Right Wing Nut House

There are few on the right who have thought more about where conservatism is and where it should be going than David Frum. Frum is a former Bush speechwriter, National Review writer, author and columnist. He just started a new blog called The New Majority which features a wide range of conservative opinion mixed with some nuts and bolts politics.

Along with Ross Douthat, Marc Ambinder, David Brooks, and a precious few other conservatives, Frum is looking deeply and seriously at conservatism’s flaws, strengths, and perhaps most importantly and relevantly, how to translate conservative principles into actionable political ideas that can win elections and establish a sound basis for governance.

In short, Frum and his new blog will almost certainly be one of the focal points in the conservative movement for the foreseeable future - or at least, it should be. The New Majority is where ideology and practical politics will merge as various strains of conservatism wrestle with ways to become relevant in the Age of Obama.

That Age is well underway, having begun even before Obama was elected. There was nothing subtle about the media’s clear preference in the November election, the consequences of which have yet to play out. The only thing certain is that to a degree not seen since the early 1960’s, conservatism as an ideology is being dismissed by the political class as irrelevant. When politicians start running away from basic conservative principles and embrace the milquetoast center or center- left, including bailout mania and other manifestations of creeping statism, you know it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get to work rebuilding a shattered conservative polity.

As I see it, there are several tracks to a conservative revival, all working toward the same goal but in strikingly different ways. You have the generalists like Frum and his cohorts who are seeking to infuse conservatism with new ideas and a new frame of reference for the old ones. Then there are the web gurus like Patrick Ruffini and his stalwart band at The Next Right who are trying to drag the Republican party and conservative movement into the 21st century by creating an army of connected, online activists. The libertarian conservatives have entered the fray with a new blog called The Secular Right which features a group of excellent writers and thinkers like Heather McDonald, Andrew Stuttaford, Walter Olsen, and National Review’s John Derbyshire. Reason Magazine is a little more independent but still has some solid conservatives contributing.

The libertarians perhaps have the longest way to come back and thus represent the greatest challenge to all who are interested in rebuilding the movement. The long-simmering tensions between social cons and libertarians exploded in open warfare over the Terry Schiavo issue and continued with the Harriet Meyers fiasco, immigration, and finally, the presidency of George Bush himself. Many libertarians abandoned Bush even before the 2006 electoral debacle - something which the social cons will not soon forget. Nor did libertarians care much for Sarah Palin which ended up splitting the movement into two spitting, warring factions where some believed Palin the second coming of Reagan while others shook their heads in disbelief over such nonsense.

It is a breach that will not soon be healed. Palin will remain a talisman for social conservatives into the foreseeable future. And as long as she is a figure of importance to the social cons, it is doubtful most honest libertarians (or right leaning centrists) will want to have anything to do with conservatives politically.

And that brings us to the social conservatives, many of whom are perfectly happy with how conservatism is defined although they are not pleased with how it is perceived. There appears little in the way of a reform movement for social cons. For them, conservatism needs a face lift - cosmetic changes that will keep their core beliefs about abortion, gay rights, and other cultural issues front and center but perhaps soften or reframe the debate. But as far as rethinking or even redefining conservative principles, social cons simply don’t see the need.

I apologize if I have unnecessarily been too general in my analysis of social cons because there are brilliant social conservatives who are thinking about the future and how to bring the warring factions together. The problem as I see it is with a relatively small but vocal and somewhat influential subset of social conservatives who fancy themselves gatekeepers and arbiters of conservative dogma. I call them “Splenetic Conservatives” for obvious reasons. And to my mind, they are the biggest obstacle to a conservative revival. More than any other faction, splenetic conservatives are fiercely resisting the idea of “Big Tent” conservatism and wish to purify the movement, purging it of alien ideas and personalities that espouse positions on issues at variance with their own.

This has not only had a deadening effect on intelligent debate but has placed a roadblock in the way of uniting the movement at a time when the actual numbers of people identifying themselves as “conservative” is falling. Whole swaths of the American electorate abandoned the Republican party and conservatism in the last election and now identify with the more tolerant, less dogmatic Democrats. How long this will last is an unknown. But even the failure of Obamaism will probably not be enough to win them back as long as splenetic conservatives feel they can dictate who can join their little club. Pro-Choice? Not in my house! Pro-Gay marriage? Surely, you joke. Immigration reform? Round ‘em up! War on Terror? Kill the Muslims!

Is this the way to a conservative majority? Is this the path to reforming the conservative movement so that once again we can tolerate our differences without lining someone up against a wall because they have strayed from the straight and narrow path set down by the splenetic conservatives?

The face of conservatism used to be a happy face, a confident face, an optimistic face. I suppose its easy to be happy if you are winning elections but there was more to it than that, more to it than even the fact that the naturally sunny disposition of Ronald Reagan was at the head of the movement. That optimism and happiness was born in the give and take of debate when Big Ideas - consequential, important ideas - were the stuff of bull sessions, conferences, panel discussions, and papers published at the various think tanks. All factions of conservatism had their say. There was passionate disagreements over everything. But somehow, we never lost sight of the goal - building a conservative movement where ideas translated into government action.

Somewhere along the way, we gave into the temptation to use conservative ideas to divide rather than unite. This tactical decision brought electoral success but at a price. It gave social conservatives and their splenetic base a platform to dominate the movement and the Republican party. The price for that mistake is still being paid.

I will give the splenetic conservatives credit where credit is due; they vote. And they contribute money to the movement and the Republican party. And in many parts of the United States, they are the Republican party, supplying not only funds but volunteers for campaigns who do the hard, slogging work of trying to get Republicans elected.

It is ironic that they are a larger group than most give them credit for but smaller in numbers than they themselves believe. They dominate the right side of the internet as well as many local Republican organizations (I have quit three different GOP groups because I got tired of people telling me I wasn’t a conservative). And if you cross them, you are in for much unpleasantness as many of the anti-Palin conservatives discovered. Is it important? The press has chosen to make splenetic conservatives the face of conservatism - for obvious reasons. Anything that can make conservatism look intolerant, bigoted, dangerous, and ignorant will gleefully be used to portray all conservatives in a negative light. We saw this in the waning days of the campaign when the press began to focus on “angry” crowds at McCain and Palin rallies, thus tarring all McCain supporters unfairly as yahoos and haters.

Ridding ourselves of these meddlesome and problematic screamers is not the issue. Opening their minds to the possibilities of compromise is a useless exercise - not when they see compromise as apostasy deserving of excommunication. Attempting to marginalize them would be playing their game. Besides, cutting off one’s legs as a way to heal the body is a strange way of reforming the movement. There must be a place for them at the conservative table - even if they have to be strapped down and force fed some hard truths about the exigencies of power and how futile their campaign to purify the movement when it comes to the raw exercise of democracy at the ballot box. Elections are about numbers; your side needs one more vote than the other side to win.

Michael K. Powell explains:

believe the Republican Party is on the precipice of irrelevance if it cannot rebuild a respect for civil debate-including self-criticism. The formation of powerful ideas requires the push and pull of varying viewpoints testing and informing one another. The litmus test politics that has abducted the party, has dulled the edge of its ideas, discourages those who respond to intellectual rigor, and repels too many from the party who are unwilling, as a condition of admission, to sign an oath of allegiance to a set of talking points.

Additionally, to have a future an institution must appeal to generations of the future. Appealing to youth is vital for rebirth. Yet, we seem trapped in a time warp. The Party has failed to fully comprehend how the young interact and communicate in an era transformed by the digital revolution. We do not yet appreciate their passions and their fears, nor pause to look at the world through their eyes. Battling to be a voice of technology and innovation is vital. In the world of youth, you must first “get it” before you are listened to.

The Party also must be more sober about the demographic transformation that is taking place in America. We are a browning nation, but a Party seemingly incompetent in connecting with America’s diversity and its ascendant multiculturalism. We are stuck in antiquated notions of race. My kids saw Barack Obama not as black but as modern. His race and enlightened manner of dealing with it captures how the young see themselves.

Allah (who links to a fascinating interview with Rudy Guiliani at Frum’s New Majority where hizzoner states that de-emphasizing social issues is the way back for Republicans) answers the question of what to do about the divisions in the movement quite nicely, giving the bleak alternatives:

[T]he key bit comes near the end of the second clip. He’s not asking the party to abandon social conservatism, just to nudge it towards the background and make foreign policy and fiscal responsibility the core of the platform. Which … is essentially the approach McCain took.

He’s right about the dwindling numbers of the base, though. I think the GOP’s tacit strategy now is to wait and hope for (1) a messianic figure of its own to emerge and build a new coalition through the sheer force of his/her charisma and/or (2) Democrats to overreach so egregiously that even minority voters who wouldn’t dream of voting Republican today will run screaming for the embrace of small government. All of which is fine, but the opposite of proactive. I wonder how long we’ll be waiting.

If I were Allah, I wouldn’t hold my breath for either of those eventualities. Palin is not acceptable to a large portion of the GOP if not a majority. Besides her bona fides as a “messianic figure” are not very impressive. Bobby Jindahl is an interesting man with a fascinating story but pinning hopes for a revival on the young man may be premature.

If no messiah, what then? First things first and that means uniting the movement with or without a dominant personality. Much more difficult if the latter but until someone comes along, someone has to do something to build bridges and not burn them.

