It is clear how Christie Todd Whitman regards social conservatives. She despises them so deeply she cannot even give a fellow Republican to courtesy of a proper appellation, she calls them "social fundamentalists" and obliquely charges them with "demonization." Before the election I wrote that I thought that the real problem for the Republican Party would be to resolve the differences between fiscal conservatives and social conservatives. In the context of what the fiscal conservatives must do if there is to be a rapprochement I said this:
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.
It is clear that Whitman is not willing to stop rolling her eyes. I believe that this comes not from her green eye shade conclusions arrived at only after crunching numbers from the last election (which other analysts have crushed and come to exactly the opposite conclusion), but from the great cleft between the right and left in America: abortion. I think Christie Todd Whitman objects to Sarah Palin for one reason only and it has to do with abortion. I think that Whitman's objection to Palin and to social "fundamentalists" is purely visceral and comes out of the abortion issue. I want to Whitman to lose the argument which she makes as she contends for the soul of the Republican Party but I am very glad she is making the argument. It must be made and every body must understand that it has been made. At the end of the day conservatism will have to come to a bedrock understanding of its faith and that can only be done by a Darwinian process which hears out all sides. I had this to say elsewhere in the same post:
There will be finger-pointing and acrimony but that is necessary and good. We must rediscover our soul and that cannot be done without bloodletting.
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.
