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Conservatism

The New Republicans

Submitted by Daniel Ruwe on Thu, 08/07/2008 - 22:06
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Crossposted at Right Minds

The conservative movement is separated into two competing viewpoints. There are those conservatives who believe that the Republican party should embrace the ideas of the Reagan Revolution by calling for low taxes, a balanced budget, and traditional values. These people tend to be populist conservative leaders—pundits like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, or bloggers such as Michelle Malkin or Ace of Spades. This line of thought dominates the grassroots of the GOP.
 
Then there are those who think that the Reagan mold is outdated, and that the GOP needs to move in a new direction. This direction typically involves abandoning social conservatives, raising taxes, implementing some form of universal heathcare, and taking action against climate change. At times, this wing of conservatism attempts to make the Republican party more attractive to a larger base of voters; at others, it attempts to achieve liberal goals though conservative methods. This line of the thought is much less organized and dogmatical than the more established traditional wing of conservatism.
 
Backers of this view are rarely well-known commentators, but they do seem to occupy positions of the power in the GOP. (The GOP’s positions on immigration and global warming, for example, don’t mesh very well with its conservative base). While it’s not certain that the GOP leadership really follows any coherent philosophy, it has certainly turned its back on Reaganism and embraced a more populist (at least from a liberal point of view) attitude. Other proponents of remaking conservatism involve the neocons at the Weekly Standard (not all, but some such as David Frum), and paleoconservatives like Pat Buchanan.
 
Reagan conservatives accuse the new conservatives “watering down” conservatism, while the new conservatives believe that the traditionalists are overstaying their welcome—the issues they support may have been relevant in the eighties, but their day is past. (I hesitate to call the new breed of conservatives “neoconservatives,” since the neoconservatives really joined the Right in the seventies due Left’s passivism in the face of the threat of the Soviet Union, and not necessarily to remake the movement. In any case, the term has been so hijacked by liberals to mean simply a Bad Person that it is virtually meaningless anyway).
 
Both sides are convinced that their position in indisputably the right one, and don’t want to hear anything to the contrary. Many traditional conservatives have vowed never to support the somewhat moderate John McCain, while many new conservatives (who seemed to congregate around Rudy Giuliani) sneer at the naivety of their conservative rivals.
 
So who is correct? Both are, at least in part. The conservative movement really is stuck in the past, and has not adapted to new realities. The conservative movement’s adulation of Ronald Reagan is counterproductive—Reagan was a great President, but he wasn’t flawless, and anyhow served twenty years ago. It’s time to move on—conservatives should respect Reagan, but they should stop selling themselves as exact replicas of him.
 
Also, Republicans still make cutting spending, cutting taxes, and fighting foreign enemies the cornerstone of their campaigns (at least at the presidential level). Unfortunately, these issues are not the vital issues they once were. Cutting spending is a cliché—everyone promises to, but no one actually does, and no one thinks that the Republicans will. Cutting taxes is admirable, but high taxes are not the problem they were in the early eighties, and don’t resonate with people to the same degree they did then. Fighting foreign enemies is the one issue that has stayed current—Americans always want to be protected.
 
Instead of promoting tax cuts (which are, it should be noted, a good thing), Republicans should focus on cutting regulation and the size of government. The federal government is far too big and unwieldy, and has expanded far too rapidly. Reducing the size of, say, HUD and like government programs would probably improve both the country and the GOP’s electoral chances.
 
The new conservatives are correct in their insistence on updating the GOP’s message—but they confuse “updating” with “rebuilding.” The conservative platform may not be perfect, and may need a bit of modernizing, but it is a strong foundation, and one conservatives should stick with.

 

How to Take Back the GOP

Submitted by Daniel Ruwe on Thu, 07/31/2008 - 23:55
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Crossposted at Right Minds

Yesterday, I wrote about how the Republican party has gradually drifted left, and how conservatives were in part responsible for letting that happen. It’s hard to disagree with the idea that nonconservatives have taken control of much of the party—the de facto Republican position on the proper role of government, immigration, and spending is at odds with the conservative one. But what’s done is done, and conservatives must now take back the GOP.
 
Before conservatives “take back” the GOP, however, they should realize that it was never very conservative to begin with. With the exceptions of Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, the Republican party has never nominated anyone for president who was a true ideological conservative, and the GOP Congressional leadership has never been particularly strong from a conservative standpoint. (The 1994 Congress had some good conservative ideas, but it mostly squandered whatever promise it may have had). It would probably be more accurate to say that conservatives must “take over” the Republican party.
 