Political strategist John Avlon on the Big Tent:

Somehow Republicans have lost common ground – Reagan invoked the Big Tent constantly as a way of collecting libertarian conservatives, national security conservatives, economic conservatives and social conservatives under one banner. But the spirit of outreach and inclusiveness has been drummed out of the GOP – disagreement is seen as disloyalty, and the search for heretics has become a hobby. Libertarians are losing any logical reason to affiliate with the GOP, while centrist Republicans are seen as suspect almost by definition. When Senators like Olympia Snowe or John McCain win re-election with over 70% of the vote, they are considered sell-outs rather than successes. I’ve debated conservatives on TV who were rooting for Norm Coleman to lose, because they considered him insufficiently conservative. This road leads not just to political disaster, but party suicide. Republicans who have won statewide in the Northeast tend to be centrist on social issues, especially on a woman’s right to chose and gay civil rights. Republicans must welcome social moderates into the big tent of the GOP, focus on finding common ground and not treat them as second class citizens. Remember: In a place where everyone thinks alike, nobody is thinking very much.

What do you do when reason does not work on the unreasonable? How can you be inclusive when a minority insists on using what power it possesses to maintain exclusivity?

What in God’s name is to be done with the Splenetic Conservatives?

I have taken much abuse on this site and others I write for from these galoots. I have not been shy about returning the invective either. Clearly, it doesn’t get anybody anywhere for us to shout and call each other vile names. But even when I am calm and rational about debate - not as often as I should be, I’ll grant - it’s worse than talking to a stone wall. In fact, the milder my response, the more outraged these pinheads get. It’s as if their minds function on only one level and trying to appeal to reason or even charity only enrages them further.

So I bear at least half of the blame for any untoward comments that come my way. But, after bouncing off the walls blaming each other or slinging epiteths back and forth, we end up in exactly the same position we were before: A battered, dispirited, and leaderless movement desperately in need of some kind of uniting expedient. Perhaps Obama and the Democrats will, as Allah suggests, prove to be so outrageously an anathema to conservative ideals that we will be forced to put aside our differences and unite to save the country.

Don’t bet on it. Obama is one smart, savvy pol with a gift for making even radical ideas sound reasonable. Unless the country falls apart economically, it is doubtful that anything the Democrats do will serve to bring the movement back together.

Therefore, we must look to ourselves and our own weaknesses and failings in order to re-establish Ronald Reagan’s Big Tent and find our way out of the wilderness where our own neglect and hubris has placed us. The journey to that goal has begun. How and when we get there is anyone’s guess.

Is it smart politics to vote against what will be a wildly popular economic bailout package that may approach a trillion dollars? Further, is it really necessary in order to “save” the economy?

Politicians are always torn between doing what they know is right and what they know is politically safe. Many times, there is a happy convergence between the two schools of thought and the politician comes out a winner. For Republicans, this happens whenever tax cuts are up for a vote or votes on issues like welfare reform or military spending.

But what happens when an issue like the bailout package comes before you - a bill that most GOP conservatives worth their salt know deep down in their gut is the wrong approach to getting the economy out of a recession and will push the federal deficit toward the magic number of a trillion dollars?

To liberals like Paul Krugman (and probably some Republicans), the deficit doesn’t matter:

It’s politically fashionable to rant against government spending and demand fiscal responsibility. But right now, increased government spending is just what the doctor ordered, and concerns about the budget deficit should be put on hold.

Krugman may be half right. Government spending increases during a recession are inevitable and the fall off in revenue due to reduced business activity as well as the increase in the numbers of citizens forced on to the public dole as a result of job loss means a rise in the federal deficit. This much is unavoidable and repeating Herbert Hoover’s mistake in trying to hold the line on spending by increasing taxes is a non-starter. Even Obama knows that much in that he has put his tax increase plans on hold for a couple of years - much to the chagrin of his class warrior base.

But a trillion dollars? And beyond that incomprehensible number is the political fallout that would occur if the GOP were to fight against the stimulus package in the first place.

Such a move might please the Republican base which makes up about 30% of the electorate. But the last I checked it takes more than 50% to be successful in elections. And if the GOP wants to make inroads against the Democrats in the House and Senate, they are going to need considerably more than 50% of the electorate to vote for them in order to climb out of the huge hole they have dug for themselves.

So the smart political move would be to go with the flow and vote for Obama’s giveaway, right? Not so fast, says Nate Silver who lays out the political choices for GOP lawmakers quite nicely:

1) Try to pressure Obama into some kind of compromise, and vote for that compromise;
2) Let the stimulus pass as the Democrats choose to construct it, over your strong objection;
3) Yield to Obama, and vote for the stimulus in the name of national unity.

The third choice probably isn’t very appealing to you. It might be appealing to Newt Gingrich, who is telling you that you don’t have the credibility right now to pick a fight. Better off rebuidling and rebranding the party for the long term. But rebuilding and rebranding means someone other than you is in charge — someone, for example, like Newt Gingirch. So that option is out.

So let’s think through the other couple of choices. First thing first: if the economy improves substantially by the midterm elections, you’re screwed. It won’t matter whether you voted for the stimulus or voted against it, and it won’t matter whether you achieved some kind of compromise or you didn’t. If, by the summer of 2010, GDP growth has miraculously recovered to 4% per year, that’s all the public is going to think about. Obama Save Economy!! Me Vote Democrat!! They aren’t going to care about whether you snuck some sort of capital gains tax cut in there.

But let’s say that the economy still sucks in 2010 — which, frankly, is a pretty good bet. That’s going to work much, much better for you if you’ve voted against the stimulus. Not only can you pin the blame on the donkeys, but you can campaign on tax cutting and fiscal responsibility — the stimulus will “prove”, once and for all, the wisdom of conservative economic principles. And then think about this: the Democrats are going to be trying to spend $800 billion in taxpayer dollars as quickly as they can possibly get away with it. Somewhere along the way, they’re going to wind up funding a Woodstock Museum or a Bridge to Nowhere. Somewhere along the way, an enterprising contractor is going to embezzle a bunch of stimulus money, or cook up some kind of pay-to-play scheme. Maybe if you’re really lucky, this will happen in your Distrct. Better to keep the whole thing at arm’s-length and make sure that Democrats get the blame for that.

The Hobson’s Choice facing Republicans is fighting against a popular president and his very popular giveaway plan in which case if the economy improves by 2010 (more on this later), the GOP is toast or accepting the rationale of the Obama White House and voting in favor of the package in the name of national unity as a result of an “emergency” in which case you will get absolutely no credit from the American people and your base will desert you. The third choice is equally unpalatable; try to inject some sanity in the giveaway by dint of minor amendments, warn of catastrophe, and then vote for it anyway.

In other words, if you stand up for your beliefs and fight the bailout (a certain losing proposition at this point given the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate), your only hope is if the plan doesn’t work and the economy is still in the tank by 2010-12. But if you follow your political instincts and vote in favor of the plan - even if you are able to get Obama to modify some of the parameters - the American people will still see the package as a Democratic triumph. You only consolation by taking door #3 is that the GOP base won’t desert you entirely - probably.

More to the point, can an honorable politician of any ideology or party deny the president what he deems necessary to help people in what his advisors and many experts are telling him is an extremely serious economic crisis? And what does it say about the GOP as a party whose only real hope for gains in 2010 is if the president’s plan doesn’t work and millions suffer the consequences?

Or will they? We are in a serious recession, the depth of which is unknowable at the moment. A Republican Administration has already pumped trillions into the financial sector (without much effect on credit markets and all to the detriment of a free market economy). Few are asking would we have been better off - or just as badly off - if Bush and his gorgon Paulson (and bailout enabler Fed Chair Bernanke) had simply tweaked the system rather than drowning it in money. If the Bushies had allowed several larger Wall Street banks to go under or facilitated some mergers while letting others go down the drain, how much worse off would we be?

Stock market lower? Perhaps. Credit tighter? Hard to see how that would be possible. More job losses? Again, we’re bleeding half a million jobs a month so it would be difficult to imagine that pace getting much worse.

Then there’s all that worthless paper - mortgage backed securities, credit derivatives, and loans that have been foreclosed. There are trillions of dollars of this worthless toilet paper sitting in banks around the world - had been sitting there for months as the housing bubble burst and began to drag the economy toward recession. What changed that caused this bailout mania?

Panic took hold. The Panic of 2008 will be remembered for the scramble to inject “liquidity” into the financial sector so that the business of American business could continue. Gigantic corporations asked the government to sheild them from the results of their poor business decisions and the ebb and flow of the free market by claiming to be “too big to fail” and the government obliged them by throwing trillions of dollars in their direction. No one knows where this money went. No one knows how it was spent. We are told that by saving these companies, we avoided a “meltdown.” If it not be heresy, might I inquire as to just what proponents of these bailouts think we are experiencing now if not a “meltdown?”

In effect, we just spent $7 trillion or so (most of that printed up by the Fed and pumped into the “system” in ways that are so arcane, not even the deacons of high finance can explain it adequately) just to avoid what we are, in fact, going through right now. We don’t know how much worse it would have been without this massive bailout. Such prognostication is impossible. Indeed, even asking the question “How much bang did we get for those $7 trillion bucks?” will bring down criticism for even daring to think that perhaps - just perhaps - much of this massive giveaway was - dare I say it - unnecessary?

But with the GOP’s credibility at close to absolute zero, no one in the Republican party seems willing to make the case that before we pump another trillion dollars into the economy in free money, it might be a good idea to pause and reflect on exactly what we are doing. Forget the deficit for the moment. How is this bailout mania - the result of a feeding frenzy due to the smell of unearned cash available to those who whine the loudest and have the best lobbyists - affecting the ability of the free market to function?

For all the ignorant words written in opposition to the free market in recent months, no one has yet figured out a better way to deliver goods and services to the consumer so cheaply and efficiently, create wealth and jobs, innovate in cutting edge industries like energy, pharma, and bio-tech, while proving itself over time as the most spectacular engine for liberty and the fairest system in the history of industrialized civilization for distributing the economy’s bounty.

