All in the Family

In an Opinion Journal piece reprinted from Commentary, Kay Hymowitz offers a notable exercise in conservative critique of libertarianism. It's timely: as Hymowitz herself observes, with the growth of the internet as a political medium (and for a number of other reasons), the libertarian voice in conservative discourse is more prominent now than it has been in quite some time.

In her review of two new books by prominent libertarians (Radicals for Capitalism by Brian Doherty, and The Age of Abundance by Cato's Brink Lindsey), Hymowitz, unsurprisingly, does not take particular issue with the authors' economic analysis. I've added Lindsey's book to my long list and will discuss its economic aspects in more detail when I get to it (it may be a while), but the most interesting part of Hymowitz's review is her focus on "the cultural contradictions of libertarianism."

Hymowitz writes:

Despite Mr. Lindsey's protestations to the contrary, libertarianism has supported, always implicitly and often with an enthusiastic hurrah, the "Aquarian" excesses that he now decries. Many of the movement's devotees were deeply involved in the radicalism of the 1960s.

Nor should this come as a surprise. After all, the libertarian vision of personal morality--described by Mr. Doherty as "People ought to be free to do whatever the hell they want, mostly, as long as they aren't hurting anyone else"--is not far removed from "if it feels good, do it," the cri de coeur of the Aquarians. To be sure, part of the libertarian entanglement with the radicalism of the 1960s stemmed from the movement's opposition to both the Vietnam War and the draft, which Milton Friedman likened to slavery. But libertarians were also drawn to the left's revolutionary social posture.

But of course this simply isn't true. There's a universe of difference between "do what you will so long as you cause no harm to others," and "if it feels good, do it." It seems that the failure to understand this difference is what defines a social conservative, and this is why liberals (including, in this case, libertarians) have such mistrust for conservatives: those who cannot recognize such boundaries cannot be trusted either as moral agents on their own, nor as the guardians of others' morality.

Hymowitz makes much of libertarians' supposed disdain for the family, and in so doing she falls back on standard fusionist logic to argue that they ought to make preservation of the traditional family a priority:

On the one hand, libertarians make a fetish of freedom; it is their totalizing goal. On the other hand, libertarians depend on the family--an institution that, in crucial respects, is unfree--to produce the sort of people best suited to life in a free-market system (not to mention future members of their own movement). The complex, dynamic economy that libertarians have done so much to expand needs highly advanced human capital--that is, individuals of great moral, cognitive and emotional sophistication. Reams of social-science research prove that these qualities are best produced in traditional families with married parents.

Family breakdown, by contrast, limits the accumulation of such human capital. Worse, divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing leave the door wide open for big government. Dysfunctional families create an increased demand for state-funded food, housing and medical subsidies, which libertarians reject on principle. And in courts all over the country, judges who preside over the manifold disputes occasioned by broken families are forced to be more intrusive than the worst mother-in-law: They decide who should have primary custody, who gets a child on Christmas or summer holidays, whether a child should take piano lessons, go to Hebrew school, move to California, or speak to her grandmother on the phone. It is a libertarian's worst nightmare.

Hymowitz disputes Lindsey's assertion that "the instincts and abilities for liberty . . . are innate," arguing that such attributes can only be instilled in children who are properly raised by proper families.

All of this concern for the family is interesting, if slightly nauseating, coming from a party whose leaders are currently engaged in stripping health care away from children. Conservatives worry about what libertarians would do to families not in a material sense, of course, but in a spiritual one. The American Scene's Peter Suderman offers a libertarian rebuttal:

Few libertarians, I suspect, would argue that strong traditional family structures are a bad thing. In fact, I’d bet that the vast majority of them would be perfectly pleased to find families doing well. But I think a number of them would resist the idea that, somehow, there’s a social obligation to perpetuate the traditional family structure, and most would also argue that other forms of social arrangements are worth allowing, and might even prove fruitful. This stance might be less supportive of deploying government muscle in order to advance one's personal preferences than some would like, but it's hardly anti-family.

Suderman helpfully points out that the old fusionist equation -- "when families fail, government steps in" -- does not express the only government threat to the family; another is presented by the overbearing efforts of conservatives to ensure that everyone's family is socially correct.

Daniel Larison's response to both pieces constitutes a far more interesting social conservative engagement with libertarian theory than Hymowitz's article. Larison suggests that the real threat libertarianism presents to the family is in its tolerance of the displacements caused by capitalism and unbridled immigration; at the same time, he takes issue with the way that "families" are privileged within the internal conservative debate:

In fairness to the libertarians, labels such as pro-family and anti-family are absurd in a way. There are significant social and political consequences that result from legal and property arrangements that bind large, extended families together or from those that encourage the break-up of a household into many separate households. A public authority worried about the dangers of corruption, nepotism and civil strife created by extended family networks would implement laws to discourage that kind of family life, which might earn it the "anti-family" designation from those adversely affected by the change, while a booster of state authority might define it as a pro-family measure if he redefines what family is. Public authority has a vested interest in governing what kinds of families exist, because the different forms of families have consequences for social and political life that extend beyond the walls of the family home.

The point is that every act of legal recognition, permission or reinforcement of this or that social arrangement is equally "artificial" in one sense, and the decision to not privilege one form over another is a decision by default to support the emergence of alternative forms.

Larison recognizes one of the fundamental flaws of libertarian theory in general: there is no such thing as public neutrality on most issues. For Larison, the important question is "whether there are certain kinds of family life that are most conducive to human flourishing" -- as a genuine social conservative, he believes that the argument is unavoidable and worth having, and if we've come to an agreement, then the question is how to get government to encourage the best kind of family life.

Liberals, of course, apply the same critique to libertarian economic theory: the idea that government can avoid substantive engagement in the economy is simply nonsense. Even when it refuses to choose, it thereby tacitly makes a choice in someone's favor. And in a certain sense, we agree with Larison on the fact that government is inevitably involved in social matters as well. But "do as you will but cause no harm to others," properly understood, has very different consequences in economics than in the purely social sphere.

I still believe that, despite the optimism of the current crop of libertarians, they'll never really challenge the social conservatives for dominance on the right -- though I should note that by "social conservatives" I don't mean Christian fundamentalists per se; the latter are just a subset of the former, and their political import is likely to change significantly over the coming years. But at any rate, if the libertarians force social conservatives to more critically examine their assumptions about ideal social order, they will have done us all a favor.

Labels: Daniel Larison, Kay Hymowitz, libertarians, Peter Suderman, social conservatives

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 1:31 PM 9 comments

  The Enduring Appeal of the Reactionaries

Last seen proposing a grand alliance between liberals and libertarians (I explained why I think that would be a bad idea here), Cato's Brink Lindsey resurfaced last week to try his hand with the conservatives, taking to the pages of the National Review to offer advice from a "well-wishing outsider." It won't shock you that Lindsey's advice to the right is much like his appeal to the left: an invitation to think like libertarians do.

Lindsey proposes that conservatives set aside their "traditionalist" objections to things like gay marriage and Mexican immigration, commenting that "much of what has defined modern social conservatism — namely, political resistance to the incessant cultural change engendered by economic development — is not authentically conservative at all. It is reactionary." Social conservatism assumes a fragility to American culture that is not borne out by the evidence; more importantly, it's on the wrong side of history, in a sort of historical-materialist sense.

Naturally we progressives will be more enamored of his arguments when he is directing them against the assumptions of social conservatism, though Lindsey is careful to frame his case in a way that flatters the traditionalist preoccupations of decades past -- even as he rightly condemns the right's record of getting it wrong on things like civil rights and the entry of women into the workforce. He puts it this way:

The culture wars are over, and capitalism won. The question now is: Will the Left or the Right be the first to figure this out? The answer may well determine the future balance of political power.

Lindsey surveys post-war American history on a broad level, arguing that we have arrived at this juncture after mid-20th century prosperity first unleashed a tidal wave of cultural change:

As the post-war boom took off, however, the unprecedented development of technology and organization made America the first society in human history in which most people could take satisfaction of their basic material needs more or less for granted.

The story of post-war America is thus the story of adaptation to fundamentally new social realities, particularly mass affluence. Time-honored practices that had developed during the long reign of scarcity were now in need of serious revision or even wholesale abandonment. At the same time, new values and priorities began to assert themselves. Wrenching cultural conflict was unavoidable.

