If Reagan Tolerated GOP Moderates, Why Can’t Today’s Conservatives?

Pajamas Media ^ | May 4 | Rick Moran

[meyer]

Reagan’s moderates are today’s Far right.

Exactly. Or, today's moderate republicans are liberals.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

When I think of pleas to retain the RINOs in the Republican party, I am reminded of an old New Yorker one panel comic.

The scene is at the Vatican. A proud looking devil with papers under his arm is marching through one of the grand gates. Watching him are two cardinals, one of whom is saying, “I think this ecumenism thing is going too far!”

The comparison is good. Inviting the RINOs to remain in the party is like inviting demons into your church. While the preacher may be thrilled with the idea of reaching common ground with them, they are so offensive to all the other churchgoers that the purpose of the church is lost.

[goat granny]

I loved Jesse Helms, he was a gentleman but didn’t back down to anyone...May his soul rest in peace....

[Melas]

Because Reagan wasn’t a radical. The problem today is that we have to many radicals on all fronts. Extremism doesn’t have much to do with the idea itself, but the hatred for anyone and everyone who doesn’t share the idea. Thus we have factions within the GOP today who are more interested in infighting than anything else. There is plenty of blame to go around, and all quarters are guilty.

[OH4life]

I think that is a pretty good summary. A lot of people here say stuff like “Some poll told me 60% of the country is ‘conservative’, and I think ‘conservative’==[lengthy list of very specific viewpoints], so if only everyone would be a real conservative and agree with [aforementioned list], we would win landslide victories!!!”

Is abortion defending the rights of the fetus or stamping all over the rights of the mother?

Is drug prohibition the only thing keeping this country from chaos or taking away people’s right to ingest what they want?

Is teaching evolution in schools grossly violating freedom of religion, or is it just teaching kids sound science?

etc etc etc

[okie01]

Why is it only conservatives who "can't tolerate moderates".

Show me the liberal who will tolerate a "moderate".

The left is infested with far more intolerance than the right.

Why is it O.K. for them?

[fr_freak]

First of all, Ronald Reagan is not Jesus Christ. Reagan was great, and I wish he were president right now, but he was not infallible, so the question shouldn’t be “if Ronald Reagan could do it, why can’t we?” The question should be “is it right for us to do so now?” The answer is no, because we have been tolerating so-called “moderates” (which were always really liberals) and look where it got us. When you’re in a hole, quit digging.

[Melas]

You missed my point. It’s not the ideas that are the problem. It’s not conservatism, it’s not liberalism, it’s not moderation, it’s the radicalization of all of the above and more. The core of the mindset that’s destroying the GOP coalition (and a coalition is absolutely necessary) is the outright anger from every faction towards every other faction.

Clue time: Elections are won by sheer numbers, and sheer numbers alone. The more voters you alienate, the fewer votes you have, and the more potential votes your opposition has to pick up. This nonsense that someone needs to be kicked out of the tent is just that, nonsense.

[Clemenza]

I travel to alot of places and talk to alot of people. Let me just say that, outside of those of us on the Right, Sarah Palin is seen as a moron who was a drag on the ticket. The ball is in HER court to prove herself beyond the hostile media a la Ronaldus Magnus. So far, she has failed in this task.

[okie01]

This nonsense that someone needs to be kicked out of the tent is just that, nonsense.

I believe you're overstating your case.

The "three legs on the Republican stool" have been social conservatives, fiscal conservatives and national defense conservatives. These are not necessarily conflicting positions; in fact, they're quite compatible.

However, what I am observing is a.) the "moderates" (whoever they are and whatever they believe) are trying to read the social conservatives out of the party and b.) the social conservatives have rightly responded with their counter-proposal. Moreover, these "moderates" don't really seem to be conservative, at all. Certainly, they aren't committed to any leg of the stool -- and are willing to compromise on all of them.

"Moderates" of this vein should leave the party. They don't belong here. In fact, they are pursuing a destructive course. If they'd rather be Democrats, let them be Democrats.

It hurts the numbers, sure. But, as voters, these are not people you can count on anyway. Plus, their presence compromises the party's principles and makes it difficult to express exactly what the party is for.

They got their guy in 2008. And we all can see how that turned out.