No, it is not perfect. Far from it. But this hybrid beast that is emerging as a result of such massive government intervention in the economy is an unknown animal. And if this is to be the end of the “American System” don’t you think we should like, you know, have a debate about it or something? Right now, the new Obama Administration is riding the crest of a wave of panic that gripped this country in late summer and early autumn. And the idea of making nation-changing decisions because Wall Street has been spooked or people are anxious about the future without the benefit of a full fledged debate is even scarier than anything the economy could ever elicit from me.

And now, at the exact moment that this country needs a strong, united Republican party who could come up with free market alternatives to this giveaway society being created by the Democrats and stand up for what they know is right, the GOP is busted, broken, toothless, and out of ideas.

It is not simply going to be good enough to scream “NO” into this hurricane wind of “hope and change.” The GOP must vigorously make the case that the need for this bailout has not been thoroughly examined or thought through adequately. They have a responsibility to try and apply the brakes to this juggernaut that has swept the country over the last few months as politicians have responded to panic by panicking themselves. Most importantly, they must do what minority parties are supposed to do; offer sound, reasonable, achievable ideas to counter what is coming from the majority.

This will not happen to the leaderless, dispirited crew of Republicans on Capitol Hill. In this respect, it won’t matter politically whether they vote for the bailout or not. They have already proven themselves to be emasculated by the voter and their own timidity and cowardice when it comes to standing up for their core principles.

Some trenchant analysis in Politico this morning on the problems facing Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal in running for president in 2012:

One other similarity between the two: a charmed political existence so far. Jindal’s first year in office brought historic ethics reforms, deep tax cuts and major funding for workforce training and highway projects. State tax coffers bulged with oil industry revenues from $4-a-gallon gas.

So, along with his counterpart in Alaska, the Louisiana governor became the undisputed hot ticket for the GOP’s circuit of Lincoln and Reagan Day party fundraisers, traditionally a testing ground for presidential aspirants. And unlike Sarah Palin, Jindal is also quickly becoming the toast of Republican elites, the class of elected officials, donors, and consultants who are much sought after well before the first primary votes are cast.

Now some political reality is setting in.

For one thing, Jindal is facing what nearly every one of his counterparts is in capitals across the country: a gaping budget deficit.

With the price of oil plummeting, energy-rich Louisiana has lost a significant chunk of anticipated revenue and is projected to have a $2 billion deficit next year.

“He’s had a rocket ride,” said Maginnis, the Louisiana political analyst. “Nobody has had a first year in office like his. But next year is going to be a lot rockier.”

In addition to the deficit, the political calendar is working against him. It would be extremely difficult for Jindal to run for both re-election as governor in 2011 and the Republican nomination in 2012. The first primaries are going to be, at best, 10 weeks from election day in Louisiana - hardly enough time to shift gears and concentrate on running for president after spending the previous year campaigning in Louisiana.

Can he do both? It would be unprecedented and there are a couple of scenarios where it might work out, specifically a run against a weak Democratic gubanatorial candidate in what would shape up to be a Republican year. What the good people of Louisiana might think about someone running for both offices is a big unknown. And raising money for both races would almost seem to be a waste.

A more likely scenario is that Jindal skips 2012 and takes his shot in 2016. He will only be 41 years old in 2012 which would still make him younger than Obama if he were to wait for four years.

And speaking of the president-elect, Republicans are already referring to Jindal as “our Obama” - a gruesome thing with which to saddle anyone. It is a superficial recognition of his Indian heritage - a “man of color” - that shows how desperate the GOP truly is. One would think that other, more important factors, should recommend Jindal to national voters and no doubt, some will emerge. But the blatant race-based politics that can proclaim Jindal a serious candidate based at least partly - or mostly - on the color of his skin has no place in any party to which I want to belong. Turn the Obama question on Jindal - “If his name was Smith and he was white, would he be taken as serious fodder for the presidency?” - and you are left with an emphatic “no” for an answer.

Sizing up Jindal at this point is probably an exercise in futility since he will no doubt grow and change as his term in office continues. But what we know of him now is not very encouraging to me. I could never vote for someone who believes that creationism/intelligent design should be taught in schools - even if it is done in concert with the teaching of evolution with the goal of “letting the kids decide” which “theory” they wish to believe.

This kind of anti-intellectualism that promotes ID as science on a par with Darwinism is just plain loony. Imagine in Cosmology if we taught the “Steady State” theory of the origins of the Universe alongside the “Big Bang” and expansion theories, allowing students to decide which theory is “true.” The question answers itself. One theory is clearly wrong and the other is clearly correct.

If parents want to home school their kids and teach them ID or send them to private religious schools where Darwin is a dirty word, fine. They will grow up sweeping the floors of Japanese, Swedish, or Chinese bio-tech factories rather than owning them. You can deny the efficacy of evolution all you want but since modern biology is based on it (and not on ID/creationism) it stands to reason that the coming revolution in bio-technology will proceed without your children being involved. This nonsense has already affected the numbers of students entering graduate level life sciences which a recent Rand study showed will necessitate US bio-tech firms looking overseas for engineers and biologists within the next decade.

But this debate is only a symptom of what ails the GOP. Much of the base appears to be battling modernity itself. Declaring categorically - and without even a scintilla of the requisite knowledge to do so - that Climate Change is a “hoax” bespeaks an ignorance that causes most voters to blanche in horror at the prospect of electing a Republican. Scientists who advocate the theory of catastrophic climate change may indeed be wrong. They may be close minded and not open to opposing views. But “hoaxers?”

This is not the first time that eminent scientists have gotten it wrong and refused to consider evidence the the contrary. The theory of plate tectonics - the continents sitting on plates, floating on magma, that rub against each other and migrate great distances over time - was belittled for a 100 years. But no one accused proponents of the Continental Drift theory of perpetrating a scientific hoax to advance that theory at the expense of plate tectonics.

The evidence for Climate Change is hardly in dispute due simply to the fact that the earth’s climate is always changing. The question is how much humans have had to do with any change in climate and whether cutting emissions will do any good. To simply pass off these enormously complex questions as a “hoax” reveals the deep strain of anti-intellectualism in the GOP that raises its ugly head from time to time. I like the great physicist Freeman Dyson’s explanation for the disinterest of warming advocates in acknowledging that there is still a debate about the causes and especially the projections of scientists regarding the earth heating up. Dyson says that “When science gets rich it becomes political.”

In his comments at both the Nassau Club and Labyrinth, he decried the use of computer modeling to make “tremendously dogmatic” predictions about worldwide trends, without acknowledging the “messy, muddy real world” and the non-climatic effects of increased carbon dioxide. “There is no substitute for widely-conducted field operations over a long time,” he told the Nassau Club audience, citing the “enormous gaps in knowledge and sparseness of observation” that characterize the work of global warming experts.

Instead of engaging in debate on the scientific merits of the Climate Change proponents, many are apt to simply dismiss the findings of eminent scientists as a “hoax.” Dyson has exactly the right attitude; plead for additional research before implementing draconian solutions that may not even address the problem. And please note he says nothing about scientists trying to pull off a “hoax.”

Jindal may not believe in theories of Climate Change and wish to see ID/creationism taught in schools. Should this disqualify him from successfully running for president? Perhaps not. But it certainly portrays the Louisiana governor as someone without the intellectual curiosity that we in the GOP should have in our candidates. Believing in ID/creationism flies in the face of the facts. Do we really want a president who does that?

Pat Ruffini was kind enough to reply to my post from yesterday where I asked how his plans to counter the left’s online advantage fit in to reform of the Republican party.

My point - either not well made or Pat chose not to respond specifically - is one of timing. What comes first, the chicken or the egg? Does creating this online juggernaut occur in a vacuum? Is it dependent on what the Republican party does to reform itself? Are the two goals mutually exclusive or is their some kind of symbiosis involved where the rightroots’ efforts lead to reform of the party or vice versa?

Pat referred to my “strawman” argument as one of tactics. Au contraire, mon ami. First, if by “strawman” Pat means I was deliberately misrepresenting his position, that was not my intent. If he took it that way, I’m sorry. I am 100% behind Pat’s efforts and, as an aside, believe him to be the best individual to get this idea off the ground and in motion.

Having said that, I believe there to be a disconnect in Pat’s reasoning that would be fatal to his efforts. Quoting from his response:

I would break down the three things the GOP needs to do as follows:

• Rebuild our infrastructure. There is no question that the left has us beat online and in the new forms of alternative media. We need a strategy for addressing that. This is a main focus of Rebuild the Party but not the only one.
• Find our message. In the absence of a new Reagan or better infrastructure, we need to find a compelling message that resonates. We need to be more centrist / more conservative. We need to focus more on social issues / fiscal issues. Etc. etc. We hear a lot of this lately. Henke has a framing for this that I like: the unifying narrative.
• Find new leaders. Only when people have a leader they can rally behind will the movement be activated. This was certainly true of Obama.

The right answer is that we need all of the above. None of these can happen without the other. Perhaps the largest failings of the Bush years can be attributed to the fact that we had a new leader without an ideological revival at the same time.

Rick is right that new technology will be for naught if we keep spending like drunken sailors. Tactics cannot overcome structural deficits or crappy, uninspiring messaging. Good marketing cannot dress up a bad product.

“Rebuilding infrastructure” was not my impression of what The Next Right and Rebuild the party.com was all about. I thought Pat was in the business of creating a whole new ball of wax - online activism, fundraising, candidate recruitment - everything the left is now doing online as well as transplanting some of the Obama model to the right. Certainly we can piggyback some of that on an existing organizational template through the RNC or some other party department but the bulk of what must be done has to be accomplished if not in opposition to the party (do they really want 5 million people trying to tell them what to do?) then certainly independent of it.

As for the “message” or Henke’s “narrative,” that indeed, refers to tactical matters that I agree is vitally important but not relevant to my critique. And whether or not finding a “Reagan” is even possible given the nature of politics and the fact that The Gipper was a World-Historical figure who by definition comes along once in a generation or two would be an iffy proposition at best.

