Mar
10
The Three Ways Of Politics
Filed Under Conservatism, General Politics | 9 Comments
Here is a Vanity Fair piece on David Cameron. To be honest, I neither care about the views of Vanity Fair, or in any great way David Cameron. But there was a sentence I found interesting:
There are, in both countries, three political directions, a toxic right, a statist left, and a third way—the trickiest approach—which involves complicated role-playing, ideological legerdemain, and marketing acumen.
I’m not sure I really buy this analysis but it does have elements of truth. But how about a fourth way. A principled yet pragmatic, positive and hopeful right. A right that doesn’t see the value in underwriting the ruinous liberal behemoths of massive entitlement programs as Cameron does with the NHS, but also a right that recognises the anomic dangers of an anti-statist slash and burn program. A right that celebrates the positive benefits of “we” conservatism represented by our allegiances to family, faith and nation. A right that brings values to the head of debate, recognising that the modern erosion of values is ruining society. But also a right with a vision for a more positive future that celebrates the dynamic nature of society.
Conservatism is about inclusion, integrity, the recognition that a rights based culture is a construct, a belief in responsibility, both personal and shared, and a commitment to self-improvement. It recognises that hate is ugly, but that universal love is unrealistic and that we are as equally defined by our flaws as we our by our strengths.
I’m proud to consider myself a conservative, I’m just not necessarily proud of some of the current forms of the philosophy.
Jan
29
I’m A Pragmatist
Filed Under General Politics | 5 Comments
One advantage to this blogging lark is that it enables me to think about my views on politics and events. I’m ready to come out of the closet and reveal myself as a pragmatist rather than an ideologue. Now don’t worry, I’m not going all David Frum, I still believe in a number of core conservative principles. But I’ve come to realise that wanting what’s best for a country is not always compatible with what I think is the right course. Some examples:
Rinos – I’m a conservative. If I lived in America, I’d be most inclined to support the Republican Party and I would prefer for there to be conservative candidates for me to support. I’d also want a Republican party to be conservative in their approach to issues. But I’m never going to see conservative solutions to problems if the party I support is in permanent opposition. In the up-coming mid-terms, Republicans would need to win ten seats to form a majority in the Senate. I want them to achieve that, especially when circumstances are as propitious as they are right now. So when there are opportunities to take Barack Obama’s and Joe Biden’s senate seats in blue states like Illinois and Delaware, then I think the GOP should do whatever it takes to achieve that. And that means putting up RINO type candidates like Mike Castle (Delaware) and Mark Kirk (Illinois). They wouldn’t be ideal members of a Republican Senatorial caucus and it may mean losing some bills in the future because Kirk and Castle find them too conservative. But without people like them in the Senate, those bills wouldn’t exist in the first place because the GOP wouldn’t have a majority. But having those two RINOs in the caucus gives us a much better chance of getting conservative legislation through than if they’d been primaried out by a safe conservative candidate without a chance of winning a general election.
If there’s a chance to get a conservative in place with a genuine chance of winning a general election, then great, Marco Rubio v Charlie Crist is a case in point. But the most important thing is to win, nothing else can happen without it.
Government – In and of itself, government is not necessarily a bad thing. It is right to question the growth of government, it is definitely right to have serious concerns about the way government works in the way it is currently run. But government can be a force for good, and a force for conservative good. Just saying “no” to government instinctively will never be a winning formula. Such a statement can have resonance at times like now where more and more people are noticing governments failings, but events will undermine that consensus: a natural disaster, an economic catastrophe or a national security incident will all have people crying out for government help. Just standing there saying “sorry, no can do” is not acceptable. This should not be seen by conservatives as a capitulation to the evils of government however, it is an opportunity to mould policy in a compatibly conservative way. I sometimes get the feeling that conservatives are being short-sighted, just resisting rather than selling conservatism as a force for good. William Buckley famously said that conservatives should just yell “stop!”. As iconic as Buckley is to the conservative movement, I can’t help feeling that Buckley got it wrong. Just saying stop has not thwarted the rise of progressivism, it has only (at best) slowed it somewhat. Personally I think conservatives should be saying to people “climb aboard”.
