Posted on 01/16/2013 6:42:50 AM PST by Kaslin
It's hard for a lot of people, particularly on the right, to recognize that the conservative movement's problems are mostly problems of success. The Republican Party's problems are much more recognizable as the problems of failure, including the failure to recognize the limits of that movement's success.
American conservatism began as a kind of intellectual hobbyist's group with little hope of changing the broader society. Albert Jay Nock, the cape-wearing libertarian intellectual -- he called himself a "philosophical anarchist" -- who inspired a very young William F. Buckley Jr., argued that political change was impossible because the masses were rubes, goons, fools or sheep, victims of the eternal tendency of the powerful to exploit the powerless.
Buckley, who rightly admired Nock for many things, rightly disagreed on this point. Buckley trusted the people more than the intellectuals. Moreover, as Buckley's friend Richard Weaver said, "ideas have consequences" and, consequently, it is possible to rally the public to your cause.
It took time. In an age when conservative books make millions, it's hard to imagine how difficult it once was to get a right-of-center book published. Henry L. Regnery, the founder of the publishing house that bears his name, started his venture to break the wall of groupthink censorship surrounding the publishing industry. With a few exceptions, Regnery was the only game in town for decades.
That's hardly the case anymore. While there's a higher bar for conservative authors at mainstream publishers (which remain overwhelmingly liberal), profit tends to trump ideology.
And publishing is a lagging indicator. In cable news, think tanks, talk radio and, of course, the Internet, conservatives have at least rough parity with, and often superiority to, liberals. It's only in the legacy institutions -- newspapers, the broadcast networks and most especially academia and Hollywood -- where conservatism is still largely frozen out. Nonetheless, conservatism is a mass-market enterprise these days, for good and for ill.
The good is obvious. The ill is less understood. For starters, the movement has an unhealthy share of hucksters eager to make money from stirring rage, paranoia and an ill-defined sense of betrayal with little concern for the real political success that can only come with persuading the unconverted.
A conservative journalist or activist can now make a decent living while never once bothering to persuade a liberal. Telling people only what they want to hear has become a vocation. Worse, it's possible to be a rank-and-file conservative without once being exposed to a good liberal argument. Many liberals lived in such an ideological cocoon for decades, which is one reason conservatives won so many arguments early on. Having the right emulate that echo chamber helps no one.
Ironically, the institution in which conservatives had their greatest success is the one most besieged by conservatives today: the Republican Party. To listen to many grassroots conservatives, the GOP establishment is a cabal of weak-kneed sellouts who regularly light votive candles to a poster of liberal Republican icon Nelson Rockefeller.
This is not only not true, it's a destructive myth. The Rockefeller Republicans were purged from the GOP decades ago. Their high-water mark was in 1960, when the Goldwater insurgency was temporarily crushed. Richard Nixon agreed to run on a platform all but dictated by Rockefeller and to tap Rockefeller's minion Henry Cabot Lodge as his running mate. When the forebears of today's tea partiers threatened to stay home or bolt the party in 1960, Sen. Barry Goldwater proclaimed, "Let's grow up, conservatives!"
It's still good advice. It's not that the GOP isn't conservative enough, it's that it isn't tactically smart or persuasive enough to move the rest of the nation in a more conservative direction. Moreover, thanks in part to the myth that all that stands between conservatives and total victory is a philosophically pure GOP, party leaders suffer from a debilitating lack of trust -- some of it well earned -- from the rank and file.
But politics is about persuasion, and a party consumed by the need to prove its purity to its base is going to have a very hard time proving anything else to the rest of the country.
Good post. The GOP constantly screams about spending cuts and they don’t work unless your goal is to go into recession and making the deficit problem worse.. The only economic solution to our debt problem is economic growth. Period. Obama has instituted so many regulation that are crushing economic growth that we will never be able to get out of this mess if nothing changes. The GOP message needs to be to educate the public on pro-growth policies. Just slashing spending will never work.
It's unfortunate that they won't be the only ones who will have to deal with his monstrosity of the week, all of us will suffer greatly for their stupidity.
Jonah is absolutely full of it. I’ve read Before the Storm, about the 1960 campaign, and right now I’m reading The Crusader, a bio of Pat Buchanan and his runs for the presidency. Both books fully and clearly establish the weak, cowardly moderation that infects the GOP. They document the inescapable fact that Republicans are deeply embarrassed by and ashamed of true conservatives. It’s always been this way.
Rush said it a while back.....the Republican party has always contained conservatives, but it has never BEEN a conservative party.
Romney is the one with the ball, Lake. HE’S the one who took the ball and went home with it. It’s up in Connecticut or Massachusetts or Michigan or Utah...whichever one is actually home to him.
Romney refused to play with the conservatives.
You can’t blame a couple million anonymous, little name people when ONE GUY could have changed everything by simply shutting up on some things, reaching out on others, and going on the attack on foreign affairs.
There weren’t 3 million little balls. There was ONE BALL.
And Romney was the candidate, so Romney had the ball.
The only economic solution to our debt problem is economic growth. Period. Obama has instituted so many regulation that are crushing economic growth that we will never be able to get out of this mess if nothing changes.
It is only going to get worse. The obama indirect tax plan seems to be to push the costs of socialist government on to businesses. They will then have to raise their prices, cut employees, etc.
That will devastate the economy and spending power of consumers. The dims will try to claim they didn’t raise taxes on the “middle class”. It’s a truly viscous cycle we are entering.
A depression might cause Americans to turn back to their God.
That would be the best that could possibly happen.