[nathanbedford]

Thank you for a very thoughtful reply which raises significant issues and focuses our attention on the other side of the coin. If there is a yang for every ying, there is a need for reconciliation as well is clarity. The issue is, do we need more reconciliation or do we need more clarity, assuming the two are incompatible? This is a mix which must vary with the times. Presently, Republicans are stripped of power everywhere and it does not much matter whether we are one vote or five votes short of preventing cloture. That tells me that these times call for clarity because there is no cost if reconciliation is traded for it. As we approach inflection points such as elections, I suspect the need for reconciliation will weigh heavier.

I wrote a very long reply after the first debate and long before the election in which I anticipated the catastrophe which was to befall of us and groped for some means of reconciliation. At no time would I sacrifice serious issues of principle to accommodate reconciliation. I set forth this post now to demonstrate that I've been concerned about your observations about reconciliation for some time and have been trying to articulate a paradigm in which clarity and reconciliation can be made compatible. The Post does not begin to treat with all the issues you raise in your reply but it is a start:

After the debate will come a time of agonizing reassessment for conservatives. We conservatives as early as immediately after the debate and certainly no later than after election eve will unavoidably come to grips with the desperate straits of the movement. The Republican Party at the end of this election cycle will be reduced to the citadel of the old Confederacy and a few Rocky Mountain states.

.... Speaking of bloodletting, it is absolutely vital that the conservative wing of the party come to a final victory over the moderates or we conservatives simply must leave the party. There will be no better time, we will never have less to lose. We will be in control of most of the elected offices and we will be in solid red states, few though they may be. The moderates will be geographically scattered in occasional congressional seats with some odds and ends in statehouses. They will have their voices in the media and some access to money. Many of them will defect to the Democrat party. Some might become libertarians. But conservatives must get lean and mean and come to a clear understanding of who they are and what they stand for. Moderates can come along but only after capitulation. There is no sense taking stragglers and mutineers along into the wilderness.

Not less important than finding our soul, conservatives must ruthlessly enforce party discipline. That can only come after moderates are reconciled to conservative leadership or have gone their own way. There can be no doctrinal accommodation with moderates. There is nothing more to be gained by compromising principle for a few more votes in the caucus because the caucus will have no power anyway. Conservative power will come from the moral strength of ideas. Eventually, if Obama only perverts and does not subvert the constitutional system, the public will realize the moral corruption of the liberal regime.

I believe that the big battle in the party will not be between conservatives and moderates but between social conservatives and fiscal conservatives who are primarily libertarian. Both flavors of conservatives find common ground in strong defense. Fiscal conservatives are generally not as enthusiastic about Second Amendment rights, but the issue is not a dealbreaker. Social conservatives are almost universally fiscal conservatives but not all fiscal conservatives share social conservatives concerns about abortion and the ancillary issue of the morning after pill, education, religion in the public square, homosexual union, stem cell research, and pornography, marital fidelity as a prerequisite to public service, and evolution.

I consider myself to be a social conservative with a pesky libertarian reflex. In other words I am ferociously opposed to abortion but I am less exercised about what homosexuals are doing to each other in private. I am very concerned about the war being waged against Christians by our own governments but I'm not very exercised about adult pornography. I recite all of this because I think the way I resolved my apparent dilemma is the way everybody should do it: look for the victim and protect him. The classic arguments in support of legalizing alcohol, drugs, prostitution and gambling all point to the "absence" of a victim so the traditional conservative bias towards individual liberty weighs very heavily. But I sure see a victim in partial-birth abortion so I don't give a damn about the mother's convenience. Indeed, I see no reason to grant exceptions to prohibitions against abortion for incest or rape because those circumstances do not justify victimizing innocents, that is, to kill babies. Life of the mother exception, to the contrary, makes sense to me because one can identify the mother now as a victim. So if all conservatives would only just do as I do, (you know, be as reasonable as Henry Higgins and I) which is to weigh the balance in behalf of an identifiable victim but otherwise to respect individual liberty, we would find much overlapping common ground upon which to build long-lasting compromise.

If social conservatives would accept formulations of public morality the organizing principle of which is the protection of an identifiable victim rather than the vindication of a moral precept, fiscal conservatives and libertarians would be much more comfortable in the party. Fiscal conservatives, for their part, must go to bat for Christians when they are embattled by the secularists who would rob them of their faith through the arm of government. Fiscal conservatives owe Christian conservatives one more consideration, they must stop their smug condescension and their eye rolling whenever Christians express their faith in public. Consider for example the execrable figure of the son of William F. Buckley Jr. abandoning the McCain/Palin ticket for ill disguised abhorrence of Palin's faith. This is probably the last kind of bigotry that is socially acceptable in America but it must no longer be acceptable among conservatives. Buckley claims that he is a "small government conservative" but I claim that no matter how small his government, he is no conservative at all but something quite alien to us.

