Posted on 04/24/2006 12:42:34 PM PDT by ex-snook
April 24, 2006 Issue
Copyright © 2006 The American Conservative
Where Have All the Conservatives Gone?
The Republican Party’s top contenders for 2008 aren’t paleoconservatives—or any other kind.
By W. James Antle III
Come 2008, who will succeed George W. Bush at the helm of a troubled Republican Party? Though the next presidential race is far off, the question is already on conservatives’ minds.
The last few months haven’t been kind to Republican operatives who assumed President Bush’s slide in popularity would be temporary. Instead, his approval ratings have settled below 40 percent, averaging 38 percent over the last four Gallup polls, and the president appears determined to drag the rest of his party down with him. Bush remains committed to an increasingly unpopular stay-the-course position on Iraq and is actively pushing amnesty for illegal immigrants in defiance of the GOP base.
So far the grassroots have been generally reluctant to defy Bush in return. But public discontent with the White House’s immigration and foreign-policy initiatives could create as many opportunities for traditional conservatives as Democrats, something Bush Republicans are beginning to sense. The president has begun sprinkling his speeches with denunciations of “isolationism.” Fred Barnes declared, in the pages of The Weekly Standard no less, “It’s a paleo moment in America.”
If so, it’s a moment the leading contenders for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination seem content to let pass. The field is dominated by candidates who support the Bush line on immigration and Iraq or are inclined to go even further. In a March Fox News/ Opinion Dynamics poll, the top three Republican hopefuls were former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani at 29 percent, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) at 22 percent, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich drawing 8 percent. Not a paleoconservative among them.
The sole Iraq skeptic, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), is at the bottom of the pack with just 1 percent. The Fox poll is no outlier. Giuliani and McCain lead in most surveys—in November, Rasmussen Reports had Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joining them in the top tier—while mavericks like Hagel languish in the low single digits.
Rice isn’t sounding like someone who plans to be a candidate in 2008, and Gingrich is running on the fumes of 1994 nostalgia. Giuliani and McCain are the beneficiaries of near-universal name recognition and fawning press coverage. But few of the dark horses offer paleos—or the growing majority of Americans who disapprove of Bush’s handling of Iraq and immigration—much reason for optimism. Unless something changes dramatically over the next year and a half, rather than taking the opportunity to repudiate the current president’s mistakes, Republicans are poised to nominate someone who favors repeating them.
If something does change, it will likely be due to one of two potential candidates. While foreign-policy realists dream of Hagel breaking out of his asterisk status, many immigration realists pin their hopes on Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.). Tancredo has graduated from House backbencher to the leader of an effective congressional immigration-reform faction. In December, he and his allies fashioned a tough enforcement-only border-security bill that passed the House. Tancredo has been touring the country as the Senate prepares to undo his handiwork.
Tancredo is realistic about his presidential chances. He tells reporters that he would prefer to see a first-tier candidate take up the immigration issue—“someone taller and with better hair”—but is considering a run if no one obliges. “Soon we may see some of the princes in waiting jockeying to become the Tancredo of the Senate,” predicts Will Adams, the congressman’s spokesman.
A Senate version of Tancredo would be a welcome addition to the field, given how inhospitable many leading Republicans have been to the real one. He was excluded from the Southern Republican Leadership Conference (SRLC), with organizers citing schedule and ballot space constraints and Tancredo’s office calling it “a clear snub from the leadership.” “Congressman Tancredo may have been kept off the stage,” says Adams. “But the immigration issue wasn’t off the stage.”
Hagel has also gotten a poor reception from Republican regulars. He garnered just 0.2 percent of the vote at the SRLC straw poll and is unpopular with conservative activists. Despite a solid lifetime American Conservative Union rating of 85 percent, he has been tagged with the GOP Right’s favorite epithet—RINO, or Republican in name only.
“If the choice were Hillary v. Hagel, I would be tempted to vote for Hillary, even apart from my ideologue’s desire to punish a bad Republican,” wrote National Review senior editor Richard Brookhiser on the magazine’s website. “This is a bogus choice, since Michael Jackson has as much chance of being the GOP nominee as Hagel.”
Conservative distaste for Hagel appears to have two causes. The first is that the Nebraska senator established himself as a reliable Bush critic before he developed a reputation as a Beltway conservative in his own right. James Dobson has accused Hagel of being coy about a constitutional amendment forbidding same-sex marriage. Supply-siders fault him for telling the Washington Post Style section that in a presidential debate he “couldn’t take that pledge” not to raise taxes. Without strong conservative credentials of his own, observers see his differences with Bush as a liability among Republican primary voters.
Hagel’s second problem is that he is perceived as being too close to McCain. While the two senators are far apart on foreign policy—Hagel is known for prudent internationalism while McCain outdoes Bush in go-it-alone interventionism—the Nebraskan was one of the few senators to endorse McCain in 2000. Lumped together with his Vietnam service and disputes with Bush, the McCain clone label has stuck. George Neumayr, in a cover story for The American Spectator, mocked him as “Chuck McHagel,” others prefer to taunt him as “the poor man’s McCain.”
Republican consultant Patrick Hynes, an expert on evangelical voting patterns, sees several reasons the 2008 field will probably remain a paleo-free zone. “Paleoconservatives are not organized politically and there are no political consequences for defying them,” he says. “They are absolutely right that their views on foreign policy have a long conservative pedigree, but most voters don’t really care who is the purest in their political tradition.”
It is true that adherents of the older strains of conservatism amount to more of an intellectual movement than an electoral one. David Brooks memorably wrote that Pat Buchanan’s 1996 presidential bid—perhaps the most successful paleo political venture to date—was “as close to an intellectual’s campaign as we have seen in modern politics.” There is no real paleo presence among the party’s state chairmen and Rolodex-wielding fundraisers. But an ambitious conservative needn’t channel Russell Kirk to realize there is an incentive to move away from unpopular positions on salient issues. According to a Hotline poll, Iraq is the top reason Republicans disapprove of the president.