I’ll stop for now, that was pretty much off the top of my head and I need to do some more thinking on it, but hopefully you’ll find it an interesting starting point for discussion.
Let me just clarify. I want to support candidates with strong conservative values and principles. I want to support a party with the same. None of that has changed, I’ve just come to realise that that can’t be all. Conservatives need to be mature enough to recognise that governing means governing everyone and that means from time to time that compromises will need to be reached.
Jan
18
Have Conservatives Become Communists?
Filed Under American Politics | 5 Comments
An interesting argument from Alex Knepper at race42008:
Scott Brown’s riposte to the assertion that he was trying to take “Ted Kennedy’s seat” was that it was “the people’s seat.” And now he’s holding a “people’s rally” to counter the president’s own with Martha Coakley. Sarah Palin has long been repeating her mantra that she wants to put government back on the side of “the people.”
Am I the only one irritated by this new Commie-style rhetoric? Where’s Jose Ortega y Gasset when we need him? “The People” is a leftist phrase. See, for instance: Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” or, well, “The People’s Republic of China.”
I’m an elitist, country-club Republican of the old school. Conservatism’s not a “people’s movement.” Proud bourgeoisie-types like me don’t know what to do with the GOP’s new rhetoric. I’m sitting back and tolerating it, letting the masses have their plaything, I suppose: but at the end of the day, this had better translate into some good old-fashioned small government policies. I don’t want the government “on my side.” I want it out of my life.
I suspect this is a little tongue in cheek but it does speak to the difference between America’s traditional conservatism who saw the people as a risk to good governance (see French Revolution) and a modern populist response to the increasing power of the political classes.
There was a time when conservatives were the political class and the populist backlash was leftist by necessity. That moment has passed. It is the left that walk the political corridors of power whichever political party are in office and thus any reaction to this has to come from the right.
So no, conservatives haven’t become communists despite the “peoples” rhetoric bt Alex Knepper is right to observe that conservatism is fundamentally different today than when the “elitist country-club” Republicans defined the movement pre-sixties and seventies.
Jan
9
Snow Is Bad For Conservatives
Filed Under British Politics | 1 Comment
This is something that has been in the back of my mind the last few days as the south of England (where I am) suffers it’s worst snow event since the early 80’s. Alex Massie addresses the point I’m about to make here.
Last Tuesday, we experienced between four and ten inches of snow here in the south. By North American (or Scottish) standards, that might not seem like a lot, but trust me, in southern England it is. What has compounded the problem is that subsequent freezing weather has meant that the snow hasn’t melted one bit. Now that is rare; usually following a snow event, the weather usually warms up enough to melt what little snow there is or the snow becomes rain within a day or two and the snow disappears. Furthermore, it appears that the snow could well be here for another week according to the forecasts.
What has this got to do with conservatism? It’s all about the response of the local councils. Because snow is such an infrequent visitor to these parts, there isn’t really the necessity for a snow-coping infrastructure. We have gritters, but snow ploughs are a rarity. And because snow rarely hangs around for long, it isn’t really necessary to have large stocks of grit in place in normal conditions. But the councils have struggled to cope with the recent snow. Schools have closed and gritters have largely been limited to the main roads, and now government is rationing salt as local mines run out of easily accessible supplies. And news broadcasts have been depressing. No news report on the snow is complete without the obligatory Brit moaning about why not enough is being done by the government to make the roads more passable.
I’m not really complaining about the individuals here, just reflecting on the fact that any hope of seeing any popular movement towards small government conservatism in the UK has no chance. We may moan about how government impact on our lives, but as soon as we face the slightest amount of adversity we start moaning about government going missing. Britain will never be a conservative nation unfortunately.
