John O'Sullivan makes a worthwhile point in this NRO
symposium on the state of the Reagan coalition:
"[The coalition] is not dead, but groups within it are increasingly
irritated because they don't feel cemented by a grand unifying idea
(like anti-Communism in the Reagan days) that justifies the
concessions each makes to the others." I think we see this very
clearly in the ongoing GOP presidential race.
I'm less sure that his proposed solution will keep peace on the
right: Emphasizing "the omnipresence of an unaccountable
bureaucracy at home and abroad that increasingly rules us while
exempting itself from our democratic control. This bureaucracy
annoys economic conservatives by overregulating the economy, moral
traditionalists by using state power to spread moral 'innovation,'
and nationalists by deconstructing the nation and transferring
power to international bodies." This is all true, but it might be
hard to turn into a "harnessing" issue in that same way as
anticommunism.
topics:
Communism