In Lindsey's telling, the prosperity brought by unfettered capitalism triggered cultural changes both positive -- feminism, sexual liberation, the end of legal segregation -- and negative. On the negative side, Lindsey describes "a radical assault on all traditions, all authority, and all constraints" -- a sort of general "Aquarian" madness (I wasn't around at the time, but reading the right's literature I imagine that a typical day in, say, 1971 probably involved packs of cannibalistic hippies raiding churches and boiling peyote in the hollowed-out skulls of former Mouseketeers. But I digress.). Social conservatives, he says, were right to push back against the chaos and crime thus unleashed, but now, in saner times, they have reached a crossroads:

The fundamental question for conservatives today is: What should they be seeking to conserve? The great American heritage of limited government, individual liberty, and free markets seems the only viable answer. As Peter Berkowitz has frequently and wisely noted, a truly American conservatism must have at the core of its concerns the defense and preservation of the liberal tradition. Which makes it a special kind of conservatism indeed: Its function is not to arrest change generally, or even slow it down, but rather to preserve the institutions that are both the chief source of change and the primary means through which we adapt to new conditions.

One obvious flaw in Lindsey's narrative is that he, a committed libertarian, ignores the important role of government investment and social insurance in fueling that post-war boom and widening the scope of its public benefits. But for the purposes of a debate with social conservatives, another problem stands out. Lindsey argues that they, clinging to their traditionalist views, are at odds with the march of history. Yet, as Ramesh Ponnuru points out in a rebuttal, Linsdey has also said that traditionalists were right to resist that march in certain ways at certain times. In that case, each social conservative argument must be judged on its merits; you can't simply dismiss them all with the proposition that, if we take care of capitalism, capitalism will take care of the rest. Ponnuru, in a sur-reply, writes:

[A]nyone who has taken up a social-conservative cause or two, or declines to sign on to all of Lindsey’s arguments, is supposed to don sackcloth and ashes and take historical responsibility for other conservatives’ having been segregationists. (Speaking for myself: No thanks.) The demand makes sense if all social conservative causes are the same, impermissibly reactionary thing, except when they happen to further “the logic of social development under capitalism,” whatever that means.

Ponnuru acknowledges, and I agree, that Lindsey is correct in pointing out that material forces, not just ideas, move history. As Ponnuru puts it, "Feminism didn’t happen when it did just because Betty Friedan wrote a book, which is why anti-feminist books can’t undo it."

Lest I sound too much like a defender of the traditionalists, let me add that we needn't simply let Ponnuru and his compatriots wiggle out from under the historical burden of social conservatives' many serious mistakes -- nor should we allow them to pretend that their arguments really do always resonate on their philosophical merits, when we all know perfectly well that naked bigotry provides much of their constituency. Whether or not Ponnuru wants to accept it, when we judge social conservative arguments on gay marriage, we can and must consider the precedents and legacy of their positions on civil rights and the role of women in society. For that matter, the record shows that a considerable number of the very same social conservatives leading the reactionary charge today still haven't abandoned the racism and sexism of the previous era. Ponnuru doesn't have to wear the sackcloth, but that doesn't mean his movement won't be judged by its own historical sins.

Ultimately, the negotations break down, with Ponnuru dismissing Lindsey's views as marginal -- just as Jonathan Chait did from a liberal perspective. The debate will be between the Ponnurus and the Chaits. I do believe that the traditionalists will continue to lose -- as they always do -- and they will lose in part because capitalism and other large-scale forces will continue to undermine the appeal of their prejudices. But I don't think they'll disappear, or that the right will limit itself to a simple defense of "classical liberalism." The social disruption and insecurity wrought by capitalism's "creative destruction" (to use a favorite libertarian term) mitigate against such reductionist politics. Social conservatism may be reactionary -- a misguided response to those dislocations -- but it's not going away.

Labels: Brink Lindsey, conservative futures, libertarians, Ramesh Ponnuru, social conservatives

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 7:24 AM 4 comments

  Consequences of Electability

Despite Fred Thompson's dramatic gains on Rudy Giuliani in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, Todd points out at MyDD that Rudy still retains considerable leads in all three states. Most signficant, though, are his extraordinarily strong favorability ratings in those states (54/28, for instance, in Florida), which are similar to his favorability numbers nationally. Says Todd:

A lot is made of Clinton's high negatives but not enough is said about Rudy' still high positives, which could end up being the Republicans' secret weapon in the general if he gets the nomination.

The same kind of analysis prompts a couple of conservative observers to declare that Giuliani is "still the frontrunner." At Real Clear Politics, Ross Kaminsky says this is for one simple reason: he's the most electable Republican:

[W]hile it is still VERY early in this process, internals of a recent Quinnipiac University poll show why I believe Rudy is still somewhat more likely to get the nomination than Fred: He is more likely to be able to win the general election.

For example, the Quinnipiac Poll shows Giuliani tied with or leading Hillary Clinton in three critical swing states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. The analysis in the link above focuses on Giuliani's lead shrinking from prior polls, but that is not the key. The key is that Giuliani far outperforms the other Republican frontrunners.

Gary Matthew Miller agrees:

If enough GOP primary participants are persuaded that only the Mayor could prevail in November of next year, that just might be the fulcrum upon which the Republican nomination may pivot.

Of course, the John Kerry experience demonstrated that "electability" is a tricky concept, but there's plenty of reason to believe that Kaminsky and Miller are correct. Yet there's a puzzle at the heart of the equation. It's one thing for primary voters to make a calculation about electablity; it's another thing for the conservative ideological apparatus itself to use the same calculation to endorse a candidate who rejects key tenents of the longstanding conservative consensus. As broad swathes of the right's intellectual, financial, and media elites use Rudy's "leadership qualities," his fiscal conservatism, and his "electability" as excuses to abandon the socially conservative half of their fusionist coalition, the issue for those social conservatives becomes much starker.

Despite their threats, it's unclear just how prepared they are to break decisively with the GOP -- to endorse a third-party candidate should Rudy win the nomination. But keep in mind that the stakes for social conservatives are bigger than just this election. It isn't just about making sure there's an anti-abortion candidate in 2008. It's about the prospect of losing access to the mighty conservative political machine altogether. If they allow the rest of the conservative establishment to leave them behind, they may never recover their place at the table; they may be permanently marginalized within the movement. For social conservatives -- for the Christian right in particular -- Rudy's "electability" is a very dangerous thing, and there's reason to believe they won't let it go unchallenged.

Cross-posted at The Right's Field.

Labels: 2008, Presidential election, Rudy Giuliani, social conservatives

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 8:19 AM 1 comments

  Looking for the New New Right (Part 5)

I'm determined to finish this thing, because it gets more interesting as it goes on...

Soren Dayton observes that conservatism is subject to redefinition -- just as Reagan redefined it around the notion of cutting taxes, so his inheritors can redefine it according to the imperatives of the present day. Reihan Salam makes the case that the "Sam's Club Republicanism" he and Ross Douthat advocate represents just such a path to revitalization.

But Patrick Ruffini is not convinced. And he makes a valid point: you can't redefine the movement if the base won't come with you. The conservative base, as Ruffini sees it, cares deeply about three main things right now:

1. Winning in Iraq


2. Stopping the spending


3. Border enforcement.

Ruffini is the kind of Reaganite neo-traditionalist who dismisses compassionate conservatism and Sam's Club Republicanism as so many exercises in "big government conservatism," dreamily positing "a lower-middle class majority held in place by government largesse with a conservative face."

I’m here to break the news to them that it won’t work. Republican voters are not motivated by a sense of entitlement. (That might be why they’re Republicans.) Whenever we’ve tried to give away the goodies (Medicare Part D, NCLB, etc.), we have not succeeded in creating loyal new Republican constituencies. The activist base that listens to Rush and dials Congress is up in arms about a bridge in Alaska and the 2% of the budget that is education spending. They won’t take kindly to a beefed-up version of Big Government Conservatism. [...]

What the welfare state Republicanism that Douthat and Salam advocate (in the name of the “base” no less) most resembles are the economic policies of Richard Nixon and the One Nation Conservatism of Ted Heath in the U.K. Which is precisely what the New Right in America and Thatcherism in Britain rose in opposition to. The revolt against Country Club Republicanism and its accommodation with government is one of the few reasons why we can speak of a “movement” and a “base” today.

It's intriguing, of course, that Ruffini applies the "country club Republicanism" tag to the one kind of conservatism that claims to make the social and economic well-being of the working classes its central concern. But this, to Ruffini and the neo-traditionalists, is a decadent conservatism, perverted and confused. It's the Republicanism of the feckless northeastern aristocrats who made their peace with organized labor, government regulation, and internationalism after the Second World War. It's a conservatism without the clarity or the courage to actually be conservative. Compassionate conservatism and Sam's Club Republicanism are simply latter-day outbreaks of the same heresies Goldwater aimed to correct. In Conscience of a Conservative, Goldwater -- through his ghostwriter Brent Bozell -- had declared:

I have litle interest in streamlining government or making it more efficient for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them.

