Conservatism

Reading the blogs and op-eds out on the net it is clear that we are reaching a point where the Conservative message is at a crossroads.  A lot of the talk has been about a leadership vacuum.  In my opinion, the Right is currently undergoing a massive manhunt to find the one person (or perhaps a handfull of people) who can clearly articulate that Conservative message.

This begs an obvious question:  What is the Conservative Message?

People are throwing around the usual catch-phrases:  "Limited Government" or "States Rights" or "Fiscal Responsibility".  All well and good, but the problem is that there doesn't seem to be anyone out there who can articulate this message AND survive the attacks on their record which the Progressive / Statist left will undoubtedly unleash in order to discredit them.

Another problem is that way too many of the "conservative" pundits out there are really just watered-down Progressives.  Neo-Statists or Progressive-lite commentators who have accepted that government intervention (vs regulation) is the solution to the majority of the problems we face.  I don't think there are many true Conservatives who would argue for outright anarchy.  Of course there's a need for government.  The question is how much do we need? Are the solutions to be found utilizing the power of the Federal Government, the State Governments, or the Private sector (The People).  Better yet... What is the right mix? The Federalist system our founders handed to us seems to be disappearing before our eyes.  It has taken nearly a century to get to this point, but it is disappearling.  Progressives have successfully framed the debate.  We, as a country, don't even blink when presented with a problem.  We immediately run to the Federal Government.  This wasn't how it was originally intended to work, but that's an argument for a different time.

Back to the question of message. We on the Right need to rally around a single message.  The idea of Limited Government is my personal favorite because it really encompasses what Conservatism is all about.  But we must also remember that "Limited Government" doesn't mean "No Government".  It means going back and checking the playbook (The Constitution) to see which entity should be the force behind implementing a solution.

Where are the leaders who have consistently approached a problem from this perspective?  Who are they?  Who looks at a problem and doesn't immediately think, "Let's create a Federal Program around it"?  Where is the politician who can consistently make the case that nearly every problem we face today is a direct result of Progressive policies that have slowly erroded our Federalist foundation?

Or is there a larger question?  Are we on the Right sure if we really believe that anymore?

I know my answer.  What's yours?

 Conservatism Is Dead!  Long Live Conservatism!

             I am 23 years old.  I have been told that my ilk and I are the future.  To say the least that assertion frightens me.  Statistics, while reassuring, can only attenuate my anxiety slightly.  For while the sweep of history that Obama disciples say their savior rode into the White House on this past November might not have been as strong as they once thought – voters 18-29 resoundingly turned out to vote for Obama, yet overall the difference between the ostensibly crucial youth vote’s turnout in 2004 and 2008 was just 3% higher – the consensus among my peer’s is that centrist-liberalism – the form of liberalism Obama does not practice but I think successfully conveys – has become the accepted norm.  Why?  Because it feels pragmatic, tolerant, and, above all, it is imbued with a sense of competent realism.  Gone are the days of stereotypical bleeding heart liberal – at least that is the perception a lot of people my age have. 

            Conservatism as a movement has been vanquished in the eyes of many young politically minded people I speak with.   It has proven not only morally bankrupt –after starting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, advocating torture, and impinging on civil liberties – but also intellectually bankrupt.  Where before a liberal friend of mine had begrudgingly admitted that conservatism’s redeeming quality for him was its emphasis on practical solutions, reliance on hard data, and fiscal frugality, today, in the wake of the financial and economic chaos that engulfs us it is no surprise that that reputation has been sullied. 

            I am not going to argue the merits of those qualms with modern conservatism.  My concern is the perception-reality gap; that is, how people, especially younger Americans, perceive conservatism, and, by extension its partisan vessel, the Republican Party.  There is a worthwhile debate to be had over whether the Bush era was, in fact, a traditionally conservative one.  William F. Buckley himself once remarked that Bush was conservative, but not a conservative.  He was not a part of the movement in the sense that Ronald Reagan was or Newt Gingrich continues to be a torchbearer for. 

            Much has been written on the subject of movement conservatism since the Republican Party was handed a disastrous defeat in the last general election.  While the former President Bush is certainly culpable to a certain extent for the humiliating electoral referendum of what has passed for conservatism these last nine years I think that all conservatives, myself included, need to look at the changing demographics and national economy and render a verdict on whether or not the conservatism embodied by our current representatives is the sort of conservatism that can subsist and win in 21st Century America. 

