Conservatism

I agree with Alexander Brunk's main point over on the main site (unfortunately my screen-reading software doesn't cope well with HTML so I can't post the link and make it look pretty). II intended to post this comment in response, but I decided it was long enough to merit a post of it's own.

There is an increasing tendency to hyphenate our conservatism, which I think  is dangerous. In general, I'd describe conservatives as people who, whensome grand new form of social engineering is proposed, stand athwart the train yelling, at the very least, "hold on a minute. Let's think this over shall we?" This is the tendency which unites opponents of redefining marriage with opponents of redefining the role of government; a basic sense that our institutions and liberties have served us well and shouldn't be overturned lightly. Incidentally, I'd argue that defense cons are opposing a redefining of our national interests and defense policy from the common framework we've accepted throughout history. The US has almost never embraced the isolation of the Paulites or the internationalism of the progressive left, and for those who think neoconservatism is some radical form of new foreign policy, I'd recommend a more careful reading of the history of the nineteenth century. Now, this isn't to say that conservatives are lock-step opposed to "change", but we tend to, I think, look for reforming rather than revolutionary change. As Rudi Giuliani brilliantly pointed out in the primary, we should be talking about the kind of change we want, rather than simply talking about change.

This does not mean that every conservative is going to agree about everything all the time. Mike Huckabee and Rudi Giuliani have, policy-wise, fairly little in common. There are also some conservatives who believe that their caution should extend to both fiscal and social issues, but who tend to emphasize one or the other more. However, if we all share this basic caution and skepticism about the social engineering which has fascinated progressives from eugenics to the "new new deal", then we are all conservatives.

I think progressives have a different, more eschatological philosophy. For a progressive (which is a more accurate term than liberal I think), there is always (A) some catastrophic calamity facing society which (B) we have brought on ourselves and which (C) only a radical re-engineering of society can ultimately solve. Eugenicists railed against the polution of "good genes" by hordes of Eastern European immigrants and the handicapped. Their solution was a new, almost unheard of regime of national entry quotas for immigration and the sterilization of those they demed mentally and physically incapable. The recession of 1929, under the progressive presidencies of Herbert Hoover (read Modern Times by Johnson if you disbelieve Hoover was a progressive) and FDR gave birth to the single greatest expansion of the role and scope of government in American history to that point. LBJ fought a war on poverty with yet another such expansion. The calamity of US foreign policy causing all manner of domestic and international ills (the Progressive read not mine) must be met with unilateral nuclear disarmament and a policy of "getting along better" with other nations. Racism could, for progressives, be socialy engineered away by successive government programs from bussing to affirmative action. Finally, in modern times, global warming must be met with another radical reconstruction of our society. Of course, some of these problems (racism) were and are real and others (the fears of eugenicists) were products of progressives' fevered imaginations. Whether real or imagined however, the problems spotted by progressives are almost never solved by them. We need progressives in society, spotting areas which need reform, but we probably ought never actually let them run things.

One more thought. I think that, among some fiscal conservatives, there is a fear that "so-cons" are really social engineers in Christian clothing. This may be true in a few cases, but in general I think you've got nothing to worry about. For the most part, so-cons want to be left alone to live and worship in the way they choose, and they feel that the hostility of culture and government makes this problematic. In many cases, so-cons want to change culture, but through persuasion and the open marketplace of ideas by preference. Unfortunately, much of the media and cultural attention lavished on so-cons portrays them as social engineers. Don't believe the hype.

Promoted. Debate is good. -Patrick

Last week, my friend Jon Henke wrote a post criticizing Heritage President Ed Feulner and more broadly the entire conservative movement (full disclosure: Dr. Feulner is my boss, but in this post I write only for myself and am representing my own views) .

As you might have guessed, I have to take issue with Jon. While he makes some valid points (as always), I still think he goes too far on a couple.

First, Jon argues that the personnel of the Republican Party apparatus is composed of movement conservatives. As someone who spent a good deal of time working in the Senate, I am surprised that he would make that argument.

I think Jon and I are both painfully aware of some the types of staffers who have clawed their way to the top throughout the beltway-Party infrastructure. In many instances, these are people who have openly disdained us and our ideas. Far too many of them desperately cling to power for power’s sake. And far too many of them wouldn’t know a great, principled policy idea if it smacked them in the face.