The first step, and the most obvious one, is to support conservative candidates at the grassroots level. There are a great many Republican Congressmen who are not conservative (Arlen Specter), or corrupt (Don Young, or the Ohio state government pre-2006), or both. It seems obvious the conservatives should oppose them in the primaries, but that really hasn’t happened, at least not enough to make a difference. (One exception is the attempt by some Pennsylvania conservatives to unseat liberal Republican Arlen Specter in favor of Pat Toomey in the primary. George Bush undercut them by endorsing Specter).
 
This does seem to be changing. There are now grassroots movements such as The Next Right and Down the Ticket that actively promote conservative GOP candidates. This is a necessary step, and the first phase of remaking the GOP.
 
Another, less obvious answer is ensuring that the Republican leadership is conservative. The key leaders of the GOP are not always politicians—some of the most influential people in the party are the directors of the Republican National Committee. The RNC is very powerful—it organizes the party platform, helps with fundraising, and decides which candidates get funds. The ideology of the RNC goes a long way towards deciding the ideology of the party as a whole.
 
Mike Duncan is the RNC head right now, and I honestly don’t know how conservative he is, and Google doesn’t have many answers. He was head of the Committee during the whole amnesty fiasco, though, which might tell us something. I imagine that he is a Republican first, and a conservative second; the GOP position will always be his.
 
Pre-Duncan, the RNC did both a very good and very poor job. Very good, because it really was quite good at such things as micotargeting and message delivery to help get its candidates elected, but poor because those candidates weren’t always worth helping. For years, the RNC basically ignored pork fiends like Ted Stevens—had it cracked down on corrupt candidates, perhaps the Republican party would be stronger today.  
 
There are some people who feel that the best way to turn the Republican party back to its conservative ways is to throw the 2008 election. This, they feel, will so alarm the Republican leadership that they will instantly move the party to the right. Actually, there is a fifty-fifty chance that the leadership would just give up conservatives as a lost cause and move left to attract center-left moderates, but no one ever thinks of that. And anyhow, Obama is far too liberal, and the damage he would do too the country would be too great. He would withdraw precipitately from Iraq, would appoint at least one and probably two Supreme Court justices, and would increase federal spending maybe almost as much as George W. Bush. It’s not worth it. (Although given the incompetence of the GOP, I can understand the temptation).
 
Taking back (or taking over) the Republican party won’t be easy. But it is necessary—if conservatism is to remain a functioning political philosophy, it will have to be represented by the GOP. And since the country needs conservative principles now, changing the GOP is an essential task.

 

The Conservative Coalition

Submitted by Daniel Ruwe on Tue, 07/22/2008 - 22:01
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Crossposted at Right Minds

I have argued often in the past the liberalism isn’t a coherent political philosophy, but rather a loose collection of interest groups, such as feminists, environmentalists, and minorities. This lack of theoretical underpinning helps explain the lack of really popular liberal media figures (Keith Olbermann’s ratings are as good as it gets for liberals, and his ratings are only about half of those of his arch-rival Bill O’Reilly) and much of the absurdity and immaturity found on the Left.
 
However, the Left was not always this way. When liberalism first became a coherent political philosophy, it had a firm philosophical foundation. (This foundation is a bit complicated; liberalism has its origins in the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and maybe even in the works of Karl Marx, and evolved from there). But over the years, liberalism embraced one interest group after another: blacks (the Left deserves credit for its early civil rights work; however, it has since embraced the grievance theory of racial relations), feminists, environmentalists, gays, and the list goes on. Now, liberalism is simply a theory of government that preaches that government exists to help the needy, minorities, or any other Democrat voting bloc.
 
This could happen to the Right as well, if conservatives forget their roots. Modern conservatism is founded on three primary principles: traditional values, a strong foreign policy, and fiscal minimalism.
 
I say “modern” conservatism because these three main beliefs are not mutually inclusive—it is quite possible to support both abortion and fiscal responsibility, or an assertive foreign policy and the welfare state. Modern conservatism works because it has managed to keep these groups united, without favoring one to detriment of another. Together, these groups form a unified, coherent movement.
 
These groups came from very different traditions. The foreign policy hawks are the oldest element of conservatism—they owe their existence to the Soviet threat. Many, perhaps most, liberals favored appeasing Communism, and some even found elements to admire and emulate in it. Early conservative thought centered around opposition to this concept.
 
The libertarian movement formed shortly afterwards. Many Republicans were aghast at the changes wrought by the New Deal; unfortunately, they were hopelessly ineffectual in their opposition. A new brand of fiscal conservative arose in response to Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs. Whether it was because of the ineffectiveness of big government, because they were better organized, or for some other reason, they had much better luck than the opponents of the New Deal. They didn’t roll back many government programs, but they have been successful in slowing their growth.
 