Dec
17
From Despair To Hope
Filed Under American Politics | 53 Comments
My heart sunk as I started reading this post at HotAir.com about a gay conservative organisation called GOPROUD seeking to participate at CPAC, the conference for conservative activists. It seems some conservatives aren’t all that keen on them taking part:
The Conservative Political Action Conference is the pinnacle of events for conservative activists. Held annually in Washington DC in the winter, it aggregates hundreds of conservative activist groups and thousands of attendees, and attracts high-profile figures on the Right, including national and regional politicians hoping to tap CPAC’s energy. Not all of these groups agree with each other on all issues, and sometimes the close quarters results in some entertaining debates (and sometimes just silly displays, such as the porpoise that followed Mitt Romney throughout the Omni in 2007). But the inclusion of a conservative coalition of gays, GOProud, has created calls for the ACU and CPAC to cut off GOProud’s sponsorship and attendance at CPAC as well as a few rumblings of a boycott among social conservatives.
Has it come to this? One can’t be welcomed under the conservative umbrella just because one is gay? If that were the case, the conservative movement would deserve all the criticism it gets. Just so we understand how GOPROUD define themselves, here are their ten principles reported at HotAir:
1 – TAX REFORM – Death tax repeal; domestic partner tax equity, and other changes to the tax code that will provide equity for gays and lesbians; cut in the capital gains and corporate tax rates to jump start our economy and create jobs; a fairer, flatter and substantially simpler tax code.
2 – HEALTHCARE REFORM – Free market healthcare reform. Legislation that will allow for the purchase of insurance across state lines – expanding access to domestic partner benefits; emphasizing individual ownership of healthcare insurance – such a shift would prevent discriminatory practices by an employer or the government.
3 – SOCIAL SECURITY REFORM – Bringing basic fairness to the Social Security system through the creation of inheritable personal savings accounts.
4 – DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL REPEAL – Repeal of the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy.
5 – HOLDING THE LINE ON SPENDING – Standing up for all tax payers against wasteful and unnecessary spending to protect future generations from the mounting federal debt.
6 – FIGHTING GLOBAL EXTREMISTS – Standing strong against radical regimes who seek to criminalize gays and lesbians.
7 – DEFENDING OUR CONSTITUTION – Opposing any anti-gay federal marriage amendment.
8 – ENCOURAGING COMMUNITY ENTREPRENEURSHIP – Package of free market reforms to encourage and support small businesses and entrepreneurship in the gay community.
9 – REVITALIZING OUR COMMUNITIES – A package of urban related reforms; expanding historic tax preservation credits; support for school choice.
10 – DEFENDING OUR COMMUNITY – Protecting 2nd amendment rights.
With the exception of the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, principles don’t really come more conservative than that. If they aren’t allowed into the big tent, who is?
So that was my despair (somewhat exacerbated by a Christian work colleague who declared today that “all gays should be wiped off the face of the earth”. Nice chap).
But then I read the comment thread for Ed Morrissey’s post supportive of GOPROUD and by a massive majority, the commentators are fully supportive of GOPROUD’s inclusion in the conservative movement.
For a while there I slipped into the liberal mindset that conservatives aren’t interested in welcoming all and sundry into their movement. It’s nice to be reminded just how wrong-headed that view is.
Nov
23
Food For Thought
Filed Under Uncategorized | 16 Comments
Ross Douthat on the gap between conservative and libertarian thinkers and the politicians needed to sell the theories the wonks come up with:
For now, no Republican leader projects a similar level of seriousness. Late in the Bush years, it was easy to dismiss conservatism as brain-dead. Among policy thinkers, that isn’t true anymore: the advent of Obama seems to have provided just the jolt that right-of-center wonks needed. But innovative proposals are useless without politicians willing to champion them.
When the Republican minority needed an alternative to the Obama administration’s sweeping stimulus proposal, for instance, a number of free-market economists were ready with an answer: a payroll tax cut. It was plausible, elegant and easy to explain — but there was no Republican leader with the wit to seize on it and sell it.
You could tell the same story about regulatory reform. A slew of conservative economists and think tankers, led by the University of Chicago’s Luigi Zingales and the Manhattan Institute’s Nicole Gelinas, have been working on ways to protect free markets from a re-run of last fall’s “too big to fail” fiasco. But most Republican politicians would rather rail against bailouts that have already happened than talk about how to prevent them from happening again.
