I’m told we’re living in a Moderate Moment. After Mitt Romney
lost the election, moderate Republicans started emerging from every
corner of the country, from Northwest Washington, D.C. to
Arlington, Virginia. It was time, they declared, for calm voices to
prevail in the Republican Party. The Tea Party, the right-wing, the
“Conservative Entertainment Complex” — all this must be cast
overboard for the GOP to win again.
The latest iteration of this came in Wednesday’s Washington
Post from
columnist Kathleen Parker:
RINO, of course, refers to Republicans In Name Only and is the
pejorative term used against those who fail to march in lockstep
with the so-called conservative base. I used “so-called” because,
though the hard-right faction of the party tends to be viewed as
The Base, this isn’t necessarily so. My guess is there are now more
RINOs than those who, though evangelical in their zeal,
are poison to their party’s ability to win national
elections.
Parker calls for a RINO uprising, a new faction on the right to
counter the Tea Party. That’s all well and good. There are genuine
differences of opinion on the right, and a little inward dialectic
never hurt anyone.
But how would her brand of Republicanism differ from the
conservative base she derides? This is the closest thing we get to
a policy prescription in her column: “Most would like the country
to rock along without drama — operating within a reasonable budget,
with respect for privacy and the rule of law, compassion for the
disadvantaged and an abundance of concern for national security,
including border control but not necessarily drone attacks on
citizens.”
Yes, if only there was a political movement calling for
reasonable budgets, more privacy for the individual, upholding the
rule of law, and concern for national security. She must imagine
hordes of earthy Tea Partiers holding the Post in their
gunpowder-stained fingers while recoiling and exclaiming,
“Compassion for the disadvantaged?! This paper’s gone to the
dogs!”
So Parker’s principles seem pretty similar to those of modern
conservatives. But then what explains this urge to diverge into a
moderate faction?
I’ve been curious about this question for some time. Since the
election, we’ve heard a lot of nebulous chatter from self-styled
moderates about how the GOP must reach out to the middle class,
appeal to Latino voters, change, modernize.
But how exactly do we do that? So far the only concrete answer
seems to be softening the conservative stance on immigration. But
according to the Pew Hispanic Center, education, jobs and the
economy, health care, and the deficit all rate as bigger concerns
for Latinos than immigration. Well then, counter moderates,
conservatives need to gear their message towards jobs instead of
deficit reduction. But Romney talked about jobs constantly
during the campaign (“Mr. President, where are the jobs?”). And
many conservatives believe job creation is directly linked to
reducing the debt and regulatory burdens on small businesses. The
two aren’t mutually exclusive.
I could go on. The more you examine the RINO critique, the more
you realize there’s nothing there. You end up grabbing at air.
To understand just how vacuous the moderate stance has become,
consider their embrace of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. John
Avlon praised the Garden State firebrand as a “Northeast
Republican” with a
“moderate record.” Joe Scarborough
defended his accomplishments. Moderate donors pleaded with
Christie
to run in 2012.
Yes, Christie has offended some conservatives, most notably when
he cozied up to President Obama after Hurricane Sandy. But a RINO
hero? This is the governor who wooed Democratic State Senate
President Steve Sweeney into supporting sweeping pension and health
care reform. Then, when Sweeney’s Democratic legislature submitted
a budget in the spirit of comity, Christie balanced it by taking
his line-item veto pen and crossed out $900 million in spending.
The cuts were painful and included AIDS funding, health care
programs for the poor, and mental health services. Sweeney called
Christie a “rotten prick” and said he
“wanted to punch him in the head.” Christie was
unapologetic.
Imagine if House Republicans made a move of equivalent
aggression and audacity. Masticated filet mignon would fly from the
horrified mouths of Washingtonians. Tablecloths would run red with
spilled Merlot. Heads would be shaken and Republican Jacobins
cursed. Locusts would descend on Falls Church.
Conservatives can’t even support sequestration without drawing
condemnation from the center-right. But Christie cuts funding for
AIDS patients and he’s the moderate Moses leading the GOP out of
the electoral desert. Again, it’s pure air.
But let’s return to Parker. Beyond that one line about policy,
her column is little more than a train of supercilious advice about
how to distinguish RINOs from righties. Righties are “the fringe.”
RINOs are “defiantly proud, aggressively centrist and
unapologetically sane.” Righties carry “gigantic photos of aborted
fetuses to political conventions.” RINOs are “too busy Being Normal
to organize.”
Reading Parker’s piece, you get a whiff of
T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII, the satirical East Coast
Republican created by blogger Iowahawk who sits around with
moderates like Parker and David Brooks, and laments conservative
extremists in between badminton games and sips of champagne.
Parker’s primary objection seems to be one of culture and
temperament rather than substance. Those tri-cornered-hat-wearing
Tea Partiers are embarrassing all the normal and well-bred people
out there.
This is the dichotomy established by many moderate Republicans:
shrill, rigid, movement conservatives on one side and open-minded
RINOs on the other.
It’s a straw man argument and a cheap one at that. In reality,
the conservative movement consists of traditionalists,
libertarians, and hawks; politicians, writers, scholars, and radio
hosts; angry and wonky, loud and soft, following in the tradition
of Burke and the politics of Reagan, but disagreeing vibrantly on
both issues and techniques. S.E. Cupp and Rush Limbaugh are
currently feuding. CPAC-goers will come home with lit from the
American Enterprise Institute and the Ron Paul campaign. This is no
cartoonish monolith.
The RINO movement consists of…well, people who say they’re
RINOs. They’re pro-library-voices and anti-tri-cornered hats and
pro-middle-class. Beyond that it’s hard to tell. But the left seems
to approve.
At any rate, let me offer some overtures to the RINOs. I’ll
agree to doff my tri-cornered hat and stop firing musket blanks at
my co-workers, several of whom have taken up my epistemic closure
with the HR office. But I’m going to keep demanding smaller
government and less spending, and I may occasionally even use an
exclamation point.
We’re staring down tens of trillions in debt. If the RINOs have
a better solution, I’m all ears.
Photo: UPI
Image courtesy Washington Post.