Social conservatives were the group that put the GOP into the majority. They believe that traditional values should be preserved, even if that means government must get involved. This group was the latest to join the conservative coalition, and probably the most underrepresented among the party elite.
 
There is nothing to keep these groups unified. In a way, the conservative movement’s dilemma is much more difficult than the one the Left faced—the Left simply kept adding pressure group till the philosophy collapsed into a confusing mess; the Right must, in order to survive, keep its component constituencies from tearing the movement apart.
 
This could happen so very easily—the different branches of conservatism have many potential contradictions. For example, social conservatives often support government action to preserve traditional values; this could be considered inconsistent with libertarian wing of the movement. (I say “could be” since many libertarians—for example, me—believe that the right to life from conception outweighs many concerns about the dangers of big government). Libertarians support a small government; foreign policy hawks support an aggressive government, and the two are not often found together. Conservatism has given the GOP a sturdy majority—but it is a fragile coalition. Conservatives must do everything possible to ensure that this coalition endures.

 

To the Ramparts!

Submitted by Walt Gilbert on Mon, 07/21/2008 - 18:24
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The addition of Andrew Breitbart to the stable of columnists at the Washington Times is, to my mind, a great development.  It seems to signal an emerging consciousness within the editorial board that there is a need for conservatism to renew its efforts to take part in the creation of cultural fare rather than ceding it to the left without so much as a peep, unless it happens to be the tired, old puling that conservatives have come to use as a crutch to explain the movement's misfortunes.

Breitbart tackles this issue in his column today, and it's well worth the read if only to serve as a reminder that if the rebuilding of the movement is to have any hope of success, it will have to take place on all fronts.  The cultural front is perhaps the most crucial one, since potential voters who aren't otherwise engaged most often develop their opinions based on what they're exposed to through the arts.

Andrew puts it aptly in the following passage:

If we encouraged our young to consider careers in the arts, we would begin to reap the benefits in short order. Instead, we waste valuable time complaining and now are knee-deep in our enemy's dogma and have the indignity of paying for their products. Too much time has been lost navel-gazing about why things haven't fallen our way.

Read the full article here.

Conservatism Is Not Dead.

Submitted by Jonathan Hall on Mon, 07/07/2008 - 22:14
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I've heard elected officials, pundits, and voters from both the Left and the Right proclaim 2008 as the year that conservatism dies. Sure, we've got a few things to be glum about--a Republican President that has driven us into a deficit, a Congress full of Republicans that enabled the President's spending habits and have been laden with scandals, and a Presidential candidate who could be best described as a moderate.

Conservatism has taken quite a few hits as of late. However, it is not dead. It is a set of principles, beliefs, and ideals that will not die as long as there are those who are willing to courageously fight for them, and stick with them through thick and thin (regardless of electability). There are true conservatives at nearly every level of government--even if they aren't running for President. 

It is entirely possible that Liberalism will win the battle in 2008. However, it is even more possible that Liberalism will not win the war. It appears that even Europe, an area that ushered in Liberalism with open arms, may be looking to turn back to the Right. Doug Saunders, a writer for the Canadian Globe & Mail, says the following:

It is a darkly ironic reversal of fortunes: At the start of the decade, a conservative such as George W. Bush was almost alone in the world; today, the world is being overtaken by conservative leaders — though not necessarily, as we shall see, by their ideas. Ten years ago, Newsweek magazine proclaimed that, "with the exception of Spain, every major country in Western Europe is now run by a left-of-centre party," adding tellingly that "conservative political parties keep winning policy debates and then losing elections." Today, almost the opposite is true. Across Europe, the left is collapsing.

Interesting. Apparently, once the policies of quasi-socialistic Liberalism are installed, they seem to be eventually rejected. Conservatism will eventually prevail because it empowers the individual, as opposed to the government. The government will never be able to know individuals better than they know themselves; personal freedom, empowered by conservatism, will win the day.

 

Which way for liberty: Reflections on Personal Democracy Forum 2008

Submitted by marktapscott on Thu, 07/03/2008 - 11:34
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Great thoughts from Mark Tapscott. -Patrick

It's not often that one gets the opportunity to be among and converse with several hundred of the smartest people in the world, but that is precisely what I was able to do last week as a participant at Personal Democracy Forum 2008 at Rose Hall in New York City's Lincoln Center complex.

