Reagan Republicans Know Meghan McCain Is Wrong About GaysI guess this is how policy differences are hashed out on the right these days? We're with Reagan, go suck it? Anyway, the blog post is a real departure for the right in terms of arguments on gay marriage:
Following a similarly, for the GOP, disastrous election in 1974, when there were plenty of senior Republicans counseling the need for a shift to the left in the post-Watergate era, Ronald Reagan urged the need to offer voters "bold colors, not pale pastels."Got it. So Republicans should just be different from Democrats, irrespective of the underlying facts of the matter? One should paint in bold colors simply because they're different? At least Reagan said it because he was offering something different at the time, not just more of the same. Who said that nonconformists are the ultimate conformists?
It continues:
By this he meant voters needed, even wanted to hear the Republicans offer a clear, bold vision for the future that was in sharp contrast on the key issues of the time to what the Democrats were promising America. Or, to put it as Phyllis Schlafly did in her 1964 book in support of Barry Goldwater, the American electorate needed to be given "A choice, not an echo."It is good that Mr. Roff wants Republicans to present an image of the future. So far, he has invoked Ronald Reagan, a man elected president nearly 30 years ago, twice. He has invoked Barry Goldwater, a man who was nominated for president 45 years ago, once. He has quoted a book written when the average Baby Boomer was 18. It doesn't sound like Roff is very interested in the future so much as reveling in the past. But he does explain why this approach will, inevitably, fail:
Unfortunately, and what she seems to miss, is that the GOP just tried that [moderation] in the 2008 election—with her father at the top of the ticket—and we all know how that worked out.Conservatives naturally want to use this argument rather than admit the truth: that John McCain ran exactly the sort of conservative campaign that the establishment loved. How do I know that? Because the House GOP has been running it ever since the election! Sure, McCain nominally supported taking action on global warming (cap-and-trade, hold the cap) but lest we forget, McCain spent the last few weeks of his campaign calling Barack Obama a socialist, which is...exactly what the GOP has been doing since then. On foreign policy, McCain criticized Obama for desiring diplomacy with Iran, out of fears that it would "legitimize them", which is...exactly what they're saying about Obama's recent trip on which he shook hands with Hugo Chavez. And let's not forget about pork and earmarks, which is...exactly what the right is blabbering about on any given moment with respect to the stimulus, among other things. True, John McCain had a somewhat heterodox history, but he flipped on everything from immigration to taxes to torture in order to get the GOP's nod, and despite rock-solid GOP support he still lost badly in the general election.
The piece continues:
The political issues on which Meghan McCain urges moderation are some of the very issues that the GOP used successfully to realign the electorate in the 1980s and 1990s and which played a major role in winning the White House for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004.Yes, again, let's talk about a bold plan for the future by...recounting past successes! Cause that helps! And it evidently doesn't compute for this writer that public opinion can, you know, change, and that issues can lose their power over time. It is regretful that this mindset is typical of conservatives, who think that the issue set that brought voters running to the GOP in 1980 will bring them back again in the future. This is not impossible--we might well have a Nietzschean recurrence of the 1970s at some indeterminate point in the future. But I never think it's a good idea to count on Nietzsche. He doesn't strike me as particularly trustworthy, and all that "insufficiency of good and evil for behavioral categorization" stuff isn't likely to play in today's GOP.
This might be my favorite nugget of the piece:
I think the real issue is for the party to return to its Reaganite, limited-government roots. And the close to 1 million, by some estimates, people who turned out for last Wednesday's national tax day tea parties seem to agree.Wait, so they were going out there because of gay people? Finally, an explanation for why these people were protesting. Though I suppose not issuing marriage licenses to gay people does qualify as smaller government.
They were quite clear they believe they are being taxed, spent, regulated, and borrowed to death by the federal government.I don't think they were clear, and in any event this comes on the heels of polling that shows unprecedented levels of satisfaction with taxation. These people are outliers, and hardly the basis for any sort of national movement. The GOP has, unsurprisingly, misread public opinion again.
And so my advice to Ms. McCain, and to those folks who think she might be right, is to focus on issues that unite us, like taxes and spending, not those that divide us, and then try to prove you know how to win an election or two before telling everyone else what their agendas should be.Yes, because God forbid that a conservative tackle an issue that doesn't have to do with taxes. I sure wish they would, because that would be fun to argue with for a refreshing change of pace. Instead, we get snark (has this guy ever won an election?) and a clarion call to dismiss anything that might "divide" conservatives, because the only divisions that should occur are mindless ones with Democrats. And what of the Reagan Democrats? What incentive have they to revisit the GOP? They've effectively been forgotten by Republicans, who have rewritten history in the past few years such that there were enough Goldwaterites to provide Reagan with a landslide victory. This is false, of course, but it negates the necessity of reaching out to anybody. You used to hear all the time about the elusive Reagan Democrats, but not so much anymore.
This is just pathetic. This article basically concedes the following points: 1) that conservatives are obsessed with their past victories, to the extent that they can't engage with current issues in American life, 2) that conservative opposition to Barack Obama is essentially opportunistic (use "bold colors" because there's a political space for it), 3) that there is no place for internal dissent in the GOP, and 4) that unless you get elected a couple of times, your opinion is meaningless (and even if you win a few elections it still seems to be meaningless--Steve Schmidt, he of the recent gay marriage supporters, won the 2006 California governor's election for Schwarzenegger. I should kick him for that one). Funny that the corollary doesn't hold: losing elections doesn't necessarily make you wrong. Because Reagan lost two. So did Barry Goldwater. And yet they are still quoted approvingly here--though not so much Goldwater, as he was too gay friendly. Come to think of it, that must be why he lost in 1964! Dammit, he could have gotten out in front of the gay marriage issue, and really laid it to the Democrats! There's a lesson here, Republicans!
One day, this country is going to have a real conservatism operative in it, instead of the pathetic mess it's got.
