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« For The Love Of The Game | Main | Palin's future »

What future for conservatives?

You know something weird is going on if I'm quoting/linking Mark Steyn (whose writing I just don't personally care for):

As for us losers, there's no point going down the right-wing version of Bush Derangement Syndrome. Any shrill vicious ad hominem invective would be much better directed at each other. The Republicans lost this election.

First, yes. The Republicans lost this election because they aren't unified and they've lost their way. I say that as somebody who has never been a registered Republican, but who knows he has a vested interest in how the Republicans respond to the 2008 elections. I just might be a Goldwater-style Republican, if the GOP would just give a damn about those kind of values. For all the lip service about small government, the GOP just hasn't delivered, and I've found that more offensive than the openly big government redistributionist rhetoric from Democrats over the years. I've found it so distasteful that I've gone for the protest vote in the past.

Christ, when you've got me voting LP over Republican, you're clearly not offering me a viable small government option. You're doing it wrong.

Second, Steyn is completely correct about there being no point in developing the right-wing version of Bush Derangement Syndrome. It was a putoff when you did it with Clinton, and he was slick enough to make you look stupid for it. Obama will, too. And it's just not helpful. Grow up and focus on the issues. (Wait, Steyn said that? It must be serious.)

Steyn, again:

I think we are near a point at which America joins the rest of the west as a center-left society — that's to say, a society whose assumptions about the role of government and the size of the state are far closer to Continental social democracies than to the Founding Fathers. In a grim media-cultural environment, the temptation for American conservatism is to be seduced into becoming one of those ever so mildly right-of-left-of-right-of-left-of-center parties they have in Europe. We should have the fight about conservatism's future vigorously and openly...

This fight is currently going on in several places, including The Next Right, a website whose very purpose is to have that fight and define the direction of American conservativism. Unsure about whether they're being serious? Check out this gauntlet thrown by Jon Henke:

The problem is not Republican politicians, although many Republicans politicians are a problem. The problem is not with the basic ideals of limited government and personal freedom, either. The problem is a movement that plays small-ball and cedes responsibility for infrastructure to business interests, leadership that rewards those who make friends rather than waves, an entrenched Party and Movement support system that mostly supports itself, an echo chamber that has rotted our intellect, a grassroots that is ill-equipped to shape the Republican Party, and a Republican Party that has replaced strategy with tactics, substance with marketing.

Now is exactly the time for Republican soul-searching... does the GOP want to stand for something other than raw opposition to the Democrats? This can't be decided in smoke-filled back rooms. It has to be done openly, or it will look like the rhetoric and gimmicks.

If you want in, get in. If you don't, you have no business saying the Republican Party is any better than the Democratic Party.