Alex Knapp takes a look at the GOP’s newly proposed set of principles by which all GOP candidates would have to abide to receive GOP funding and shows how they are not only incoherent but would also define many unquestioned conservatives out of the party entirely. [Read more →]

Round 2 of the debate on the future of the American Right between John Hawkins of Right Wing News and Conor Friedersdorf is up.  It is again quite civilized even as both participants remain unapologetic and honest about their positions. 

Hawkins opens with a couple of haymakers, but also throws some straw men into the debate when he treats “moderates” as indistinguishable from “reformers.”  He notes, correctly, that few of the Bush Administration’s worst abuses were “conservative” in any meaningful sense, but also makes the unsupportable statement that these policies were ”a case where conservative politicians were convinced by people of Conor’s ideological temperament to abandon conservative governance, and it led to disaster.”   The reality of course is that the advocates of many of these policies came from both the movement and what is now the reformist camp.   They were in large part the result of political strategists (who, again, fall into both camps) filling the policy void left in a party without any kind of unifying positive agenda, as I’ve argued before.  Indeed, many of the reformist criticisms of the Bush Administration are precisely the same as the criticisms by the movement – specifically, that the Bush Administration pursued an un-conservative agenda. 

After missing this right hook, Hawkins then lands a doozy in discussing why movement conservatives don’t trust the reformers, noting that the reformers often seem more interested in throwing personal jabs at the Right, disowning conservatism, and supporting the Left than in actually working with the Right.  This is followed with a right-left combination, as Hawkins asks “Why do the people who get accused of being racists, xenophobes, and too dumb to understand politics always have to be the ones who forgive while the same blockheads who never learn from their mistakes insist on getting their way again?”  The first punch in the combination on racism and xenophobia hits home hard – it’s tough to earn someone’s trust if you’re making claims like that about them.  The second punch – “learn from their mistakes…” – misses because it again ignores that the mistakes of recent years came from strategists from both camps running the show rather than wonks or the base itself.

Notably, Hawkins sprinkles in a few successful blocks by conceding that the base exhibited too much partisan loyalty to Bush throughout the first term and that there needs to be more open discussion of ideas in the conservative media (though he tries to throw a gratuitous cheap shot that the Left is less willing to openly discuss ideas than the Right – obviously Hawkins doesn’t read many liberal blogs). 

Conor, however, comes back swinging, wearing Hawkins down with some strong blocks and dodges.  He opens his part of the round by narrowing the issues beautifully, conceding a number of Hawkins’ best points from Hawkins’ first post.  Then he goes on the attack with a magnificent roundhouse, writing “As a conservative, I presume you believe, as the Founders did, that political power tends to corrupt. Indeed, long experience teaches that all political and ideological movements sooner or later tend to become corrupted, intellectually lazy, blind to internal weaknesses, captive to orthodoxies of thought, and forgetful of their ostensible ends.

How can the right mitigate these ills so that when Republicans return to power, they’ll govern effectively? You’d think answering that question would be an urgent priority, especially for movement conservatives who regard today’s Republican Party as out of touch at best, and corrupt at worst, even as they pine for its return to power. But I can’t recall ever seeing the matter addressed, except by folks who are dismissively derided as “conservative dissidents.” This analysis applies whether the Republican Party moves to the right or to the center, whether or not it more successfully wins minority voters, etc.”

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.  This is in many ways exactly the point that I’ve been trying to make for weeks now.  This little flurry brings the crowd to its feet, shouting “Conor! Conor! Conor!”

And Conor isn’t even done.  He follows this punishing sequence with some very hard truths about the policy issues facing this country: welfare isn’t the problem, middle class entitlements are; the looming pension crisis; defense cuts; and the fiscal limits on our foreign policy. 

This sequence puts Hawkins on the ropes, and Conor looks poised for the knockout.  But just before the bell rings, Conor runs out of steam and throws a few weak punches denigrating the quality of the conservative media as compared to the quality of the explicitly liberal media.  This series of punches misses because it’s not clearly tied with the theme of the rest of Conor’s argument and Conor lacked the time at the end of the post to set this line of argument up properly.  The truncated resulting argument thus comes off as unconvincing and quite likely as a gratuitous shot at conservatives that Hawkins will no doubt use heavily to his advantage in the final round. 

Still, the first 3/4 of Conor’s round were near-flawless and landed some clear haymakers, where Hawkins’ round was inconsistent despite landing some solid blows.  Friedersdorf wins the second round of a tough fight.  After two rounds, I have it scored 19-all.  However, had Conor left out the last paragraph, Hawkins may well have suffered a knock-down that would have left the round 10-8.

While I don’t think Corzine’s been as bad for New Jersey as most people seem to think (the Dems in the Assembly and Senate being a much different story), there was never any chance I was going to vote for him this year on divided government grounds.  Since I’ve become something of a proud proponent of divided government, this would seemingly make Chris Christie (who’s not only a firstie-firstie, but a firstie-firstie girlie-girlie) the only realistic option.  But then a third party candidate, Chris Daggett started making a sizable dent in the polls.  Meanwhile, I could never figure out what Christie was actually for beyond some platitudes about lower taxes, eliminating “wasteful” spending, and ponies for everyone.  Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that even with divided government, Christie will still be a mess as a governor, for pretty much the same reasons that Bush was a mess as a President even with divided government.  This pretty well explains why:

Lonegan didn’t disappoint. The crowd in the VFW hall, fueled by hot dogs and beer, went wild as the former Bogota mayor launched into his typical Tea Party  tirade against big government. Next up was Kim Guadagno, the No. 2 on the ticket. Guadagno, who grew up in Iowa, started by praising the country music played by the excellent band on the stage behind her. Then she spotted me in the audience. “Hello, Paul,” Guadagno said. “I’m going to tell you a little  bit about the plan we have here in New Jersey. We have a plan.”

A property-tax plan? I’d been pestering her and Christie to come up with one since summer. Better late than never, I thought. But it was not to be. She changed the subject and before long the band was playing country music again.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: until Republicans figure out what they’re for, they’re going to continue having serious problems with good governance.

Compare that to Mr. Daggett (especially here).  While I’ve got my share of disagreements with the guy, I’ve got little difficulty figuring out what he’s for, and every reason in the world to think he’d be an effective governor even with a potentially hostile legislature.

UPDATE: Extra credit for the first commenter to figure out the cinematic origin of the term “firstie-firstie girlie-girlie.”

Over at True/Slant, E.D. makes a valuable and important comparison between Jeff Flake and Michelle Bachmann and the future of the GOP.  I’m not looking to re-open the whole “reformer” vs. “base” vs. establishment brouhaha, but Flake is in many ways the shining example of why the GOP’s problems aren’t the craziness and partisanship of the base but the nihilism of the establishment.  [Read more →]