            Clichés can ruin empires.  They can also ruin political movements.  Unfortunately, conservatism has fallen prey to rampant clichés that are promulgated by a myriad of comedians and entertainers.  To my fellow youthful Americans, Stephen Colbert and comedians of his kidney hold great sway over perception of conservatives (comedy does have a liberal bias, after all).  I am hesitant to bring Mr. Colbert into a serious discussion about the state of modern conservatism as an intellectual and political movement, but I would be remiss not to highlight how entertainment media has successfully reduced conservatism to a set of ugly cultural symbols:  the gun-crazed, the gay basher, and the God fearer.   Conservatives have long wrestled with images of backwardness, bigotry, and zealous piety.  In the 1940s, when the postwar conservative movement was still in its adolescence and sowing the fundamental intellectual seeds of its platform, liberals decried nascent conservatism in America as an attempt to reinstate medieval feudalism.   Meanwhile, the average college student is, I can safely confirm, denied any knowledge of the conservative intellectual history that could challenge these nasty generalizations.   The domination of the nation’s universities by a liberal professoriate is complete.   Men like William F. Buckley Jr., Friedrich Hayek, Frank Meyer, Russel Kirk, and Wilmoore Kendall are scarcely mentioned outside of being the butt of many bad jokes.    Instead, conservatism is treated as a reactionary force in American politics – the default position of obstinate country bumpkins and avaricious plutocrats. 

            But really, who can blame these critics?  Conservatives of late have made themselves easy targets for two reasons.  First, conservatism has become ideologically rigid and rhetorically trite.  In the 1980s and 1990s, the small-government, free market message resounded because it contravened liberalism’s decades long insistence on the power of federal programs to correct society’s ills – the results of which were Leviathan bureaucracy and stagflation.  So while the totalizing nostrums of liberal policymakers had been compounding inefficiencies since the New Deal, Reagan represented the culmination of a conservative movement that offered sound reasoning for why liberalism had failed and what it could be replaced with.  

            Today, however, the twin pillars of the conservative economic policy – low taxation and deregulation – are held in disrepute.   Cut taxes and deregulate it repeated ad nauseum will not do.  As much as I agree with these mantras (in most instances) it must be acknowledged that as rhetorical tools they have become useless pabulum.   Conservatives must articulate a more nuanced economic policy that stresses long-term fiscal solvency, debt reduction, free trade, measured and responsible deregulation, and sensible arguments for why tax cuts – not spending programs – are the stuff of real economic growth.   A government-phobic stance only reinforces the perception of doctrinaire intransigence.  If conservatives can admit the necessity of limited economic regulation they will win not only more respect from non-ideological voters who are skeptical of dogmatism in any form, but they will be returning to a pragmatism that is the very essence of conservatism.

            I would also like to stress the supreme importance of shedding the image conservatives have garnered for being socially parochial.  I have been contemplating this article for some time now, and in the way of research I made it a point to start conversations with young people of different political stripes and with varying degrees of interest in politics.  To someone with only a fleeting interest in electoral politics social issues are what matter, and often function as a first foray into politics (more than likely because social issues elicit emotional responses and do not require one to be well-versed on an issue).  To win young voters, or at least not alienate them, conservatives should apply the “Don’t Tread on Me” ethos they champion in the economic sphere in the social one, as well.  This does not mean we shirk the greater task of reintroducing meaning, civic duty, religion, and something beyond shallow materialism and licentiousness into American society.  On the contrary, conservatives should fully embrace their rhetoric of individual responsibility by purging the movement of its puritanical authoritarianism so as to eliminate the inherent contradictions in their positions.  For how can we praise the right to individual choice and responsibility and still support the interminably futile “war on drugs,” which not only wastes millions of the taxpayer’s dollars but exacerbates racial tensions?  How can we continue to speak of justice and liberty when homosexuals are not allowed to marry their loved ones and when the majority of Republicans in congress opposed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act?  

            To accomplish all of the above and remain relevant conservatives must follow point two of my thesis, as well:  they must govern effectively and remain principled.   My generation’s formative experiences occurred during the Bush administration and under the auspices of a Republican-dominated congress.  Two wars, a rash of scandals (Mark Foley, the Delay-Abramoff connection, the Valerie Plame leak, the Terri Schiavo episode, Black Water, etc.), and the financial crisis have severely damaged the Republican Party and conservatism’s image.  The recovery will be slow going.  But if conservative politicians can begin to shed their reactionary mien, offer alternative policy ideas that bypass hackneyed platitudes, and live out their lofty rhetoric and lead by example we may yet see the movement regain its strength and political clout. 

