The Reagan cult and the GOP

Alex Massie says the Republican habit of deifying Reagan is hurting the party. Excerpt:

But it is an iron truth of politics that prolonged success sows the seeds of future downfall. Revolutions run out of steam. They cannot be permanent. More damagingly still, what begins as an unorthodox and surprisingly successful approach calcifies into a stubborn orthodoxy that brooks no dissent, even as times and circumstances change. The path to power is built upon compromise and flexibility: Thatcher always knew what she wanted to do, but she was also aware, in her early years, of how limited her room for manoevre was - not least because not everyone in her cabinet was on board. If progress was slower than she liked, it was also steadier than when, after 1987, she reigned supreme and hubris began to take its fatal grip. Similarly, Reagan was a vastly more adaptable President than current conservative folklore might have you believe.

In that sense, then. the troubles of Republicanism now and of the Tories in the last 15 years, were built upon their previous successes. The difficulty is that the second (or third) generation is rarely as talented or adaptable as the trailblazers who won power in the first place. Instead of finding fresh ideas and solutions, they inherit positions and prejudices that, because they worked once before, are assumed to be eternal truths rather than particular answers to particular problems at a particular time.

And because they're seen as eternal truths, any deviation from them is grounds for heresy. Thus, for instance, the Club for Growth would, it sometimes seems, rather see a Democrt in Congress than a "bad" Republican. Fair enough, they've got their wish and the GOP is a minority party in both houses of Congress. It's not all the Club for Growth's fault, of course, but the narrowness of their (fiscal) vision is parallelled by other forces within contemporary conservatism that have left the party older and whiter and more religious than America as a whole. In other words, the GOP is increasingly out of step with a changing America.

Witness, for instance, the party's hostility to gay marriage. That plays well with the base, but it's not something that's likely to endear it to the political future. It's a symbolic issue in some ways, but each year plenty of voters who agree with the GOP die while plenty more who don't are added to the electoral roll.

I completely agree with Alex's view that many, many US conservatives invoke Reagan's name and example today as a substitute for creative thinking. And with regret, I mostly concede his point about gay marriage. As I've said before, I think that the political argument is lost in the long run because the cultural argument has been lost. I'd love to be proved wrong, but I don't think I will be. But this particular issue raises a question that I don't have a good answer for, at least not yet, and it has to do with how a political party should handle the conflict between principle and popularity.

Political parties are not churches. They aren't dogmatic. They exist to win elections and gain power to accomplish goals in governance. Their principles dictate the goals they wish to achieve. A party that's strictly principled, and paid no heed to the need to compromise at times will find itself pure but small and powerless. A party that will take any stance that keeps it popular and in power will eventually peter out in meaninglessness. All successful political parties have to find a balance.

Is there a point at which a conservative says, "Look, the GOP is no longer a party I recognize, and I want nothing to do with it"? Or does he say, "I hate the changes the party is making, because I believe they take us away from what conservatism should be. But if we don't adapt, we'll keep losing ground in the real world"?

It's easy for me to talk about ways the GOP should change, so long as we stick with the environment, and other issues that I already agree with. It's a lot harder to contemplate yielding ground on issues like gay marriage. Sooner or later the case will be put to Republicans to give up on gay marriage, because it's a big-time loser with voters. What then? What conservative principles should conservatives go soft on because to hold onto them firmly is to consign the party to even more powerlessness?

I don't know, myself. But I'm thinking about it. Democrats had to think about it after the Reagan years. What do you say? What do we on the Right have to let go of? What can we not afford to let go of?