It was my first PDF and, despite only being able to attend the second day, it was a memorable experience because I came away with a heightened sense that we are on the cusp of profound, even revolutionary changes in government and public policy thanks to the Internet. Being a conservative, I don't use that word "revolution" lightly.

I was in fact continually reminded throughout my time at PDF of Alexander Hamilton's prophetic observation at the outset of The Federalist Papers, America's most important contribution to serious  political thought:

"It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force."

Conservatism Can Work

Submitted by Conservative En... on Fri, 06/27/2008 - 14:39
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Since 2006, it’s been almost a curse to be called a conservative. The President is a “conservative,” and the country has quickly turned their back to him. The Grand Old Party is at its lowest “party affiliation” ranking in polls since the time of Watergate. The title conservative has become synonymous with Bush and the GOP in the US and those aren't necessarily something that you want to be associated with. Their "brand" is toxic. But, conservatism, no matter the "brand," can always win if it’s advertised correctly and shown in a way that makes sense to the everyman. This is how a platform can be rebuilt and save the conservative movement.

Taxes and spending have always been winning conservative issues, recent polling has shown that Americans think tax hikes hurt the economy and would rather have less offered by the government coupled with lower taxes. Candidates should provide detailed roadmaps to cutting earmarks, perhaps a permanent moratorium on them. Candidates should discuss details of wasteful spending – bring up waste in detail, such as the Alaskan Bridge to Nowhere. Bring up details on pork, Club for Growth style. Don’t bring up tax cuts unless you bring up the following items first  – cutting wasteful spending, lowering the deficit, balancing the budget, and opposing unnecessary tax hikes. Those four points are worth discussing at length. Americans are, on average, fiscal conservatives and hate to see waste.

Term limits. Why did Republicans in Congress give this up after the Contract for America? Because after a goodly number of them went to Washington, they got greedy. They loved their fat paychecks and began to stuff their constituencies with pork in order to keep getting reelected. If we propose term limits in Congress– it might work out that we cut back on the number of career politicians. Five terms for the House, two terms for the Senate, 2 Terms for Governor. Seems pretty straightforward. If the GOP were to champion this issue...again, it would easily be a winning issue. Couple it with pay cuts for politicians instead of pay raises, and I think the American public would thank you for it. Yes…I’m suggesting that our politicians take voluntary pay cuts in order to help lessen the national debt.

Crime is a winning issue. I don’t mean being criminals; that means you Larry Craig and Joe Bruno…I mean crime related legislation. Stiffening prison sentences, making it more difficult for violent offenders to get bail, even support of the death penalty can be a winning issue. See George Pataki in New York in 1994. Reinstating the death penalty was a major plank for him…and he beat the three term incumbent as a no-name one-term State Senator from downstate whose claim to fame before that was being Mayor and an Assemblyman for less time total than the incumbent was in office. In Statewide, City-wide, and even national elections – being the tough on crime candidate can be a major boon. Not caring about party lines when enforcing the law is a BIG boost. Republicans could learn a thing or two about that.

Social issues are rarely winning issues and not worth discussing in most parts of the country. So, what can be while still being socially on the right? The Courts. Don’t point to specific forms of legislation, just point out the fact that you want to see judges at all levels of governance to strictly adhere to our Constitution. That’s enough to make the most militant of conservatives drool…I know I do when I hear Fred Thompson spout on about federalism and strict constructionist interpretations of the Constitution. What does this do? It makes Roe v. Wade into an issue, indirectly. You’re saying you wouldn’t mind Roe overturned, without actually saying so. How come? From the strictest constructionist perspective, Roe was poorly decided. Just because you think a law is bad, doesn’t make it unconstitutional. Conservatives sticking to a viewpoint of strict construction of our Constitution is a brilliant way to win back supporters.

The final thing to do is weed out all those from within the party that conflict with these viewpoints. Get rid of those connected to President Bush in a public sense, ex. Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Condi Rice, etc. Get rid of those who are clearly corrupt and continue to make the GOP look bad, ex. Joe Bruno, David Vitter, Larry Craig, John Sweeney, etc. Next – we need younger candidates. We don’t need to force them to run for President, (i.e. Obama), but we need to have new fresh faces becoming the face of the GOP. Michael Steele should be the next chairman of the GOP. We need Republicans like Bobby Jindal, Randy Daniels, Josh Romney, Mark Harris, and Sarah Palin who have bipartisan appeal, who understand some of the things I’m bringing up. We need them as the faces of our party, not the face we have today.

We need a new Republican Party that is transformed into a reformist, tax cutting, pork busting, crime fighting, strict constructionist party that brings a new spin on conservatism. A new direction, this direction, is a winning direction for conservatives. A new Contract with America needs to be built on a foundation of the most logical and powerful of conservative points that can readily be championed by the entire Republican Party. I feel these are those issues.