But the Rolodex men aren’t just weeding out dissenters on the war and immigration policy. This field is strikingly weak even on basic conservative staple issues. For the past 25 years, it would have been difficult for a candidate who was outspokenly pro-choice or in favor of gay rights to mount a serious bid for the Republican nomination; Giuliani is both. McCain’s record on social issues is more consistent with GOP norms, but he is distrusted by the Christian Right and despised by economic conservatives. His unsuccessful 2000 presidential campaign was widely seen as an attempt to relieve both factions of their control over the party.
This will provide some interesting insights into conservative priorities—whether they prefer war and guest workers or traditional values and small government. Some of the Right’s opinion-makers have already reconciled themselves to the front-runners’ moderation. In 2004, David Frum penned an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, the title of which pronounced Giuliani “pro-choice, but still the best choice.” The Weekly Standard promoted McCain when he took a more adversarial line against the GOP establishment; his saber-rattling on Iran and talk of committing still more troops to Iraq may make him William Kristol’s favorite a second time around.
Conservative outlets that are more interested in domestic policy have already started casting about for alternatives. The two favorites have been Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. The smooth-talking, telegenic Romney has appeared on the covers of National Review, The Weekly Standard, and The American Spectator (the last with the headline “Romney Rocks!”). The football-throwing, NASCAR-loving Allen has graced the covers of NR and Newsmax.
Both men are odd choices for conservative adulation. Until he began seriously entertaining presidential ambitions, Romney was a Northeastern moderate Republican. As recently as his 2002 campaign for governor, he pledged to “protect the right of a woman to choose under the law of the country and the laws of the commonwealth.” “He has had as many positions on abortion as John Kerry has on Iraq,” says Hynes.
Allen is a more conventional red-state Republican, but despite his 100 percent rating from the National Right to Life Committee, as governor of Virginia he was pro-choice in the first trimester and opposed to overturning Roe v. Wade. Factor in Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who is also tepid on social issues, and all the stronger cultural conservatives linger at the back of the pack alongside war critics and immigration reformers.
Hynes warns, “Republicans may be in real trouble with values voters.” Traditional conservatives are also in real trouble if, after eight years of Bush, the best the GOP can do is even worse.
April 24, 2006 Issue
The open borders "Wall Street Journal Republicans" just want to pigeon-hole pro-enforcement (as in law enforcement against ILLEGAL aliens) Conservatives into that stereotype.
True. But quixotic campaigns by people without elected executive experience have just not been successful. The last President who had not been either a Gov. or VP was John F. Kennedy in 1960. And he was a well known war hero and the George Clooney of his day. And he was a Senator. I really can't think of a lowly Rep who has made it.
Doesn't mean it can't happen, but it probably won't. Candidates like Forbes, Buchanan, Perot get some publicity and a some votes, but don't seem able to build the structure needed to win (even the nomination).
Realistically if Tancredo wants to be President his best bet would be running for and winning the Gov. of Colorado.
First, by the time the vast majority of us get to vote in a presidential primary, the field has already been eliminated in such places as New Hampshire and Iowa. By simply cutting off the cash to the few who remain who don't toe the RNC line, the choice is thin gruel by the time Super Tuesday rolls around. In 2000, the choice for CA was down to Bush or McCain, IIRC. Buchanan had split; Bauer, Alexander, Forbes, Libby Dole, Kasich, Hatch, Keyes and Quayle were already gone.
God help us if we do that.
the US and the world for that matter, is just not as conservative as it used to be.
get ready folks, you ain't seen nothing yet...
True but also consider that it was decided much earlier by the number of dollars donated by the power brokers. In primaries, the candidate who has the most dollars wins. You only get to select from what's on the menu. Hard to reason that Bush won the nomination on his ideas or Gore for that matter.
Perzactly. In the pre-9/11 world, I voted more against Gore, than for Bush. The only reason I saw in favor of Bush was his stance on federal judges and constitutionalism.
Maybe the bottom 'line' is the line at the airports which measures Bush's success in the WOT.
The problem is the same as it has always been.Back before 94 my liberal buddy used to say, well you just have to elect your guys. But we do elect our guys and then they are not our guys any more. They go to Washington and turn 180, becoming big spenders and anti security and when reelection time comes we compare them to the alternative and elect them again and they run still further away from us.
I'll make it easy.
I don't care what a politician calls himself, paleo, neo, or neopaleo. I want someone who has a strategy to deal with muslim terrorism in particuilar, and muslim expansionism in general.
I want someone who is a constitutionalist.
I want someone who won't be embarrassed to secure the borders.
I want someone who is principled, isn't embarrassed by his principles, and who can articulate them to a new generation.
If you can do that, I'm willing to listen.
Agreed. It's about time for a general. And a general who's not afraid of fighting the war of words and ideas in Washington, too.
you should know by now ... you have to be 200% pro-life or you're just not quite good enough for some. "more Catholic than the Pope" they used to say ;)
One party will disappear, the other will be re-invented.
A new one will be born.
Hopefully, the rest of the story won't follow the script - but I'm pessimistic.
And he really lost.
First, please don't use "feel" in place of "think." We already have enough sissy liberals "feeling" everything.
Second, how could abortion not be a priority? Abortion is the murder of another american; and worse, the murder of a baby!
BTTT.
Keeping 'em honest is a full time job.
Finally someone understands how GW came to power. He was anointed as will be his successor.
I never knew Hagel was conservative.
"And he really lost"
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Lost ????? Kennedy beat Nixon.
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