By contradicting the core message of the modern conservative prophet, "big government conservatism" discourages the base, muddles the message, and undermines the right's brand. It weakens the movement. Conversely, "when the movement is strong, the GOP becomes more conservative and government gets smaller." For Ruffini, then, conservatism is the movement, and Goldwater's disciples are its base.

Ruffini argues that Reagan's redefinition of conservatism worked only because it kept true to the core principles of Goldwater Republicanism. In a sense, it was hardly a "redefinition" at all -- Reagan simply recognized new policy avenues for the movement to pursue. If Goldwaterism was concerned above all with liberty, cutting taxes was clearly in keeping with its spirit. "Reagan's changes," says Ruffini, "had buy-in from the base" -- because they didn't change the core brand around which the base was ideologically constituted. Reagan redefined conservatism, but on the movement's terms.

Salam offers the obvious rebuttal: that may be so, but "the movement is aging and dying." Pointing to this Pew Poll chart, which shows Americans under 30 skewing sharply toward the Democrats, Salam warns:

The "Movement" is old. The salience of "Movement" concerns is declining. So if Ruffini defines the Movement as those preoccupied by these particular issues, some of which I consider very important, he's not talking about a constituency that will be vitally important in twenty years time.

So while he is more than welcome to consider the fate of this group, it is no longer the fulcrum of American politics. Conservatism is a situational doctrine that has always been attuned to new threats -- to security, to economic freedom. As Soren rightly points out, the old threats aren't always and inevitably the same as the new threats.

The movement's base may want what it wants, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to translate the base's priorities into a majoritarian politics.

Arguably, the conservative base is not, in any case, what many conservative elites tend to think it is. Consider Pew's 2005 Political Typology: of the three groups Pew identified as constituting "the right," only one -- "Enterprisers," accounting for just 11% of registered American voters -- held to the standard fiscal conservative ideological line. The others ("Social Conservatives" and "Pro-Government" conservatives) favored government intervention in the economy well beyond what any self-respecting AEI fellow would be willing to tolerate. It's true that neutrally-posited ideological questions produce different results than well-crafted campaign rhetoric -- "lower taxes" is a pretty effective slogan -- but there's pretty good evidence that the conservative movement's base is not nearly so committed to fiscal conservative orthodoxy as the movement's leaders presume.

Salam defines Douthat and himself as social conservatives. "Pretty straightforward," he says. This means, in part, that "while I think we're both concerned with defending a free enterprise system, we're also keenly aware of another kind of economic freedom." He defends the notion of using the state to redistribute income -- though by "conservative" means, like the negative income tax or the Earned Income Tax Credit:

Hayek, for instance, defended a basic minimum on the grounds that expanding the "choice set of the poor" will contribute to the defense of economic freedom. Some would argue that this "choice set" is an essential part of economic freedom rightly understood, and that some trade-offs are necessary.

Our goals are familiar -- thriving families -- and our means are familiar -- competitive markets. The fact that our tax code punishes, for example, stay-at-home mothers and other conservative constituencies means that a certain kind of government activism is needed to counteract these effects. [...]

One can imagine a "Movement" that would expand rather than contract the choice set, and speak to the interests of small-scale entrepreneurs and aspirational blue-collar workers: key parts of past Republican electoral success.

The burden Salam and his fellow "conservative reformists" are forced to bear is the failed Bush presidency, particularly since the influential neo-traditionalists in the conservative movement tend to blame that failure on the administration's attempt to pursue the very same goals by the same sorts of means. Salam's only defense in this post is that Bush merely "gestured in the direction of the white working class," that he failed in the event to actually "deliver policies." The basis of Reagan's success, like FDR's, was that he delivered on his promises (taken for the sake of argument). Bush II has failed to do so.

The question for Salam, then, is why did he fail? Was he really just insufficiently committed to the policy agenda? Or were there structural reasons for the failure of compassionate conservatism? And if there were, what's to say that "Sam's Club" conservatism would fare any better? The neo-traditionalist conservatives have their own set of answers to those questions. I won't suggest my own until I take the time to engage the substance of the "Sam's Club" argument myself. In the meantime, we'll finish this particular thread tomorrow, with a postscript on some of the implications for Democrats.

Labels: conservative futures, Patrick Ruffini, Reihan Salam, social conservatives

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 6:57 AM 0 comments

  Heterodoxies, Real and Imagined

I know it's been a light couple of weeks here at A&S, and to be honest, I'm unlikely to be doing multiple posts every day for the foreseeable future. But it'll still be regular (should be around one a day, maybe two), and hopefully we'll maintain our reputation for sterling quality control (er, do we have a reputation for that?).

At any rate, E.J. Dionne has a column today that could almost be a stand-in for an A&S post, except that his thesis is a little bit flawed. Dionne discusses the various heresies of the various GOP presidential candidates (Rudy on abortion, Huckabee on taxes, McCain on campaign finance laws) and sees it as a symptom of the breakdown of conservative orthodoxy:

One dynamic forcing Republicans to new ground is the failure of the Bush presidency. This is leading liberals to insist that President Bush's tenure proves conservatism doesn't work, and conservatives to insist that Bush was never a real conservative (something they didn't say when his poll ratings were high).

Something similar happened to Jimmy Carter in 1980 when conservatives attacked him as a liberal while liberals disowned him. Carter's defeat by Ronald Reagan was followed by an extended liberal nervous breakdown. Now it's conservatives who are panicking.

But Republicans also know in their guts that their old axioms don't work anymore because their constituencies are breaking up.

The obituaries this week for the Rev. Jerry Falwell often took the form of elegies for the entire religious right. Younger and suburban evangelicals may be more or less conservative, but they do not share the ideological fervor of the Moral Majoritarians. These new evangelicals care about issues other than abortion and gay marriage. They yearn, along with almost everyone else, for problem-solving competence. [...]

If conservative ideologues were the dominant force in Republican primary politics, Giuliani would not be at the top of the pack, Gilmore the Pure would be doing better, and McCain and Huckabee would not be placing bets on pragmatism and political reconciliation. Yes, every Republican still wants to be called a "conservative." But they are all feeling pressure to pour new wine into that old vessel because it's almost empty. And Democrats beware: A less orthodox Republican Party would be a lot more popular.

I agree with Dionne's last assertion, and on a general level I think he is seeing the same crisis in the conservative movement that I'm seeing, but I don't think he's getting the nuances quite right - and they're important nuances.

It would take more than just the collapse of the religious right to bring down the conservative ideological edifice. Dionne's one example of deviation from an economic conservative line consists of Huckabee's defense of his own record on taxes. But I think that what's going on here is something rather different than what Dionne sees.

Christopher Orr's critique of Dionne's article is instructive:

[T]he idea that the heresies (most of them minor) on display in South Carolina somehow represent the GOP candidates' efforts to rethink party ideology seems, well, wrong. For the most part, they're exactly what they appear to be: The candidates' efforts to deal with (and, wherever possible, minimize) their inconvenient political baggage.

As Dionne notes, Huckabee may have raised taxes as governor of Arkansas, but he still pitches himself as a fiscal conservative who cut taxes "94 times." Giuliani has only embraced his pro-choice past because his earlier efforts to finesse it away were such an abject failure. As for Romney, he defended a federal role in education because he was specifically asked whether, in light of his many convenient ideological conversions (on abortion, gay rights, etc.), he'd had any conversions that might hurt him with the base. Defending No Child Left Behind seemed a better bet than admitting that he's a shameless, flip-flopping opportunist. Really, the only candidate who proudly defended his apostasy was McCain on torture.

Far from being characterized by the kind of freethinking, let's-reinvent-the-party spirit Dionne seems to describe, the GOP primary has thus far been a race to the right on almost every issue: McCain suddenly recognizing the advantages of tax cuts for the rich, Romney reeducating himself on fetal rights, and of course everyone (with the exception of fringe candidate Ron Paul) embracing a war that, while ever-more unpopular with the public at large, is still a rallying cry for the GOP base.

Let's consider Huckabee again. The former Arkansas governor is saying what he's saying about taxes precisely because he's on the defensive against enforcers of conservative orthodoxy. That's why he emphasizes the "94 tax cuts" claim; his refusal to renounce all tax increases comes across more as a self-defense strategy than anything else -- an attempt to avoid complete capitulation, which would make him look weak. In fact, I think Huckabee would have a sound strategy for success in a general election if he were to more strongly emphasize his disagreements with economic conservative orthodoxy, but as he well knows, the Club for Growth won't let him.

