WASHINGTON -- And so after the November 4 presidential elections,
American conservatives have again been thrust into the
wilderness. All we have to comfort us is the L.L. Bean catalogue.
Winston Churchill, during his wilderness years, had Pol Roger and
a fistful of Habanos. Nowadays smoking is malum
prohibitum almost everywhere, and even in the wilderness a
lit cigar would be highly controversial. Thus we are left with
L.L. Bean, but the catalogue features colorful parkas, sturdy
boots, all the accouterments to make life in the wilderness
almost plush. So our wilderness years may not be so bad.
Yet to hear some of the pundits tell it, we conservatives are
going to be out here with the flora and fauna for many years. I
hope to get a tent not far from Sarah Palin. She is very cute and
can handle a firearm. Just the other day pundit David Brooks,
writing in the New York Times, predicted that "the
Republican Party will probably veer right in the years ahead, and
suffer more defeats." He notes that "the Traditionalists" (read
conservatives) have been meeting "to plot strategy" to ensure
their hold on the defeated Republican Party, meaning more chill
years out here in the poison ivy with the wolves and the coyotes
nearby. Sarah, keep the gun handy!
Brooks's alternative is to side with those conservatives whom he
dubs "the Reformers," clear-eyed thinkers who believe that
"G.O.P. priorities were fine for the 1970s but need to be
modernized for new conditions." Truth be known, the G.O.P.
"priorities" of the 1970s were not Reaganite priorities. Those
conservative priorities came to power with the Old Cowboy in
1980, and they have been regnant ever since. Even Bill Clinton
was influenced by them. Brooks's Reformers want conservatives "to
pay attention to the way the country has changed." They consider
the conservatives' advocacy of limited government passé
and they prescribe big government to address "inequality" and "to
take global warming seriously."
Did he say global warming? Out here in the wilderness
temperatures have been dropping for nearly a decade. I know that
the scientists' computers predicted that temperatures were going
to be going up, but they are going down and it is getting cold
out here. Increasingly I am of the opinion that global warming is
the kind of hysteria recorded in that 19th century classic
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of
Crowds. As for the Reformers' wariness about the popularity
of limited government, according to a Rasmussen survey conducted
on October 2, 59% of the respondents agreed with President
Reagan's declaration in his first inaugural address that
"Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the
problem."
Doubtless, as the Reformers say, the country has changed over the
years, but some of that change has been a tilt against the old
liberal priorities. A large majority of the American people still
favors tax cuts over tax increases, 55% to 19% according to Scott
Rasmussen's recent polls. Even the "social issues," so admired by
the conservatives and so embarrassing to the Reformers, fare well
in the polls. In California and Florida heterosexual marriage
votes won with the support of large numbers of black and Hispanic
Democrats who otherwise voted for Senator Barack Obama. I
understand that the social issues are controversial with many in
the media, but the fact is that they win the approval of
substantial majorities within the electorate, who perhaps
recognize that the opposite of social values is anti-social
values.
What provoked Brooks's fandango with the Traditionalists and the
Reformers was a meeting the former group held in the Virginia
hills outside Washington to prepare for the years ahead. As
Brooks reports, I was present; his term Traditionalist, however,
is misleading. There was more variety within the group than you
would find among liberals planning a revival in 2004. There were
libertarians, evangelicals, tax cutters, hawkish foreign policy
advocates, and others. It was indeed the kind of turnout that
could be termed "Reaganite," and there are other meetings coming
up. For years the conservative movement has had more variety than
the liberal movement, which might explain why only 22% of the
American people call themselves liberal while 34% call themselves
conservatives. There is vitality on the right, and there will be
vitality in the wilderness, though the last time we were out here
we only stayed two years. Liberal overreach and incompetence saw
to that.
topics:
Conservatism