-The Conservative Engineer

Building a GOP Farm Team

Submitted by Matt Moon on Fri, 06/27/2008 - 14:14
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Today, David Brooks gave praise to Reihan Salam's and Ross Douthat's new book, Grand New Party, in an op-ed entited "The Sam's Club Agenda". (Two days ago, Patrick Ruffini posted and encouraged everybody to start reading and debating.) I plan on going to the Barnes & Noble across the street from where I work today to buy it.

While I haven't read the book yet, Brooks made an interesting observation on Salam and Douthat's vision: "This is not compassionate conservatism (which flattered the mind of the compassionate donor), it’s hard-work conservatism, which uses government to increase the odds that self-discipline and effort will pay off."

Bottom line up front: all politics still seems to be local. While the federal government is involved in a lot of bread-and-butter economic issues for the middle class, voters obvioulsy feel very removed from what goes on inside the Beltway; yet, a larger amonut of folks pay attention to local and state issues, partly because you are more likely to have a connection and conversation on a first name basis with your city councilman or state representative than you are with your senior U.S. senator. (An unrelated question: how has new media affected the mantra that all politics is local?)

Major league/professional sports teams have "farm team" systems where they can identify and train prospects. The best franchises in baseball have fully developed minor league system: Red Sox, Yankees, Angels, etc. The NBA only recently saw the usefulness of having a minor league system with the NBDL. Here's an observational question (and I look forward to responses/disagreements/debate on this): Do the Democrats today have a better "farm team" system than the Republicans? My answer would be yes, because not only have liberal/left-leaning organizations and the DNC have been involved in identifying and training politicians and aspiring politicians at the local and state level; they have supported these candidates using Web2.0 tools like ActBlue.

[I also bring this up in light of a report that was released by House Republicans responding to why they just lost some special Congressional elections. The report apparently states that: "None of the candidates nor their allies successfully established themselves and their local brand in contrast to the negative perception of the national GOP."]

Now the real question: What can the next Republican Party do to develop our "farm team" system? The point here is that a lot of the middle class economic issues are problems that can be solved with conservative principles and policies at the local and state level: property/sales/severance taxes, transparency in budgeting, taxpayer-backed bonds, and accountability in education. And while we on the right like delegating power to state and local leaders on legitimate state and local issues, I believe that any national center-right organization and the next Republican Party need to have much closer coordination with state parties, local leaders, and potential local leaders to both identify (in the long term) those who can move up within the system and to identify (in the short term) local issues that are important to the middle class.

If we're going to have a broader Republican Party, and if we buy into Salam and Douthat's vision, developing the Republican Minor League will be just as important, if not more important, than keeping the Republican Major League in line.

- MM

Your Website Doesn't Matter

Submitted by Patrick Ruffini on Thu, 06/26/2008 - 09:51
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One of the more intriguing concepts making the rounds of late is Clay Shirky's notion of the "cognitive surplus." The cognitive surplus represents what we do in all the time we don't spend fully immersed in work. During the industrial revolution, as people moved from backbreaking agricultural labor to 8-hour days in factories, they turned to drink. Today's answer is television, and increasingly, the Internet.

More and more, the cognitive surplus no longer means sitting back and getting sloshed (though there's that too), and television's hold on an Internet generation is gradually waning. The cognitive surplus is now coming to be defined by the time we spend creating content and interacting online. When asked by a TV person "where do people find the time?" to edit Wikipedia, Shirky's answer was pretty direct. With a fellow academic, he did back-of-the-envelope math revealed that all the edits to Wikipedia to date represented 100 million hours of human effort -- as compared to the 200 billion hours a year Americans spend watching television. The Internet is stealing from the hide for TV -- and not soon enough.

Over the last few days, it's dawned on me that the cognitive surplus can also explain part of the divide in left-right online activity, at least at an institutional and leadership level.

Buy Grand New Party

Submitted by Patrick Ruffini on Wed, 06/25/2008 - 14:53
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http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41JagbfWoKL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

There are two must-buy products this summer. One is the iPhone 3G. And the other is Grand New Party by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam. I just picked it up on Amazon.

Aside from being all around great guys, Ross and Reihan have made a compelling argument that the Republican Party needs to turn its attention to bread-and-butter economic issues to win. I'm not sure I agree entirely with their prescription, but this is the kind of vibrant debate that The Next Right was created for. You can expect to see us covering the arguments on both sides in great depth in the coming days and weeks.

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