If the conservative movement is to be salvaged, this dichotomy will have to be resolved either along lines that I suggest or some other way. The alternative is a further splintering of the party and that would be very, very unfortunate.

Conservatives face one other dilemma where the choice is ultimately a moral one and no matter which side of the argument prevails, the cost is inevitably great. The Republic is obviously embarking on a accelerated venture into socialism which implies deprivation of fiscal as well as First Amendment and other traditional liberties. When this happened during the Great Depression the Supreme Court for a while upheld the Constitution against the tidal wave of public opinion demanding action. That all ended with a court packing scheme which did not succeed in packing the court but did succeed in forcing the court to turn its face from the Constitution. The nation is probably embarking on a parallel course under Obama in response to this financial crisis. There is really no hope that the Constitution can be invoked to protect property to stop that process. Conservatism will have to rationalize this radical departure from the Constitution and find new ground to oppose the nationalization of everything. This will be both an intellectual and a public-relations challenge. The temptation will be to do as John McCain has done, try to moderate rather than resist entirely the usurpation of our liberty and our property.

How conservatives can contrive to come out of the wilderness or whether they can come out at all cannot now be foreseen. Much depends on whether Obama merely perverts our institutions and traditional liberties or succeeds in subverting the Constitution à la Hugo Chavez. Obama has many tools short of violence and few institutional obstacles stand in his way. He has the overwhelming justification of the financial crisis which might well become a depression. He will pack the court. He will use the treaty making power to detour around our constitutional liberties. The propaganda machine will be overwhelming.

The bright side, if it can be counted as such, is that all will not be well on the left. Hillary will exercise her ambitions, inevitably at the expense of Obama. Every special-interest group will be calling in their IOUs. In the long run, an extreme leftist coalition cannot hold together unless it moves beyond our constitutional government toward some sort of repressive regime. I look for Stalin versus Trotsky wars on the left with the potential for these internicine battles to spin out of control.

Who knows where that will lead? Much depends on whether the left stays within the model of a representative democracy or seeks to extend its power with subversion of our historical liberties.

[Lexinom]

This post goes into my permanent personal bookmarks. I hope many read it and re-read it. Beyond your commendable mastery of prose, the scintillating idea - uniting argumentation around the presence or absence of a victim rather than abstract moral precepts - is the precise remedy for this fever-stricken movement. This is a “big tent” I can support with enthusiasm.

[Lexinom]

Doing something I rarely do: pinging a handful of you to a brilliant post, #71.

[nathanbedford]

Do you realize that if my wife or kids see your post I will never ever be able to live this down but thank you for the kind words anyway.

[Lexinom]

You've hit the proverbial nail on the head. In other words, you've A) understood a complex problem that has been difficult for many to grok and B) articulated both the problem definition and a viable remedy. The problem is one of epic proportions both in depth and scope - the future of America. The solution, not extreme but reasonable and tractable to normal thinking adults, bears a correspondingly heavy weight of importance.

You are most assuredly onto something big and have the gifts to disseminate it to a broader audience than FR.

[Congressman Billybob]

I agree. Excellent post.

One caveat, however. There is one issue that is no compromise. The Constitution must be obeyed. The limitations on government power, the separation of powers, the division of powers between state and federal governments, and most importantly, an end to usurpation of the Amendment Article, all these should be our Pole Star. All who hold to this basic principle, which made us who we are, should be welcomed. All who do not should be utterly rejected and thrown into the outer darkness.

Congressman Billybob

Latest article, "Homeland Security's Unsecure Secretary"

Latest article, "Ben Franklin (Congressman Billybob) at Knoxville Tea Party"

[Fiji Hill]

This nonsense that someone needs to be kicked out of the tent is just that, nonsense

There are some posters on this board who want to kick Sarah Palin out of the tent.

[Melas]

No one wants to kick Palin out of the tent. She’s an asset to the GOP. She just isn’t going to get to be the ringmaster.

[carmody]

She’s an asset to the GOP. She just isn’t going to get to be the ringmaster.

Who decides? The people? or the media? Or is it pre-determined (as in, "It's Bob Dole's turn.)