            It goes without saying that the party out of power naturally seems adrift and leaderless.  And already the steady stream of articles proclaiming conservatism in America “dead” seems conspicuously outdated.  A recent Gallup Poll finds that more Americans in all fifty states identify themselves as conservatives rather than liberal or very liberal.  The Democrats health care reform salvo is on precarious footing thanks to a grassroots conservative revival across the country and a smile-worthy Rasmussen Poll concludes that fifty-seven percent of Americans would vote out the entire congress – including those ossified Republican relics.  This has to mean something, right?  America has tried “change” in the Obama vein and is disappointed, yes?  Well, in a word, no.  First it is too early to predict how Obama will recover from these setbacks and second I’m afraid the president, despite his sinking poll numbers of late, represents a new breed of liberalism that has successfully adopted superficial conservative hues; in particular, conservatisms mild-mannered pragmatism.  Essentially, Obama has won the vital center by shrewd deception and still enjoys the support of those who might not agree with him on certain controversial issues, such as health care, Afghanistan-Pakistan, or bank bailouts, but who trust his judgment, nonetheless.  Like Reagan, he’s Teflon (for now.)

            The backlash Obama and the Democrats have faced this summer is, most likely, ephemeral.  The town hall meetings will eventually cease and the endless news cycle will make it all seem like a dream, as the angry voices of protest that once commanded front-page attention are lost to the archives.  I hope I’m wrong, but this is more than often the case; sustained popular outrage has a relatively short life expectancy.  If conservatives want to win in the future it will require a new language, a more tolerant and less rigid ideological platform, and exciting and articulate figures like William F. Buckley, Milton Friedman, and Ronald Reagan to lend action to ideas.  If you’ll notice, those three aforementioned heroes of the conservative cannon are no more.  Conservatism, though, can live on.  One, because it is the movement of the individual and his quest for self-improvement, not only for himself but his country and mankind, and two, because that quest is the ongoing story of the United States.

But, then again, I'm only 23 -- what do I know?

Over the last few days, Jon Henke has laid out the case for the Right more strongly disavowing outfits like WorldNetDaily that actively peddle Birther nonsense. To the extent the mainstream Right has weighed in, it has been to urge Jon to ignore WND and move on, in the interests avoiding an intra-movement civil war. Some have even tried to subtly distance Jon from the conservative movement, saying his views don't represent those of most conservatives. Many on the Right have made the calculation that however distasteful their views, a public fight with the Birthers just isn't worth it.

As a fiscal and social conservative, I happen to think Jon is completely in the right here, both substantively and strategically. Don't raise the canard that we ought to be attacking Democrats first. Conservatives are entirely within their rights to have public debates over who will publicly represent them, and who will be allowed to affiliate with the conservative movement.

The Birthers are the latest in a long line of paranoid conspiracy believers of the left and right who happen to attach themselves to notions that simply are not true. Descended from the 9/11 Truthers, the LaRouchies, the North American Union buffs, and way back when, the John Birch Society, the Birthers are hardly a new breed in American politics.

Each and every time they have appeared, mainstream conservatives from William F. Buckley to Ronald Reagan have risen to reject these influences -- and I expect that will be the case once again here.

But there is another subtext that makes Jon's appeal more urgent. As a pretty down-the-line conservative, I don't believe I am alone in noting with disappointment the trivialization,  excessive sloganeering, and pettiness that has overtaken the movement of late. In "The Joe the Plumberization of the GOP," I argued that conservatives have grown too comfortable with wearing scorn as a badge of honor, content to play sarcastic second fiddle to the dominant culture of academia and Hollywood with second-rate knock-off institutions. A side effect of this has been a tendency to accept conspiracy nuts as a slightly cranky edge case within the broad continuum of conservatism, rather than as a threat to the movement itself.

Those advocating a tough stand against the Birthers like to point to William F. Buckley and the Birchers. 

In founding National Review, Buckley made a point of casting out the conspiracy nuts and the cranks of his day because he saw them as a fundamental threat to a conservatism that was just emerging as a political force. In doing so, he was able to define conservatism for a generation.

What is interesting about Buckley (and that is so different today) was his ability to align intellectual firepower and a faster march to the Right. Buckley was a man of class and erudition who happened to be more conservative than virtually all of his peers. That's the key point. To the extent we think of intellectuals today, we deride them as creatures of the Left. When they are active within conservative circles, they are discarded as to the left of the movement. The archetypical center-right intellectual today is a guy like Ross Douthat, whose ideas (to be fair) are often outside the conservative mainstream. Most of the party's rising intellectuals are seen as advocating a shift away from social conservative issues, which are still deeply relevant to a critical mass of Americans beyond the two coasts. Back in Buckley's day, it was possible to get 175-proof conservatism in Ivy League flavoring.

