A more realistic view of modern conservatism...

A great article from the WSJ...
Cheer Up, Conservatives!
You're still winning.

BY JOHN MICKLETHWAIT AND ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE
Tuesday, June 21, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

The second-century physician Galen observed famously: "Triste est omne animal post coitum." So perhaps it was inevitable that such a lusty beast as American conservatism should fall prey to unhappiness sometime after its greatest electoral seduction. All the same, the droopy state of the American right these days is unnatural.

Last November, American conservatives were full of grand visions of a permanent revolution, with spending brought back under control, Social Security privatized, conservatives filling the federal bench, and a great depression visited on the lawsuit industry. Six months later, listening to conservatives is as uplifting as reading William Styron's "Darkness Visible." Larry Kudlow bemoans "the dreariest political spring." John Derbyshire worries about the "twilight of conservatism" as the Republicans go the way of Britain's Tories. For Pat Buchanan "the conservative movement has passed into history"--much as, some would say, Mr. Buchanan himself has done.

Conservatives whinge that George Bush has presided over a huge increase in federal spending. Social Security reform is stalled. A plan to deprive the Democrats of the power to filibuster Supreme Court nominees failed at the 11th hour, when seven Republican Senators defected. America is confronting protracted resistance in Iraq. And, needless to say, liberals remain firmly in charge of the commanding heights of American culture, from the Ivy League to the Hollywood studios.

All true. But it is time for conservatives to cheer up. Fixate on a snapshot of recent events and pessimism makes sense. Stand back and look at the grand sweep of things and the darkness soon lifts. There are two questions that really matter in assessing the current state of conservatism: What direction is America moving in? And how does the United States compare with the rest of the world? The answer to both questions should encourage the right.





The Republicans have by far the most powerful political machine in the country. Last November, the Democrats threw everything they had at George Bush, from the pent-up fury of a "stolen election" to the millions of George Soros. Liberals outspent and out-ranted conservatives, and pushed up Democratic turnout by 12%. But the Republicans increased their turnout by a fifth.
Crucially, George Bush won as a conservative: He did not "triangulate" or hide behind a fuzzy "Morning in America" message. Against the background of an unpopular war and an arguably dodgy economy, he positioned himself to the right, betting that conservative America was bigger than liberal America. And it was: The exit polls showed both Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry won 85% of their base, but self-described "conservatives" accounted for nearly a third of the electorate while liberals were only a fifth. Mr. Bush could afford to lose "moderates" to Mr. Kerry by nine points--and still end up with 51% of the vote, more than any Democrat has got since 1964.

It is true that, since those glory days, the Republican Party has lost some of its discipline. Once-loyal members of Congress have defied a threat of a presidential veto on both highway spending and stem-cell research. It is also true that the liberal wing of the party is enjoying an Indian Summer. Opinion polls suggest that John McCain and Rudy Giuliani are the two favorites for the Republican nomination in 2008.

But is this loss of steam really all that remarkable? All second-term presidents face restlessness in the ranks. And the noise is arguably a sign of strength. The Democrats would give a lot to have a big-tent party as capacious as the Republicans'. One of the reasons the GOP manages to contain Southern theocrats as well as Western libertarians is that it encourages arguments rather than suppressing them. Go to a meeting of young conservatives in Washington and the atmosphere crackles with ideas, much as it did in London in the heyday of the Thatcher revolution. The Democrats barely know what a debate is.

Moreover, it is not as if the Republican moderates really pose a long-term threat to the conservatives. The High Command of the party--Messrs. Bush, Cheney, Frist, Hastert and DeLay--are all from the right. Even Messrs. McCain and Giuliani are better described as mavericks rather than liberals. Mr. Giuliani is as resolute on terrorism as Churchill would have been; Mr. McCain mixes social conservatism with media-pleasing iconoclasm. Both these alleged RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) are further to the right than Ronald Reagan on plenty of issues.

