Connecting Dissidents and the Base
The other day, I struggled to think of a single unifying characteristic for the various strains of dissident/reform conservatism and blamed the lack of such a characteristic for the fact that the conservative agenda nowadays amounts to little more than “we’re not liberals.” Beyond that, though, what unifies these strains of dissident conservatism is that the dissidents are almost all drawn from the conservative elite: they’re wonks, not foot soldiers. Moreover, it increasingly seems that what unifies the old conservative wonk class is that they’re almost all dissidents. The set of non-wonkish dissident conservatives is close to null, as is the set of wonkish conservatives who maintain close ties to the base.
One area where Freddie has taken a bit of heat is for going after so-called reform conservatives for being unwilling to try to fix the problems with conservatism. For a long while, I thought this heat was deserved and that Freddie was being quite unfair to people who were clearly trying to do exactly that. And while two Ordinary Gentlemen do not a trend make, I read enough liberal blogs to see that their opinions are shared by quite a few on the Left, so while liberals may not have the disdain for the reformers that they have for the hardcore movement types, the reformers are hardly respected by liberals.
Meanwhile, the hardcore movement conservatives truly cannot stand the reformers, who they view as RINOS at best and traitors at worst. This animosity is even understandable since, to the extent the reformers even try to interact with the base, it is more often than not to criticize it for extremism in rhetoric or style.
This question has perplexed me for months: how is it possible for a group of well-intentioned conservative wonks to be so reviled by the Left, despite sincerely opposing the worst of the Right’s extremism and attempting to make the Right serious about governing again, and the Right, despite sincerely opposing most all of the Left’s agenda? It’s not as if these people are just squishy centrists and moderates – they almost always have a pretty clear set of principles underlying their actions.
Reading Jamelle’ s post, though, the answer finally became clear: the conservative wonks simply aren’t doing their jobs. What they are doing is picking apart liberal proposals, picking apart conservative proposals, attacking the low-hanging fruit of conservative extremism, and occasionally making suggestions to liberals on ways of either improving liberal proposals or making those proposals more palatable to conservatives. What they are not doing, and largely are not even trying to do, is to drive the GOP agenda. They are, in effect, content to leave the GOP agenda as little more than “vote no on everything” and tear down whatever the liberals do.
October 15, 2009 103 Comments
