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The Re-Death of Conservatism?
Many folks may not recall Sam Tanenhaus, a New York Times editor who wrote the celebrated 2009 cover story for the New Republic entitled Conservatism is Dead. Critics hailed it as “an intellectual autopsy of the movement” which lead to the book The Death of Conservatism (if you must read, barely used hardcover’s start at 1¢). The esteemed Upper-West Side elites whose superior intellect and selfless noble cause fêted Tanenhaus, whose work became the star of the political and media narrative. While many probably didn’t read the entire article (a not-quite-7,000 word treatise) the intellectual class was satisfied knowing that Tanenhaus attacked the Right’s most iconic leaders, from Friedman, Buckley, and Goldwater to Reagan and Gingrich in an effort to prove “What conservatives have yet to do is confront the large but inescapable truth that movement conservatism is exhausted and quite possibly dead.” With President Barack Obama in the White House, the Left nodded in pious agreement, clanking tumblers at 2009 NYC/DC cocktail circuits, singing “Ding-dong, conservatism is dead.”
Of course, Tanenhaus and the elites forgot to tell the voters. With the wave elections of 2010 and 2014, the GOP not only gained control of the House and Senate, but also governors’ mansions and state houses throughout the country. Except for the White House, conservatism was very much alive, strengthened by an enticing platform of holding back the progressive Obama agenda. Tanenhaus went back into his hole. Seven years later, though, America is facing a Sophie’s Choice election where voters on both sides will need Silkwood showers on November 9th. If the polls are correct (let’s be real, they usually are) the country is about to vote the first almost indicted, untrustworthy, corrupt female president into office. Though not quite a fait accompli, the fat lady’s gargling salt water while vocally tuning her D notes. It’s bad enough to lose the White House against an unlikable and very beatable Democrat, but the GOP is now also likely to lose the Senate.
This has lead to numerous articles questioning the future of the Republican Party including @Jon Gabriel’s piece in the Arizona Republic and USA Today. While some authors clutch artificial pearls in their woe-is-me tropes, Jon provides granular specifics on what needs to be done. The problem is, in today’s A.D.D. media circus, getting back to micro bona-fide conservative issues is likely to fall on deaf ears. Most, if not all, of the mainstream media (including Fox News) placed Trump upon the nomination pedestal with their eye either on ratings windfalls or the ideological intent to tear him down in the general (or both). This is now happening. Of course, Trump doesn’t help the cause by providing unlimited cannon fodder as he’s currently on track to become the worst major party candidate in the lifetimes of many.
Of all years, this year the GOP’s perennial mainstay policy issues are easy low-hanging fruit. What’s frustrating is that, outside of Trump’s rallies, very few are discussing them. Reports suggest the RNC have presented Trump with instructions to stick to the script. Rumors (unsubstantiated) even suggested the RNC presented him an ultimatum to shape up or they’d pull support and focus on saving Congress. At this point, they should. The primary focus for any right-of-center types now is to save Congress. When Don Lemon or Chuck Todd ask questions about Trump’s latest idiotic statement, RNC surrogates need to answer as follows:
I’ll let the Trump campaign answer for themselves. However, Americans are deeply concerned about:
- The Economy: Right now, we’ve got 1.2% GDP growth including wage stagnation, the lowest work participation index in 40 years, and an extreme regulatory environment and entrepreneurial slowdown. Obama’s stimulus failed and Clinton now wants to double-down. Conservative policies would be an economic boost meaning higher wages instead of McJobs.
- National Security: The ill-advised military pullout in Iraq left the vacuum for the creation of ISIS. Obama’s first six years sidelined the threat as “JV.” Those decisions lead to increased terrorist attacks and threats both abroad and at home. While many didn’t agree with the Iraq war, we needed to finish it correctly. Now, there needs to be a pivot and proper clean-up, before a chemical weapon goes off at your neighborhood shopping center
- Illegal Immigration: 57% increase in just the past 2 years. See Economy and National Security.
