It seems to me that the self-styled reformist conservatives have
made some tactical errors that make it less likely that their
project will succeed. The first and most obvious is allowing
their
least conservative members to serve as their most prominent
spokesman, though I suppose Uval Levin or Ross Douthat can't help
the fact that the New York Times op-ed page is still a
bigger platform than even National Review or a blog
hosted by the Atlantic. Relatedly, they have allowed
reformist conservatism to be set in opposition to most actual
conservatives, which may well doom its prospects for gaining any
adherents on the right. Condescension seldom wins converts.
The biggest blunder in this area, in my view, was suggesting that
reformist conservatism was an improvement over Reaganism. If it
is actually conservatism and not a revived Rockefeller
Republicanism or David Cameron-style Toryism (or David
Brooksism), then Reaganism ought to be the best example of
what these reformists are trying to accomplish: taking
conservatism away from the realm of abstraction or Goldwaterite
exhortations to eat your vegetables and applying it to the
pressing concerns of the electorate. Reagan wasn't as pure a
small-government man as Goldwater, but neither did he completely
abandon limited government while trying to serve middle-class
economic interests. Instead, he won policy victories on behalf of
limited government in certain areas by tying those principles to
the real needs of the American people.
That is, if the reformist conservatives want to succeed they need
to formulate a Reaganism for our times. I say this not because
I'm sympathetic to the big-government conservatism of many
reformists. But I do believe that conservative principles have to
be applied to issues like health care or economic anxieties in
intelligent ways if the country is to stop electing Obamas. The
key is to come up with policies that are both solutions and
conservative in some meaningful sense.
