Two Kinds of Conservatives

Okay, now that Barack Obama is the President Elect and is busy doing things out of sight of cameras, the Republicans are having a crisis of identity now that they have been toppled from power. Since John McCain more or less opted out on Tuesday night on the Jay Leno Show, by saying he was going back to the Senate and it was up to a younger generation to worry about the next election. So there are two questions for the party:: Who are we, and who shall be the new leader?

Bill Kristol and David Brooks both work for the New York Times as the paper’s representative conservatives and both commented this week about the post-election situation. Kristol sees no need for any kind of ideological realignment, where Brooks does.

As far as Kristol is concerned, Obama’s victory is not a landslide and there is a good chance the G.O.P. could make a comeback in two years, like the Party did in 1994. He sees the vote for Obama as really a vote against Bush, a gesture toward his failed administration. That doesn’t quite explain a poll this week that indicated a belief that President Obama would see to it we are better off 4 years from now. 78% said they felt that way. That sounds unquestionably pro-Obama. Despite the dawning of a newly generated Liberal Era, Kristol thinks we remain a center-right country. President Obama would have to stumble in a major way for 1994 to be repeated. I don’t think it’ll happen.

David Brooks sees things differently. I dare say more realistically. In his estimation Obama has the Gravitas, discipline, and requisite skills to stay in office 8 years. Neither does he buy the notion of an anti-Bush vote. Rather he thinks it was inevitably a Democratic year with Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Paulson on everyone’s shit list, which signaled it was time to try the other Party. As for McCain, he lost because he was too moderate for the base, too old, too erratic, and too out of touch with most Americans and the Digital Age. In fact, moderates were one casualty of this election; they have all but disappeared, especially from the Northeast. Brooks once called himself a “progressive conservative,” which is like having the best of both worlds. He argues there are two varieties of Republicans: The Traditionalists and the Reformers. The Traditionalists were led by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, the dynamic duo of Mediadom, who believe the R-Party should stick to core principles, that is, cut government, cut taxes, restrict immigration, pro-guns, anti-choice, anti-intellectual, anti-Liberal; and they should rally around Sarah Palin and push the idea that we are still a Christian nation. They are, to say the least, hard-core, and there is no compromise with the evil Liberals, who, according to the likes of Ann Coulter, make their bed with snakes and cockroaches. There is a legion of these types on talk radio that keep something on the order of 20 million zealous listeners agitated and in line. They take a dim view of people who don’t think like they do. They are, for example, very glad the moderates have been purged from the Party.

Posed against these angry traditionalists are the pale-faced Reformers. (There are no African Americans in evidence in either group.) They are a camp largely made up of center-right intellectuals who lack the institutional support the Traditionalists enjoy (Think Tanks, Talk Radio, FOX NEWS, lobbyists, publicists, the Religious Right, the base.) Brooks counts himself with the Reformers. The Reformers think the Far Right’s priorities are out of touch with the vast majority of Americans, especially those who live in the larger cities on the West and East coasts, all the way down to Virginia, North Carolina, and even Florida, plus the upper Midwest and the Northeast. The Red States are in the South, the plains, the Mountain West, and part of the Southwest, with the exception of New Mexico and Colorado, which went for Obama this time around. Actually, Obama made inroads in several Red States, which may come in handy two years from now. The populations of the Red States still cling to the land, to church and the Rotary Club, to old time values, including rugged individualism. The Blue States combine a more secular approach and a polyglot spirituality, and more strikingly urban culture, with all its attendant pleasures and problems.

Brooks has a sociological perspective as thinker and writer. When he mentions religion, it belongs to someone else not him. He tends to see society as a collective entity influenced by the environment and human interaction. Rugged individualism is a myth that has had its day. His view is secular, pragmatic, and tinged with Behaviorism. He disagrees with Limbaugh and the rest of them about slashing government; their view is unsupportable, as governance has social relevance and responsibilities. (Just think of the taxpayer money given to Banks and the Auto Industry, and the partial nationalization of both.) He also thinks the R-party must address the growing inequality in our society and the Middle Class anxiety about our reeling economy. Nor should the Party cater so categorically to the rich, which is other side the equality coin. They must also make an appeal to the Hispanics, the Independents, and the younger voters, or Republicans won’t be voted in as Dog Catcher. Reformers see compromise as the essence of Democracy and how to get something done.

In my estimation, David Brooks’ analysis of the Party’s dilemma makes much more sense than the ranting opinions of the Zealots of the Far Right. For example, Limbaugh is already blaming the recession on Obama when he not even in office yet. The man foams at the mouth as a substitute for thinking.