To say that the conservative movement should bear responsibility in that arena is something I vehemently disagree with. I mean heck, as a staffer for Jim DeMint over the better part of the last two years, I saw first hand how the good Senator repeatedly went toe to toe with GOP establishment and received nothing but scorn for it – from staffers and senators alike.

And for Heritage’s part, they have been in the battle every step of the way. But frankly, since Heritage got banned from then-Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s office back in 2003 over our opposition to the prescription drug bill, it has been an adversarial relationship most of the way. And that is as it should be given the makeup of the Party right now.

This adversarial relationship has continued to manifest itself over the years. Whether it be on immigration reform, Harriet Miers, No Child Left Behind or Bridges to Nowhere, Heritage and the broader movement have stood opposed to the powers that be – both elected and unelected – in the Republican Party.

That leads to my second gripe. Jon says we need to push the reset button on ideas. Look, I am somewhat susceptible to this argument. I liked parts of David Frum’s book Comeback, I read Brooks regularly and can even stomach some Douthat on occasion. I certainly don’t agree with all that these guys are pushing, but I love the outside the box thinking when and if it advances the cause. But it is, in my opinion, unfair to write a post that portrays Ed Feulner and the Heritage Foundation as a group lacking ideas.

Stuart Butler, Heritage’s Domestic Policy VP, has been the national leader in pushing the idea of a revamped employer-based health system as the alternative to Obamacare as well as a major reform of the tax treatment of health care – a proposal that would achieve equity while empowering those without employer coverage. Who knows? Heritage’s persistence may even yield successes under our new liberal overlords. The rest of our health care team have been effective as well in pushing “transformational” ideas as evidenced by nearly all the major candidates adopting some form of our proposal.

Or take entitlements. Heritage convinced the top people at left-leaning Brookings and Urban Institute to seriously address this issue. It was Heritage who argued for a transformation in the budget process to “end entitlements as we know them” by putting Medicare, Medicaid, etc. on to the same budget basis as defense.

These are ideas that are, as Jon says, “transformational” and they would be enormously beneficial to the country if acted upon.

There is plenty more.

The problem has not been within the idea incubators, it has been with the politicians who either cannot explain their position, or frankly don’t have the heart and the passion to advance the idea. We make ideas, we don’t coach politicians. Not in our job description.

Finally, Jon ends with a call to “reset the movement” and develop a new guard to “compete” with the old guard. We are conservatives, not revolutionaries. We do not reset. Conservatives build on the past by identifying what has worked and discarding what has not. We stand on the shoulders of giants and we yes, we must train up the next generation. Edmund Burke said the true mark of a statesman is the disposition to preserve and the ability to improve. I bet we both agree that should be our model.

Surveying the political landscape, it is easy for conservatives to become, shall we say, disillusioned. The recent electoral slaughter notwithstanding, conservative principles have been on the decline for quite some time. Even the Republican Party, supposed to be the party of conservatism, has abandoned a conservative method of governance for one that represents simply a watered-down version of the agenda of their Democratic counterparts.

In fact, I would submit that this is precisely the reason for the defeat at the polls of so many Republicans. The Republican Party has been tarnished by a lack of conviction. Rather than sticking to a core set of values and proposing solutions to America's problems based on those values, Republicans have for years been simply reacting to the proposals of Democrats with a “lite” version of whatever their idea is.

So the people have spoken, and they want “change.” Here, however, is the golden opportunity for conservatives. The change represented by the new Democratic majorities in Congress and their President-elect doesn't appear to be change at all. Rather, the “change” coming to Washington is, in fact, a furtherance of the policies that have been implemented in this country for decades. Granted, Obama and the Democrats will likely implement these policies to an extreme not heretofore presented, but they are still the same policies that we've seen for decades.

Bad economy? Spend more government money. Energy policy? Go green. Foreign policy? Make nice with the enemy. Taxes? Raise 'em. And on and on it goes. Every single policy idea being proposed by the Democrats at this juncture is nothing but a regurgitation of a policy that has either been tried or proposed for a long, long time.

So what would real change look like? Real change would be a return to the principles that made this country great, not a continuance of the failed policies of the past. Real change would be a complete turnaround from the decline toward Socialism that this country has been undertaking. Revamping major, failing government programs such as Social Security and our education policy would be real change. Advancing the narrative that America works best when it's Americans doing the work, rather than the government, would represent real change. Ending the lifestyle of career politicians would be real change.