Perhaps the intellectual composition of the conservative (or liberal) movement wasn't all that different in Buckley's time, but Buckley provided an ideal -- and set a standard -- for conservatives to position themselves as scholarly thought leaders within the broader culture that simply no longer exists today -- despite numerous conservative academics toiling facelessly in the vineyards. This gave a Buckley the credibility to cast out the movement's lesser lights, and impose a layer of discernment between fact and fiction inside the movement. In politics, symbols matter. Just like there could only be one Reagan, there could only be one Buckley.

The automatic problem that arises when someone who is not a William F. Buckley (and none of us here pretend to be) is that you're instantly tagged a RINO for calling out something that is objectively and demonstrably false. The space between fact and fiction is confused as a litmus test between right and left. But what if the WNDers are not the true conservatives in this argument? What if the actual test of conservatism was not how fervently you oppose Obama, or where you went to school, or where you pray, but how firmly your conservatism is rooted in First Principles and not personalities or conspiracy?

Within my relatively short lifetime, I still remember a time when success and intellectual achievement were more often than not conservative virtues, and I remember WFB looming large in this framework. Recent Democratic gains within the creative and educated classes have eroded this image, creating a media dynamic where intelligence is seen as aligning with the left within the Democratic Party, and the center within the Republican Party.

That is an untenable position for a conservative movement that needs to generate new ideas and groom future leaders who can speak articulately and persuasively to the whole country. (It's true that Ronald Reagan was not a book learner, but under the theory of multiple intelligences, he more than held his own.) Before conservatism was a viable political movement, it was a viable intellectual movement, and it was those on the center and in the left who were seen as intellectually slovenly.

This is why there is a unique urgency now to cast out the obscurantists and the conspiracy nuts. We don't have a Buckley anymore. Our intellectual giants have died off and not being replaced. And preventing the lowest common denominator from filling the void is a constant daily struggle.

In a movement and a party that has largely defined itself outside centers of higher learning in recent years (for good or ill) I believe the time is ripe for a return to Buckleyite elite conservatism.

On another thread I was asked this question.  I thought it was important enough to merit its own blog entry.

Here was my response.

With regard to what I hope to conserve: I'm a big fan of Burke on this score.  I believe society is a fragile, delicate, interconnected web encapsulating the inherited wisdom of the customs and traditions of countless generations.  Its complexity is beyond human comprehension.  We mess with it only at our peril.  So I'm not in favor of "socially engineering" anything, because I don't think it's possible to do successfully.  What I want to conserve are the traditions and customs of the past that has led to the extraordinarily free and prosperous nation that we have (well, minus the socialist bits).  To the extent that customs and traditions are no longer compatible with modern values, then let's change our customs and traditions organically, via consensus, instead of having the imposed by judges.  So that's what I believe.

Timothy then responded:

Interesting. You present the development of history toward secular, pluralistic democracy as a conservative endeavor rather than a progressive endeavor. Are you suggesting that, only by slowing the wheels of progress, we've landed in the place we are at? I'm curious; do you think, were we to go back in time and pick out all of the crucial moments of change that have led us to this point, that conservatives would be the champions of those changes or the opponents of those changes, more often than not?

My guess is that you'd find conservative ideology, by its nature (including what you've listed here) would be opposed, more often than not. The changes that have led us to this "extraordinarily free and prosperous nation" are more likely to have been championed by those forces outside of conservative ideology. Right? Isn't that logically necessary?

My response:

Well I suppose it has to do with how you define "accomplishment".  I don't consider the establishment of "secular, pluralistic democracy" as an end unto itself.  I consider it a manifestation of a particular system of ordered liberty through which individuals can pursue their individual aspirations, and it's these accomplishments which I regard as having made this country prosperous.  So it's good that we have a large amount of individual liberty in this country, but it's only what people do with that liberty (i.e., achieve great things) which makes America truly great.  And it's because of the wise customs and traditions of the past that we, for the most part, use the liberty towards positive ends and not negative ones.  Have you ever wondered: why do people, for the most part, stand politely in line?  There's no law against linejumping.  Yet you almost never see it.  Why?

