Torpedoing the Right

Jacob makes some fair points again in the comments below. The Right has always had and, godwilling, always will have the advantage over the Left in the freedom to dissent department (or at least that’s what my cognitive bias asserts). Ramesh Ponnuru, for example, recently called Fukuyama the “most honorable and serious” of the Obamacons—pace Kristol, Fukuyama isn’t the shameful opportunist.

But increasingly my concern isn’t the freedom to dissent within the Right’s big tent. It’s whether the conservative movement as a whole will draw the correct lessons from this experience. That lesson is: When your guy fails, punish that failure. Otherwise you risk torpedoing the movement, along with all its attendant policy preferences.

Bush has failed. Often as not, he’s failed while bucking conservative counsel (e.g. failing to limit spending dramatically increasing spending, adding to the federal bureaucracy in education, homeland security, attempting to appoint Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, etc.), but he’s also misrepresented or botched many conservative positions (failing to adequately plan plan at all for the Iraq war, blowing any chance for a conservative option on social security reform, etc.), thus bringing disrepute to the cause.

Throughout his own campaign, McCain has shown an alarming capacity to commit both of these sins, too. In fact, and I realize I’m running the risk of fetishizing Sarah Palin (no, not like that, you sickos), you can identify both aspects of Bush’s problematic relationship with conservatism in McCain’s choice of a vice presidential candidate. 1. Bucking conservative counsel: Word on the street is that McCain really, really wanted to pick Lieberman as his running-mate and that only a last-minute call from Turdblossom himself brought him back from losing the Right in this election. 2. Botching conservatism: Unfortunately, McCain stepped back from one ledge and right over another. He picked Palin, a candidate who energizes a certain portion of the base, but turns off the center and counter-energizes the opposition.

I certainly won’t say all the above means conservatives should go out and punch their cards for Obama. Issues still count for something, and his party is simply too far out there on just about all of them. But in reluctantly punching the card for McCain, or in refusing to punch it for either of them (Bob Barr? Err, no thanks.), conservatives have to make certain the GOP feels the pain now, when it counts—not just the day after or even later on, when the hangover and all its attendant discomfort have been forgotten.