So is wondering about whether the chicken or the egg comes first in this reform process a question of “tactics” or is it a fundamental question regarding the viability of Pat’s ideas? By reforming the party, I think we are both talking about not only issues but structural changes as well (Pat addresses this at RTP.com by calling for RNC reform). I am not sure that the way the national party’s thinking is organized at the moment, Pat’s online ideas fit entirely in the party’s plans for the future. I’m sure they’re grateful for the efforts and would give their right arms for the kind of organization Pat is talking about but are they going to be a help or a hinderance?

So my question from yesterday about why conservatives should exert the energy to become more active before the party takes the necessary steps to reform itself both issueswise and organizationally stands. Indeed, if that question can’t be answered, it puts Pat’s entire enterprise at risk in my opinion.

Patrick Ruffini and Mindy Finn have a nice write up in today’s Washington Post regarding their new web effort Rebuild the Party.com. The website features a list of endorsers that constitutes a who’s who of the rightysphere as well as a plan they would like to see the GOP adopt that, includes the recruitment of 5 million new Republican online activists, reorganizing the RNC, developing a new fundraising model, and rebuilding the grass roots infrastructure of the party.

All ambitious goals to be sure. But are they achievable?

Everybody agrees the GOP must become more web savvy and that a better connection has to be made to conservatives online. Few would also argue with the notion that efforts must be made to catch up to the Democrats in online fundraising and organization. But then we have the problem with the Republican party itself and its refusal to get serious about the kinds of reforms that would make a conservative like me proud to belong once again.

If Ruffini wants me to promote candidates, raise money, and urge volunteers to work for campaigns he better put a burr under the ass of the party leadership and get them busy on changing just about everything about the organization that contributed to its defeat these last two elections. These are not just technical adjustments or changes around the edges. We are talking about fundamental alterations in people, policy, and ideology that would make the Republican party worth getting excited about again.

Republicans are about ready to fall into a couple of traps that losing parties apparently can’t avoid when the dust settles following a debacle such as they have experienced the last two election cycles. The first is the belief that the reason for being rejected by the voters is that their candidates weren’t “pure” enough ideologically and that only by pushing forward “true conservatives” can the GOP find its way back.

I don’t dispute the necessity for putting up more conservatives for office. But the idea that you can have some kind of lock step litmus tests to determine who a “true” conservative might be is nuts - and counterproductive. There are plenty of competitive congressional districts where one of those “true” conservatives would get slaughtered by most Democrats. When 70% of the country does not identify itself as “conservative,” you are deliberately setting up the GOP for defeat if you advocate only “real” conservatives receive support.

There are candidates that would be completely acceptable to the vast majority of conservatives who would fail some of the litmus tests given by the base. A party that seeks to diminish its ranks by making membership dependent on a rigid set of positions on issues is a party doomed to maintaining its minority status. The Democrats made the exact same mistake in 2000 and it cost them in 2002 and 2004.

Only when they stopped listening to people like Kos and recruited dozens of candidates that reflected the realities of their specific district did they break through in 2006 and 2008. These candidates were not hard left ideologues but much more pragmatic in their politics. That didn’t mean they were “conservative” or even “moderate.” It means they were attractive candidates with decent name recognition, well funded, well organized, and in tune with local concerns. And they wiped the floor with our guys.

The other trap the GOP appears to be springing on itself is the idea of “me-tooism.” “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” may have worked for Bugs Bunny, but to see Republicans seeking to alter the disastrous Bush/Obama policies on bailouts only by proposing less money or nibbling around the edges rather than uniting to oppose these fundamental alterations in American society only proves that the vast majority of them are not worthy of conservative support. On this, the most important issue that has come before the Congress in a generation, the GOP is failing the test.

Pat believes that changes in the party can be effected by uniting the conservative community online and forcing the GOP to make necessary alterations. I believe he is being overly optimistic. What should come first, party reform or rightroots activism? What good would all of Pat’s great ideas be if they came to fruition and the GOP was still a party of pork-loving, deficit embracing, open border hugging, lobbyist kissing corrupt hacks? Is Ruffini saying that by initiating the kind of activism he is looking for online that the party will, either naturally or by osmosis, magically reform itself into an organization that conservatives would feel justified in backing?

This, is not an insignificant point. As is stands now, the rightroots are more conservative than they are Republican. And the noises being made by many GOP officeholders are not encouraging. The transformation of our economy into some kind of quasi-socialist managed disaster is going on with barely a peep from Republicans. Yes there are some like Senator Inhofe who are trying to hold the line. But if the GOP is interested in employing the conservative online community in a bid to help the party back to power, it would be helpful if a few more congressmen and senators joined the fight, proving that they were worthy of conservative support by acting like, well, you know, conservatives.

In the end, despite the undoubted genius of Ruffini and his friends, I can’t see him making much headway until the Republican party rediscovers its fundamental philosophy and its primary purpose for existing; to elect honest and ethical candidates who espouse conservative values . Not litmus tests but rather shared principles of governance with room for disagreement and debate.

Can Ruffini’s template for conservative activism and organization goad the GOP into that kind of a reformation? I think Pat is counting on that happening. But from where I’m sitting, it would appear to be an uphill battle to motivate online conservatives to join a cause where their activism would be exploited by those who don’t share their principles or care for their opinions.

Salagadoola mechicka boola
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
Put ‘em together and what have you got
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo

Salagadoola mechicka boola
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
It’ll do magic believe it or not
bibbidi-bobbidi-boo
(Music: Mack David and Al Hoffman; Lyrics: Jerry Livingston

It is either a serious discussion on the influence of the Christian right in the Republican party or a nonsensical debate about whether morals informed by religious beliefs have a place in the public square.According to Kathleen Parker and Kevin Drum, there is actually a question about the latter.

Parker:

As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit.

Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D.

I’m bathing in holy water as I type.

To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn’t soon cometh.

Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth — as long as we’re setting ourselves free — is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that.

What does she mean “oogedy boogedy?” And I note that most commentators on this article missed her allusion to “armband religion.” Now let’s think a moment and ask ourselves, what group in history is famous for wearing armbands? The Boy Scouts? Maybe, but do you seriously believe Parker was alluding to the Boy Scouts in her little self-aggrandizing missive?

Parker was comparing the religious right with those other famous armband wearers, the Brown Shirts of Nazi fame. But she did it in such a cutesy way, we will forgive her, right? Boy, I bet Parker’s little smear elicited a snicker or two from her new found friends on the left - a crowd she seems to be playing to more and more lately.

But it is the use of the pejorative “oogedy boogedy” that has everyone up in arms on the right. Jonah Goldberg wonders what all the fuss is about:

My email box runneth over with nice attaboys and more than a few interesting criticisms regarding my post about Kathleen Parker. Keying off some of the criticisms, here’s one thing I want to know, as I sit here at the Whither Conservatism conference. What aspects of the Christian Right amount to oogedy-boogedyism? I take oogedy-boogedy to be a pejorative reference to absurd superstition and irrational nonsense. So where has the GOP embraced to its detriment oogedy-boogedyism? With the possible exception of some variants of creationism (which is hardly a major issue at the national level in the GOP, as much as some on the left and a few on the right try to make it one), I’m at a loss as to what Kathleen is referring to. Opposition to abortion? Opposition to gay marriage? Euthanasia? Support for prayer in school?

Goldberg makes the excellent observation that there all sorts of legitimate points to be made both in favor and against those positions. Indeed, I have found some secular arguments against gay marriage to be if not compelling, certainly reasonable and based on both the law and common sense. Hence, “oogedy boogedism” actually expresses a nebulous kind of fear of the religious right more than it identifies any specific proposals that smack of “armband religion” as so cleverly construed by Parker.

Kevin Drum disagrees:

There will always be plenty of votes for a culturally conservative party. That’s not the problem. The problem is the venomous, spittle-flecked, hardcore cultural conservatism that’s become the public face of the evangelical wing of the GOP. It’s the wing that doesn’t just support more stringent immigration laws, but that turns the issue into a hate fest against La Raza, losing 3 million Latino votes in the process. It’s the wing that isn’t just a little skittish about gay marriage, but that turns homophobia into a virtual litmus test, losing 6 million young voters in the process. It’s the wing that isn’t just religious, but that treats belief as a precondition to righteousness, losing 2 million secular voters in the process. It’s the wing that isn’t just nostalgic for old traditions, but that fetishizes the heartland as the only real America, losing 7 million urban voters in the process. It’s the wing that goes into a legislative frenzy over Terry Schiavo but six months later can barely rouse itself into more than a yawn over the destruction of New Orleans.

What Drum doesn’t mention is the utter contempt liberals and Democrats had for the truth in defining the Republican positions on some of those issues. A “hatefest against Latinos?” Only if you’re a Democrat and want to smear your opponent by spreading that notion. Taking the Gilchrist or Tom Tancredo attitude and position on immigration as the mainstream conservative or GOP position is as ludicrous as the GOP trying to make Cindy Sheehan the poster girl for the Democrats on national security.

What Drum is either too much a partisan to say or just clueless about is that the Democrats successfully demonized Republicans on just about all of those issues he mentions above. He is alluding to a successful political strategy not the reality of where the movement or the party stands - with the exception of gay marriage. (Is he seriously saying that 7 million young voters abandoned the GOP because of that? Young voters have been trending left since 1992, long before gay marriage was even on the radar.)

Fetishizing the heartland as “the only real America” was a direct response to urban Democrats and liberals who have made trashing us out here in flyover country (a term invented by liberals) a cottage industry for authors, pundits, and idiot bloggers like Drum. Perhaps Drum forgets his liberal colleagues and their pointed smears of heartland voters after the 2004 election when calls for secession and sneering at voters in “Jesusland” was all the rage on the left. Fetishizing urban voters as smarter, more sophisticated, more worthy than those of us in the heartland might explain some of that pushback, wouldn’t you think - especially since a more liberal (not necessarily tolerant) attitude toward social issues is a litmus test in and of itself among urban elites.

