My objection to this approach is that it is a know- nothing approach. When one talks about poll numbers one weighs the predictive ability of a quasi-science. Even so, no sensible politician would go to war without being armed with the latest polls. That is because the predictive qualities have been demonstrated election after election. Not infallible, they are nevertheless valuable. To abandon them is to abandon an objective tie to reality. The know- nothing approach permits us to float freely in space pronouncing on every matter of political science as it suits our fancy.
How much more true is all of this when one considers that most of the numbers that I have cited have to do not with predictive polls but with actual voting results or exit polling data.
So we must be wary of those who lie with statistics. But we also must be wary of those who deny the reality of the science. We see this phenomenon played out every cycle here on Free Republic. When the polls favor us, we accept them on face value and reject them when they make us unhappy. This leaves us at sea without a fixed pole, without a starting point, with no idea where the hell we are, or where we are going, or how to get there.
But it leaves us firmly ensconced in our own opinions.
You and I agree that conservatism is the medicine to restore the Republican Party's fortunes. I just posted, or rather reposted, a lengthy reply to that effect. But that reply is utterly unsupported by statistical data. It is merely my opinion. If I were a politician I would certainly not embark on a campaign, staking the future of the Republican Party and the conservative movement, on my uninstructed, unilluminated opinions. They might or might not make logical sense, but they have no intrinsic scientific value. If I were the chairman of the Republican National Committee, I would be doing what Newt Gingrich has been doing And What the Democrat National Committee has been undoubtedly doing: polling, polling, polling!
This is how the professionals behave and there is a reason for it. For all my criticisms of Karl Rove for his declensions from conservative orthodoxy, I do not fault him for lack of mechanical ability. Neither you or I have established any credentials as mechanics. I have tried to react to what I see as objective numbers which at least are congruent with the colors on the electoral map. That does not mean my explanation is the reason the colors are there but at least we are operating with deductive reasoning. What we abandon all ties to what the mechanics can tell us, we abandon political science for philosophy and we have converted before the election the electoral map into a child's coloring book.
Let's turn to the interaction between conservatism and the Republican Party. Again you state a principal with which I agree:
What is important is Conservatism's solutions, and long term commitment to Conservative principle within the party mechanism.
I believe that cannot be accomplished using the Republicans as a vehicle. If it can, it will be signaled by a wholesale stepping-down of the present leadership, and an ascendancy of Conservatives. If that does not happen, I don't think the Republicans will get the trust of Conservatives, regardless of the conditions or promises.
While I believe that the salvation for the Republican Party is to restore conservatism, I have the humility to admit that this is my opinion. My opinion on whether this is the proper, as opposed to the electorally successful route to go, however, is as valid as the next man's.
Likewise my opinion as to whether our side can prevail without the apparatus of the Republican Party is valid for what it purports to be: an opinion. That opinion is that a rump conservative electoral effort will doom us to defeat. My opinion is that the apparatus of the party itself is not just valuable but indispensable to running and winning national elections which cost money approaching $1 billion. Only the party can supply the infrastructure, the boots on the ground, the expertise for the air war, the proper exploitation of the Internet, the national visibility, the fund raising ability.
Our founding fathers were not naïve, but they entertained a skeptical view of the nature of man as a political creature. So they set up a system which anticipated unceasing tension. Although they deplored political parties, they made them virtually inevitable if society was to govern in a system in which the founders had placed so many obstacles to effective government. Political parties are designed to undo what the founders did, to bridge the gaps created by the founders as checks and balances. So, for longer than two centuries our society has been at eternal war with itself, always risking totalitarian government (such as today under Obama) by strong political parties on the one hand or risking ineffectual government such as we saw under The Articles Confederation or under the Southern Confederacy on the other hand.
Similarly, the parties themselves are under tension which is unceasing and in the long run very healthy for a political body. Every party is ever at war with itself. So it is with the Democrats and so it is with the Republicans. If we Conservatives win the battle this season, as surely as the tides return, we will be confronted with another Rino challenge in the next season. That is good because without the tension there is nothing to prevent a political party-or, worse, a governing party-to veer ever farther to the left or right and wreck the country as it commits suicide. The best example of this occurring in history is the inability of the Soviet Union Communist Party to correct itself. Why were there 70 years of bad weather affecting Soviet harvests? Because the Communist Party simply couldn't honestly look at its own policies.
And so it is that when we indulge our predilections, reject what objective reality we can put together, Parade know- nothing ism as a virtue, we risk veering off. Fortunately for our party and our government system there is a check, it is called elections, and those political parties which do not gauge reality accurately will soon be corrected. The job of the Karl Roves of the world is to obviate the need for the correction to occur.
Viva the tension.
