Despite some quibbles with his characterization of the modern Left, I hope Dan Riehl is very much on the right track in arguing that the old movement conservative establishment is no longer capable of holding the Right together, and that the future of the Right lies with the Tea Parties, and in particular with the more libertarian element of the Tea Parties.  [Read more →]

I respect E.D., but he’s completely off base here:

And yes, even though it may cause healthcare reform to die in its tracks, I still think that the right person won in Massachusetts.  I also think that there are ways the Democrats could scale back reform and get some conservatives on board with a much more modest, more market-friendly reform that still helps a lot of people who need help. [...]

In the end, I’m not too down over healthcare reform bottoming out.  I don’t think it’s over, for one thing.  And maybe something better, something more fiscally sound that still covers most Americans will emerge from all of this – perhaps even something with bipartisan support. Maybe a better, less cynical Republican party will begin to take root as well.  Maybe, just maybe, people will take another look at Wyden/Bennett….

There is almost nothing in recent political history to suggest that the Republican Party is anything but hostile to health care reform.  And if not hostile, then indifferent.  Republicans had nearly four years of uninterrupted dominance with which to tackle health care reform, and neither President Bush nor congressional Republicans proposed anything. What’s more, the bulk of Republican legislators are comically ignorant of health care policy, and those that aren’t are far more concerned with their political futures than they are with reforming the health care system (see: Olympia Snow, Chuck Grassley).

By suggesting that Democrats “scale back” reform, E.D. is effectively blaming Democrats for Republican intransigence, which is completely absurd.  Last year, Democrats offered Republicans the chance to make their mark on health care reform.  Yes, it would happen within a liberal framework, but Democrats were more than willing to compromise and scale down if it meant GOP support.  Republicans were repeatedly offered the opportunity to alter the bill to their liking; if Republicans wanted market-friendly reforms, they could have gotten them.  If Republicans wanted something modest and limited, Democrats probably would have delivered.  But they didn’t.  Despite that, Democrats produced and passed a bill that is moderate and bipartisan in everything but name.  The current bill is dramatically more conservative than Bill Clinton’s attempt to reform health care, and owes far more to Mitt Romney than it does to say, Harry Truman.

The simple fact  is that there isn’t a single shred of evidence to support the idea that congressional Republicans have any interest in passing health care reform, even conservative, incremental health care reform.  They are opposed to health care reform, they have always been opposed to health care reform, and if this bill fails, they will still be opposed to health care reform.  If this bill fails, there won’t be another and — if previous history is any indication — it will be fifteen years before another president attempts to tackle health care reform, and in the meantime, the system will move closer to complete failure.

I don’t think I can be emphatic enough about this: the idea that there are Republican votes for a conservative health care bill (it’s already pretty moderate) is a complete fiction.  The truth is that Republicans have made a conscious choice to categorically oppose each and every one of President Obama’s priorities, under the theory that obstruction is the surest way back to political success. Judging from their success so far, I think it’s fair to say that isn’t going to change anytime soon.  To pretend otherwise, as E.D. does, is to be willfully ignorant of political reality.

It is impossible to understand politics in the United States over the last 12 months without some in-depth discussion of the impact of the Tea Party movement.  Over the course of the last several days, I had the good fortune to engage in a dialogue with Stephen Gordon about a wide range of Tea Party-related topics, including what the Tea Party movements are about, where they’re going, what their influence has been and will be, and whether there is the possibility of a right-left alliance under the Tea Party umbrella.  There are, frankly, few people as qualified as Gordon to discuss these topics, as he’s been partying with tea since long before it was cool, having helped organize a successful state-level Tea Party in Alabama as early as 2003.  Gordon has also been heavily involved in libertarian politics for a number of years, including acting as Communications Director for Michael Badnarik’s 2004 campaign, and e-Campaign manager for Bob Barr’s 2008 campaign.  Recently, he’s appeared several times on the Rachel Maddow Show, and contributes to several well-regarded blogs, including the Liberty Papers, the Next Right, and Examiner.com.  He is now the Director of Media Relations for the political consulting firm Forward Focus Media.

MT: It’s quite clear that the Tea Party movement is primarily a grassroots-based movement without any clear leaders.  Moreover, although the Tea Party movement seems to be primarily focused on government spending, there have been numerous documented Tea Party-affiliated protests focusing on anything from the Democratic health care reform bills to illegal immigration.  Is there any kind of coordination of message that takes place within the movement, and if not, what would you say is the common theme that runs through all of the Tea Party organizations?

SG: This is a point I tried to make the other night on Rachel Maddow’s show.  If there had been enough time to elaborate, I would have stated because these are grassroots operations led in many places by people with no political experience, they are ripe for takeovers by established political organizations.  Obviously, organizations taking over elements of the movement have their own agendas. What I see most often is an attempt to guide the Tea Party movement to do what they initially opposed: re-electing politics-as-normal big-government Republicans.