Plus, keep in mind that conservatives are not anti-progress.  We don't really want to stay in the 18th century forever.  There have been changes that have been championed by conservatives, e.g., women's suffrage.  These changes can be well reconciled with foundational principles of our republic.  Many conservatives today advocate for tremendous change: a radically different tax system, for instance.  What I as a conservative most object to is change that attempts to replace the wisdom of the customs and traditions of the past with the knowledge of smart experts.  I don't care how smart the experts are: the "fragile web" of society is beyond human comprehension, and we cannot tinker with it without expecting it  to get all messed up.  I believe it is also why many people perceive conservatives as being "anti-intellectual".  It's not that we hate smart people, it's that we don't think brains can replace wisdom or "common sense".

Furthermore, if we are going to engage in intellectual time-travel exercises, I also think that our current path of historical development is not the best of all possible outcomes.  Who knows, if abolitionists had not insisted so loudly on ending slavery, and we had never fought a Civil War, then legal slavery would likely have persisted longer.  But it would have come to an end eventually, and I think that if slavery had ended without having a shot fired, then we never would have had the racial problems we have had in this country since the end of slavery, because it would have happened organically and not by force, would have been more generally accepted by all.  Incidentally I feel the same way about Roe v. Wade.  Honestly, you pro-choicers should advocate for it to be overturned, because the undemocratic imposition of legal abortion is a non-trivial motivating force for pro-life protesters. If Roe v. Wade is overturned, and abortion becomes a matter to be decided upon by the states, then eventually I think it will become not just democratically adopted everywhere, but also normalized, and in the end you will have won.  Which is, incidentally, exactly how women's suffrage was achieved in this country.  Judges didn't impose it; it was achieved by referenda and by Constitutional amendment (i.e., votes by representatives of the people).

So my answer to your last question is complex.  Even if conservatives had stood in the way of every single one of those changes (which I think is unlikely), then I don't know if things would have turned out worse, or better, or just merely different.  And we can never know.

What do the rest of the conservatives on this site think?  Am I right or am I way off base?

Has the Right been approaching politics wrong all along?  The Right has not figured out good policy means to accomplish its limited government & individual freedom ends.  The Right has been good at being anti-Left, but unsure what to do once it gains power. So what has been the problem?

Friedrich Hayek's essay, Why I am Not a Conservative, contains a few points the Right should consider carefully.

Let me now state what seems to me the decisive objection to any conservatism which deserves to be called such. It is that by its very nature it cannot offer an alternative to the direction in which we are moving. It may succeed by its resistance to current tendencies in slowing down undesirable developments, but, since it does not indicate another direction, it cannot prevent their continuance. It has, for this reason, invariably been the fate of conservatism to be dragged along a path not of its own choosing. The tug of war between conservatives and progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction, of contemporary developments. [...]

Personally, I find that the most objectionable feature of the conservative attitude is its propensity to reject well-substantiated new knowledge because it dislikes some of the consequences which seem to follow from it - or, to put it bluntly, its obscurantism. [...] By refusing to face the facts, the conservative only weakens his own position.

The implication of Hayek's position is that conservatism can never achieve the vision of genuine individual freedom - it can only oppose the Left.  If that is the case, then who can achieve limited government?  The Compassionate Conservative approach has been tried, miserably (though some, like Douthat and others advocate variations on it).  The religious right seems inclined towards a Christian Democrats approach (Huckabee, et al).  There is the "energetic" and "ambitious" "national greatness" approach advocated by those like David Brooks, Bill Kristol & John McCain.  LIbertarians and many independents/moderates are inclined toward a, you know, libertarian approach.  And there is also a more moderate libertarian parternalism approach that recognizes a role for government in addressing economic issues and market failures, but focuses on optimizing defaults and preserving choices.

So, a question: If conservatism is more of a social and cultural tendency, rather than an effective political philosophy, then what should be the driving political philosophy for the Republican Party?   (NOTE: This does not imply that the Republican Party becomes inimical to conservatives; only that the "movement" be driven by a political vision, not a social/cultural tendency)

One of the biggest reasons for the Right's decline in the Bush era is that we had long since completed most of the items on our to-do list. Low marginal tax rates? Check. The Soviet Union gone? Check. Welfare reform? Check.

This empty cupboard of ideas had led to progressively more minimalist Republican governing agendas and campaign platforms. If John McCain proposed any big, game-changing policy shifts in the last election, I must have missed them. It's true that Obama's ideas were not new either -- but he was able to sell them as "change" because they had been not tried in toto since the Johnson Administration, and people had forgotten how badly they had crashed on the rocks their last time out. Obama's central thesis -- that government ownership and central planning can outpace returns in the private market -- is actually very, very old. His playbook is that of FDR in 1933, Attlee in 1946, and Mitterand in 1981.