But here's the nuance that I think both Dionne and Orr miss. Giuliani's refusal to submit to the abortion litmus test is substantively different -- very different -- than any of the other "heresies" under consideration here. The issue is precisely what Dionne aluded to when he pointed out (as I did the other day) the waning power of the Christian right.

There is, on a general level, a crisis in the conservative movement. At the same time, though, it isn't a question of anybody "rethinking" anything. The chaos on the right is operating differenly in a theoretical fashion than it is in a practical fashion. That is, nobody can sort out to what extent the crisis is a matter of discredited ideas, and to what extent it's a matter of weakened institutions.

The difference between the social conservatives on the one hand, and the economic conservatives on the other, is crucial here. The various candidates continue to pander mindlessly to both sides because they're mostly too blinkered and mediocre to notice that, suddenly, the enforcers of some conservative orthoxies are a lot weaker than others these days.

Here's what I think, tentatively, is beginning to happen: Rudy Giuliani's break with the anti-abortion line is, as I've said, the only truly heterodox move by a major Republican candidate in a long time. The economic conservatives are happy enough with Rudy, and they see him as the most electable Republican -- probably the only electable Republican -- next fall. The conservative intellectuals, who mostly stick with the economic side of the movement (since that's the side that finances them, and since they generally aren't the types to sign chastity pledges themselves), also dig Rudy for what they see as his war and terror cred. And the economic conservatives and the intellectuals perceive that, suddenly, it's possible for a candidate to leave the whole abortion thing behind. So if that's what they think he needs to do, tactically, they'll support him.

What this means is that, after several years now of complaining about the effects of the Christian right on their party, economic and intellectual conservatives are finally beginning to leave the fundamentalists behind. And they seem to be positively giddy about it.

It's still very early and difficult to forecast this stuff. But I'll try to document it going forward.

Here's the grand irony, though. As the rise of the moderate evangelicals saps the enforcement power of the social conservatives on Republican candidates (even while drones like Mitt Romney fail to see it), the economic right, by default, becomes more powerful within the movement. Thus Rudy, who rejects the core social conservative tenet, is still a frontrunner, while a skilled politician like Huckabee is hobbled for being insufficiently zealous about tax cuts.

But while Rudy could somehow coast to the White House on the hero-worship factor alone, it's Huckabee who represents the more potent forumula for a future Republican party. I would bet my cats that a formula of moderate-conservative religiosity (with a self-help sheen) plus a willingness to acknowledge a positive role for government is much more appealing to the American public over the long run than tough-guy pseudo-libertarianism. Even if we end up with a President Rudy -- especially if we end up with a President Rudy -- we may be watching the conservative movement destroy itself.

Labels: 2008, conservatives, economic conservatives, Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, social conservatives

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 3:25 PM 0 comments

  "Saving" Social Security, One Uterus at a Time

If defenders of Social Security have won the fight against privatization -- and it looks as though, for the time being, they have -- there still remains the important debate over how exactly to head off the revenue shortfalls predicted to occur beginning in 2041. Even progressives agree that, as the Economic Policy Institute explains, we will have to consider options including "tax increases, new government debt issues, or benefit cuts." Writing in the Weekly Standard, former OMB official James Capretta develops a conservative line of argument in this discussion. Capretta, now affiliated with the right-wing Ethics and Public Policy Center, puts American fertility rates at the center of his analysis.

Capretta draws on the work of Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal to argue that social insurance programs reduce the incentive for people to have more children, since there is less need for offspring to contribute to a family's economic security -- for instance, by taking care of their parents in old age. This in itself isn't a particularly controversial statement (it's a basic assumption for those who argue that shared prosperity in developing nations will reduce birthrates there), and Capretta isn't using it as an argument against Social Security. On the contrary, he opposes privatization, preferring instead to make the case that a focus on fertility rates can be part of a strategy to stablize Social Security's finances without raising payroll taxes:

The starting point for a sensible reform of Social Security should be opposition to any proposal that would increase the program's current size--including proposals to initiate personal savings accounts with "add-on" contributions. The current Social Security payroll tax rate and wage base--12.4 percent of wages up to $97,500 in 2007--should be ceilings (the taxable wage limit is already indexed to increase with average wage growth each year). The temptation among some Republicans to accept a tax hike to get a bipartisan Social Security deal should be resisted; it would only lead to further pressure on the birth rate. Social Security's financing gap will need to be closed with benefit adjustments, such as increases in the retirement age and reductions in the benefit formula for higher wage earners.

But reform should not stop there. Today, two workers with identical wage histories pay the same contributions and get the same retirement benefits, even if one of them has numerous children--with all of the expense that entails--and the other has none. That's not fair or prudent, as it undervalues the program's need for investment in human capital. Longman, Carlson, and others have suggested reforms that would begin to correct this flawed accounting. These proposals would give workers who are raising a family either a payroll or income tax break or a boost in their retirement benefit to compensate for the costs of investing in future taxpayers.

Christian Weller of the Center for American Progress has reported on why raising the retirement age is a problematic idea -- it would create unequal burdens and would fail to account for the fact that, "while gains in life expectancy have accelerated, health improvements for those near the current retirement age appear to have slowed."

But what about the fertility argument? One response would be that immigration and productivity are more likely to help counter the shortfall than schemes to encourage more babymaking. While the Social Security Trustees are rather pessimistic about the potential for immigration to make up much more than about 5 percent of the program's 75-year actuarial deficit (largely because they forecast declining immigration rates and lower fertility among those who do immigrate), Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon argues that the Trustees are being far too cautious. Gordon forecasts a higher productivity rate and a significantly more gradual decline in immigration rates than do the Trustees. He also expresses confidence that the United States will maintain its current fertility rate, thanks in part to our flexible labor market, which makes it easier for American women "to combine work and childbearing" (and on this note, one might suggest that if you worry about American fertility rates, you should support policies like family leave guarantees and subsidized day care, the better to maintain this flexibility).

And here, as we begin to discuss the people at the center of the fertility question -- women -- we come to the other, rather obvious aspect of Capretta's agenda. The watchdog site Right Web points out that the EPPC is a distinctly social conservative think tank, whose self-described mission is "to clarify and reinforce the bond between the Judeo-Christian moral tradition and the public debate over domestic and foreign policy issues." A look at some of the Center's publications gives some idea where its intellectuals stand on gender-related issues: several decades in the past. Capretta himself mentions, almost in passing, that "my Ethics and Public Policy Center colleague John Mueller has noted that higher fertility accompanies more frequent religious practice." Mueller also argues that abortion is bad for the economy -- in large part because it lowers the birth rate.

I don't want to put words in Capretta's mouth, but one can certainly imagine how well his plan to fix Social Security would dovetail with an anti-feminist, socially conservative agenda. It promises to solve a major, looming crisis by asserting the role of public policy in influencing women's decisions about their bodies (and their careers). It avoids icky tax increases by making each woman's uterus a concern of the state. Like many fusionist conservative strategies, it's both elegantly designed and highly pernicious.

Labels: Ethics and Public Policy Center, feminism, social conservatives, Social Security

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:11 AM 0 comments

  Huckabee's Lament

PFAW's excellent Right-Wing Watch reports that Mike Huckabee is getting a little fed up with all the love and forgiveness going on between religious right leaders and the various adulterers and cross-dressers in the Republican presidential field:

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, beloved by many on the Religious Right for his positions on wedge issues but dismissed as a serious presidential candidate, has spent the last few weeks deploying a seemingly desperate gambit aimed at undermining support for frontrunners Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. They should “be held to a standard of personal accountability and responsibility for their personal lives,” he said, alluding to what Vision America’s Rick Scarborough called “multiple marriages and serial adultery” among the candidates. “If Republicans in this election vote in such a way as to say a candidate’s personal life and personal conduct in office doesn’t matter,” said Huckabee, “then a lot of Christian evangelical leaders owe Bill Clinton a public apology.”

[...]

In a recent appearance in Iowa, Huckabee sharpened his “personal lives” attack, noting that “I’m specifically referencing Christian evangelical leaders who were the most vocal in saying back during the Clinton era that personal behavior, personal responsibility and character were the key factors in a president’s criteria.” He accused those leaders of selling out to the Republican Party.

Huckabee is stuck in a vicious circle: he's doing terribly in the polls because he has been unable to gain support from the leaders of what should be his base in the primaries; he has been unable to gain that support because he's perceived by said leaders as unelectable.

