The media can’t take yes for an answer. Journalists grumble
about the “moderate façade” of the GOP convention in New
York City, yet that moderation is exactly what they have long
lobbied the Republican Party to embrace. At the Democratic
convention, journalists wanted the true believers to speak so that
they could build them up. At the Republican convention they want
the true believers to speak so that they can tear them down.
And is it a moderate GOP façade? Would that it were
merely a facade. Unfortunately, the PC moderation is real. Would
that George Bush was as conservative as the media’s
hyperventilations. It is no wonder the Democrats have become so
radical: As Bush moved to the middle, they had to move farther and
farther to the left in order to sustain their critique of him as a
radical conservative. Only a party that gravitates to socialism,
for example, would regard Bush’s prescription drug benefit as
dangerously conservative. If they had any perspective, the
Democrats would claim victory, having pulled the debate so far to
the left that the conservative position on prescription drugs
became the liberal position of a few years ago.
Maria Shriver is one of the few journalists to realize that the
GOP’s “moderate façade” isn’t one. She can sit comfortably
at a Republican convention now that the party’s philosophy on
domestic issues is so pallid. Rigorous conservatism is of little
interest to the Republicans at this point. A hodgepodge of
pragmatism — as illustrated by Arnold Schwarzenegger saying that
he learned free-market economics from Richard Nixon, the president
who gave us price controls — has replaced any sort of
philosophical coherence. John McCain says the “platform” is
something you “stand on” during the convention and run away from
during the campaign. Even that cynicism is passé:
Republicans don’t even bother to stand on it during the convention
anymore.
On domestic issues, the difference between the two parties
amounts to the Democrats’ liberalism versus the Republicans’
liberalism in slow motion. On foreign policy matters, the
difference amounts to no common sense (the Democrats) versus some
common sense. Schwarzenegger’s speech was about a foreigner who
dreamed of running America; the Democratic convention speeches were
about Americans who dreamed of foreigners running America.
Judging from Tuesday’s speeches, the Republicans will, to their
credit, fight the war on terrorism but they won’t fight the
cultural one. Could America win the war on terrorism and then
collapse from within, having ignored festering cultural problems in
the name of tolerance? Here again the Democrats, if they weren’t
such power addicts and had some perspective, could claim victory.
The Republicans have internalized most of their liberal attitudes
on social issues. The Sex and the City culture they have worked
hard to mainstream has become the cultural air both parties
breathe. The president’s daughter, with her Sex and the City crack,
managed to progress even beyond the media progressives, some of
whom commented on her lack of taste and dignity.
The mixture of conservative and liberal currents at the
convention was conveyed by Schwarzenegger laughing about “girlie
men,” then Laura Bush extolling them. She spoke of a “dad whose
wife is deployed in Iraq recently” and his “struggles to rear his
three children alone,” one of which is that he is turning his
childrens’ clothing pink through laundering mishaps. Shouldn’t this
story warm the hearts of Democrats? Or is an anecdote about a
father who struggles at laundry too retrograde for their ears?