Political success is not everything, of course. Reassure conservatives about the Republican Party, and you get an inevitable retort: that the Republicans are doing well, but conservatism, either of the fiscal or social sort, is not. Stand back a little, however, and this, too, looks over-pessimistic.

Consider, for instance, Mr. Bush's failure to control public spending. The White House points out that some of the splurge is thanks to Clinton-mandated programs. This can hardly apply to the prescription-drug benefit or the pork-stuffed farm bill. All the same, other bits of big-government conservatism have a decidedly ideological edge. Schools have been given more money, but only in return for tougher standards. Money has gone into social programs, but with a clear attempt to encourage self-discipline. The Bush administration is trying to practice "statecraft as soulcraft" (to borrow a phrase from George Will): to use government for conservative ends--to reinforce family values and individual self-discipline, and to give poorer Americans the skills they need to rise in a market economy.

The essential conservatism of Mr. Bush's approach is all the clearer if you compare it with the big-government liberalism of the 1960s--or with the big-government reality of European countries that American liberals are so keen to emulate. Mr. Bush is not using government to redistribute wealth (unless you own an oil company), to reward sloth or to coddle the poor. And government in America remains a shriveled thing by European standards. Some 40 years after the Great Society, America still has no national health service; it asks students to pay as much as $40,000 a year for a university education; it gives mothers only a few weeks of maternity leave.

What about values? Back in the 1960s, it was axiomatic amongst the elite that religion was doomed. In "The Secular City" (1965), Harvey Cox argued that Christianity had to come to terms with a secular culture. Now religion of the most basic sort is back with a vengeance. The president, his secretary of state, the House speaker and Senate majority leader are all evangelical Christians. Ted Haggard, the head of the 30-million strong National Association of Evangelicals, jokes that the only disagreement between himself and the leader of the Western world is automotive: Mr. Bush drives a Ford pickup, whereas he prefers a Chevy.

Rather than dying a slow death, evangelical Protestantism and hard-core Catholicism are bursting out all over the place. Who would have predicted, back in the 1960s, the success of "The Passion of the Christ," the "Left Behind" series or "The Purpose Driven Life"? To be sure, liberals still control universities, but, thanks to its rive droite of think tanks in Washington and many state capitals, the right has a firm control of the political-ideas business.

Indeed, the left has reached the same level of fury that the right reached in the 1960s--but with none of the intellectual inventiveness. On everything from Social Security to foreign policy to economic policy, it is reduced merely to opposing conservative ideas. This strategy may have punctured the Bush reforms on Social Security, but it has also bared a deeper weakness for the left. In the 1960s, the conservative movement coalesced around several simple propositions--lower taxes, more religion, an America-first foreign policy--that eventually revolutionized politics. The modern left is split on all these issues, between New Democrats and back-to-basics liberals.





The biggest advantage of all for conservatives is that they have a lock on the American dream. America is famously an idea more than a geographical expression, and that idea seems to be the province of the right. A recent Pew Research Center Survey, "Beyond Red Versus Blue," shows that the Republicans are more optimistic, convinced that the future will be better than the past and that they can determine their own futures. Democrats, on the other hand, have a European belief that "fate," or, in modern parlance, social circumstances, determines people's lot in life. (And judging by some recent series in newspapers on the subject, the party appears to have staunch allies in American newsrooms at least.)
If the American dream means anything, it means finding a plot of land where you can shape your destiny and raise your children. Those pragmatic dreamers look ever more Republican. Mr. Bush walloped Mr. Kerry among people who were married with children. He also carried 25 of the top 26 cities in terms of white fertility. Mr. Kerry carried the bottom 16. San Francisco, the citadel of liberalism, has the lowest proportion of people under 18 in the country (14.5%).

So cheer up conservatives. You have the country's most powerful political party on your side. You have control of the market for political ideas. You have the American dream. And, despite your bout of triste post coitum, you are still outbreeding your rivals. That counts for more than the odd setback in the Senate.