Drum’s claims of “lost voters” as a result of the Christian right may be true in the aggregate but his specifics leave a lot to be desired. I too, have pointed out that the Republican party is now identified not as the party of fiscal conservatism (How could it be?) but as the party of anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage. Given the alternatives - an economy in ruins, unpopular wars, a despised president, corruption, and incompetence - it is perhaps understandable that the GOP saw its path to victory in turning out its evangelical base in huge numbers. As it turned out, that too, failed.

Now what? If Parker’s “oogedy boogedy” is an elitist’s exaggeration of what the religious right truly represents but if Goldberg is too dismissive of the public face of this movement - the Dobsons, the Ralph Reeds, even the Sarah Palins whose dogmatic approach to the political permutations of social issues turns off many urban, heartland, and in between voters - where can the GOP go to get its mojo back? (Apologies to Mother Jones and Jennifer Rubin.)

What the GOP needs is a little prestidigitation - some Bibbidi, Bobbidi, Boo to drive away the oogedy boogedies and allow the true nature of conservatism and Republican principles to dominate the national debate.

We aren’t going to do that with John Boehner as minority leader. Nor are we going to do it with the bulk of GOP Congressmen now who will no doubt be meekly acquiescing to Obama’s plans to nationalize health insurance, emasculate our defenses, seize control of our schools, and generally impose a liberal template on what still is a country that if it doesn’t lean center right can now be termed a “center-center” nation. More left leaning than they were 20 years ago, the electorate can hardly be termed “liberal” in any sense of the word. Obama won because people believed he would cut their taxes. When queried, the voters still want a strong defense and want a sane fiscal policy.

Those are conservative issues, my friends. The GOP’s mistake in trying to use social issues as a wedge rather than gathering under their tent the bulk of voters who would cast their ballot for a candidate who espoused Republican principles is what lost them the election.

The people may want some form of national health insurance - but they don’t want to break the bank doing it. They may want out of Iraq - but they don’t want our national defenses shredded. And the disconnect between the laundry list of social programs for the middle class offered by Obama and the taxes that would need to be raised to pay for them hasn’t sunk in yet with voters. When it does - when the trillion dollar deficits start to pile up - the Republicans don’t want to be standing too close to the Democrats lest they be hit with the rotten fruit that will be aimed at the left.

This entire argument among conservatives and Republicans comes down to tactics. We just went through an election that proved pretty conclusively that promoting social issues and making them the centerpiece of Republican orthodoxy is just too problematic - too open to dishonest liberal counterattacks that exaggerate and even lie about how pernicious and evil the Godbotherers truly are - oogedy boogedy in spades. The left successfully demonized the religious right and Republicans stupidly made them the poster children for the party. The millions of secular conservatives and religious moderates who had made up the backbone of the GOP fled in terror from the prospect of inquisitions and and pogroms - fostered by the left - and voted Democratic or stayed at home on election day.

Can the two wings of the party be integrated into a coherent whole? This is what will occupy conservatives and Republicans for the foreseeable future. The Kathleen Parkers of this world wants the religious right muzzled and beaten down. The evangelicals and the rest of the base want litmus tests in order to excommunicate those who disagree with them.

The schism is not as wide as it might appear. There is, after all, more that unites us than divides us. But it will take a towering personality or, God forbid, a shock like 9/11 to make the two sides realize it.

The prospect of being slaughtered next Tuesday is concentrating the minds of some prominent conservatives wonderfully.

Patrick Ruffini, Jon Henke, and John Hawkins are beginning to flesh out their thoughts on what a post election conservative on line community might want to accomplish in the future. Let’s take the meat of their arguments one at a time.

Henke:

Actually, I don’t think it’s ironic at all that the analysis of problems on the Right is similar to the arguments made by the Netroots Left. For one thing, the “claims made by Markos Moulitsas” are in many ways intentional recycling of the movement on the Right.

The underlying systemic inputs are very similar. The political/electoral culture and incentives, and the emergence of the internet as an important social and technological phenomenon impacted both the Left and Right at approximately the same time.

The difference in uptake and evolution is predominantly due to the political cycle. Democrats went through the wilderness from 1995 to 2003; they found their way from 2003 to 2008. Republicans entered their wilderness in 2007, though I would argue that the Right has been in the wilderness for longer. How long the Right wanders in the wilderness depends, in large part, on how seriously they take the lessons they can learn from the Left.

***********

Will the Right’s netroots movement look like that of the Left? To the extent that the tools, and the social/political dynamics, are similar, I’d say the Right’s netroots movement will look a great deal like that of the Left. The question is not what tools are available, but how they are relevant to the surrounding environment. The components will not be identical, but the basic concepts they represent should be very much the same. Or rather, they will be when the Right regains its footing.

Jon also notes that “the surrounding political environment” i.e., the conservative on line community’s relationship with the Republican party, has to change before much progress can be made.

Hawkins makes somewhat the same point and amplifies the idea of using the netroots model for the rightysphere:

Why has the left side of the blogosphere grown so much faster?

Personally, I think there are two reasons for it. The first is that the Right has a large talk radio presence while the Left doesn’t. That means on the left, strongly motivated partisans have little choice other than to flock to the blogosphere while on the right, they can simply opt to listen to Rush Limbaugh or Laura Ingraham to get their daily fill of conservatism.

The other more salient reason for the Left’s growth is simply that they’ve been out of power and that has produced an anger and an energy that has driven them online. There was similar growth on the right during the nineties when websites like Townhall and Free Republic rose to prominence as a response to the Clinton years. If Obama gets into the White House, it will be terrible for America, but my guess is that the right side of the blogosphere will grow like a weed for the next 2-4 years.

The bad news is that the Republican Party looks at bloggers solely as an alternative means to get their message out. In other words, there’s a completely non-functional top down organizational structure. It’s non-functional because the Republican Party organizations and pols issue talking points and press releases, most of which are of no interest to bloggers, and they are largely ignored. In other words, they spend most of their time issuing unheeded orders to people who, by and large, think they’re incompetent and aren’t inclined to pay much attention to what they say.

There are exceptions: Jim DeMint, Tom Coburn, Thaddeus McCotter and a few others — but most of the Republican Party doesn’t really understand the blogosphere or know how to communicate with bloggers.

I would add to Hawkins excellent analysis that the GOP doesn’t want to understand blogs or communicate with bloggers because, in my opinion, they want to maintain control of the message. Not only, as John points out, does the GOP treat bloggers as an appendage of the Republican PR machine, but at bottom, there is a profound disrespect for the blogosphere (except for a select few who have proven useful to them) and they despise the independence of most conservative bloggers.

How many GOP functions will Michelle Malkin be invited to after skewering the party 6 ways from Sunday for immigration, corruption, and incompetence?

Finally, Patrick Ruffini riffs off of both men’s analysis and offers a challenge:

What will it take to turn this around? If you’re a conservative blogger, the question you need to ask yourself is this. Is the main purpose of your blog to express your personal opinion? Or is its primary purpose to build political power for a cause? If you cannot answer yes to the latter, you’re probably not going to be comfortable with making the changes necessary to make online conservatism a political force to be reckoned with.

This is not a criticism, but an observation. Most conservative blogs are still stuck in 2003 — both in terms of the overwhelming focus on media criticism and punditry, and the tendency to outsource electoral politics to the Republican Party. This was in some ways legitimate response to what was happening in 2003-4, when media surrender-monkeys were undermining the War on Terror, Republicans had a kick-butt political operation, and Kos was going 0 for 16.

I don’t fault bloggers for holding on to this point of view in 2003 and 2004. What is unfortunate is that they clinged to it in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 and failed to pivot to the new reality, leaving the Republican Party without a powerful enough force to rein in the self-destructive tendencies of its elite.

Sadly, it’s human nature to cling to the frame in which you came up — traditional media people will never fully reconcile themselves to the blogosphere, talk radio people will always tend to view it as the center of the universe, and even denizens of the “new media” can become easily set in their ways. This is not unlike people who got rich on the housing bubble thinking it could never end. When things first start going wrong, it’s always just a momentary blip, not a sign of an impending crash. Only a catastrophic collapse is usually enough to make people rethink matters.

Building critical mass behind an independent online movement on the right will probably require new people. The old blogs that have been with us since 2003 will not go away. But they’ll need to be joined by people who care more about Indiana’s 8th district than Islamofascism, and MN-SEN more than the MSM.

Allow me to give the perspective of a blogger who has been online for 4 years and may have some unique insights into these matters as a result of my building a modest success of this site and my equally modest success at making a living as a blogger/writer/editor on the net.

All three gentlemen make excellent points about what needs to be done to improve the effectiveness of conservative blogs in making an impact on the political process. Certainly there are things we can learn from the left while at the same time, it is important to recognize that some specific tactics and structural components of the netroots simply aren’t transferable to the rightysphere.

Ruffini and Henke write for The Next Right, an online conservative community. This is the template used by the netroots to organize - large communities of online posters who rail against conservatives, exchange ideas, reinforce their own views on issues, and generally offer a comfortable, enjoyable place to belong.

That is the key - the need to be part of something greater than yourself - that drives the netroots and allows them to connect via these huge communities. The question is, can this model be duplicated by conservatives and further, is it desirable to do so?

Ruffini nails it with his description of conservative blogs being outlets mostly for punditocracy. My one foray into the real world of politics was my advocacy for Fred Thompson’s presidential campaign. This website alone raised more than $10,000 for the candidate in two blog blegs I organized and my efforts to unite conservatives behind Thompson’s fund raising activities in December and January were modestly successful. (I really can’t take much credit when Glenn Reynolds and other large bloggers linked and helped promote both fundraising efforts).