It continues to mystify me, and as far as I can tell, it really does all trace back to the Club for Growth's vigorous attacks on Huckabee a few months ago. Otherwise, what's not to love? He's a governor, a Baptist preacher, a star on the stump, he's been on Oprah, and he has a flair for reframing traditionally Democratic social issues within a conservative narrative. In fact, I think it's this last trait, more than the specific tax increases he approved in Arkansas, that doomed him in the eyes of the Club for Growth crowd. They've been traumatized by "compassionate conservatism," and the last thing they want is a nominee who intends to go down that road again. The tax increases only sharpened their skepticism. Thus they appplied the "unelectable" tag to him, even though there's no reason to believe he's unelectable at all. Again, the economic conservatives punch above their bodyweight in the conservative coalition.

This time, they've done Democrats a favor.

Labels: 2008, economic conservatives, evangelicals, Mike Huckabee, Presidential election, social conservatives

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 2:27 PM 1 comments

  More Conservative Warnings for Rudy

John Podhoretz in the NY Post: "Get real, Rudy: You're blowing your White House Run."

As a presidential candidate, you seem to be winging it these days - giving off-the-cuff, ill-considered answers to delicate questions. If you keep winging it this way, you're going to fly off a cliff.

Cal Thomas at Townhall: Giuliani is a contortionist:

If Giuliani believes in a strict construction interpretation of the Constitution, he could not support abortion, because a strict constructionist does not find language permitting it. For him to take the position he does on abortion and then to say he would nominate strict constructionists to the bench twists him and the law into a pretzel.

Giuliani says people who don't like his position do not have to vote for him. Many social conservatives who view abortion as a make or break issue are likely to follow his advice.

The good news for Rudy is probably that at least all these pundits are talking about him (poor Sam Brownback).

The bad news is that the abortion issue is beginning to consume his candidacy just as surely as many predicted it would.

Labels: 2008, abortion, Presidential election, Rudy Giuliani, social conservatives

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 7:23 AM 0 comments

  Excommunication for Rudy?

John Kerry had to deal with Catholic conservatives breathing down his neck in the 2004 election, so it would seem only fair that the thrice-married, nominally pro-choice Rudy Giuliani should be subject to the same scrutiny.

And lo and behold! Here's Catholic newspaper columnist Kenneth J. Wolfe in an op-ed at the NY Daily News:

Republican presidential hopeful Rudolph Giuliani has made several statements supporting legalized and even taxpayer-funded abortion. Some Catholics believe these warrant a "latae sententiae" excommunication from the church under canon law - in other words, an automatic excommunication that occurs "by the very commission of the offense."

But there is another area on which the grounds for excommunication are much more clear: marriage.

Giuliani is currently in a civil marriage with Judith Nathan. Unlike Giuliani's previous two marriages, this one was not performed under the auspices of the Catholic Church. And unlike his second marriage, he did not receive an annulment from the church for his most recent marriage. As a result, Giuliani could be prohibited from receiving Communion.

For those of you who didn't grow up Catholic, being "prohibited from receiving Communion" is what excommunication is all about.

The problem, for Rudy, is not the first divorce - it's the second. The Catholic church, of course, does not sanction divorce at all - however, if a married couple can demonstrate that their marriage should never have taken place at all, the church will grant them an annulment. This is what ended the marriage between Giuliani and his second cousin Regina Peruggi. The second time around, though, it's a lot harder to get an annulment. And so, when Rudy dumped Donna Hanover (disgracefully forcing Hanover to learn of his decision through the media), he never got the church's sanction.

And that means that, when Giuliani married Judith Nathan, he became - in the eyes of the Catholic church - an adulterer. He may not be unusual in this respect (though he was unusually cruel to Hanover), but it's hardly a formula for winning over conservative voters:

If Giuliani is elected President, he would be the second divorced man to win the office. However, he could be the first to be barred from his church from fully participating in its liturgy. As the GOP continues to court conservative Catholics, his excommunication could very well have an effect on the 2008 election.

I expect William Donahue will be weighing in?

Labels: 2008, Catholics, Presidential election, Rudy Giuliani, social conservatives

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:56 AM 0 comments

  The End of the Litmus Test?

Yesterday I wrote about an article by Noemie Emery at the Weekly Standard, which argues that Rudy Giuliani is positioned to win the GOP nomination despite his "socially liberal" tendencies. Emery's analysis of Giuliani's appeal is convincing enough, but let's look a bit more at whether the litmus test is really endangered.

Emery argues:

After 30-plus years of fierce, intense arguments, much emotion, and many polls taken, both sides in the abortion wars have been mugged by reality, and realize that neither is likely to reach its major goals soon. Dreams of outlawing abortion on the one hand, or, on the other, of seeing it funded, legitimized, and enshrined as an unassailable civil right, have faded in the face of a large and so-far unswayable public opinion that is conflicted, ambivalent, and inclined to punish any political figure it sees as too rigid, too strident, or too eager to go to extremes. For this reason, no politician shrewd enough to make himself president is likely to go on a pro-life or pro-choice crusade.

Activists are becoming increasingly sophisticated both in accepting the political complexities of the abortion debate, and in recognizing that a president's personal beliefs in fact have little bearing on the state of play. Emery acknowledges that, for many dedicated conservatives, this kind of subtle analysis is unconvincing. But, she says, "the surprising thing is that these debates are occurring at all."

This is why early assessments of Giuliani's possible weakness may be misleading, among them polls indicating that many social conservatives would never back a pro-choice nominee. They do not show what might happen if the nominee pledged not to push for a pro-choice agenda, or if he were endorsed and supported by conservative icons who vouched for him, campaigned with and for him, and swore to their backers that he was all right.

The deal in the works has been carefully crafted to make sure that no one loses too much. Conservatives would be getting a pro-choice nominee, but one who would not push a pro-choice agenda, and one who would give them (as far as presidents can be sure in these matters) the kind of judges they long for. Giuliani would not be required to renounce his beliefs, merely to appoint the right kind of judges and to remain more or less neutral in a policy area in which, to be honest, he has never shown that much interest. The Republicans will remain the pro-life party--as desired by the bulk of their voters and required by the workings of the two-party system--though now with a larger, more varied, and in some ways more competitive field of candidates.

Emery suggests that Democrats, too, might move away from an abortion litmus test - but that's another discussion entirely.

For Emery, the litmus test has been problematic from the beginning, dictating from the extremes a debate in which most Americans fall somewhere in the conflicted middle:

It has been a very good deal for the people who imposed it, but a very bad one for the country at large. It has meant that a candidate for national office must begin by embracing ideas that have been rejected by seven in ten of Americans, while a candidate who comes close to the center of public opinion would never be allowed to compete.... Worst of all, it posed the real possibility that a candidate would come forth who seemed equipped to deal with a crisis, but who, because he held the "wrong views" in the eyes of the interest groups, would not be allowed to emerge.

That crisis, of course, is terrorism - and the man who "seems equipped" to deal with it is Rudy Giuliani, President of 9/11.

I don't know enough about Emery to guess whether this is strictly objective analysis, or whether she is a Giuliani sympathizer making a case for Rudy's viability.

I do know that Ramesh "Party of Life" Ponnuru disagrees with her. Citing the need to look beyond the "negative connotations" of the term "litmus tests," Ponnuru asks what the phrase really means:

Only that some people have the nerve to prefer candidates who agree with them on the issues that they care about.

He criticizes Emery for being "too quick to declare, and to celebrate, its demise."

[M]y own guess is that pro-life and pro-choice voters will cease to care about the views of presidential nominees only when the politics of abortion is de-nationalized: which is to say, after Roe v. Wade has fallen.

It seems Emery is putting the cart just slightly before the horse: she argues that anti-choicers will support a candidate as long as he promises to appoint the judges to overturn Roe; Ponnuru seems to think they'll believe it when they see it - and meanwhile, litmus test away.

At any rate, Ponnuru doesn't think the litmus test has been such a bad thing at all:

No cost-benefit analysis is complete if it looks only at costs, as Emery does. What have been the benefits of the pro-life “litmus test”? It has kept open a question that the courts, among others, have repeatedly and arrogantly tried to declare closed. It has helped to promote policy changes that have brought the abortion rate down. It has made the Republican party a more conservative party across the board; and it has furthered a campaign to restore the judiciary to its proper place in the constitutional scheme of things, a campaign that would have gotten nowhere without it.

One could apply a pretty cynical analysis here. The abortion litmus test has indeed given discipline and impetus to the conservative agenda. It has done so at the cost, to anti-choice true believers, of electing presidents who pay lip service to an extremist anti-abortion agenda, but are powerless to actually do anything about it. And thus, considering how much political damage the Republican party would suffer if Roe were ever actually overturned, from the point of view of a GOP operative, the litmus test has perhaps been a pretty great thing all around.