In the health care debate, too, conservative and libertarian policy thinkers have floated a number of plans to expand insurance coverage. Some are incremental and some are sweeping; some build on the existing system and some would essentially replace it. But any of them would be better than that threadbare plan House Republicans actually put forward, which would hardly expand coverage at all.
True, these ideas won’t sell millions of books, or excite the crowd on Huckabee’s talk show. But they’re what the Republican Party needs if it’s going to be more than just a brake on liberalism’s ambitions. And they’re what voters are going to be looking for, in 2012 and beyond, as proof that conservatives can be trusted once again.
There’s a lot of truth to this. Being anti-government is in vogue right now and is getting a fair amount of traction with the electorate. But the time is right for an articulated conservative vision to be effective. Greater government efficiency, sensible cuts to the size of government, action on social cohesion and the encouragement of an enterprise economy. But we are not seeing any of this from leading republicans who are focused too much on Obama’s agenda. That might get them through 2010, it might even help win in 2012 should the economy still be in trouble, but it will be an opportunity lost on making America a better more conservative country. And that would be a shame.
Nov
10
Conservatives Can Win
Filed Under American Politics | 1 Comment
Patrick Ruffini, a writer at The Next Right served on the Bob McDonnell winning gubernatorial campaign in Virginia.
He offers his thoughts on how Bob McDonnell’s conservatism, roundly condemned by the left as social conservatism of the worst kind, was no impediment to his dominating win in the recent gubernatorial race.
When Liberals Attack:
Andrea Mitchell of (no surprises) MSNBC asks:
I’m just wondering whether any Republican..can any candidate win after having written something like this: “working women are detrimental to the family”
Well Andrea, you got your answer. Yes they can and very comfortably too. In a state that Obama carried by 6% of the vote, Bob McDonnell turned round that margin into a 17% winning margin. So why did the liberal’s tediously consistent message of conservative extremism fail so dramatically.
Because it’s about the economy stupid! Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. More accurately it’s because it’s not about the ideology stupid.
Voters are less bothered about a politicians ideological underpinning and more interested in being able to trust the politician and in their solutions to the voters problems:
McDonnell is a strong conservative who early in the campaign put Deeds on the defensive by running against Obama and Pelosi’s policies, most notably card check and cap-and-trade. There was never any doubt as to McDonnell’s conservative bona fides.
But even though McDonnell was in fact a true conservative, there was no need to make the election about those credentials. McDonnell’s conservatism spoke for itself.
What the campaign keyed in on very early is that most voters aren’t ideological. In a time of crisis, they first and foremost want problems solved — and specifically, the problems created by too much government meddling and taxes to go away.
Wait, not ideological? So Ruffini’s saying we need to run moderates? No. That is precisely the opposite of what I am saying.
Because very few independents care about ideological name-checks, they won’t be swayed by scare tactics trying to persuade them that Candidate X is the ideological second-coming of Attila the Hun…In a purple state like Virginia, you can win by running as a liberal and a problem-solver (Kaine), as a moderate and a problem-solver (Warner), and as a strong conservative and a problem-solver (McDonnell).
There is no problem with conservatives who are fiscally or socially so, but the defining characteristic must be to be able to govern and to earn the trust from the public. That applies to liberals too and explains why the conservative attacks on Obama as an associate of Wright or Ayers, as a sleeper-cell socialist didn’t work. The public trusted Obama and ignored the GOP scare-mongering.
Patrick Ruffini sums up the lesson from the McDonnell campaign:
The lesson of the McDonnell campaign: Maintain your conservative principles, but make the election about policy. And whatever the issue, make sure you’ve got an app for that.
Nov
9
Someone Give This Man A Job
Filed Under General Politics | 16 Comments
An op-ed stint at The Times or some-such.
Martin Meenagh scores a hole-in-one on his take down of what drives modern progressivism; the reliance on the abilities of social scientists to recognise and fix problems in society without any regard for who we are or how we got to be who we are.
In the words of Russell Kirk:
(conservatives) “sense that modern people are dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, able to see further than their ancestors only because of the great stature of those who have preceded us in time.”
