The Things You Can't Give Away

Two interesting bits today, both from self-professed intellectuals of the Conservative movement. One comes from diva and Palin hater Kathleen Parker and one from Tod Lindberg, a Hoover Institution fellow and foreign policy adviser to the McCain campaign. Both come to us courtesy of the WAPO, and both essentially have the same message; the GOP needs to ditch the Evil Religious Right and the social conservatives (or as Parker put it, 'the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy people') to have a hope of winning elections.

Lindberg's piece, entitled " The Center-Right Nation Exits Stage Left" says pretty much the same thing, but from a dry, more statistical point of view that suggests a major shift in the electorate to what he refers to a center Left position:

Thus Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, in Outlook last week: The United States "is indeed, as conservatives have been insisting in recent days, a center-right country." On election night, former Bush guru Karl Rove opined on Fox News, "Barack Obama understands this is a center-right country, and he smartly and wisely ran a campaign that emphasized it." And it's not just conservative pundits and operatives singing this song. Take Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, who wrote an Oct. 27 cover essay entitled "America the Conservative," which argued that Obama will have to "govern a center-right nation" that "is more instinctively conservative than it is liberal." {..}

In 2004, Republicans and Democrats each constituted 37 percent of the electorate. In the 2006 congressional election, Democrats outnumbered Republicans 38 percent to 36 and won big. This year, the Democrats made up a stunning 39 percent of the electorate, compared with just 32 percent for the Republicans. Add the painful fact that Obama outpolled McCain among independents, 52 percent to 48, and you have a picture of a Republican Party that has lost its connection to the center of the electorate.

Shortly after the GOP convention, McCain looked as if he could still come back. But it was the “maverick” McCain, running against party type, who was winning over independents at that point, not a conservative campaigning as a conservative (compassionate or otherwise).

Perhaps, as Rove says, Obama was running to the center. But can anybody make a serious case that people were mistaking him for a center-right politician?

Parker's self-consciously cutesy piece is one of the most bigoted pieces of anti-Christian rhetoric I've seen in print for quite some time. I'm certain she had a good cackle at what she thought were some particularly w-i-t-t-y bits as she spewed them out.

I mean 'armband religion'? Please.

...the GOP has surrendered its high ground to its lowest brows. In the process, the party has alienated its non-base constituents, including other people of faith (those who prefer a more private approach to worship), as well as secularists and conservative-leaning Democrats who otherwise might be tempted to cross the aisle.

Are they right? And even if they are, does it matter?

I've written before about the recent Pew Research post-election polling. The Left may dislike admitting it, but America is still an overwhelmingly center/right nation. According to the latest Pew survey only some 37% of Americans identify themselves as 'liberal'(a category that would probably include Joe Lieberman and a lot of other relatively sane people) with only 16% of those identifying themselves as 'very liberal'.On the other hand just under 60% of Americans identify themselves as 'conservative' or 'very conservative'.Even more interesting, these percentages remain consistent since the last time Pew took this survey, before the 2004 election.

More importantly..if the new, Left-leaning GOP decides to purge religious and social conservatives, do they really think they can out-Democrat the Democrats with a socially liberal agenda, identity politics and promises of gimmees and entitlements? This time, the margin was 52-47%. Can you imagine what it would be next time if religious and social conservatives get booted from the GOP?

Conservative principles work because that's how life works. And that's true for the married, white Christians Parker despises as well as for blacks and Latinos.The thing is, you have to deliver, mean what you say and say what you mean.And you have to pick issues that resonate across the board, and present yourself as a clear alternative. I mean, did anyone notice that Obama got away with presenting himself as the tax cut candidate, and that McCain was too inept and the media too partisan to out him on it? Or that anti-same sex marriage propositions passed in California and Florida this year, with huge support from black and Latino voters?

What happened in this election is quite simple, and Senator Jim DeMint put it fairly well: "People favor a traditional, conservative government...they just didn't trust the Republicans to deliver it."

This has happened before,and both times there was a guy named Bush sitting in the White House to run against. What a coincidence, hmmm?

Parker bitchily compares the Democrat's convention to the GOP's: "One party was brimming with energy, youth and diversity; the other felt like an annual Depends sales meeting."

I guess Parker didn't stick around to see what happened when Hurricane Sarah took the floor. Or consider that the cameras and reporting were run by her pals in the dinosaur media, who were, let us say, less than objective in how they presented things.

The fact that the Democrats were only able to win by five points when they had the uncritical media advocating for them, a charismatic candidate with a huge money advantage, a deeply flawed incumbent in the White House to run against, a worrisome economic climate and a lousy and ineffectual candidate in McCain that a large chunk of the party had to swallow like a dose of Metamucil says volumes. If McCain had picked somebody other than Sarah Palin, he'd have been lucky to crack 40%.

And having said that, there's also this - even if Parker and Lindberg are right, it doesn't matter. Because principles matter.

If the GOP is planning on ditching it's socially conservative small government principles to become the Democrat party lite, who needs them? Me, I'm a principles man, not a party man.

When you stand for nothing - or even worse, when you claim to stand for something and then prove that you don't, you forfeit any political mandate you might have had and deserve to be consigned to oblivion like the Whigs.

At the end of her piece, Parker writes, in a very different context that a new party may be necessary. She may be right at that.