Labels: 2008, abortion, Presidential election, Rudy Giuliani, social conservatives

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 3:38 PM 0 comments

  Rudy and Social Conservatives: "A Deal in the Works"?

How could Republican primary voters - the preponderance of whom are social conservatives - possibly wind up nominating a pro-choice New Yorker for president? Noemie Emery explains how in an article at the Weekly Standard. Contrary to the many observers who see an unresolvable conflict at the heart of the Rudy-Republican relationship, Emery suggests that there may be a "deal in the works" between the mayor and sociocons:

Next year may see the party of the Sunbelt and Reagan, based in the South and in Protestant churches, nominate its first presidential candidate who is Catholic, urban, and ethnic--and socially liberal on a cluster of issues that set him at odds with the party's base. As a result, it may also see the end of the social issues litmus test in the Republican party, done in not by the party's left wing, which is shrunken and powerless, but by a fairly large cadre of social conservatives convinced that, in a time of national peril, the test is a luxury they cannot afford.

As Emery points out, the abortion litmus test has been at the center of national politics for over 30 years, dating back at least to the parties' dueling 1980 platforms, and reinforced since by powerful interest groups on either side. Emery is suggesting that something no less than revolutionary is happening: a party may be on the verge of abandoning its commitment to the fight. And the winner would be Rudy Giuliani.

Such a development is made possible by the way Giuliani has been working within a changing political context. First, and most important, he has not been resorting to wild Romney-style pandering. Instead, he's been taking David Frum's advice:

"He should not try to deny or conceal his own views," [Frum] wrote of the mayor. "He should not invoke Lee Atwater's 'Big Tent' . . . nor should he spend minutes and minutes parsing his views. . . . His job is not to persuade pro-life Republicans to agree with him, but to assure them that they can live with him."

This matters because Giuliani's appeal to conservatives lies in his strong-leader persona, which would be undermined if he gave the impression of flip-flopping around - even if it were in the name of taking up the sociocon agenda. It's a pretty neat trick.

Of course, it's aided by the fact that some social conservatives have indicated their willingness to be bought more cheaply this time around. Just give us the judges, they say, and we'll do the rest. And Rudy has been promising them that much, at least. Of course, there's another contradiction here: if sociocons believe that they are winning the wars of public opinion over abortion and gay marriage, they may have the self-confidence not to need a leader who promises to federalize their every concern (certainly this would be a relief to the libertarian contingent in the GOP). But if they are winning the public opinion war, why should they settle for anything less? To the victors should go the spoils, right? Judicial nominations are a baseline upon which Giuliani is able to freely acceede to conservative demands. And some of the commentariat are telling themselves that that will be enough. But will it?

Back to Emery, at any rate. If the litumus test is about to die, if Giuliani is able to win the nomination without making more than baseline assurances to social conservatives, it will be for a number of reasons. Emery provides four - the first two of which I want to discuss in this post.

First, the War. This is the most obvious factor, though Emery provides a particularly vivid depiction of the sociocon mentality here:

They see [Giuliani] as a more ruthless version of George W. Bush, someone who would not have consented to less-than-aggressive rules of engagement; who would have taken Falluja the first time, and not have had to come back later; who would not have let Sadr escape when he had him; who would not have been fazed by whining over Abu Ghraib and Club Gitmo, and would have treated critics of the armed forces and of the mission with the same impatience he showed critics of the police in New York.

This, besides being deeply disturbing, points to a larger question: can the 'war on terror' act as a convincing stand-in for the struggle against communism, which united the right for so long? Emery quotes Jonah Goldberg as saying that pro-lifers "really, really believe the war on terror is for real." Of course, that's exactly what a fighting keyboarder like Goldberg would want to believe. I don't pretend to know the extent to which Joe and Jane Pro-Lifer actually buy into the vast, self-aggrandizing historical fantasy of the conservative pundit classes, who have so much invested in their operatic role-playing game, who spend so much time and waste so much ink making bad historical analogies and congratulating each other for their Churchillian wisdom and Lincoln-like resoluteness, but I have my doubts.

There's also the Uncle Rico factor. This was of course the name we gave to Tom Schaller's theory that Giuliani represents, for Republicans, a chance to go back and relive the era before they bungled in Iraq, a time when Republicans, with a straight face, could refer to the GOP as the party of national security (9/11-related failures notwithstanding). Thinking about it more, I'm starting to wonder: is Schaller giving conservatives too much credit? Remember, they don't think like us. Sure, GOP politicians and strategists know Iraq has been a disaster for them, but isn't the whole point that Republican primary voters don't make a distinction between Iraq and the war on terror? They may be angry about how the war has been such a cock-up, but between now and next November they have a perfectly good Dolchstosslegende to explain why it's all the Democrats' fault.

At any rate, the war (whichever war) may turn out to be a lot less predictive than we'd like to think it will be, in terms of how it affects conservative voters next spring. The "surge" will have done its thing, or not done its thing. If conditions in Iraq haven't improved, even social conservatives may not be so eager anymore for a hawkish candidate that they'd be willing to sell their age-old priorities down the river. On the other side of the coin, if the Dolchstosslegende has been marketed well enough, any old Republican might be able to take advantage of it.

Still, there's no denying - for now - the appeal of Rudy's vicious personality. And that's the second big factor for Emery: Rudy is "not your father's pro-choice Republican." He's no squishy liberal like Lincoln Chafee or "the ladies from Maine." He's a hard-ass:

To the press, Rudy was one of those terrible people--too quick to defend the police when they were attacked on brutality charges; a fascist, a bully, and a prude. With most pro-choice Republicans, their views on abortion are only one of a set of positions and attitudes that arouse the ire of the base. Giuliani is that very rare animal, a pro-choice Republican who is also the furthest thing possible from a liberal on a wide range of issues (law and order among them). [...]

Rudy Giuliani is a liberal slayer.

Rudy's an authoritarian jerk. And, to social conservatives, this is apparently like pheremones. As discussed before, it's not unlike Vernon Lee's examination of Dubya's appeal in 2004: the cowboy factor. It all seems to converge with analysis by Glenn Greenwald and Rick Perlstein. The right loves swagger. The right loves to bug the liberals. The right loves a bully. All of this makes Rudy Giuliani a hell of a lot more compelling than George Pataki, and it may just get him nominated.

Tomorrow I'll look more at this argument - and its implications for the Republican party.

Labels: 2008, Noemie Emery, Presidential election, Republicans, Rudy Giuliani, social conservatives

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:07 AM 1 comments

  Confession is Good for the Political Soul

So now that Newt Gingrich has admitted that the whole time he was tormenting Bill Clinton over Monica Lewinsky he was also cheating on his own wife, it appears that the evangelical brigade are giving him the green light. Jerry Falwell has praised Gingrich for coming clean, and invited the former speaker to appear at Liberty University:

"He has admitted his moral shortcomings to me, as well, in private conversations," Falwell wrote in a weekly newsletter sent Friday to members of the Moral Majority Coalition and The Liberty Alliance. "And he has also told me that he has, in recent years, come to grips with his personal failures and sought God's forgiveness."

It's all so formulaic, so ritualistic. Candidate X needs fundamentalist votes. Fundamentalist Blowhard Y wants to feel relevant. X offers the standard words of contrition to Y. Y publicly forgives X on behalf of God and the Moral Majority.

It's a political market in indulgences.

Labels: 2008, Jerry Falwell, Newt Gingrich, Presidential election, social conservatives

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 11:25 AM 0 comments

  First Thing You Learn Is You Always Got to Wait

When we last saw Paul Weyrich, he was urging social conservatives to wait and see whether a "real" conservative candidate would emerge, rather than jumping on the electability bandwagon with one of the unappealing frontrunners.

The New York Times reports today on the deliberations of Weyrich and his peers in the conservative illuminati at the Council for National Policy, the most publicity-seeking "shadowy" organization in America. Seems they're still waiting for the messiah. And the situation is unnerving them:

[I]n a stark shift from the group’s influence under President Bush, the group risks relegation to the margins. Many of the conservatives who attended the event, held at the beginning of the month at the Ritz-Carlton on Amelia Island, Fla., said they were dismayed at the absence of a champion to carry their banner in the next election.

Reading between the lines, it's interesting to note that, as it enumerates the Council members' complaints, the Times piece leads with denunciations of McCain and Guiliani, relegating Romney to a second tier of conservative discontent. Is this because Romney is a second-tier candidate, or because he doesn't offend them quite as much as the other two?