That is the failing of progressivism. It’s vision is limited because it ignores the value that our heritage provides. Family, faith, nation, community and experience, along with earlier intellects, are the giants upon which we stand. But by cutting those away, all we see is limited short-term change which is perceived to be for the better but usually has adverse consequences in the future. Multi-culturalism leads to increased racial resentment, America’s social security is going bankrupt, easier divorce laws have led to too many one-parent families and welfare leads to increasing dependency.
All these reforms were well intentioned but have resulted in (hopefully) unintended consequences. Progressivism and conservatism are symbiotic, without the moderating effect of each other, both are doomed to failure.
It is true. We can only look ahead when we are standing on the shoulders of our giants.
Go read Martin’s piece. When he’s being conservative-minded, the man’s a genius.
Oct
26
Sorry to labour this point about independents, but I find them an interesting political force at them moment and have been waiting to find some polling on what they value. Thankfully, Gallup have obliged in one of their regular “Is America a Conservative nation” surveys.
Gallup tested republicans, democrats and independents on a number of issues:
- Is there too much government regulation?
- Should unions have less influence?
- Should regulation of firearms stay the same or be less strict?
- Should immigration be reduced?
- Should government take a role in promoting traditional values?
- Do you take the pro-life position on abortion?
- Is the threat of global warming being exaggerated?
These are a fairly good range of values that determine whether one’s position is a conservative or liberal one. On every single one of those positions, independents take a more conservative position now than they did in 2008 by double-figure (or very close too) margins. I won’t go through the numbers, follow the link if you are interested.
It is not a perceived conservatism that is the problem for the Republican party, there are other issues that have eroded support for the GOP, principle among them, a perceived lack of competence and a lack of trust.
Oct
7
In a comment, I made this point about the poor performance of conservatism in American politics today:
Any successful political movement needs three elements. The intellectuals to provide the substance, the politicians to provide the change and the populist army to provide the shock troops and to hold the politicians in particular to account. Conservatism in America is missing the first two elements, the intellectuals and the politicians. That isn’t the fault of the populists.
So it’s nice to see that Richard Viguerie and Steven Allen, writing in the Washington Examiner agree with me:
An army in the ancient world needed foot-soldiers, charioteers, and archers. A football team today needs an offense, a defense, and special teams. Leave out one element, and the entire enterprise usually founders. (Yeah, we’re talkin’ to you, Redskins.) And a political movement needs –
* · Intellectuals, who develop ideas and apply old ideas to new circumstances (Edmund Burke, Adam Smith)
* · Activists, who explain ideas to the public and rally people around those ideas (Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine), and
* · Politicians, who put those ideas into practice in government (John Adams, Thomas Jefferson).The divisions between the categories are not absolute. In the modern conservative movement, William F. Buckley Jr. and Milton Friedman straddled the line between intellectuals and activists, and Ronald Reagan the line between activists and politicians. Nevertheless, conservatism, like any political movement, is most successful when it is strong in all three aspects.
Because of Obama’s governing from the far-left, activist conservatism has been rejuvenated following the disappointing Bush years. The populist voice of any political movement is usually the loudest, and in any successful political moment, it needs to be mediated by the input from intellectuals and the practicable input from the politicians. Unfortunately for now, neither the intellectuals or the politicians have seized the moment in the way that the populists have:
Among the millions of new conservative activists inspired by Obama, some are uncouth, and a few say or write things that are wrongheaded or that bring embarrassment to the token Republicans who get invited to cocktail parties in Manhattan or Georgetown.
The conservative deficit in political discussions right now is not the fault of the populists, they are doing what they do best; agitating and mobilising. But the sniffy tone demonstrated by the likes of David Frum, east coast and D.C. Republicans and Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs is going to do nothing to further the conservative cause unless they embrace the conservative grassroots, warts and all. Conservatives need leadership and unless the Romneys, Pawlentys or Huckabees recognise this, then they will leave the door open for others. The trick is not to abandon the grassroots conservatives, it is to embrace them and reconcile their views with an appeal to the center-right moderates.