Dumbing down conservatism

In 2006, the Democrats regained control over both houses of Congress. Just two years later, conservatives couldn’t even manage to get one of their own nominated to head their party’s ticket in the race for the White House. In fact, no true conservative has been nominated for the presidency by the Republican Party since 1984. That’s almost a quarter-century without a conservative bearing the standard for the GOP.

What’s going on here? Is conservatism on the decline?

The numbers argue otherwise. Several consecutive Battleground Polls show that conservatives are in the majority in this country:

In each of those bipartisan polls over the prior four-and-a-half-years, the American people overwhelmingly consider themselves either “conservative” or “very conservative,” as opposed to “liberal,” “very liberal,” “moderate,” or “not know.” In the October 2006 Battleground Poll, just before Republicans were routed, the results were virtually the same. Sixty-one percent of Americans considered themselves either “conservative” or “very conservative,” while only thirty-four percent of Americans considered themselves “liberal” or “very liberal.” Five percent of Americans either called themselves “moderate” or “not know.”

So, something must have changed dramatically between October and November or between October and today, right? Wrong. The Battleground Poll released in late January 2007 showed that fifty-nine percent of the American people considered themselves either “conservative” or “very conservative,” while only thirty-four percent of Americans considered themselves either “liberal” or “very liberal.” Seven percent were “moderates” or “not know.”

The gap of twenty-five percentage points between self-identified conservatives and liberals is a wider gap than in five of the seven prior Battleground Polls, although all of the polls show almost identical results. The number of Americans who consider themselves conservative has never been lower than fifty-nine percent and the number of Americans who consider themselves liberal has never been higher thirty-eight percent…

Winning elections is simply a matter of convincing conservative voters that you are a conservative. This may have something to do with the reason that Ronald Reagan, the most popular Republican president of the Twentieth Century, was also perceived as the most conservative Republican president of the Twentieth Century.

So if conservatives’ numbers are not declining among the rank-and-file, that’s a pretty strong clue that the problem must lie elsewhere. But where?

Look no further than the leadership of the Republican Party. If you doubt me, just read this recent news item:

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels elicited several hushed gasps and raised eyebrows late last week as he lectured a conservative crowd that it was “time to let Ronald Reagan go.” The governor delivered his remarks to a room full of fellow red-staters at the Fund for American Studies’ annual conference and donor retreat at the Newseum.

Nostalgia is fine and Reagan’s economic plan was good,” Daniels said. “But we need to look towards the future rather than staying in the past.” Daniels added that the GOP needed to work on uniting behind Sen. John McCain instead of constantly comparing the Arizona senator with the Gipper.

While he prefaced his remarks with the disclaimer that his thoughts were “somewhat controversial,” he hoped that he “would not be misunderstood.”

With leadership like this, it’s no wonder that conservatives appear to be splintered into small interest groups and unable to agree on much of anything.

“Get over” Reagan? Why would we want to “get over” a great world leader who helped bring down the Iron Curtain, bring an end to the Soviet Union and free so many millions of people? Why would we want to “get over” the last American president who was able to make us feel good about ourselves, our nation and the future? Why would we want to “get over” the last Republican candidate for the presidency who literally blew the Democrat opposition into the ditch with two landslide victories in a row? Why would we want to “get over” a winner? So we can feel better about the losers who have taken over the leadership of the GOP since Reagan left the White House?

Daniels wants us to stop comparing our political candidates, including John McCain, to Ronaldus Maximus. He overlooks the fact that many conservatives have, however grudgingly, accepted the fact that we have to support McCain to prevent the country from falling into the pink paws of one of the two most liberal Democrats to seek the White House since George McGovern. But Reagan is the yardstick by which we take the measure of all our candidates. If no one can measure up, that’s all right. We movement conservative types know that there was only one Ronald Reagan and that there shall not be another. We don’t expect our candidates to be Reagan; we just expect them to be true to his principles. The Gipper stood for small government, fiscal responsibility, a strong national defense and moral certitude - the four essential ingredients to across-the-board conservatism.

The failure of the Republican leadership to remember what Reagan stood for and how he put these principles into practice is a knife driven right through the heart of the conservative movement. This short-sightedness represents not only a watering down of conservatism, but also its dumbing down. Daniels and his ilk, little by little, have been throwing conservative principles under the bus for nearly twenty-five years. As a result, the Republican Party, which Ronald Reagan left us in a proud and stong condition, has been steadily morphing into Democrat Lite.

Rush Limbaugh took some time today on his radio program to tell us what’s underneath this willingness of the part of the GOP leadership to abandon the very people and principles which made the party great and such a winner in the 1980s:

Now, this, sadly, is a symptom of what is happening in the Republican Party at large. The country club, blue-blood Rockefeller Republicans — and there are lots of them in the Republican Party, they were not happy with Reagan when he was in office. They didn’t like Reagan. They were embarrassed because they thought he was a dunce and an idiot and he didn’t come from their stock, and even when he was winning two landslides. He brought with them these Reagan Democrats, conservative evangelicals — and that brought abortion, and that really embarrassed the hell out of them…

Hey, Mitch? Governor? Governor Daniels? Should we get over Lincoln, too? He’s in the past. We just gotta go over Lincoln. This is so contrary to conservative thought. For me, on the wrong day, this could be tough to take. We’re supposed to learn from our past. We are supposed to build on that which works. This is part of conservative thought! I’ll tell you what. Let’s just get over the founders. The founders of the country are in the past, too. Let’s get over them…

Why would we “get over Reagan,” unless we reject the core principles of the party and the nation? For that matter, why should we do that? I think a lot of these politicians who are suggesting that Reagan’s old news and we’ve chronicled all of them that have said it. Newt said it. “The era of Reagan is over.” I don’t think they can attain the status of a Reagan. Maybe that’s why they insist we get over him and by implication I suppose all great conservatives. We should get over Bill Buckley and we should get over Milton Friedman…

So you have Governor Daniels, and he’s not alone, dumping on the very people who made conservatism a viable political option. In fact, it set the stage for his election as a governor: running as a Reagan economic conservative. So now they want to take the party and the movement, wherever. They’re going to take it down, but they don’t see that. They think they’re taking it to a new direction; one where they won’t be plagued by yapping chatterboxes like me being critical of them because there won’t be enough of us to matter. That is their hope. So we’re supposed to close ranks. We’re supposed to get over Reagan. We’re supposed to shut up. We’re supposed to get over all of these great traditions that made us who we are in our movement and our country and close ranks behind their favorite Republican and Republican candidates, while they trash the most successful policy-wise and politically conservative in a century or more, the most successful Republican in fact.

Sadly, it seems to me that the people that want to get rid of Reagan and want us to get over Reagan, leave him back there in the past; these are people like a lot of libs who cannot compete in the arena of ideas. They are lousy at communication. They can’t compete with the successful political politics of Reagan, so they insist that we reject him as a standard. So we have to embrace much less, dumb down thinking, a loser political mentality. They want to control the political debate. They insist that they’re the only realistic alternative to the Democrats. What we’re seeing here with this, with the support of some pseudoconservatives, is the rise of the country club Republican. He’s back.

Once again, El Rushbo nails it.

No, let’s not get over what makes conservatism - real conservatism - great. Instead, let’s get over these Rockerfeller Republicans and turn the Grand Old Party away from the death march to the sea where these lemmings are leading it. Once we’ve managed that, there’s no problem finding which way to go. Ronald Reagan drew the map to the treasure, and we only need to follow it.

- JP