I know that more than a couple bloggers have chimed in on David Brooks’ recent column in the New York Times wherein he divides conservatives up as either “traditionalists” or “reformers” then tries to figure out what it all means.
Brooks being Brooks, he more or less muddles through things until he reaches the general conclusion that traditionalists aren’t cool and that they’re in charge of everything Republican, which is why Republicans lost the last election.
I’m not going to delve into Brooks’ thinking nor his conclusions. Ace, Stacy McCain, and John Hawkins all converged on Brooks from entirely different directions like three particularly nasty linemen meeting at the quarterback. I recommend each of their posts. I’m especially taken with the “Jalalabad Airdrop” idea of McCain’s. It’s a testament to how weak Brooks’ argument really is that each of them can effectively pummel Brooks from completely different directions.
My objection isn’t so much with where Brooks finished in his column, but where he began. Some of his assumptions are so wrong that there’s no way he could have come up with a good conclusion except by complete accident. My programmer friends have an old dictum: Garbage in; garbage out. They call it GIGO for short. That’s what this column was.
Let’s start at the beginning, where he makes his first big mistake.
It’s only been a week since the defeat, but the battle lines have already been drawn in the fight over the future of conservatism.
In one camp, there are the Traditionalists, the people who believe that conservatives have lost elections because they have strayed from the true creed. George W. Bush was a big-government type who betrayed conservatism. John McCain was a Republican moderate, and his defeat discredits the moderate wing.
To regain power, the Traditionalists argue, the G.O.P. should return to its core ideas: Cut government, cut taxes, restrict immigration. Rally behind Sarah Palin.
Well, no. That’s not exactly what they argue. You’d have to hunt around a long time to find more than a handful of traditional conservatives who really want to restrict immigration. If Brooks had said illegal immigration, he would have been right, but he tried to slick one past us. Beyond Mark Krikorian, there aren’t more than a couple serious conservatives who are trying to restrict legal immigration. Traditional conservatives oppose amnesty vigorously, but that’s not the same thing.
Secondarily, the suggestion that we traditionalists have made Sarah Palin a core idea is just silly considering that it’s only been possible to rally ’round her for three months or so. In fact, the entire notion that traditional conservatives would rally around any one person ignores the entire history of modern conservatism. But this is not really a secondary consideration for Brooks. I suspect that most of his problems with traditionalists revolve around Sarah Palin whose main failing seems to be that she’s not sufficiently upscale enough for his liking. Of course, traditionalists have defended Palin like any decent human being would defend someone from the scurrilous attacks launched against her not only by the left but also by folks like Brooks. We shouldn’t accuse defending a woman from vicious rumors and effete snobbery with rallying around her as a core political idea. Brooks does and he’s wrong.
This is only the first of at least three major “garbage in” moments that Brooks has. Here’s a hint of another.
The Reformist view is articulated most fully by books, such as “Comeback” by David Frum and “Grand New Party” by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, as well as the various writings of people like Ramesh Ponnuru, Yuval Levin, Jim Manzi, Rod Dreher, Peggy Noonan and, at the moderate edge, me.
Remember these names. They’ll be important in a couple or three paragraphs.
The debate between the camps is heating up. Only one thing is for sure: In the near term, the Traditionalists are going to win the fight for supremacy in the G.O.P.
They are going to win, first, because Congressional Republicans are predominantly Traditionalists. Republicans from the coasts and the upper Midwest are largely gone. Among the remaining members, the popular view is that Republicans have been losing because they haven’t been conservative enough.
Really? If Republicans are “largely gone” in those areas, then how in the world do they keep winning elections? California has a Republican governor. So do the “upper Midwest” states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Nebraska. There are Republican governors in Vermont, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. The entire Southeastern coast is Republican. Ditto the Gulf Coast. Ditto the state with the longest contiguous coastline in the United States, Alaska. Hawaii has a Republican governor, too.
Most of these Governors are Traditionalist or leaning heavily in that direction. A couple, like Governor Schwarzenegger, are not, but he won his office by running on traditional conservative issues. It’s only been since he’s taken office that he’s tacked left.
It’s certainly wrong to say that Republicans in those areas are “largely gone”. Somebody’s voting for conservative Governors and it sure as heck isn’t left-leaning Democrats.
Second, Traditionalists have the institutions. Over the past 40 years, the Conservative Old Guard has built up a movement of activist groups, donor networks, think tanks and publicity arms. The reformists, on the other hand, have no institutions.
There is not yet an effective Republican Leadership Council to nurture modernizing conservative ideas. There is no moderate Club for Growth, supporting centrist Republicans. The Public Interest, which used to publish an array of public policy ideas, has closed. Reformist Republican donors don’t seem to exist. Any publication or think tank that headed in an explicitly reformist direction would be pummeled by its financial backers.
Remember those names I told you to remember? Go back and take a look at them.
What do David Frum, Ross Douthat, Ramesh Ponnuru, Yuval Levin, and Jim Manzi all have in common? They all write frequently for National Review. All of them save Douthat are frequent contributors to the online mixing bowl of conservative thought called The Corner. Douthat writes for National Review magazine. Rod Dreher used to write for NR and The Corner until he left. I believe it’s more than fair to say that National Review has, at the very least, an incredibly healthy Reformist representation, yet it’s not being “pummeled”.
Indeed, NR has invited Brooks himself to moderate a panel discussion called The Future of Conservatism next week. The discussion is the main event of an all-day program put on by the National Review Institute. The panel also included Douthat and Ponnuru. I’d say that counts as moving, to some degree, “in an explicitly reformist direction”, especially considering that of the remaining panelists, only Jonah Goldberg meets his definition of Traditionalist. Still…no financial pummeling. Oh, sure, some of us have wondered what in the hell NR is thinking, but I, for one, have not cancelled my subscription and The Corner remains on my RSS reader.
Consider also that William Kristol, whose support for Reformist John McCain goes back to at least the 2000 election, is the editor of The Weekly Standard and I don’t recall his reformist ways earning his magazine a financial beat down either. Oh, guess who else used to work for The Weekly Standard? I won’t give you the answer, but his name rhymes with Mavid Mrooks.
Brooks’ problem, insofar as I can see, is that he has an idea in his head of what the future will be – a future where he finally wins over those mean ol’ conservatives and their moose-killing vixen of a figurehead – and he stretches the facts to cover that idea. The truth of the matter is that the conservative movement looks nothing like Brooks’ description. His opening assumptions were garbage, so it’s no surprise that his conclusions are garbage, too.
Tags: Conservatism, Conservatives, David Frum, Effete Snobbery, Immigration, Jim Manzi, John Hawkins, John McCain, Jonah Goldberg, New York Times, Peggy Noonan, Ross Douthat, Sarah Palin, Stacy McCain, Taxes