The left is all aglow with the Krugman piece last week stating that “the deficit problem is over” because it will “come down naturally over the next few years as a percent of GDP.” So i asked one of the, on Twitter what the implied GDP growth rate was in those projections. The CBO is assuming AVERAGE growth of 4.7 percent from 2014 - 2020. Absolute joke growth rates. We haven’t seen a period like that in ages.
Political change IS underway through a 4+ decade barrage and infestation by New Left Democrats who openly have a hard on for Communist dictatorships. The media, academia, and DNC stinks of their rhetoric.
It became "a scandal" to call out Communists at some point in this country. Those who say it is scandalous are among the red dupes who are blind to the problems of Socialist Utopian visions. As if the rhetoric and "lists" regarding gun owners is somehow more "well intentioned" than the outing of traitors in the State Department in coordination with the Soviet Union.
And Romney was the candidate, so Romney had the ball.
Exactly. It’s not difficult. Romney lost because he BUNGLED THE CAMPAIGN. He knew what to do. He whipped the kenyan in the first debate. He whipped the MSM at the Jacksonville press conference. He CHOSE not to do that more often. He CHOSE not to fight back against the outrageous smears in critical places like OH, etc., etc.
The loss is all on Romney and his campaign. It shouldn’t have even been close. I find it silly to blame his errors and subsequent election loss on those who didn’t vote.
I have yet to hear a "good liberal argument".
They have no qualms about lying (how many phony anecdotal friends do the Democrats bring up, like the "racist" hunter who supports gun control?). Any "outrage" they have over "war crimes" disappears when the president has a D after his name.
I saw a book in the 1990s that "solved" 10 controversial issues. Among them were abortion/overpopulation/teen pregnancy. The theorist said first that the issue over whether abortion kills a living thing needs to be set aside. After that, the issue is "resolved" because abortion is used on demand. THAT is a "good liberal argument"?
Not one liberal who said it is "wrong" for Warren Buffett's secretary to "pay more taxes" than he does bothered to discuss how he owes a billion dollars in back taxes. So much for an honest discussion.
I’ll grow up, Jonah, when I’m certain I’m playing with adults.
&&&
Post of the day, IMO.
They weren't purged. They became Bush Republicans. The GOP today at the national level is all about growing the government, and screwing the rank and file. Jonah couldn't be more wrong.
How can Jonah write such an article without mentioning Reagan? I think Jonah has turned into an apologist for the GOPe.
By "hard reset" I mean something more on the order of Weimar Republic hyperinfation or the Argentine currency collapse. Or some sort of unprecedented disaster that obliterates normal services. The media machine will not be able to pretend that it isn't happening, especially when the power goes out and stays out at the studio.
It might be enough to bring Americans back to God. Or not. But with the Boy King at the helm we may get to find out soon.
So, the Founders were not conservative?
Jonah has always been a huckster.
My take on it is that if I agree with any politician 100% of the time, then I am the politician.
Michele Bachmann voted in favor of ethanol subsidies as a freshman but that hardly puts her in the same category as a Fred Upton or John Boehner.
Perhaps, but my problem with Bachmann is that when push comes to shove, she sides with the establishment, e.g. her recent vote for Bonehead as Speaker.
The GOP needs to study and learn from the political working of states like Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas if it wants a future.
OTOH, what has that got to do with Obozo's agenda of bankrupting America, destroying the middle class, continuing his international dictator's butt-kissing tour; golf at the best country clubs, multi-zillion dollar "vacation trips taking Moochelle and her parasite friends and fellow Marxists at our expense???
And what did it have to do with the care and feeding of the trust funds of the rich and brainless which is Mittens the Mild's (very nice description!) one and only priority other than personal power to do most of Obozo's priority list to show that "Rich Republicans are people, too!!!" ?
Give it a rest already. None of us who refused to vote for a POS like Romney regret it. Nor shall we ever regret it. OTOH, you aren't likely to change your mind either. It is time to get on with our respective lives.
Want our votes in the future??? Earn them by nominating a candidate worth voting for. That goes not only for POTUS but for Senate, House, Governorships, state legislators and party officials.
The rigged 2012 election is over. Get over it. If you are actually a conservative, look to the future for a CONSERVATIVE result not some half vast leftist crap like Romney, McCain, Dole, Bush the Elder, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon or whomever of that ilk. Get on board with a real conservative agenda or understand that conservatives will launch our own party and destroy the GOP. Most of us will still vote in GOP primaries while we are at it. If that does not produce acceptable candidates, so be it. Third party, here we come! When, as a result, the upper marginal tax rates return to 90%, it will be the GOP-E who get to pay those rates, not me or most conservatives. I hope that they will be satisfied with themselves.
Since the GOP-E have no interest (at least not a constructive interest) in saving babies, saving marriage as an institution, religious freedom, gun rights, slashing gummint waste (that they benefit from), nationalism, interventionism when justified and other real issues because they are so totally obsessed with the interests of the Junior League and the trust fund babies, conservatives have no interest in electing GOP-E greedheads and other GOP-E trash to public office. Not being Obozo is NOT ENOUGH.
Your boy Romney was an enemy of the babies, of marriage, of religious freedom, of gun rights, of slashing gummint waste, of nationalism, of justified interventionism, and of each and every policy position that actual conservatives actually CARE about. You can protest all you want that only Ron Paul was worse in your eyes as a GOP candidate but you confess voting for Romney and he is yours now and forever. You own his royal Romneyness. Get on board for actual conservative efforts and bygones can again be bygones. OR keep on defending the evil POS Romney and the GOP-E and continue to be utterly irrelevant.
Finally, Joshua Goldberg can take his accommodationist BS and go straight to hell along with what passes for National Review nowadays. If the Northeast is destroyed by earthquake, it will be Bill Buckley rolling in his grave over the garbage that NR has become.
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