 To me, healthcare is a very relevant topic for Tea Parties.  Immigration, abortion, foreign policy or even reform of marijuana laws, not so much.  I’ve been vocal about this in the past.  

Because of the nature of the movement, top-down coordination of the message can’t be planned by Karl Rove.  This also means that each Tea Party event or organization will have a slightly different flavor.  If I was in charge of the movement, my message would be one of fiscal responsibility. This encompasses deficit spending, corporate bailouts, stimulus packages, the current health care legislation, etc.  To a great degree, this is also the message of my Tea Party groups I’ve encountered. This, in my opinion, is a good thing.

MT: How do the Tea Parties overcome this problem of co-option, which seems to infect grassroots movements of all political stripes?  Is some sort of organized – and independent – top-down leadership eventually going to be necessary, or can the Tea Parties maintain their momentum without maintaining a narrow focus on fiscal issues?

SG: I’d offer any Tea Party organization the same general advice. First of all, stick to a single or narrow range of issues.  Every time a new, and especially an unrelated, issue is introduced the movement will lose supporters. Second, develop organic lists. Make sure you obtain e-mail addresses, phone numbers, etc. at every event and from as many website visits as possible. Third, don’t let them take you over but make them come to you. Alabama Tea Party activists just held a gubernatorial debate and straw poll and their favorite candidate was made apparent. Had that particular movement been co-opted, I’m sure the result would have been different. 

While the laws  vary by location, if any local movement becomes large or influential enough, state and federal laws are eventually going to force some legal organizational entity to be formed. This will require a bit more top-down approach in some regard, but hopefully the Tea Party groups will be very mindful of the grassroots activists who made their organizations possible in the first place.

MT:Changing gears slightly, many commentators certainly have questioned where the Tea Partiers’ anger was during the Bush Administration’s spending orgies, not to mention the bank bailouts.  This isn’t to say that all of the Tea Partiers can be accused of suddenly discovering their passions when the Democrats took over in Washington – obviously, libertarians like you and your old boss Bob Barr, not to mention Ron Paul’s legions, have been banging this drum for a long while.  But why has the rise of the Tea Parties seemingly coincided with the Democrats – and President Obama - obtaining overwhelming power in Washington? [Read more →]

Allahpundit jumps on the Obama-approval-ratings-are-dropping bandwagon and, like most conservatives who try to interpret the data, totally misses the point:

More than 60 percent of indies disapprove of his handling of health care and the economy. Meanwhile, the overall 44/51 split is the widest gap yet on ObamaCare and the first time it’s been statistically significant in the WaPo poll [....]

Sixty-three percent support the recently deceased Medicare buy-in. Then again, majorities also consistently say they support the public option even though most of them don’t understand it, so it’s anyone’s guess what that “support” means in practice. Remember: It’s amazing what a follow-up question about trade-offs can do to the numbers when polling on ObamaCare. Which probably explains why one wasn’t asked here.

Somehow this leads Allahpundit to imply that disapproval of Obama’s job performance among independents has led more people to lean Republican, closing the partisan gap.  That doesn’t seem very likely to me.  I think a huge portion of independents who disapprove of Obama’s performance are actually hoping for more progressive reforms and are disappointed with how conservative the healthcare bill has become.  These folks might stay home in November, but they won’t come out to vote Republican.

What we’re seeing here is more wishful thinking on the right, interpreting every sign of disappointment with Obama as an indication of the right’s success.  That is simply wrong-headed.  If 63% of independents support the Medicare buy-in and majorities support a public option, then I’d say it’s fairly unlikely that most indies will come out and vote for the GOP in 2010 or 2012.

Remember, people are naturally inclined to vote for the lesser of two evils, and the Republicans are moving more to the right, not more to the center where a good chunk of independents reside.  Even those indies who “lean right” might be scared away by the prospect of a Sarah Palin nomination.

A lot of the reaction to my conservapedia piece falls along the lines that you would expect – essentially that I’m painting with too broad a brush.  I probably was in that post.  Obviously a lot of conservatives are thoughtful, independent-thinking, and honest people.  It’s primarily, therefore, a reaction to the conservative leadership that leads me to write posts like that one.  To the movers and shakers on the quasi-populist right.

What I think we’re seeing and have been seeing now for some time is the heating up of an internal war within the GOP and the broader conservative movement, which includes the Tea Parties and other grassroots efforts that may or may not be directly affiliated with the Republican Party.  This was bound to happen after the McCain loss.  It gave the real right-wingers in the party (and outside of it) a chance to blame the moderates for the loss, and it gave the GOP insiders a chance to settle old scores.  I’m not at all sure that the factions here are really “moderates vs conservatives” so much as a certain brand of right-winger vs. another.

