Weekend Politics
Posted by David Darlington on 7 February 2009 | 3 responses
A few good links on conservatism that got my mind working this week:
- Sam Tanenhaus’s “Conservatism is Dead” in The New Republic is the read of the week. Tanenhaus surveys the intellectual history of the movement and argues that conservatism has calcified into a rigid ideology (”tax cuts! tax cuts! tax cuts!”) and a constant state of cultural outrage, when it should be more of a “conservatism of doubt,” typified by Whittaker Chambers and Russell Kirk, that serves as a corrective to liberal over-reach. I wonder how a more flexible conservatism is going to be compelling enough to win elections. Responses from John O’Sullivan, Russell Fox, Yuval Levin, Damon Linker, Conor Friedersdorf, David Frum, and Mr. Flexible Conservatism himself, Andrew Sullivan.
- Speaking of Yuval Levin, he has a good essay in Commentary on the meaning of Sarah Palin and the class divisions her candidacy revealed. He’s definitely more positive about Palin than I am. I’ve been meaning to write about this since the campaign ended. I think there are some real class divisions in the GOP between the “populists” and the conservatives/libertarians, and I tend to think that the cultural right-wing populism of Sarah Palin (and similarly, Joe the “Plumber”) is a dead end if the GOP expects it to lead them back to the majority. But I could be wrong.
- On the other side of the coin, we have David Frum’s new New Majority venture. Launched on inauguration day, New Majority seems aimed at creating a conservatism that can win back college educated suburbanites–the kind of people turned off by Palinite cultural populism. Right now, I’m really appreciating Geoffrey Kabaservice’s series on the GOP’s 20th-century moderate figures: Thomas Curtis, Tom Dewey, Ogen R. Reid, and Henry Stimson.
- Here, Patrick Deneen wonders if George W. Bush so discredited the label “conservative” (unfairly, considering he wasn’t all that conservative) that another name is needed. Doesn’t he know ITA has covered that already?
3 Responses to “Weekend Politics”
“college educated suburbanites–the kind of people turned off by Palinite cultural populism”
I disagree that this demographic was turned off by Palin, or that she’s a dead end for the GOP. Indeed, Levin’s article argues that she really isn’t a cultural populist anyway, except that she’s not an Ivy League grad or imitator thereof – if that’s what you meant.
Levin’s article makes the good point that 66 days on the campaign trail is not enough to get to know the real Sarah Palin. Maybe she really is the sort of pragmatic executive he thinks she is. If so, I’d be willing to give her a second look.
Nevertheless, I side with Frum about populism in the GOP. It’s not that Palin doesn’t have an Ivy education — few people care about that outside of the Washington chattering classes. I do believe however college-educated suburbanites are turned off by the kind of populist rhetoric Palin and JtP used on the campaign trail in 2008, like especially “Real America” vs. “Fake America.”* Suburbanites vote on quality of life issues–taxes, crime, education, retirement, and so on–not on populist appeals. It plays well with the base and in the rural hinterlands, but the massive gains the Dems made in suburbia between 2004-08 I think shows the drawbacks of such an approach. This is, for better or worse, a suburban and multicultural nation.
*speaking as a lifelong conservative who has, apparently, never lived in “real America.” At least I have Miss Virginia on my side.
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