The effect on the Right even before Obama had been so corrossive that the institutional right was utterly incapable of offering any competing thesis of the economic crisis, leaving government ownership and bailouts as the only "appropriate" policy response. Even the previous Administration, made up of men of the Right, justified the bailouts -- and particularly the auto bailout that precipitated the White House putsch at GM -- as inevitable, "temporary," "emergency" measures.

Fast forward two months into the Obama era. Pro-forma denials of nationalization and socialism aside, the White House feels responsible enough for the insurance and automobile industries to dictate their management and maximum salaries -- the classic hallmarks of ownership. The Federal budget has swelled to $3.6 trillion, and revenues cover barely half the bill. To an extent probably never seen before in our history, there are no consequences for business failure, no consequences for individuals who took out loans they couldn't pay for, and no consequences for government that overspends.

The Welfare State mentality of the '60s that created the conditions for 1980 and 1994 systemically excused bad behavior at an individual level, creating millions of individual tragedies. Obamanomics systematically excuses bad behavior at the wholesale macroeconomic level, creating a vicious circle of irresponsibility with major consequences for every American.

If nothing else, the first 70 days of Obama -- with an assist from the last 4 months of Bush -- has left government economic policy so off-kilter that it may take a decade or more to fix. Remember that exhausted to-do list? Not a problem any more.

For the first time in decades, Republicans could run on a platform of cutting government by a third and not seem wild-eyed or mean-spirited. When we talk about the dangers of governments running private businesses, we will have contemporary object lessons to teach with, not bogeymen that are decades old or oceans away. When we talk about getting the government out of our lives, more people will nod their head knowing exactly what we mean, having just footed the bill for bailout after bailout, instead of yawning or dismissing it as a non-issue as they did in the prosperous, laissez-faire post-Reagan America.

The end result of this agenda, the size of government at 2007 levels, may seem minimalist in any broad sweep of history, but it is galvanizing in a way it wasn't before because of the sheer scope of what's changed in six months. The yawning gap between where we are now and where we were two years ago gives conservatives an ambitious goal to reach for and a reason for being again, even if the end result is little change over time. And if we get a mandate to actually cut government significantly -- and I think the public mood will shift there in a few years if not sooner -- it might not be that much harder to cut it to below pre-Obama or pre-Bush levels because current levels are so out of whack that people would not be able to tell the difference between that and what the status quo was in the mid-2000s -- only that it is change.

Though it has apparently triumphed, this is a dangerous moment for liberalism. Long-planned moves toward redistribution like universal health care or the repeal of the Bush tax cuts are being conflated with and to some extent elbowed aside by emergency nationalizations and Mr.  Geithner's experiments. The White House is not selling the de-facto AIG and GM nationalizations as such, because they know the stigma the S-word carries. It becomes harder to sell the long-standing liberal policy agenda as urgent and necessary when the Administration is busy putting out ten different fires first. And after Year One, it becomes exponentially harder for a new President to push wants instead of needs.

Meanwhile, it becomes easy for Republicans to point to real-life consequences of government control to nullify the entire Obama agenda. Screw ups like the AIG bonuses will inevitably happen and be magnified by the fact of government investment, and this will have a chilling effect on the public's view of interventionism more broadly in areas like health care. Barack Obama standing behind your new muffler will not be looked upon with warm and fuzzies in the years to come. The best case for Obama is that this time in history is seen as sober and necessary. But that's not a rallying cry and a movement-builder. The right will be galvanized to action by the theft of the free enterprise system. What will the left be galvanized by?

African Americans were a liberal leaning constituency prior to the 1960s and partly for good reasons.  Breaking the Jim Crow system would inevitably involve the aggressive use of federal government power and the most reliable supporters of civil rights laws were among northern liberals. The intensity of the African American community's antipathy towards conservatives was born in the civil rights struggles of the mid 1960s (and every conservative really should read William Voegeli's Summer 2008 CLAREMONT REVIEW OF BOOKS article on conservatives and the civil rights movement).  But we should not mistake the roots of the division between African Americans and conservatives to be the sole cause of this division.  How many Americans of any race remember Goldwater's vote on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and relate it to contemporary politics?

In my experience, younger and better educated African Americans have a much clearer (and more hostile) collective memory of Ronald Reagan than of Goldwater or William F. Buckley.  The memory of the "welfare queens" remark has been passed down as a slur on black women in general, and this (among other hostile impressions) has influenced how many educated African Americans view Reagan and the conservatives who admire Reagan.  It is worth remembering that different communities can remember the same person in different ways and that for many African Americans, "welfare queens" is much more intensely remembered than "tear down this wall".  This collective memory of Reaganite hostility (whether this hostility was real or not) is also much more powerful in shaping their view of Reagan and conservatives than Reagan's record on economic growth or anything else.

