*When postulating the composition of The Next Right, it is crucial to do some digging beyond the oft-quoted think-tanks and talking heads. The GOP can enlarge its base while sticking to its principles by identifying the multitude of ways those principles can be applied to the world.
Let me begin with a Financial Times Q&A with Christopher Buckley:
Is it possible for the conservative movement to reinvent itself without the reliance on the cultural boogeyman that has made them so onerous? Can the Party separate itself from religion?Mark Glover, Mass
CB: This is a key question, to which I very much hope that the answer is yes. Remember what Burke said (I shall now proceed to misquote him): “I believe neither in permanent defeats or permanent victories.” My late father (WFB, Jr) once said to me, “I have spent my entire life trying to separate the Right from the kooks. Let’s hope the next WFB, whoever he may be, will be successful.
This answer says much about the state of conservatism in America. Here Christopher Buckley blames the "conservative movement's" failings on its "reliance on cultural boogeyman." I happen to agree that, yes, conservatism stands for more than backwoods irrationality; but to stop thinking there would be to miss the point.
WFB "spent his entire life trying to separate the Right from the kooks." This is necessary in any political "movement" so as to avoid a schism (like we are seeing today in the GOP and among conservative circles.) So why, then, are we witnessing a schism if the conservative movement's "architect," "father," and "Sir Galahad" spent his life trying to avoid such a travesty? It happened because Buckley succeeded.
William F. Buckley Jr. wrought exactly what he was trying to avoid by his very own success. The "conservative movement's" public persona is dull, flat, unexciting and completely unoriginal. For the last 8 years, the "conservative movement" was a veritable echo-chamber with FOX News leading the way. This was tenable for the GOP while the wind was at its back. With national security at the forefront of the nation's attention, the GOP had little to worry about on election day. Meanwhile, short-term strategists negotiated completely unconservative "compromises" with liberal Democrats on everything from prescription drug welfare to education-centralization under NCLB along with many other unconservative endeavors that created a huge ballooning in domestic spending and the national debt.
It's not surprising the GOP isn't in worse shape when one couples these domestic blunders with very unpopular and ill-communicated initiatives like the unfortunately named "domestic surveillance" program and a few bungled national disasters (ahem...New Orleans) plus unmitigated immigration and a very difficult global war with seemingly amiguous fronts (Mission Accomplished?).
All of that happened precisely because the conservative movement became an echo-chamber that rubber stamped the RNC and other GOP leaders (that means you, W). The GOP's 1996 party platform vowed to abolish the Dept. of Education (completely conservative); but then in 2007 after nearly two GOP presidential terms, the Dept. of Ed. was fatter than ever with a headquarters renamed for Lyndon B. Johnson (completely unconservative)!
This is why we need "the kooks." For two long, ideological diversity has been replaced by TV's talking heads and books with covers that resemble the "I'm With Stupid" t-shirts.
The Right of the future (ie. the Next Right) needs an intellectual insurgency. A lot has been said about conservatives being cast out to the wilderness to find our way. Some of that sentiment has merit, but I suspect the trip to the woods won't last too long precisely because many "conservatives" have been in the "wilderness" quite awhile already.
In order to make a comeback fast, conservatives need an all-out intellectual insurgency. The Right must throw open the doors to the "good kooks" in the following groups that should have voted enthusiastically for the Republican in Novemeber but didn't:
the young Americans for liberty,
the paleoconservative interventionist Right,
the free market Austrian School of Economics capitalists,
the privacy rights libertarians (especially the energetic Ron Paulers),
the antiwar Right,
the young conservative activists,
the intellectual collegiate scholars,
the spectators of American politics and culture,
the traditionalist studiers of statesmanship and public policy,
the anti-illegal immigration patriots,
and the societally sophisticated paleoconservative alliance that "prefers peace with honor to proxy wars, Western civilization to multicultural barbarism, Christendom to the European Union, and Russell Kirk to Leon Trotsky."
Now, I don't characterize myself as a pacifist libertarian nor as a zero-immigration xenophobe, but I do believe vigorous debate from the Right would inform the American electorate in favor of the Repubs and against the Dems. By framing the debate by interjecting passionate "kooks" into the public eye, the Dems will be shown for the socialist frauds that they are. The entire campaign the media and the American people never heard Barack Obama's true plans for the country or the consequences of his ideas because the debate was controlled by his minions (in other words, the Left's "kooks").
Notice that I did not list the
American Enterprise Institute,
National Review,
Heritage Foundation,
sly Southern nanny-state hucksters,
"bloviators" like Bill O'Reilly,
"thinkers" like David Frum,
radio hosts that talks much but says little,
or the much flaunted conservative "authority" that seems more like a histrionic mannequin.
I left them out because they have had either too much sway during the Bush years or they failed to capitalize on the opportunities afforded to them. It's not that they aren't important to the Right wing in American politics, it's just that they aren't the only shows in town. The conservative "movement" needs to open its eyes and realize that conservatism is much bigger and deeper than the Bush Administration would have us believe.
Also, "fusionism" is imperative to the next Right. The tripartite alliance of the social, economic and national security conservatives has been shaken by dominant neoconservatism, plain and simple. Whenever one wing of the triumvirate gains too much power, the entire group weakens.
The GOP didn't really implode in '08. Let's not forget that the Republican Party barely won the White House in 2000 and probably would have lost in 2004 had it not been for the Global War on Terrorism and the awful candidate John "I wish I was the real JFK" Kerry. The midterm defeat in 2006 shouldn't make 2008 a big surprise, especially considering the perfect storm the GOP faced this past November.
For these reasons (the wilderness and discovering our deepest roots are two of them) and many more, we have much to look forward to in 2009. We also have much to do.
Reading books with boring covers published before 1990 is as good a place as any to get started.
