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.
BUMP.
I do hope you are happy with that arrogant pos occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave
You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but I never cease to be amazed by the propensity of those who are compromised to blame those who won’t compromise for the inevitable fruit of their own compromise.
No candidate, of any political party, is entitled to our vote. They have to earn it. The day we show up ‘having’ to vote for a candidate of any stripe is the day we become no better than the Soviets.
Mittens didn't say boo about Benghazi until Palin came out and reamed Obama and Clinton. Then hours later he came out with a PC nuanced version of what she said and then when he got clobbered by the media for it, he grovelled and basically apologized for speaking out so quickly.
REPRESENTATIVE self-government.
What a concept!
He simply wasn't "pure" enough, but then, as FR has shown, nobody ever was. Not Perry, not Palin, not Newt, not Santorum, not Bachmann, none were pure enough. We were the circular firing squad that lost, and those such as you that didn't understand the difference between a RINO and a full fledged Marxist, and voted third party or stayed home, you now have to live with the fact that you misjudged. Every week that the monster brings this country closer to the drain, it's your fault. I was never for Romney as our candidate, but at least I knew the difference between a dumb ass RINO and a monsterous Marxist who hated this country.
You got who you wanted for president now live with it.
Kas, I’m surprised at you. Some of us caved and voted for Romney in a condition of being physically sick by what we were doing. Never again.
The POS was as well the Establishment Republicans for putting up someone just like themselves— anemic socialists.
The Party is squirming now, plotting to get rid of us, believing it is we conservatives who have ruined the brand, with our rigidity.
The Establishment can either join us or lose forever, as cloning more socialists as our nominee offers no contrast to Democrats.
It’s really our way or the highway, whatever the price. If we were wrong, it might be different. We are not wrong. Even when our lives and liberty are in peril, we are not wrong.
The GOPE needs to get a clue, and dump the endless compromise and apathy for the Constitution. This is war.
Just another NRO RINO.
Check out this from The Corner today by Fred Schwarz on 2016. It’s laughable (check out his comment on Jeb Bush - what is it about the GOPe and the Bushes?). And just look at the Palin conventional wisdom he throws out. These guys are clueless.
And, personally, I think Jindal would be a disaster for 2016. He’s accomplished nothing for Louisiana.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/337862/firstest-leastest-fred-schwarz
Can we get this one straight, the GOP has a bunch of different factions fighting for its soul. The problem isn't so much with them, it's that we don't know how to beat them anymore. We are the ones that need to get a clue.
We were the ones that tore each others conservative candidates apart so that Romney could win, we were the circular firing squad that lost, and when Romney won, enough of us took our ball home like toddlers, pouted and allowed a full fledged monster a second term to destroy us.
Watch him do it, it's the only thing he's good at.........and then watch those that helped elect him go preening around here as if they did something wonderful.
Oh geez. Not another “if you didn’t vote from Romney you wanted Obama” idiot.
Where did you learn logic? From a box of Cracker Jacks?
“Hmmmm, I really don’t like Hitler so I guess I want Stalin.”
Where did you learn logic? Kenya? From Axelrod?
I didn't get who I wanted for President. The guy I voted for didn't win. The guy you voted for didn't win either, in part because he made it quite clear he didn't want the votes of people like me, and the party he represented is now trying to chase us both out of the fold.
Sir.
Yes, quite a concept. When exactly did it die?
Since you were one of them, kindly live with it, you got who you really wanted, you knew what was going to happen when you didn't do the only thing that you could do that would have gotten rid of the Marxist destroyer.
He's all yours.
We need to scrap the Republican Party and form a new one. They have become the Whig party that they replaced over 150 years ago, and we need to form a new one that respects the constitution.
You know, my kids sometimes tried to talk to me like you’re doing. They grew out of it. So, as the title of this article suggests, kindly grow up like they did.
I didn’t vote for Obama, and I never would. On the other hand, you could vote for a liberal, and you did. I accept no censure from you or from anyone for upholding conservative principles with my vote.
To make yourself feel better, you adopt the juvenile approach of claiming I did something that I didn’t. That said, I’ve got nothing against you, so back off with the ‘you voted for Obama’ garbage. It’s been debunked more times than you or I can count.
Actually, had you and enough others instead decided to support a conservative candidate, the Marxist Destroyer could have been defeated by someone who might have been palatable in office. You know, by coalition building. Good old-fashioned pavement-pounding, grass roots politics.
Holding your breath till you turn blue and trying to deflect your candidate’s weakness onto me won’t change the fact that you supported a guy who has been an enemy of the conservative movement for thirty years or more, and it won’t change the fact that you attack others for not supporting a candidate who is anathema to their own core philosophy.
And you’ve got the nerve to blame me.
The GOP is now trying to purge both of us from their ranks as conservatives. The difference between you and me is that you voted to enable that behavior. I didn’t.
That's just a fact of life. Get used to losing, establishment boy.
It’s not dead yet.
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