That part of it I didn’t mind. It was burying my native skepticism and critical eye in service to the candidate that discomfited me. In the end, I just couldn’t help myself and wrote critically of the campaign and candidate. But for a while, I was 100% with the program - and I hated every minute, every blog post and article I wrote in service to the cause.

Don’t get me wrong. I actually think Thompson would have been a decent president. He had certainly thought longer and more deeply about many issues than either McCain or Obama and his conservatism was informed by both a love of country and a deep, abiding respect for the Constitution and its principles. But he proved a weak, ineffectual candidate and it was a chore trying to defend him.

Ruffini seems to be saying that he wants bloggers who will shill for the cause. He appears to want bloggers who would subsume their independence and buy into the notion that the “primary purpose” of an individual’s blog is “to build political power for a cause.” That “cause” would be backing specific conservative candidates and issues.

One assumes this would be accomplished by adopting some of the online activist model created by the netroots - the most important in my opinion being the creation of online communities that I mention above. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this idea and I hope it is realized.

The problem, as Patrick mentions, is that many of us old mossbacks are stuck in 2003 and our blogging is unrelated to political activism, except in a roundabout way that presupposes our readers are forced to think about what we write and whose opinion might be altered because of the scintillating brilliance of our logic and reasoning.

Or not.

I am not so full of myself that I actually believe my writing makes a difference. But it is mine, my own, and not beholden to a group, a party, or a cause. I suppose that means I will be left behind when this new conservative on line community begins to take shape. That will be my choice and I will harbor little bitterness towards those who choose another path.

But is it the best way for conservatives to achieve power? Is it a way at all?

There is a definite push back on the right these days against the “elites” who make their living inside the Washington-New York axis; where conservative media and commentators exist side by side with their liberal counterparts and it is believed - wrongly in my opinion - that criticism directed at conservatives in flyover country for their passionate embrace of Sarah Palin and the emphasis placed on social issues like abortion is an attack on “ordinary folk” and indicative of the elites’ desire to be accepted at liberal cocktail parties as well as a lack of ideological purity.

I have written that this smacks of a nascent anti-intellectualism (to go along with the anti-science notions pushed by some of the social cons) and that this is an argument as old as the republic itself (populists vs. elites). Questioning the conservative bona fides of Peggy Noonan or David Brooks - two conservatives who have done more to promote conservative ideas than all of their critics combined - doesn’t make sense in any other context except as an indication that many on the right prefer purges to debate and the guillotine to reasoned discussion.

For their part, the elites are, well, acting like elites - seeking a top down, “Live from Mount Olympus” here it is, rubes, take it or leave it analysis that inherently questions the ability of “ordinary folk” to think and act in their own interest and march to their own drummer. The fact that the conservative movement needs both sides to reinvent itself and thrive is lost in recrimination and threats of excommunication.

I have taken my own shots at the anti-intellectuals because I think their take no prisoners attitude is destructive. And if Ruffini et al believes that these purists will be able to see beyond the end of their own nose and participate in any community or movement that isn’t in absolute lock step with their precious notions of who and what a conservative is, they have a lot to learn. Perhaps, as Hawkins points out, the netroots coalesced because they were in the wilderness for so long and that maybe a few years on the back benches in Congress will bring some sobriety to “the base.” I am not confident that will occur.

Last year, I was one of the few conservatives who attended the Yearly Kos convention at McCormick Place in Chicago. What I saw was startling and, for a conservative, not a little frightening. At the time, I was laughed at and roundly criticized for seeing more into what the netroots were up to than was possible. I don’t think too many conservatives are laughing now:

In the summer of 1980, I was a volunteer for the Reagan campaign in Northern Virginia. There were many of us who had come to Washington to work in Congressional offices or fill positions in the burgeoning conservative lobbying industry and “idea factories” that were popping up every other week, contributing to the intellectual ferment that made conservatism so dynamic. It was pretty heady stuff for a 26 year old political neophyte whose bookish ideas of government and the people who ran it was largely shaped by narrative historians and political philosophers.

What was striking at the time was how confident everyone was and how determined people were to bring about a conservative revolution that would sweep the old order away and bring to power those who truly believed in conservative principles. The ideas themselves were important but only as a means to an end. Shaping the ideas, framing them, and packaging them to move the voting public to cast ballots for conservatives was the subject of much discussion in memoranda, position papers, editorials and articles from the few conservative publications at the time.

Anyone who lived through those times and experienced the feeling that ideology and politics had merged so that the ends and means were exactly the same would recognize what is happening at YearlyKos. Top to bottom, inside and out this movement is first and foremost nothing less than revolution. The ideas driving that revolution are pretty standard liberal fare; anti-war, health insurance, environmental protection, education, and jobs top the agenda here at the netroots convention. But the way the issues are being framed by participants in the dozens of panel discussions, workshops, and forums is where the action is. The nuts and bolts savvy of the political activists fuses with the wonks and wise men of the left’s intellectual brain trust to turn out a brand new way to showcase these ideas to the public.

And the netroots are even farther ahead now. They are organizing not just at the state level but all the way down to the precinct level to make the gains they made in 2006 and are going to make next Tuesday into a permanent, liberal majority. This will drive the Republican party to the left - much as conservative success eventually drove the Democrats to the right - and make conservatism an ideology that will be on the outside looking in.

Unless our online conservative wise men like Ruffini, Hawkins, and Henke can figure out a way to tap the enormous potential of the rightosphere and turn its energies toward creating a network of conservatives that can challenge the left at every digital turn.

A fascinating discussion on the internets today about conservatism. It dovetails nicely with my post from yesterday  and with J.R. Dunn’s great blog post in American Thinker where JR talks about conservative elites and how out of touch they are with the heartland:

We need to know the precise reasons why too many of the core commentators of our movement turned on Sarah Palin. That is the only way that we can discover if the situation can be salvaged. What we’ve heard so far is only part of the truth, at best. The response to Palin by such figures as Brooks, Frum, Brookhiser, Buckley, Parker, and Noonan (Krauthammer and Will have been considerably more rational, if still mistaken) has been the farthest thing in the world from reasoned. It has been vicious and feral. People do not react to a merely disagreeable political figure in this manner. All the individuals I mentioned, including Krauthammer and Will in this case, have attacked the McCain/Palin ticket with more ferocity than they have Barack Obama, the most socialist presidential candidate since Henry Wallace. This requires an explanation.People react that way only to threats. We have to know precisely why the conservative elite is threatened by a successful conservative governor to the point that they have completely lost their bearings. The reasons we’ve heard so far are nonsense — you don’t call a woman a “cancer” because she says “like” too much or wears flashy shoes. If these questions are not answered, then we will be obliged to formulate our own.

My opinion is no mystery to readers of this site — that the urban conservative crowd is frightened of Palin because she represents a threat to the standard model of conservatism constructed since the wilderness years of the 1930s, in which a highly-educated and well-connected East Coast coterie led a much larger, less-informed heartland contingent. This, like it or not, is elitism. By their very nature, elites tend to corrode over time. And Sarah Palin, through the very fact of her showing up, has revealed this to be the case in our circle. She upset the enclave conservative applecart, and now they are angry — a lot angrier than they have been at any lefties in recent memory.

Well, applecarts are made for upsetting — they must be knocked over from time to time, to assure against smugness, arrogance, and decay. You can’t simply decry events like this — you have to learn from them. That is what our little elite is refusing to do. And that tells us all we need to know.

What JR is talking about is what Ross Douthat of The Atlantic Monthly calls a Conservative “Cocoon:”

Just to clarify: Sarah Palin’s Alaska is not the conservative cocoon. Neither is Tim Pawlenty’s Minnesota, or Mike Huckabee’s Arkansas, or any other place out in flyover country where a populist conservative became a popular and successful governor. The cocoon is the constellation of mutually-reinforcing conservative institutions - think tanks and advocacy groups, talk-radio shows and websites - that can create the same echo-chamber effect that the liberal media has long produced, and that at times makes it difficult for the Right to grapple with reality. The cocoon is the place where it took an awfully, awfully long time for conservatives to admit that the post-2004 crisis in Iraq wasn’t just a matter of an MSM that wouldn’t report the good news. The cocoon is the place where conservatives persuaded themselves, in defiance of most of the evidence, that the reason the GOP lost Congress in 2006 was excessive spending, and especially excessive pork. And today, the cocoon is the place where conservatives are busy convincing themselves that Sarah Palin’s difficulties handling high-profile media appearances aren’t terribly important, that her instincts are more important than her grasp of national policy, and that the best way to defeat Barack Obama is to start with the lines that Palin has used on the stump - Ayers, anti-Americanism and ACORN - and take them to eleven.So when I say that a populist conservatism needs elites, what I really mean is that it needs elites who can step outside this cocoon and see national politics more clearly - whether they work for conservative outlets, MSM outlets, or something else entirely. This is not, I repeat not, a matter of listening to Beltway conventional wisdom instead of the practical wisdom of the heartland. It’s a matter of recognizing political realities, instead of denying them outright - whether you’re in DC, New Hampshire, or Wasilla. The Sarah Palin who ran for statewide office in Alaska appeared to understand this, which is why she seemed like such a promising figure to me months before McCain selected her: As governor, she was conservative and pragmatic, right-of-center and

anti-ideological. The trouble is that since she’s burst on to the national stage, she’s entered a right-wing world that’s bent on, well, cocooning her - telling her how great she is regardless of whether she gets up to speed on policy and handles Katie Couric’s questions, feeding her lines that appeal primarily to the segment of the electorate that’s already in conservatism’s corner, and calling out anyone who criticizes her as a cocktail-swilling elitist.