This hostile communal view of Reagan and conservatives is not an accident or a conspiracy.  It is a dominant narrative that is passed on by politicians, journalists, academics, and of course family members.  Conservatives should not dismiss the sincerity of much of this collective memory.  Sure hacks like Charles Rangel manipulate (and help perpetuate) this hostility for partisan purposes, but millions of people truly believe it and pass it on.  This narrative forms the screen through which contemporary events and personalities are viewed. 

The assumption that conservatives are hostile or indifferent helps make sense of events.  If the Democrat controlled government of Louisiana fails in Katrina relief it is incompetence.  If a Republican (which is by association conservative) administration fails in the same task it is racist indifference at best or racist conspiracy at worst.  This is a case in which rapper Kanye West's comments that Bush did not care about black people have particular importance.  Conservatives are used to hearing celebrities slander conservative politicians, but they should listen a little closer to West.  West's mother was a college professor.  He was raised as part of the educated, striving, black upper middle class.  West's opinion was hardy unanimous but it does indicate that conservatives have a problem that extends beyond Grammy winners.

There is also the problem of being a black conservative in the black community.  This is not the same as having conservative opinions on abortion, the death penalty, or taxes.   This is a problem of associating yourself with conservative tainted organizations - the Republican Party most of all - and thereby cooperating with the enemy.  Even if one has basically conservative opinions, the social barriers to joining such an organization are significant.  Most of all is the disinclination to join groups that one has assumed are hostile.  There is also the knowledge that such association opens you up to all kinds of hits big and small.  The rules of civilized debate will only sometimes and partially apply to you and you are vulnerable to social ostracism.  Emerge magazine (a news monthly marketed towards African Americans) put Clarence Thomas as a lawn jockey on its cover.  Conservatives bitterly complained that Michael Steele did not stick up for them when D.L. Hughley compared Republicans to Nazis.  What conservatives would do well to remember was that Hughley was trying to slyly portray as a Nazi collaborator.  This suspicion was only to be expected when he took on the RNC chairmanship.  There is the Spike Lee movie Get On the Bus in which a (demonized) African American conservative is thown off a bus going to the Million Man March and is symbolically expelled from the African American community.  Real life is generally less dramatic than Spike Lee fantasies (though the fantasies have their own subtle influence), but conservatives should not dismiss the less overt pressures.  Picture a person in a predominantly conservative community who has a strong affinity for Code Pink.  It can't be easy. 

Well, that is one (white) guy's opinion about some and only some of the challenges that conservatives face.  What can we do about them?

The below is bumped from an earlier discussion thread.  Many conservatives have trouble understanding the depth of the majority of the African American community's alienation from conservatism as a political movement.  Conservatives wonder how some African American voters can have many opinions on the right but vote for candidates on the left when they are faced with a conservative Republican vs. a liberal Democrat.  The answer has much to do with history and how that history is remembered.  The public coming out party for modern conservatism that was the Barry Goldwater presidential campaign and how the Goldwater campaign appeared  to the African American community might be a good place to begin

The conservative case that Goldwaterites opposed the great civil rights acts for benign reasons butts up against two big obstacles in convincing the African American community.

1. Why should African Americans care about the professed principles of people who would have preserved a system that made a mockery of every maxim that was spoken of in Fourth of July celebrations ("no taxation without representation", "one man one vote", "give me liberty or give me death") as it applied to southern blacks?

2. Many people who voted for southern white segragationists for the worst reasons suddenly started voting Republican in presidential reasons around the time the GOP nominated a Senator who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. You can argue that it was because the Jim Crow system was no loger tenable and that the interparty competition for southern whites switched to issues like national defense, crime, taxes, abortion, whatever. There is a lot of truth to that argument, but African Americans can clearly see white southerners moving from the Democratic party to the faction of the Republican Party that was most opposed to the key civil rights law.

So if it seems like many black people assume that conservative Republicans are their natural enemies, they have their reasons.

That is not the whole story of course since one can hardly explain the conservative side's unpopularity with African Americans based totally on an almost fifty year old campaign.  The Goldwater campaign and related events did much damage to political conservatism's name among African Americans, but much has also happened to keep the antipathy alive these many years later. 

I'll have some more ideas a little later.

