Comments on: By Request: The Reformed Right-Wing Coalition

By: DMD

DMD — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 13:49:58 +0000

Zach, you’re more optimistic than I am about a fiscal conservative renaissance. The supply siders (”tax-cuts-for-tax-cuts-sake crowd”) really don’t care much about deficits, I’m afraid. But I hope you’re right that spending overreach by a Democrat will help them see the light.

By: Joshua Claybourn

Joshua Claybourn — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 03:30:12 +0000

Good post, Zach.

By: Zach Wendling

Zach Wendling — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 21:07:02 +0000

In reverse order, I think that the tax-cuts-for-tax-cuts-sake crowd, admittedly not fiscal conservatives, could largely be co-opted/distracted by a fight against a huge, wasteful spending program.
Nativism probably does constitute a separate constituency, but it can be viewed through three lenses. Foreign policy hawks can play up the border security issue; if Juan can make it over, so can Osama. Social conservative oppose mass immigration on a meta level; culture changes if it is infused with millions of people who have, well, a different culture. Fiscal conservatives worry, wrongly, about the economic impact of immigrants, usually through their drain on social services — though business interests and libertarians are notable exceptions. It may take a generation or two to allay all of these fears.
I’m really not sure how the coalition will react to immigration in the future.

By: philosopher

philosopher — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 20:17:56 +0000

Thanks Zach! (And thanks also for the links to the NYT and Reason articles, which I hadn’t yet seen.) I’m sympathetic to a lot of what you say here, but there seem to me a couple of important pieces missing:
(i) the hard-core nativist populists on immigration – these folks aren’t going anywhere, and they may well end up costing McCain the presidency. But it’s not clear that they can be integrated into the rest of the coalition, without utterly losing the Hispanic vote and, for that matter, a lot of the business support that the GOP has historically been able to count on.
(ii) the tax-cuts-for-tax-cuts-sake crowd – I don’t think that this counts as fiscal _conservatism_, but there’s an important single-issue constituency that only cares about getting taxes cut. It’s not clear how the actually fiscal conservative factions can get along with these guys, with taxes already so low and deficits already pretty high.

By: David Markham

David Markham — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:44:17 +0000

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By: Jerry Doodle

Jerry Doodle — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:07:18 +0000

“Hope” is not a plan for ending neoconservatism’s hold on the foreign policy establishment. Despite the dire economic consequences, the fact that potential war with Iran still looms on the horizon indicates that the neocons have not gone away, and likely have no intention of going away any time soon. Says neocon godfather Irving Kristol on the role of neoconservatives: “to convert the Republican party, and conservatism in general, against their wills.” Claes G. Ryn, in an interesting 2005 article in The American Conservative called “A Jacobin in Chief Exporting the French Revolution to the world” describes these ideologues as neo-Jacobins:
“After the implosion of the Soviet Union, the neo-Jacobin neoconservatives argued that America should use its status as the lone superpower to spread its principles. They demanded ‘moral clarity’ in U.S. foreign policy. Good stood against evil. After 9/11, Bush became their chief spokesman. He committed the United States to what he calls ‘the global democratic revolution.’ The war against Iraq, he said, was ‘the first step’ in that revolution. There has been not even a hint in the president