Here's another interesting little tidbit:

Finally, in a measure of their dissatisfaction, a delegation of prominent conservatives at Amelia Island tried to enlist as a candidate Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, a guest speaker at the event. A charismatic politician with a clear conservative record, Mr. Sanford is almost unknown outside his home state and has done nothing to prepare for a presidential run. He firmly declined the group’s entreaties, people involved in the recruiting effort said. A spokesman for Mr. Sanford said he would not comment.

At the National Review recently, Mallory Factor praised Stanford for his supposed ability - apparently rather unique among governors - to avoid raising taxes. Sanford's clearly not going to jump in this time around - unless he's got some stunt up his sleeve - but is somebody worth keeping an eye on as a potential star on the conservative bench.

And speaking of governors with star potential, Mike Huckabee was said to be lurking about during the Council's deliberations. The Huckster, as we have learned, is a slick social conservative with powerful political skills (albeit with a rather strange intepretation of history) - but he's persona non grata on the right because of his tax-raising record in Arkansas. But it seems he's ready to be born again:

Mr. Huckabee said he was now leaning toward signing a pledge not to raise income taxes that is presented to all the candidates by Mr. Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform.

Mr. Norquist said he remained open to any of the three candidates who spoke to the council or to Mr. Romney. He argued that with the right promises, any of the four could redeem themselves in the eyes of the conservative movement despite their past records, just as some high school students take abstinence pledges even after having had sex.

“It’s called secondary virginity,” Mr. Norquist said. “It is a big movement in high school and also available for politicians.”

Of course, we all know how these virginity pledges usually work out.

Labels: 2008, Council for National Policy, Mike Huckabee, Paul Weyrich, Presidential election, social conservatives

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 9:56 AM 2 comments

  Mitt: Working Hard to Bug the Liberals

Rick Perlstein reports on Mitt Romney's attempts to woo conservative support - not just by trying to make friends, but by making enemies. Exhibit A: Mitt's announcement speech at a museum honoring the notorious anti-Semite and Nazi sympathizer Henry Ford. Perlstein notes that the controversy ended up helping Romney with many conservatives - thanks to the right's eagerness to lash back against media backlash:

Consider the sarcastic reflection of this denizen of the right-wing website Free Republic:

Allright, an AP hit piece! The MSM has more acute RINOdar than we. Real RINO's don't get rinky-dink MSM hit pieces such as this. This proves that the MSM believes Romney is a conservative, and therefore must be roughed up.

Translation: I used to suspect that Romney was only a "Republican in Name Only." But now I realize: He bugs the liberal media. By the tribal logic of right-wing identity politics, that is enough--Mitt Romney now can be called a conservative.

And Perlstein goes on to make a very interesting comparison between this move and Reagan's decision to launch his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., where only sixteen years previously the Klan had murdered three young civil rights workers:

Then, the symbolism was absolutely deliberate: Reagan pledged fealty to "states' rights," a concerted attempt to nudge the tribal identities of Southerners into the Republican column once and for all. But it didn't mean Reagan, or anyone in his audience, was for bringing back Klan terrorism any more than Romney has Michigan anti-Semites dusting off their copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Reagan's benefit from speaking at Philadelphia, Mississippi derived primarily from all that outrage that he spoke at Philadelphia, Mississippi. He stood up to the Yankees. He proved to Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, and the rest that he felt their pain: tribally, he was one of them--just as Romney has just demonstrated oneness with conservatives sick of being called "fascists" by liberals.

Whether Romney's intending to do this or not, it's fascinating. It still might not be enough to save his campaign, but it's yet another reminder that nobody's trying harder to get right-wing support than Multiple Choice Mitt.

Labels: 2008, Mitt Romney, Presidential election, Rick Perlstein, social conservatives

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 5:33 PM 0 comments

  One More Whack at Giuliani

From The Hill:

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who said Wednesday night he is making a bid for the White House, will not be America’s 44th president because he supports abortion rights and gay rights and has been married three times.

At least so says Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. [...]

While Giuliani’s moderate to liberal stances on social issues are beginning to be discussed more and more in conservative circles, Land said the mayor’s annulment, divorce and subsequent third marriage will seal the deal against hizzoner for social conservatives.

“It’s got to surface at some point,” Land said. “There are too many social conservatives talking about it, and it applies to [Newt] Gingrich, too.”

Land actually doesn't like any of the GOP frontrunners. Funny how that seems to be going around on the right.

Labels: 2008, Presidential election, Rudy Giuliani, social conservatives

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 7:22 PM 0 comments

  Jeb Hearts Mitt?

Via Mark Levin at NRO: Jeb Bush is putting his foot on the scale for Romney:

Jeb Bush, who hasn't publicly picked a favorite in the Republican presidential race, privately is talking up the candidacy of Mitt Romney and steering some of his closest advisers to the campaign.

[...]

Governor Bush said, 'Before you commit, I want you to meet Mitt Romney. He is the kind of guy you will like no matter what,'" said former Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings. "The governor was very candid about the fact that he really liked this guy."

Jennings, the woman Bush chose as his lieutenant governor, is one of several former Bush confidantes in the Romney camp. Others include his hand-picked, former state party chairman Al Cardenas, and Sally Bradshaw, Bush's former campaign manager and chief of staff.

Now on Romney's payroll, these former Bush stalwarts are working to help the candidate overcome his lack of name identification in Florida.

Jeb has uber-cred among conservatives these days (at least among those who don't believe that he murdered Terry Schiavo). I missed his talk during the conservative summit, but understood that he brought the house down.

I'm increasingly convinced that Romney's efforts to court social conservatives will pay off. I know everyone is skeptical - he's a Mormon and he once endorsed failed to totally oppose gay marriage. Well as far as I'm concerned, unless Giuliani somehow emerges unscathed from the mass release of the skeletons in his closet, Romney is the frontrunner-in-waiting.

Labels: 2008, Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, Presidential election, social conservatives

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 10:05 AM 3 comments

  It's Really Not About Us, Except When it Is

Dinesh D'Souza has really caused hell for American conservatives. With his silly little book, he has inadvertently pinned cultural conservatives into a trap of their own making; he is openly asking for an alliance that everyone knew made sense but nobody outside the left had been willing to point out: between U.S. social conservatives and Islamic conservatives. He has illustrated, in grand fashion - and quite explicitly - the not-so-secret yearning of so many on the right for an American version of sharia law. And despite his best efforts to square the circle and insist that, still, it's actually the left who are in cahoots with the terrorists (even while rejecting everything they stand for), D'Souza has left conservatives desperately looking for a way to squirm out of the frame he has so artfully built for them.

The latest conservative intellectual to make an attempt at escape is Stanley Kurtz, the inveterate culture warrior, who has just reviewed D'Souza's book at the National Review. Kurtz declares that his "moment of culture-war overload has finally arrived." Better late than never, I suppose.

Of course, this is not going to be the violent denunciation D'Souza's foolish screed deserves. Kurtz is far too polite. Or rather, he's not too terribly opposed to D'Souza's thesis. Sure, it's "seriously misconceived." But it's also "thoughtful, provocative... serious and interesting;" it's a "fruitful error," one which can serve to provoke useful debate. Kurtz is hardly bothered by the slander against liberals - indeed, he seems to agree with it ("D’Souza is undoubtedly correct to finger the global spread of our “liberated” post-Sixties culture as a factor in the terror war.") But as long as the frame is "liberal values vs. Islamicist values," conservatives are trapped in the uncomfortable position of admitting (if only implicitly) that conservative values can look discomfitingly close to the latter. He needs other "factors" to discuss.

So Kurtz turns the focus to Islam itself. The problem, he argues, is not (liberal) Western culture, it's the pathologies within Islam that lead Muslims to be so easily offended by the West:

Yet, while Islamists may seize upon Hollywood films and international productions of the Vagina Monologues as symbols of their underlying objections to modernity, the more important sources of conflict are the distinctively Muslim social practices that generate such complaints to begin with.

In other words, if immigrant British Muslims weren’t secluding their daughters in hopes of preserving family honor and protecting an already promised marriage to a cousin back in Pakistan, they’d be far less upset with Western movies in the first place. What’s driving the distress is less the movies that a daughter sees at college than the fact that British daughters go off to college at all, freely meet men there, and freely choose their husbands from among those men. Other British immigrant communities, with less restrictive family practices, may occasionally grouse about cultural depravity. Yet the complaints are less frequent, less deeply felt, and far less deadly. It’s the marriage practice, not the movie, that counts.

Here the culture warrior is on familiar ground. All he needs to do is find a set of criteria that allows him to transfer his critique of liberal pathologies to a critique of Islamic pathologies. Hell, he even gets to keep "marriage" as the central point of analysis.