I’m not really entirely sure of Sean Scallion’s break down of the sides involved as Conservative Inc. vs. the establishment.  I think that they overlap far too much, and I think that it is a certain faction within the establishment that is also at the heart of the Tea Parties, warring against other factions within the establishment.  In other words, the grassroots base is not its own entity but rather part of a larger faction.

Nor is it simply social conservatives vs. fiscal conservatives, or neoconservatives vs. realists, or neoconservatives vs. social conservatives.  The factions at play here are not the old divisions, and the old rules don’t apply.  People like David Frum are pushed to the margins for entirely different reasons than people like Daniel Larison. [Read more →]

I thought this recent Angus Reid poll on the Tea Party movement in America was a brief but interesting read,

A third of adults in the United States appear satisfied with the proposal to establish a third political party, according to a poll by Angus Reid Public Opinion. 32 per cent of respondents think the National Tea Party would be a good thing for the country.

Honestly, and I’m not liberal concern trolling here, I couldn’t think of a better thing for American politics right now. A third of Americans (and this was an online poll, so caveat emptor) isn’t a majority, but it’s also nothing to sneeze at.

Contra the liberal blogger to whom Andrew linked the other day that has sparked a whole “leaving the left” discussion at the Dish, I’m of the opinion that strong voiced progressives and conservatives should not only continue to voice their opinions in a vociferous fashion, but even crank it up a notch or two. There was a time when I was a strong supporter of the “tack to the centre” school of thought on politics where you try, as much as possible, to moderate the party lines towards the most middle of the road and “practical” place you could. That was the best way to steal as many voters from the other party as possible, pick up those always elusive independent voters, and generate bipartisan agreement.

I have, frankly, abandoned that view of politics. My shift is due in no small part to the fact that I think such maneuvering winds up doing far more harm than it does good. It creates much of the intra-party drama that fuels so many of our, to quote Charles Johnson, “nontroversies” and it stifles sincere and vehement debate that is the cornerstone of a vital and successful democracy. That Americans continue to labour under a two party system only really exacerbates and reinforces the worst of those tendencies. A National Tea Party would be more than just a breath of fresh, if not somewhat frenetic, air, but I think would go a long way in helping to break that archaic and dysfunctional dualistic mold. And unlike in Canada, I think you’d actually have some decent, helpful, and better defined debate that would fall out as a result.

So any movement towards creating a National Tea Party is a move I would support. My ultimate hope would be to see the Democratic Party split into versions of its neo-liberal/centrist/blue dog and progressive/Kennedyesque/Dean constituencies, along with a possible reclamation of the Republican Party by the more economic/political conservative class and see what happens. I actually think there would be a lot of grounding to each segment given that they woulnd’t feel any compulsion to rail against the other end of their current teams. That grounding would, I might suggest, tamp down on some of the crazy and could really flesh out some of the different perspectives in interesting ways and allow for a much greater degree of flexibility and mobility in American politics in general.

Thoughts?

This interview with Andy Schlafly [below] of conservapedia.com is hard to watch.  It’s almost embarrassing.  I think Colbert is at his best for most of the exchange, and the zinger about creating his own reality is marvelous.  Schlafly really is the ultimate self-parodic conservative, and I’m not just saying that because he has one of the most annoying laughs in the history of television.  He says, and I shit you not, that most of Jesus’ parables were lessons in free market economics. I really am spoiled reading the conservative writers that I do read at the Scene and the Porch and Pomocon and the other little pockets of intellectual conservatism remaining.

But really.  Good grief.  I’ve heard of conservapedia but I never realized how utterly inane the project really was.  Of all the silly things on the internet, this one is beginning to take shape as a future hall-of-famer. That’s the magnificent thing about the internet – there’s always room for one more elegant disaster.

Let’s see – here’s the opening paragraph in the entry on evolution: [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.

Andrew Sullivan on his intellectual consistency:

I was appalled by the anti-Semitism buried within ANSWER – the left-wing equivalent of the Tea Party peeps – their paranoia and their ad Hitlerum daffiness. I railed against “the intolerant, extremist and reactionary forces behind an unhealthy amount of the anti-war movement.” I argued that they were not offering any serious proposals to address the actual problem – Saddam’s WMDs. In many ways, my critique of the far left then is identical to my critique of the far right today. And the critiques both come from a small-c conservative perspective.

