusty as almost to feel new and unexplored.

A generation ago, Republicans dominated among college graduates. In 1984 and 1988, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush won states like California, Pennsylvania and Connecticut – states that have been “blue” for a generation. (America’s least educated state, West Virginia, went for Michael Dukakis in 1988.)

Those days are long gone. Since 1988, Democrats have become more conservative on economics – and Republicans have become more conservative on social issues.

College-educated Americans have come to believe that their money is safe with Democrats – but that their values are under threat from Republicans. And there are more and more of these college-educated Americans all the time.

So the question for the GOP is: Will it pursue them? To do so will involve painful change, on issues ranging from the environment to abortion. And it will involve potentially even more painful changes of style and tone: toward a future that is less overtly religious, less negligent with policy, and less polarizing on social issues. That’s a future that leaves little room for Sarah Palin – but the only hope for a Republican recovery.

National Post

"We're eight years past Clinton, and yet the GOP still blames him for problems"

You might still get this from Rush and the Fox crowd, but most conservatives have moved beyond it. In fact, many say that Clinton turned out to be better than expected. No prize, by any stretch, but not the devil a lot of us thought he would be.

"Why shouldn't the Democrats use the last eight years of Bush as a cover for problems that arise in the coming Obama administration?"

Translation: "The GOP lies about its problems and refuses to accept responsibility. Why shouldn't the Democrats?" Nice.