Conservatives have an opportunity to change the narrative, and it is one that we can ill afford to squander. We must not be in denial about the fact that the people are demanding change, we just need to present them with the change that they desire. Americans are instinctively conservative. They don't like government meddling in the personal affairs and are offended at the idea that they cannot take care of themselves and so the government must interfere. Conservatives must begin right now by triangulating, in the mold of Dick Morris, the Democrat's message and pointing out to the people of this country that furthering the decline of this country is not, in fact, real change.

It is a Herculean task, as the media is against us. However, if conservatives want to stop the decimation of not only our values but the country in general, it is a task that they must undertake with fervor. Our ideas win when we adhere to them and present them to the electorate in the form of real solutions. We must get to work advancing our cause and our ideas, before the entrenched liberal policies of the past become the standard by which everything is measured.

Cross-posted at my blog.

In the weeks following the debacle that was Election 2008 I have heard every pundit, commentator, expert, and imbecile declare what the GOP must do or not do to attract this or that vital demographic. Rarely, very rarely, have I heard the most simple thing we CAN do... Nominate candidates that practice and advocate Small Government, Individual Liberty, and a Strong America.

Here's what I'm going to do: I will IGNORE any more talking heads that want to opine on what the "GOP must do" unless they have these three things as the core of their strategy. No more Web 1.0 this, 40 under 40 that, win the Hispanics this way, win the blue collar vote that way... Give me decent conservative candidates -- FOR A CHANGE.

“Which comes first,” asks Michael Turk, “ideas or the message?” That’s an easy one. Of course it’s ideas. But to understand why, let’s think about politics in the context of the production cycle.

This concept is not my original thinking. It was explained to me a couple weeks ago during a presentation on the future of conservatism as a way to grasp our shortcomings and understand the gaps of our movement.

Let’s start with the basic manufacturing production cycle, which I’ve boiled down to three essential steps: 1) obtain raw materials, 2) turn them into a product, and 3) sell that product to consumers.

Now let’s apply those three steps in the context of producing change in politics:

1. Coming up with ideas. Academia plays an important role, albeit less significant today due the shortage of right-leaning academics. For example, think about the work of the powerhouse team of political economists at the University of Chicago (Frank Knight, Milton Friedman, George Stigler) and how their ideas on free-market economics began to take shape after World War II.
2. Turning ideas into public policies. This is role of think tanks -- and on the right there is no shortage of them. Think tanks existed prior to the 1970s, but mostly in the form of academic institutions without students (AEI, Brookings, CSIS). The Heritage Foundation (my employer) helped usher in a new approach. These new institutions (Cato, ATR, NTU) began working directly with policymakers to have an impact.
3. Implementing policies. Here is where activist groups, media and politicians fit. The left has a superior network of implementers who are effective at shaping a coherent message (MoveOn.org) and using communications channels (full-time bloggers) to sell it. We're about to see how a politician, Barack Obama, achieves this through governing. On the right, groups like Club for Growth and online communities such as RedState fit into this portion of the cycle. Rebuild the Party is an example of an implementer.

The point of this exercise is to understand the imbalance we face on the right. There is a serious deficiency of academics and implementers. We have an abundance of think tanks. Because we lack balance, the production cycle is thrown out of whack and we’re unable to produce change.

You see, ideas alone don’t produce change. And activist groups and bloggers savvy at marketing can’t produce change if they don’t have principled public policies to back up their message. We need a more integrated structure and balanced production cycle.

Promoted: Ed Feulner is the President of the Heritage Foundation. -Matt Moon

[Listen to Feulner and ask him questions today at 12:05 p.m. ET during the Conservative Bloggers' Briefing on BlogTalkRadio.]

Conservatives today need to get their mind right. And the first order of business is to stop equating the Republican Party with the conservative movement.

Our opponents on the left are happy to draw this false parallel. Before the 2006 elections, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne argued, “The decline of conservatism leaves a vacuum in American politics.” According to Dionne, the failures of the Republican Party were a failure of the conservative movement.

A couple of months ago, the left-wing American Prospect ran an article, "The Coming Conservative Crack-up." After describing what he saw as fatal Republican mistakes in the presidential campaign, author Paul Waldman concluded: "In other words, all the pillars that have held up conservatism for so long are crumbling." There it is again: If the GOP fails, conservatism must be crumbling.