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So let’s see – in Virginia a life-long social conservative, Bob McDonnell, ran as a pragmatist and beat the tar out of  Democrat Creigh Deeds.  Exit polls show a majority of Virginians still support President Obama.  In New Jersey, voters were fed up with incumbent Jon Corzine, despite Obama’s best efforts to prop up the incumbent Democrat.  Republican Chris Christie won that race, even though exit polls in that state showed overwhelming approval rates for the President.

And in the much-ballyhooed NY-23 special election, Conservative Party candidate, and self-proclaimed Glenn Beck acolyte, Doug Hoffman was given the smackdown by Democrat Bill Owens.

Now, I would draw from this Democratic victory in a traditionally Republican area – the first Democrat to represent New York’s North Country in over a century – a few observations.

First, what works for conservatives in Texas or Georgia might not work for conservatives in California or New York.  One of the lovely things about conservative philosophy is its emphasis on local politics.  Dede Scozzafada may not have been red enough meat for the likes of Sean Hannity or Michelle Malkin, but she might have been just the right shade for northern New Yorkers.  Doug Hoffman, on the other hand, might have fit in better somewhere else.  Really, it was a northern New York affair.  The national Republican meddling distorted the issues on the ground.  Left alone, Scozzafada may very well have beat Owens, giving the GOP a much-needed seat in the House – even if she wasn’t of purest stock.  Remember, in Virginia, the Republican candidate campaigned on fiscal and economic issues – as a pragmatic leader, not as a red meat social conservative.  And he won.

Second, even a liberal Republican is much more likely to vote with Republicans on issues than a moderate Democrat.  Party loyalty cannot be underestimated here.

So what does the conservative movement take from this loss amidst all this victory? [Read more →]

I sat down with Eric Brescia, Republican candidate for delegate in Virginia’s 47th district, to discuss his thoughts on a few local issues as well as the future of the party. Eric is running in Arlington, a notoriously liberal county just across the river from D.C., so his candidacy thus far has been pretty unorthodox. He’s been endorsed by The Washington Post, has come out in favor of gay marriage (he wrote an op-ed on the subject for The Washington Blade), and his campaign features some distinctly libertarian overtones.

I don’t agree with everything Eric has to say on the podcast, but he’s a smart, engaging guy with a real interest in public service, and his campaign is a useful template for other Republican candidates in liberal districts (Liz Mair has more on Arlington’s political environment and a few local races here).

On another level, while I’ve enjoyed reading the League’s back-and-forth on conservative dissidents, I think our discussions are sometimes a bit too detached from the everyday reality of partisan politics. The real work of debate, discussion and political innovation often takes place at the local level before percolating upwards, and I think Eric’s campaign is an interesting case study for intra-party reform.

Of course, if you happen to live in Arlington’s 47th district, I encourage you to cast a ballot for Eric next Tuesday. If you’re so inclined, I know he could also use some financial support.

Full audio after the jump:

[In the interest of full disclosure, I should add that a friend of mine is involved with Eric's campaign, which is how I heard about it in the first place. Due to scheduling constraints, my ability to follow-up on questions was also pretty limited. Oh yeah, the audio sucks. Sorry - we're working on a better podcast set-up.]

[Read more →]

Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate.

Confront them with annihilation, and they will then survive; plunge them into a deadly situation, and they will then live. When people fall into danger, they are then able to strive for victory.

Sun Tzu – The Art of War

I’m still trying to decide if Conor is willfully misreading me or if this is simply a rhetorical tit-for-tat.  Conor pounces on the title of my “strategy” for taking responsibility for the conservative movement – which I flippantly called the Trojan Horse Strategy.  If you recall, the Trojan Horse is a story from Homer.  In it the Greeks (think dissident conservatives) built a big wooden horse and filled it with some Greek fighters and then left it on the doorstep of the city of Troy.  They then pretended to sail away.  The Trojans (think: conservative movement) unwittingly brought the horse inside thinking it was a parting gift and were roundly beaten by the Greeks who sneaked out, unlocked the gates, and let their hiding army inside.s

Okay – so it’s a terrible analogy for what I’m trying to do.  I’m not trying to “defeat” the conservative movement, after all.  Just change it for the better.  My point is simply this: quit hurling spears at the walls of the conservative movement in vain.  Don’t you see, the only way to make a real, lasting difference is to get inside?  And to do that you use this big wooden horse and then….yeah.  Terrible analogy.

But that was my point, bad analogy or no.  I fleshed it out with some nice bullet points like 1) don’t alienate the base; 2) don’t alienate the independents; 3) try to reconcile social, fiscal, and defense conservatives; 4) try to nudge these groups in a more practical, productive, and ultimately good-for-the-country direction – etc.  (Nudge is key here.  I think it is more effective than denouncing people as racists or calling their radio show hosts out as bigots or as “rude” or whatever…see the above Sun Tzu quote….)

Anyways.  Here’s Conor’s take: [Read more →]