Mark Steyn has a slightly different take on this “cocoon.” In fact, Steyn was responding to Ross Douthat’s post explaining why the grassroots “need” elites. Douthat (whose recent book The Grand New Party lays out a conservatism that is more populist and thus able to appeal more to America’s working class) wrote above that Steyn misunderstands his idea of a “cocoon” but I’ll let you decide.

Steyn:

Yet, in contrast to other industries, our chattering classes are uniquely concentrated in Ross Douthat’s DC/NY corridor. Isn’t this a little odd? And doesn’t it pose particular problems for Republicans? Conservative elites live in liberal jurisdictions - and, way out back in the “conservative cocoon”, it gives them the whiff of absentee landlords, who enrich themselves on the strength of various holdings in ramshackle colonies but have no desire to spend much time there. Whatever one feels about what Ross Douthat calls the “conservative cocoon”, it elects conservative mayors, conservative school boards, conservative road agents, conservative state reps, and conservative governors: it’s the only place to go to experience conservatism as applied in practice. On the other hand, Mr Douthat’s aforementioned corridor will once in a while elect a Michael Bloomberg or a Christie Whitman, and that’s it: conservatism remains strictly a theoretical proposition.That’s why the metropolitan sneers about the size of Wasilla were extremely ill-advised, and not just because of the implication that the mayors of, say, New Orleans, San Francisco or Detroit are therefore more qualified to be in the White House. If it weren’t for small towns, suburbs and rural districts, there would be no conservative government at all. With a few exceptions (such as Vermont), “blue states” mostly turn out to be red states with a couple of big blue cities (Pennsylvania, for example, or even California). Almost by definition, an effective conservative executive - the kind you might want in the White House - can only come from flyover country.

So, when a conservative pundit mocks Wasilla, he’s mocking conservatism as it’s actually lived, as opposed to conservatism as a theoretical fantasy playground for the purposes of cocktail-party banter.

I think Steyn is being slightly unfair to Ross - especially at the end of his missive where he skewers the East Coast elites:

As for Sarah Palin, I think she could use a fewer sharper moose gags, but I’m not sure David Brooks is the go-to guy for that. And, to return to his Charlie Rose “Barack is the mountain” shtick, any PBS-watching inbred stump-toothed knuckle-dragging plaid-clad mountain man not yet face down in the moonshine or enjoying a bunk-up with his sister might think that Mr Brooks’ bizarre metaphor gives the game away: the “conservative cocoon” is somewhere you drive through en route to the hiking trip.

So what gives? Is Douthat right? Has conservative media - blogs, talk radio, and the small but influential mags like NRO and Weekly Standard - created an “echo chamber” where our supposed intellectual betters on the coasts can step outside this “cocoon” and tell us the “political truth” about Palin or any other conservative?

Or are JR and Steyn on the button? Are our “elites” out of touch with real conservatives in flyover country and they are simply scared of looking like rubes to their liberal friends?

Allow me to referee this dispute and call a foul on both sides while awarding points to both sides as well. (And if that makes me a straddler, so be it. I happen to believe that both sides make excellent points.)

The roots of this dispute are as old as conservatism itself; elites (the best among us rising as a result of their own talent and efforts) versus what we might call “the levelers” - those more egalitarian conservatives who distrust any aristocracy be it the result of birth or one’s own efforts. For lack of a better label, let’s term these conservatives “populists” (although many would probably reject that label because its historical baggage).

The friction between the two sides is obvious. What has brought it to the fore now is distrust. There is more trust in a roomful of thieves today than there is in a room full of conservatives. And Palin is the focal point where both sides seek to measure the other’s conservative bona fides. The populists see most criticism of Palin coming from elites as signs of squishiness. They believe (rightly) that the elites have no idea how embattled they feel. To many in the heartland, this race has been a nightmare what with the government of George Bush abandoning all pretense that they were conservative and resorting to rank socialism to deal with the financial crisis.This, coupled with a mainstream media so obviously in the tank for Obama along with a fierce rejection of conservatism by many of their friends and neighbors has literally upended the world the populists knew just a few short years ago.

And into this collapsing world come their supposed betters telling them they are wrong about Palin. The elites simply cannot fathom why the populists would latch on to Palin and invest so much of their loyalty and admiration.

Palin represents the future to these populists. She’s like the first born of a monarch - all the hopes for future happiness and success rests on her shoulders. If McCain goes down, the heartland has Palin to look forward to. This attitude has caused the populists to overlook or ignore some of Palin’s obvious shortcomings - something that the elites cannot do, being “realists” who can “step outside the conservative cocoon” and see things as they “really are.”

By damning Palin along with the liberals, the elites come off as “piling on” - something more akin to betrayal than a simple disagreement about politics. So the elites are insensitive while the populists are oblivious. And Palin?

My personal belief is that if the elites would give her six months or a year in Washington in a McCain administration, she would be more than ready to take over if worse came to worse. She has proven to be tough, smart, and possessing good political instincts. But the elites have a point when they say that she simply is not up to speed on national issues now nor will she be before inauguration. And using her as an attack dog is not the best use of her talents. She articulates a fine conservative vision in language that all Americans can understand and embrace. And when she looks into a camera, she is pure magic - a gift that any politician in America would kill for.

So is this really a set to about Palin? Or is there something a little deeper at work tearing at both elites and populists? At bottom, I think the elites blame the base for what could very well be an electoral disaster while the populists are all set to lay the blame for any election disappointments at the feet of the elites for what they see as a betrayal of conservatism itself in its hour of need.

And at this point, I see no way over the wall that is beginning to separate these two strains of conservatism that need each other if the movement is going to resurrect itself following what may be shaping up as a disaster of historic proportions.

 This blog post originally appeared in The American Thinker

Maybe the press is right. Maybe this is, indeed the right’s “Days of Rage.” And much of that anger is directed squarely at the GOP candidate for president.

John McCain not only isn’t a very good conservative. He isn’t a very good candidate. He may not even be a very good man but I don’t know him well enough to say one way or another. Fact is, I have not concentrated much on McCain this campaign. This has driven two or three of my commenters batty who believe I should be writing encomiums to “my” candidate rather than savaging Obama.

Do they fear the power of my pen to damage Obama? Um, probably not although no doubt my views hold sway among that all important voter subset of angry, old, middle aged fat men going deaf. I just wish they’d shut the f**k up and let me write what I want to write and if they don’t like it, they are free to go elsewhere. Few things raise my hackles in this world more than someone telling me what I should be writing about.

Frankly, McCain’s campaign is holding less and less interest for me the further he falls behind. By election day, I may be so disinterested, I might not even vote, although no doubt my obligations as a citizen will eventually overcome the sheer tedium I feel about what is rapidly becoming the most boring campaign of my lifetime.

What is really beginning to engage my mind and hence, my pen, is the state of conservatism. Last summer, I started what I was hoping to be a series of articles on “What Ails Conservatism.” I managed exactly one entry in the series and have yet to come back to it. I hope to do so now that fall has arrived and the distractions (and opportunities for successful procrastination) are somewhat limited.

But questions like that are for another day. Right now, it is simply a matter of acknowledging the obvious and observing the crack up from a safe distance.

The schism, as has long been predicted, is occurring between libertarian conservatives and more traditional, “family values” conservatives. The glue that held the two sides together - Iraq and the War on Terror - has weakened as a result of the winding down of the Iraq war, the fading of Afghanistan as an issue, the fecklessness of the McCain campaign, the economic crisis, and finally, the prospect of utter and complete defeat - an electoral wipeout of truly historic proportions.

I find myself caught between the two sides; not entirely comfortable with the libertarians and rejecting many of the social issues near and dear to the traditionalist’s heart. Perhaps I can call myself a classic conservative but I have yet to see a definition of that animal that I can latch on to. Am I a Burkean? A Kirkean? A Buckleyite?

My head hurts.

For me then, labels aren’t very important. All I know is it will probably be vital that conservatives find a way to reconstitute and revitalize the “movement” to fight the new president and congress when they invariably propose to revolutionize and in some cases perhaps, radicalize the country. Until then conservatives have trained their gunsights not only on Obama and the Democrats, but also on other conservatives who have proven themselves to be less “pure” than they. Apparently, criticism of Sarah Palin has become a litmus test for many regarding how conservative one truly is, as Peggy Noonan and Kathleen Parker have found to their surprise and chagrin.

Noonan, who was working for the conservative cause when most of her critics were but a gleam in their father’s eye or “still in is short pants” as we used to say is now seen as an elitist and an apostate because she fails to see the brilliance of the Palin pick for Vice President and believes that Palin herself might be less than ready to assume high office if worse came to worse. She has been exposed to the full throated howls of rage from the unhinged internet right as well as the more rational chidings from many bloggers who see a flash of hypocrisy in her criticism:

Noonan’s initial position — that Palin represents some sort of existential threat to the left — was over-the-top, and I said so at the time. It seemed that Noonan had been caught up in the irrational exuberance that swept away many conservatives, particularly those trapped in the bubble that was the Republican convention, during the heady days of early September. Except that Noonan may not have believed what she wrote.

Noonan’s current position — that Palin epitomizes what’s wrong with conservatives - fares no better. She begins by citing Edmund Burke’s admonition that writers owe their readers their judgment, and that they betray their readers if they present what may or may not be their opinion. Ironically, this is precisely the betrayal of Noonan’s initial column on Palin.

In her latest column, Noonan argues that Palin has not been sufficiently thoughtful in her public statements during the seven weeks she’s been on the campaign trail. “She doesn’t think aloud,” Noonan complains, “she just says things.” But in the home stretch of this campaign, have Barack Obama, Joe Biden, or John McCain been any more thoughtful than Palin? Noonan doesn’t make that case, and I doubt it’s there to be made.