Last spring the New Yorker ran a widely discussed article by George Packer, "The Fall of Conservatism: Have the Republicans Run Out of Ideas?" That title commits the same error: Republican failures are interpreted as the fall of conservatism.

I expect this from our opponents on the left. They will seize upon any pretext to announce the death of conservatism. They've been doing it for decades. But too many conservatives today are buying into that fallacy. That is a dangerous mistake, because it will sap your will to fight. If you believe the current sorry state of the GOP is a measure of the health of conservatism, you're bound to conclude that the conservative movement is done for.

If you want to see when conservatives were in trouble, go back 35 years to 1973, the year The Heritage Foundation set up shop. We were just a handful of people in a few rented rooms. At that time there were no cable outlets like Fox News. There was no conservative talk radio, because the Fairness Doctrine was still in effect. Al Gore hadn't invented the Internet, so there were no conservative bloggers exposing the biases of the mainstream media and delivering conservative commentary to millions of readers.

In those days, the conservative movement was in trouble. In fact, it barely existed. Today the Republican Party is in trouble -- serious trouble of its own making. But the conservative movement is not in decline. In addition to Fox News, hundreds of talk radio programs and scores of national magazines, conservatives have achieved a staggering presence on the Internet. Blogs like The Next Right have inspired the next generation of conservative leaders to plot the future.

Given the results of the election, it's obvious that Congress and the White House won't be receptive to many conservative ideas. So we'll be playing a great deal more defense. And there will be plenty of defense to play as liberals try to redistribute wealth, abolish the right of workers to cast secret ballots on union elections, nationalize health care, bankrupt energy companies that use coal -- the list just goes on and on. It will truly be a “target-rich environment.”

But there's good news here, too. Conservative are better equipped than ever before to play defense. We have analytical resources like Heritage’s Center for Data Analysis; we have a vibrant network of allied organizations that can be mobilized very quickly when policy issues come to a head; we have a virtual army of bloggers who can alert tens of millions of Americans literally within hours. And we have some of the best educated and most experienced policy experts in the world.

And while we are playing defense, we must also be educating the American public – both on first principles and on specific strategies to build an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity and civil society can flourish.

This isn't a time for despondency. It is a time for optimism.

This isn't a time to look backward with regret. We need to look forward with hope and purpose and commitment.

Now isn't the time to let political setbacks drain our resolve. It is the time to remember that progress doesn't follow a straight line. Setbacks are a natural part of gaining ground.

If nothing else, this blog is about us on the right doing a better job communicating and knocking down barriers to our effectiveness that come from within the movement.

A great example is how many on the right are all lathered up about the return of the Fairness Doctrine under an Obama Administration.

I have two words for these people: Not happening. Not only has Obama, though a spokesman, flatly denied any interest in reimposing the Fairness Doctrine, or otherwise failed to show any interest in the issue, but his pursuing it would be political suicide. Even if you don't believe a word that comes out of his mouth, believe that he is not this dumb. 

Not only would the Fairness Doctrine constitute a direct provocation to the Right without any tangible political benefit in the Center or the Left, but Democrats now the advantage in both mainstream and alternative media and have less reason to go after conservatives' atrophying talk radio advantage.

As tirelessly chronicled elsewhere, sites like TPM and HuffPo and ThinkProgress are the liberal talk radio. Obama raised a motherlode from the Internet in a way conservatives have been unable to do using talk radio because the Web is an all-encompassing home for communication and activation. Not only do you you have a mechanism for motivating people, but you have the click mechanism for funding and real-time response. Even when talk radio is successful at driving action, as with the immigration debate, its versatility is limited by the number of talkers on the AM dial. On the Internet, the number of activation channels is unlimited and the surround sound from this cacophony is persistent. The Left understood that the web was the medium of the future, with flailing catchup projects like Air America reduced to window dressing.

Sorry to burst anyone's bubble, but liberals are unlikely to upset the apple cart with alternative media because they now dedicated channels of their own, unlike in the early Clinton years. The reimposition of the Fairness Doctrine went nowhere when Rush was on the rise in 1993, and it will go nowhere next year or the year, especially with conservative talk radio no longer the center of the universe.