Now, if the true pathology is with Islam itself, then this suggests that Muslims will be offended by the West anyway, whether the libs are running wild or not. Kurtz describes this as a "clash between modernity and Islamic social life" (hung up as it is on practices like preferential patrilateral parallel cousin marriage), and he argues that "Islam has a long history of producing violent and radical sects ... in times of crisis." What this analysis allows Kurtz to do is to set up an opposition between American conservatives and Islamists, for it is the conservatives who represent Kurtz's ideal version of Western "modernity," which is defined by its Judeo-Christian commitment to individualist values and free choice in marriage.

Now, we have plenty of reason to be skeptical of the social conservatives' claims to represent such values anyway. But see if you can spot the massive gray thing in the room here.

The pachyderm-like shape becomes clearer when you read the series of responses Kurtz's review triggered at the Corner. Mark Steyn says "it's not about us":

Dinesh’s argument that America’s worthless porno-sodomite-lapdance culture is the root cause of jihad has one very big hole in it: He speaks in praise of "traditional Islam" and notes that most of the world’s people also live in "traditional societies" who are as revolted by our pop culture as your average imam. But how then do you account for the very problematic relationship "traditional Islam" has with other "traditional societies"? In Nigeria, in Sudan, in southern Thailand, etc.

Andrew Stuttaford says "it's not even just the Muslims":

The fact of the matter is that there is something in human nature that is drawn to violent religious fanaticism of the worst kind (usually bundled up in a grotesque puritanism). It's not just the Wahhabis. No religion (or quasi-religion such as communism) is immune from it. Think, for example, of the Maccabees, or the completely-to-be-expected Spanish Inquisition, or, for that matter, the zealots of the early Bolshevik era, or even, dare I say it, the foam-flecked atheism of Richard Dawkins. The more interesting question is whether some religions are more prone to it than others...

Jonah Goldberg says it's not the Muslims' responsibility to tell us that the queers are out of control:

It shouldn't matter. If gay marriage is wrong, it's wrong. If feminism goes too far, it goes too far. Jim Crow was wrong because it was wrong, not because it gave the Soviet Union talking points at the UN. So even if Dinesh were right that our "pagan depravity" prompts Jihadis to behead Jews and Christians, kill homosexuals, enslave women, hijack planes, and blow up buildings full of civilians, the fault still lies entirely with the Jihadis.

Gee... all that talk about the furniture and still nobody's mentioned the elephant.

The elephant, of course, is foreign policy. It's the fact that bin Laden himself has made it very clear why Al-Qaeda attacked the US, and it had nothing to do with Hollywood or with whose cousins were marrying who. It's the fact that every competent observer has pointed out that bin Laden has certain specific regional strategic goals, that his primary targets are secular Mideastern regimes (including the one we helpfully destroyed for him), and that Al-Qaeda has attacked the US because and to the extent of our status as an obstacle to and/or useful foil in accomplishing those goals.

Kurtz himself has dismissed this observation, for instance in this piece written shortly after the 9/11 attacks. To Kurtz and his ilk (and he's got a lot of ilk), any consideration of actual foreign policy choices - even one that might not lead the conclusion that our choices have been wrong per se - is nothing more than a howlingly outrageous attempt to "blame America first." It looks that way, quite probably, because the Kurtzes and Steyns and Goldbergs are generally quite ignorant when it comes to geopolitics. They are movement types. Their bread and butter is commenting on the social pathologies of everyone who does not live they way they think people should live; when foreign policy realities fail to bend to their wishes, they fall back on the same schtick: the problem must be with the way Muslims live. Or, if you're D'Souza, it's American liberal pathologies to blame after all. Once again, foreign policy is subjected to the ideological preoccupations of the social right; once again, they are hammers, so the problems of the world must all be nails.

None of which resolves their essential dilemma: culturally speaking, conservatives do indeed have more in common with Islamicists than do liberals.

But it sure gives them a lot to talk about.

Labels: Dinesh D'Souza, Foreign Policy, Islam, social conservatives, Stanley Kurtz, War on Terror

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 5:46 PM 0 comments

  More on McCain and the Sociocons

From the AP: McCain Courting Religious Conservatives. More of what you've probably already heard about why the religious right doesn't like the Senator from Arizona. Repeat of the Dobson quote, which keeps coming up and must be doing a good amount of damage:

"I would not vote for John McCain under any circumstances," Dobson said last month on KCBI, a Dallas Christian radio station. "I pray that we won't get stuck with him."

And the latest formulation of the list of grievances:

[Conservative fundamentalists] are dubious about his opposition to a federal amendment to ban gay marriage. McCain opposes same-sex marriage, but says it should be regulated by the states.

_They still resent passages in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, which Christian broadcasters say limit what they can tell voters before elections.

_And they question the sincerity of his overtures. McCain condemned evangelist leaders Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as "agents of intolerance" during his 2000 run.

Hmm. Maybe the Senator should try flip-flopping more vigorously.

Oh, by the way, the article quotes our conservative-of-the-day Paul Weyrich on the second point:

McCain-Feingold "is a big stumbling block for all of us," Weyrich said.

What Weyrich is upset about, of course, is the limitation on his crowd's ability to run vicious, slandering, third-party attack ads during the final days of a campaign.

This, apparently, is one of the major political priorities of a group of people calling themselves "Christians."

Labels: 2008, fundamentalists, John McCain, Paul Weyrich, Presidential election, social conservatives

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 6:24 PM 0 comments

  Romney's Holy Sweet Spot

Yglesias thinks Mitt's got a pretty fine line to walk in simultaneously attempting to woo social conservatives and convince voters that his Mormonism is not an issue:

One assumes that to win, Romney is going to need to talk about his newfound commitment to abortion-banning and gay-hating and the most obvious way to do that would be within the context of talking about his deep Christian faith and so forth. But while that might work great for a Protestant or a Catholic, I don't think it goes over so well if your deep faith is something most Christians consider weird and, indeed, not really Christian.

Similarly, it's hard to do the standard JFK-style "my faith is not an issue" thing if you're simultaneously trying to convince politically mobilized Christian traditionalists that you're the candidate for them.

It's an interesting point, but as Yglesias himself notes, Romney's main competitors in the primary contest are John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, neither of whom has much natural appeal to sociocons at all. And Romney has been trying much harder than either of them.

Here's the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza discussing a recent Gallup poll:

Among the GOP sub-sample, 66 percent told USA Today/Gallup that they would support a Mormon candidate, while 30 percent said they would not (77 percent of independents and 72 percent of Democrats said they could back a Mormon).

Digging slightly deeper into the Gallup numbers, more skepticism becomes apparent. Of those 66 percent of Republicans who said they would cast a vote for a qualified Mormon, 54 percent said they would be "completely comfortable" with that decision while 12 percent expressed "some reservations" with that choice.

Combine those two questions and here's what you get: 54 percent of Republicans in the Gallup poll would vote for a qualified Mormon without a second thought; 42 percent would either not vote for a Mormon or would do so with some level of doubt.

But does anyone believe that religious conservatives would have any less doubt about a McCain or a Giuliani? And might it benefit Romney that he's out there talking constantly about "faith" at all - even if that faith is not mainstream?

Labels: 2008, Mitt Romney, Presidential election, social conservatives

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 12:58 PM 0 comments

  Kansas Throws Its Lot in with the Apes Again

Reality returned to Kansas today, after its most recent extended vacation from the Sunflower State, as the Board of Education repealed its anti-evolution curriculum guidelines. The state has thus rejoined the mainstream, rejecting so-called "intelligent design" in favor of, you know, actual science. If you're feeling a faintly dizzying sense of deja-vu, it's no wonder:

The state has had five sets of standards in eight years, with anti- and pro-evolution versions, each doomed by the seesawing fortunes of socially conservative Republicans and a coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans.

Full credit to the undaunted people who managed to put things right again:

"Those standards represent mainstream scientific consensus about both what science is and what evolution is," said Jack Krebs, a math and technology teacher who helped write the new guidelines. He is also president of Kansas Citizens for Science.

As Liberal Values points out, it's a nice victory, but "it's a shame they couldn’t have done so one day earlier. It would have been a great way to celebrate Darwin Day."

Red State Rabble followed the deliberations, and should be a good source to follow for news on the aftermath (it also has links to a couple of anti-Brownback blogs, for your GOP presidential primary tracking pleasure).

Is this a sign that the hardcore conservatives of Kansas have reached their high-water mark?

Labels: education, evolution, Kansas, Liberal Values blog, Red State Rabble, social conservatives

  ¶ Posted by Paul Curtis 7:30 PM 0 comments