Instead, Noonan asserts that Palin doesn’t really understand the “tinny” lines she’s been “throwing out” to crowds. But Noonan does not provide a basis for concluding that Palin doesn’t understand what she’s saying or that her lines are appreciably more tinny than those of her counterparts in this election. If Palin were as dense as Noonan suggests, it’s doubtful that she could have held her own (or better) with Biden in a 90 minute debate, a performance that Noonan praised.

I don’t agree with Noonan at all about Palin. I thought at the time and still believe she was not only McCain’s only real choice but, in the end, an excellent pick. Despite the attempts to “Quaylize” her, she has proven to be much tougher than anyone thought as well as being blessed with an innate intelligence that will serve her well in the future. (It is a matter of fact and record that Biden’s gaffe-a-day campaign has gotten a monumental pass from the press since Palin’s entry. Can you imagine any candidate for high office spelling out that famous “3 letter word J-O-B-S” and having that kind of stupidity just disappear down the rabbit hole?)

Ready for high office? Not now. Probably not on inauguration day. But give Sarah Palin 6 months to a year in Washington as Vice President and I guarantee you that not only will she be ready, she will become a formidable force in a McCain administration.

Columnist Kathleen Parker has come under attack for similar views to Noonan on Palin and was amazed and frightened at the vitriolic response. Her naivete was touching and charming while also being a little puzzling. How clueless and out of touch with the modern conservative movement can you be that you are unfamiliar with this strain of nuttiness that floats just below the surface of the conservative base? Here live the beasts and “knuckledraggers” I call them who are constantly on the lookout for any deviation from their own extraordinarily narrow and ignorant view of conservative gospel, ready to pounce and devour those unfortunates who express views even slightly at odds with their own.

Parker crossed them and paid the price. What she doesn’t understand is that the crack up of the conservative movement has opened old wounds relating to elitism vs. populism, secularism vs.religiosity, and the resurrection of anti-intellectualism that conservatives from Kirk, to Buckley, to Kristol, to Reagan all fought with varying degrees of success.

Parker uses her column yesterday to skewer conservatives who dared take off after Christopher Buckley for his endorsement of Barack Obama for president:

What does it mean that the right cannot politely entertain dissenting opinions within its ranks? What, if anything, does it portend that Buckley The Younger has bolted from the Right, even resigning from the family flagship?

Some have opined, ridiculously, that Buckley — son of the famous William F. Buckley (WFB) — was merely seeking attention. Christo, as family and friends call him, has written more than a dozen acclaimed books, one of which, Thank You for Smoking, became a movie. In 2004, he won the Thurber Prize for American Humor for No Way to Treat a First Lady. For 18 years he edited a magazine, Forbes Life, and otherwise seems to be doing all right.

Other critics have surmised that Buckley’s “betrayal” was a publicity stunt for his newest novel, Supreme Courtship (which I reviewed for National Review). When you’re as funny and write as well as Buckley, you don’t have to resort to stunts. You are the stunt.

So why did he do it?

Because he had to. It’s in his genes.

True believers of whatever stripe too often forget that the men and women who create movements are first and foremost radicals. Great movements are not the result of relaxing afternoons musing along the Seine but emerge from flames of passion ignited by injustice.

What planet has Parker been writing her columns from over the last decade? There hasn’t been “polite” debate within the conservative movement or between ideologies for a very long time. Besides, I’m with the knuckledraggers on this one; Buckley is a tool.

It is painfully obvious Buckley is either uninformed about what Obama stands for and what kind of a man he is or he doesn’t care. But if he is going into this endorsement of Obama knowing everything the rest of us know, it is indeed a sorry statement on Buckley’s basic beliefs.

I understand the attraction to Obama for some conservatives. On a very superficial level, he is a true inheritor of the “optimism gene” that any political movement in America needs to succeed. He says all the right words. He makes all the right allusions to our history as an exceptional people.

But given the disconnect between his past radical associations and the anti-American, anti-western, anti-conservative beliefs of the Wrights, Ayers, Meeks, and Khalidi’s in his past and present, Obama’s words become suspect and hence, he literally can’t be trusted with the legacy of Reagan, Kennedy, FDR, and Teddy Roosevelt. Those men didn’t see America as the problem in the world. They didn’t see the wealthy as villains or evil. They all correctly saw the free market as the engine of liberty and social justice.

Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Buckley represent a conservatism that is unfamiliar to me; disconnected from politics, answerable not to a set of principles but rather a personal muse who whispers in their ear what seems to be a polyglot collection of the classically liberal notion of a ruling intellectual aristocracy and the classically conservative precept of an expansive, everyman bonhomie .

This conflict will almost certainly, eventually, lead to huge disappointment in Mr. Obama - if they are intellectually honest enough to recognize it when it happens. Sullivan is so far in the tank for Obama that he will no doubt be a true believer to the end as Obama will try to take us over the cliff. Buckley, I have hopes, will eventually see the light although by then, it won’t do him much good with his erstwhile friends on the right.

The left, of course, is responding to this internecine warfare with tremendous gloating and glee. That’s fine. They have the right to get satisfaction out of our discomfort. But sooner than they realize, they may be questioning the commitment of their own leader to their core beliefs and principles.

And that’s because I have hope that Obama’s most glaring demonstrated weakness - his inability to make up his mind - will “Carterize” his presidency and turn his own base against him in the end. With virtually every single controversial issue in Obama’s political career, he has frozen like a deer in headlights by either voting “present” or, as in the Senate, finding someplace else to be when the issue came to a vote. His tortured, illogical, explanations for where he actually stands on issues like partial birth abortion, immigration, gun rights, campaign finance, and host of others proves that perhaps the GOP’s best hope with the coming Democratic majority may lie in Obama’s fear in forcing people dislike him.

Not much to hope for but in this bleak campaign season, it may be the best we can expect.

The election of Barack Obama would be a catastrophe on the scale of the Great Flood and the Permian Extinction all rolled into one. His ascension to the presidency will mark an end to the American Experiment in self government, open the door for socialism, allow for the payment of reparations to former slaves, ensure the triumph of radical Islam (after turning the White House into a mosque), bring back the Fairness Doctrine, require everyone to become a homosexual, allow the United Nations to run our foreign policy, bring Ahmadinejad over for coffee and some of Michelle’s delicious snack cakes, and turn the United States into a vassal of Sweden.

And that’s not the worst of it.

An Obama victory would also force the Republican party to take a long, hard look at itself and work to discover where things went off the rails. The deadwood and deadheads who are currently in control of the party would be kicked upstairs in order to make room for a new generation of leadership; sobered by defeat, cognizant of the mistakes made in the past, eager to reform everything from the budget process to ethics, and most importantly, able to develop a plan to not only win back power but govern the country once victory is achieved.

A victory by McCain will derail that effort by several years if not, for all practical purposes, shelve it completely. What need is there for reform if we’re winning - even if victory takes the GOP farther away from answering fundamental questions regarding philosophy and identity? John McCain the reformer will find a brick wall if he tries fundamental party reform. Those currently in power are a big part of the problem and it is hardly realistic to believe they will simply fall on their swords and give way to others with new ideas and little baggage to make reform a reality.

If there is a difference in the psyche of the two parties, it is in the way each goes about the process of self examination. Republicans by and large eschew navel gazing, preferring to bull their way ahead with a minimum of self absorbed clutter to distract them. The way the party approached the 1994 elections is a good example. The “Contract with America” was part political testament, part side show, part exercise in turning ideology into governance. It was canny, corny, and brilliantly executed. And after it was realized, the GOP didn’t have a clue what to do with their success except hold on to power.

The Democrats on the other hand are so angst-ridden and emotive when looking at themselves, you half expect the entire party to be locked up and put on a suicide watch. It takes them a lot longer to figure out what went wrong (not liberal enough) and where they should be going (elect more liberals) but when they decide what to do it is for the long term.

Yes, an Obama victory would be bad for America. But if this country can survive a Jimmy Carter, a Herbert Hoover, and a George Bush, it can certainly survive an amateur and fakir like Obama. It will be his incompetence that probably saves us in the end. He has yet to prove himself a success at anything except getting elected. He was a failure as a community organizer, a failure as head of the Chicago Annenberg Project, a failure as a state senator, and a non-entity in the short time he has been a US senator.

With a record like that, how much do we really have to worry about?

I will grant those of you who are wiping spittle off your monitors at this point that an Obama presidency means a much more lefty oriented Supreme Court. We shall see. The GOP will still have the filibuster in the senate. A truly egregious choice could be sidetracked. But even bringing on moderately liberal justices will no doubt mean there will be decisions that will be odious to most conservatives. The key will be to make Obama a one term president while using the next several years to reform the party so that when the GOP is able to win back the House - probably not until 2014 at the earliest - there will not only be a plan for electoral victory but a blueprint for governing as well.

The alternative is for the GOP to continue to wander in the wilderness; directionless, moribund, and with the current leadership more interested in holding on to what they have than seeking to do the things necessary to bring about a resurrection. The party has virtually disappeared from the northeast, the mid-atlantic, and the upper midwest while being challenged in the upper south, border states, the mountain west, and even in the midwest.

There won’t be much of a party left unless Republicans have the courage to take a good long look at themselves, at the last 8 years, at the people who have led them to this near catastrophe, and at a new breed of conservative Republican who could revitalize and re-energize the party and show the American people that the GOP is the party of the future once again.

Obviously, I am not working for a McCain defeat. But his loss would not be the end of the world and could very well be the catalyst for a new, smarter, more dynamic Republican party. It all depends on whether those of us who are in a position to call for change learn the right lessons from a McCain defeat and go about the slow, laborious process of building a new GOP. A party that would not only be capable of winning elections but of governing this beloved country honestly and with the humble realization that the American people need more out of us than moralizing and the tired ideas of the past.