No fistfights broke out during the National Review Institute’s
“Future of Conservatism” Summit in D.C., disappointing my hopes for
the weekend. Some sort of bloodletting — at the very least, a
venting of grievances — might do everybody good after the
Republican defeat in November. Alas, decorum prevailed and none of
the panelists even raised their voices in anger.
The most depressing moment of the conference came, perhaps not
coincidentally, during a panel on immigration when radio talk-show
host Hugh Hewitt, representing the pro-amnesty side of the
argument, announced that he really didn’t want to be debating
immigration because it was bad for Republicans to talk about the
issue — especially when those talking about it were
middle-aged white guys like himself and his antagonist, Mark
Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies.
Undeterred by Hewitt’s disavowal, Krikorian recounted facts that
ought to give pause to conservatives who, since November, have
begun jabbering desperately about winning over Hispanic voters by
adopting a pro-amnesty line. Krikorian noted a
Pew Research poll from 2011 that found Hispanics have the
lowest opinion of capitalism of any group surveyed. Only 32 percent
of Hispanics hold a favorable view of capitalism, while 55 percent
have a negative view. Even supporters of the left-wing Occupy Wall
Street movement expressed a more favorable view of capitalism than
did Hispanics. Insofar as the Republican Party promotes policies
favorable to capitalism, then, it is at odds with the sentiments of
the one group whom the pro-amnesty Republicans insist their policy
ideas will win over to the GOP.
Facts are stubborn things, John Adams once observed, but perhaps
even more stubborn is the sense of panic that has gripped
Republicans since Obama’s re-election. No sooner had the votes been
counted than shell-shocked Republicans began making a lot of
earnest noise about “demographics” and “culture.” These seem to be
code words of a kind. When a Republican says “demographics,” he
means, “Brown people don’t like us very much,” and “culture” is
Republican code-speak for, “Young people really hate us, don’t
they?”
This nervous code-talk was evidently inspired by exit
polls showing that Mitt Romney got just 27 percent of the
Hispanic vote (by comparison, George W. Bush got 44 percent in
2004), and 37 percent of under-30 voters (compared to Bush’s 45
percent in 2004). The GOP panic reaction to those numbers has been
wildly disproportionate. Hispanic voters comprised just 10 percent
of the electorate, according to the exit polls, and 81 percent of
voters were over 30, but the Republican demoralization since
November has been so complete that they can’t seem to stop
obsessing over “demographics” and “culture.”
Have we seen this kind of reaction before? Yes and, not long
ago, it was Democrats who were in panic mode. Most Republicans seem
to have forgotten the doom reaction that briefly gripped Democrats
after Bush’s 2004 re-election, when exit polls showed “values
voters” to be the decisive factor in Ohio and other key swing
states. “Values voters,” it seemed, associated Democrats with
left-wing attitudes including radical anti-military sentiments,
support for abortion and gay-rights activism. Even while the few
remaining moderate Democrats were wringing their hands over these
exit-poll numbers, however, the left-wingers determined to double
down on these very issues. Enraged progressives made opposition to
Bush’s war policies a litmus test and, in the 2006 primaries, drove
Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman — who had been the Democrats’
vice-presidential candidate in 2000 — out of the party
altogether. In 2008, the left-wing Democrats insisted on nominating
the anti-war Barack Obama instead of Hillary Clinton (who had voted
for “Bush’s war” in Iraq), and Obama has loyally promoted every
single one of the radical issues that the “value voters” of 2004
rejected. If there are Democrats today who don’t enthusiastically
endorse same-sex marriage and abortion on demand, they’re awfully
quiet about it, and the fanatical extremism of the Left has
apparently intimidated even conservative Republicans, who are now
increasingly fearful of being identified with “social issues.”
(Thank you,
Todd Akin!)
This phenomenal fear of “social issues” is remarkable, given the
fact that (a) polls indicate that
opposition to abortion is at or near its highest levels since
the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, and (b) Gallup’s survey
last fall found that homosexuals are a
mere 3.4 percent of the U.S. population. Exactly why this 3.4
percent tail should wag the 96.6 percent dog — so that
“marriage equality” has suddenly become a winning political issue
in
Maryland and other states — is a question that
Republicans show no willingness to answer. If approval of sodomy is
not yet legally mandatory, opposition to homosexuality is rapidly
becoming an idea “that it is unacceptable to articulate,” as Maggie
Gallagher said during a Sunday morning panel devoted to the issue
of marriage. Traditional Judeo-Christian morality is currently in
an “existential fight,” Gallagher told the summit audience, because
such values are “being re-defined as the moral equivalent of
racism.” No one on the panel made note of the remarkable political
ju-jitsu performed by the radical Left, which seems to have turned
a Republican asset — the very issues that motivated the
“values voters” who inspired the Democrat panic of 2004 —
into an embarrassing liability for the GOP in the short span of
eight years.
Much of the discussion at the weekend summit was hopeful, if not
exactly encouraging. Some of the more promising fresh faces of the
Republican Party, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Louisiana Gov.
Bobby Jindal, offered strong arguments on behalf of the GOP’s
continued relevance. The party’s 2012 vice-presidential candidate,
Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, warned the conservative audience Saturday
that
Republicans can’t afford to “get rattled” in their political
battles with Obama during the next four years: “We have to be
smart. We have to show prudence.”
As if on cue, the least prudent Republican in America made news
Sunday by declaring his unabashed support for Obama’s proposal to
provide amnesty to an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.
There is a “new appreciation… that we have to enact comprehensive
immigration reform,” Arizona
Sen. John McCain said on ABC, insisting that this
“comprehensive” reform must include a “pathway to citizenship” for
these law-breaking foreigners.
Is this “prudence” or panic? Are Republicans prepared to
surrender and call it a victory? And is it the job of conservative
spokesmen — including the intellectual heirs of Bill Buckley
at National Review — to persuade us that the best way to
beat liberals is to start agreeing with them? For the past two
months I’ve been trying to shake the gloomy thought that we are, as
I said after the election,
doomed beyond all hope of redemption. But we are most certainly
doomed to defeat if our leaders refuse to fight.