One of the things that is striking to me about our politics is that it is, from a conservative perspective, insufficiently ideologically sorted out. What I mean is that there is a sizeable fraction of voters who, if given an exam on the issues, would mostly answer in favor of the "conservative" positions on taxes, regulation, abortion, ect. But those same voters would vote for a liberal Democrat over a conservative Republican. These same voters might consider political conservatives to be their political enemy. A lot of times these are cases of racial and ethnic politics trumping ideology as we have come to think of it.

But I also think that we should take seriously the reasons why these voters are choosing liberal candidates with whom they have so many disagreements. That doesn't mean we have to agree with all of the reasons, but to try to understand the history that has brought us to this place and try to plan approaches that will work better. This is destined to be very complicated. William Voegeli's  terrific and brutally honest essay in the Summer 2008 issue of the CLAREMONT REVIEW OF BOOKS really only illuminated a small corner of the tortured relationship between conservatives and the African America community. Similar work could be done about the relationship between the political expressions of conservatism and Latinos. That does not mean that we should always be looking for blame on the conservative side. Sometimes liberals do as well as they do because of the use of slander to create a false sense of ethnic/racial siege. But sometimes conservatives have taken approaches that have ended up being counterproductive in winning the votes of nonwhites. In some cases conservatives have needed to fight harder (possibly with a harsher and more aggressive communication strategy) for the votes of people in those communities. I don't really have a final answer, but I do think that conservatives need to think alot harder about how to bring over nonwhite Americans who share our issue preferences but think of conservatives as the villains of politics.  

These haven't been the best couple of weeks for Rush Limbaugh, Michael Steele, or Bobby Jindal. (OK, let's carve out a possible exception for Limbaugh.)

What these three people have in common is that they're all significant figures who have taken fire from different elements of the conservative movement at the behest of the Obama White House and the Kos/TPM/Olbermann triangle.

It's time this stopped.

Conservatives need to decide who we want to see succeed and who we want to see fail. We then need to calibrate our reactions to the inevitable missteps from either camp accordingly. If someone we want to succeed comes under attack, we hold our fire and close ranks -- unless it's clear they've become a long-term liability. If it's someone we want to see fail -- like Jim Bunning -- we unload until they get off the stage.

Limbaugh, Steele, and Jindal are all important personalities that we should all want to see succeed. The larger and more influential Rush's audience, the more mobilized the base will be against Obama. This has nothing to do with Rush exerting policy leadership over the GOP -- and everything to do with Rush as a popularizer of conservative principles and a rallying point for opposition. The best reaction to the Limbaugh "controversy" is for GOP politicians to avoid it entirely -- while Rush's audience grows and grows.

Michael Steele made a tactical mistake in getting drawn into this argument, but I still want him to be a successful RNC Chairman. Steele was elected Chairman as a fresh face and a reformer, a basic orientation the Republican Party will need to embrace in 2010. He remains one of the most compelling public faces of the party. If I were a Democrat, I would rejoice if Michael Steele were somehow made less relevant. Moreover, his challenge of the party's blind support for incumbents -- conservatives' #1 frustration with the RNC -- is probably more relevant to his leadership as Chairman than his Rush comments.

And some conservatives have gleefully joined in on the pile-on against Bobby Jindal for his delivery of the non-SOTU response and stayed mostly silent when it came time to counter the left's coordinated attack against Jindal's leadership during Katrina.

Taking a step back, and it's easy to see why the Obama team must be rejoicing. Some of the Republican Party's most charismatic and influential voices are being attacked -- from within. Conservatives appear flailing and divided, embroiled in controversies against the leading talk show host, the party chairman, and one of the party's rising stars.

I could deal with the "flailing and divisive" narrative if it were aimed at public embarrassments, like Bunning, or against more expendable, transactional pols -- people whose removal would not hurt the cause and in fact could help it.

We should be highly vigilant -- however -- when the attacks are aimed at people who would be significant public scalps for the Democrats, and who are not easily replaced.

At some level, we have to project a basic level of confidence in the people we choose to elevate -- whether it's on the radio, at the RNC, or in the statehouses -- especially if these are the kind of people we say we want -- younger, aggressive, reformers, etc. If we are too eager to throw people like Steele and Jindal under the bus when we were celebrating them not so long ago, conservatives overall appear indecisive and uncertain in their leadership. 

Ultimately, the journey out of the wilderness won't happen without a leader. We will ultimately have to learn how to get on the bus with somebody, warts and all. This is what a mature movement did with Reagan. And it's what the left did with Obama. I'm not pronouncing anyone the leader right now, but if we fall into the left's trap of delegitimizing important conservatives and potential rising stars from the get-go, we will never know what it is like to have that kind of leadership because only the utterly mediocre will be let through the netroots/MSM filter of Republican leadership.