If the RNC/GOP/conservative alliance is intent on minimizing the 2016 damage to just the White House, it should hound Hillary Clinton’s media’s acolytes on these issues — and only these issues — until Her Royal Heinous is seated upon her Saudi-financed throne. Then, let’s watch as a GOP House and Senate deal with the first likely almost indicted, untrustworthy, corrupt, female impeached president who was married to a former impeached president.
Dave Sussman
“The Left mostly practice identity politics which slice and dice people into victim groups and then use them as bargaining chips. The Right mostly treats people as individuals all based on their character, not their race or creed.”
This is incorrect.
The Left builds coalitions of the aggrieved and the resentful based on an explicit anti-white ideology and then gets those envious minority groups goodies from the government. The Left satisfies the psychological and emotional needs of its voter base, which is why it’s voters believe that their candidates “care about people like them.”
The Right as represented by the Republican Party refuses to recognize that its base is the white predominantly Christian majority of the country. It talks about individuals to avoid identifying its own core and channels that core’s righteous anger at the Left into support for a business agenda; in that way it collaborates in policies that assault its base of support (immigration, affirmative action).
Thus the GOP gets no goodies for its voters from the government, not even the cessation of hostilities against it. All the GOP does is try to slow things down. No wonder that while most Democrats when polled say they are happy with their party, most Republicans, long before Trump, have said they were furious with theirs.
The quandary the Republican electorate is going to have to settle is whether they just want to continue to be members of the #2 “anti-racist” American political party.
The moment the GOP becomes “The White Party”, it is dead. That’s what European right wing political parties are. What made the GOP different was American conservatism which is individualist based, and not concerned with racial or class distinctions.
If that’s what the GOP is now, the left wins. They do statism better than anyone.
I have never bought into the Lefts identity politics. It stems from the very same hate and resentment the Left claim they are against. Yet the alt-right continues to use these same politics to stir the resentments within their own hate-filled ranks. I’m not interested in hearing it.
As a Conservative I refuse to adopt a focus on identity as a cause. Conservatism isn’t about identity. Its about the same message Republican Martin Luther King espoused on the character of the man, not the color. The individual, not the state.
Please don’t hijack the thread with alt-right propaganda.
The culture war is not simply about abortion, marriage or family. The culture war is the struggle about which moral environment will govern conduct in the United States: that of the amoral, self-centered, untethered Left or that of an hierarchical, exclusionary and other-directed Right. One or the other will, so it’s up to everyone to choose.
We used to have the elites on our side, but empire and wealth beyond the dreams of avarice have a funny way of perverting one’s interests. Charles Murray summed it up well: our elites no longer preach what they practice – meaning that they live in one moral universe but proselytize for the other.
Your argument is interesting for this reason: Mitt Romney would have easily won the 2012 presidential election if the nation’s demographics were the same as they were in 1980, the year of Reagan’s first win. But they weren’t and he didn’t. Is that a positive development?
Did you vote for that? Did anyone?
American conservatism did not have to be concerned with racial distinctions when we were a bi-racial society, but we do now because, unfortunately, contemporary conservatives collaborated with left-wing Democrats to make this country multi-racial, multi-ethnic and multi-religious since 1965 by going along with a ruinous immigration policy. And that, my friend, is how the Left wins.
Consider California.
I await your reasoned response.
Nobody’s hijacking anything. I’m making civil, rational arguments and observations on a thread about conservatism. I have a different idea about conservatism than you seem to have.
Your emotional reaction is disappointing, as is the fact that you cite Martin Luther King, Jr., a man who would be totally comfortable in today’s Democratic Party, as a Republican.
I think that is what many people on the right want, including some of the leaders that your side considers to be respectable.
Remember, Mark Steyn used to revere Geert Wilders as a god.
Oh Tyler for pete’s sake.
Who’s reading Ricochet? This post is linked at Instapundit