So, why does it bother me that some people focus on the issue?

First off, even with the proliferation of media, there is only so much bandwidth in the media ecosystem for conservative opposition messages. Do you really want to waste it on a nothing-burger like the Fairness Doctrine? There are enough legitimate threats -- endless bailouts, runaway deficit spending, nationalized health care, card check -- that I don't think we can afford to throw away our limited political capital on a non-issue.

Second, conservatism in the public arena has had a substance problem these last few months. Call it the William Ayers Effect -- for what we were talking about when the economy went to hell in a handbasket this fall. Obama is promising drastic and radical change on the issue that's of central and singular importance to the public -- the economy. It is on that issue, and on very few others, on which we must engage. If Obama revives the Old Deal on top of the $700 billion bailout, that will be a huge shift felt for generations to come. If he ultimately succumbs to automakers' demands for a bailout, he'll have rewarded the most pathological sectors of our economy and crippled what's left of the domestic manufacturing base. Ditto for nationalizing one seventh of the economy in addition to the everything else that's been nationalized in the last sixty days.

The Center for American Progress's talk of going 76 years back in time to the Old Deal -- when its president John Podesta is leading the Obama transition, is dead serious. It's time for conservatives to be similarly serious about how they want to oppose Obama.

Be afraid, be very afraid, but not because the Fairness Doctrine is coming back.

I always here about the great pool of fiscally conservative socially liberal voters and it makes me laugh just a little bit. The reason for this is simple; they don't exist. In John’s post over on the home page, David Bose of the Cato Institute sights a poll indicating that 59 percent of the population describes themselves as “fiscally conservative and socially liberal”.  Putting aside the fact that this number almost certainly under-performs other indicators (such as the Pugh Hispanic Study) which deal with minority communities, experience indicates that this polling basically means that people like the "idea" of fiscal conservatism, so long as their taxes and other people's spending gets cut. Nobody really wants less money coming to their district to build playgrounds, community theaters and even, in one district in Iowa, rain forests. It should not be surprising that these "social moderate" tend to elect congressmen who vote for tax increases and big spending bills.

This brings me to the chief irony around which this post is based: the most fiscally conservative congressman and senators tend to also be the most socially conservative. I challenge you Libertarian types to go find a solid fiscal conservative congressman who's also a social moderate. Better yet, find a whole caucus of them elected by Libertarians. But we'll start with a simple test; how many of the members of the house and senate who voted against the Medicare proscription drug benefit were pro-choice or pro-gay marriage? I'm waiting...  In the meantime, the fiscally conservative heroes in the senate (Tom Cobern, Jim DeMint) and house (Jeff Flake, Paul Rian, Jeb Henserling and, at one point, Pat Toomey) all, to the best of my knowledge, have pretty solid socially conservative voting records.
How can this be? Isn’t social conservatism the attempt to impose 1950s-style morality on the country, to force women to get back-alley abortions and brainwash your kids not to believe in dinosaurs? Um… not so much. The truth that social liberal activists don’t want anyone to recognize, let alone make political hay about, is that Even on social issues there is a broad natural consensus between limited government advocates and traditional so-cons. How is a court decision which federalizes abortion law and violates the tenth amendment at all in line with either limited government or "choice"? How is government redefinition of a sacramental institution (marriage) in any way limited? How is it "imposing big government" to let local school districts determine their science curriculum (for the record I'm a Christian who believes in evolution, but since I actually, ya know, also believe in limited government and all, I've got no problem if a local school district wants to teachID in science classes, though I might consider sending my kids, if I had them, to a different school). Limited government means local choices; this is the essence of Libertarianism. Unfortunately, many modern Libertarians have conflated liberty with Libertinism, advocating for a government big enough to force all local communities to conform to their absolute notion of choice. This has nothing to do with John Locke, Adam Smith, Frederick Hayeck or any other giant of libertarian history. Indeed, the one thing which has always unified fiscal and social conservatives is our opposition to social engineering. Despite the media hype about so-cons imposing their views on people, social conservatism is, by definition, an attempt to protect the local community from social engineering. Perhaps this explains why, when it comes to voting in congress, the so-con fis-con divide is nearly non-existent.
 

135 years ago today, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettsyburg Address.  Since we're in need of Republican leaders these days, I thought it appropriate to call out one of the big guns.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.