Political Success or Philosophical Purity
I shy away from wading into fights about political philosophy because I’m usually punching out of my weight class–whereas James is more inclined to comment on (and shape) the intellectual side of the conservative cause, I’m more a nuts and bolts kind of guy. In other words, you come up with the ideas and I’ll tell you how to win elections with them.
Unfortunately, my skills (limited as they may be) are useless this cycle since the GOP couldn’t win the House or Senate back if they discovered the cure for cancer (and McCain doesn’t have a much better shot at holding on to the White House). But are Republicans destined to lose because they are out of ideas, as argued by George Packer in this week’s New Yorker? And would a devastating loss be that terrible?
Andrew Sullivan has long lamented the lack of a coherent philosophical base for the Republican platform and I think his contribution to this debate is of particular importance: “For conservatism to copy liberalism by always seeking ‘solutions’ to problems and convincing ‘the right coalitions’ of people to look to government for the satisfaction of their needs would be a mistake in my view.” In that sentence Andrew illuminates the giant problem with conservatism as it operates within modern government. Voters expect the government to do things, both for the country and for themselves. If conservatives refuse to court those voters–if they tell people “get your own damn health insurance and quit driving so much”–how do they win the elections necessary to govern?
It’s all well and good to decry the compromises Republicans have had to make with their philosophical underpinnings, but that doesn’t change the fact that’s impossible to govern without making such concessions. Megan hones in on this problem when she writes “‘tax cuts are awesome’ is not the universal solution to every problem, and moreover, they’re totally unaffordable thanks to entitlements.” This is true, to a point, but I think she’s off base when she approvingly writes “I’m seeing more and more people who are actually looking forward to going into the wilderness for a little while, where they can get their heads together without having to worry about the intellectual compromises of actual politics.”
Tax cuts are unaffordable because of entitlements, but lower taxes remain a good thing in principle and if the GOP disappears from the political landscape for eight years what are we going to end up with more of? Entitlements–specifically some massive new health care system–and higher taxes that we won’t be able to reduce. Because once you grant an entitlement, it never goes away. So disappearing for an ideological retreat over the next decade or so and sitting around the campfire while we pass the speech feather and debate Burke and Kirk might sound awfully tempting (and it might even reduce the schizophrenia within the conservative movement), but there are practical reasons why it would, in fact, be terrible.
Which brings me to my main point: Conservatives can have success in the political arena or we can have philosophical purity. But we can’t have both. Getting shellacked in ’06 and ’08 might turn out to be a blessing in disguise for the GOP and conservatives, electorally speaking–as Packer points out, “tactics have a way of outliving their ability to respond to the felt needs and aspirations of the electorate: Democrats continued to accuse Republicans of being like Herbert Hoover well into the nineteen-seventies; Republicans will no doubt accuse Democrats of being out of touch with real Americans long after George W. Bush retires to Crawford.” The sooner Republicans figure out which tactics are losing ones, the better.
But what are winning tactics? Is a return to the conservatism that brought home presidential wins in the 80s and congressional wins in the 90s the answer? Is there some sort of magical new formula for conservatives to devise–a “eh, tax cuts would be nice but what should really do is grow the government responsibly” type of plan?
Personally, I think that conservatives, working through the GOP, would be best served by getting back to basics. Explain why we need to raise the retirement age so as not to bankrupt Social Security and the country in general; explain why nationalized health care is a bad thing (and why the “47 million people don’t have health insurance” figure is bunk); help fix the environment by working with private industry instead of trying to cripple private industry. We don’t need big new ideas. We just need to fix the big old ideas.