Being Anti-Obama Not Enough
One of the questions here at Frum Forum is whether the conservative movement can become a majority and also, whether it can command in the future given the views of youth and various demographic changes. Various criticisms of the Mount Vernon Statement, Sarah Palin and CPAC all contain this theme. But what made conservatives successful from 1980 to 2006? For a quarter of a century, the Republican Party retained the presidency except when Bill Clinton ran. It held the Senate for most of that period, and for the first time in half a century also held the House for more than a decade. In my view the Republican response to the endgame of the Cold War, the excesses of the regulatory state (including its destruction of the underclass family) and taxation drove this dominance.
But politically that is not the key. Ronald Reagan, and in his way, Newt Gingrich, were extraordinary political talents, as was Bill Clinton. The gains and triumphs of the liberal and conservative leaning parties were achieved in part and magnified by those personalities when they occurred. But with tepid politicians like the first George Bush and a speaker like Denny Hastert, Republicans still won. I think the key is the Presidency of Jimmy Carter which capped the 1970’s. Jimmy Carter gave a host of people who had never voted Republican (or just for Nixon over McGovern) permission to vote Republican. The extent of Jimmy Carter and the Democratic majorities’ failure drove conservative success. Catholic white ethnics (as they used to be called) of the eastern states, and Southerners all started pulling the lever for Republicans and actually fearing the return of Democratic politicians.
The reasons may be attributed to this or that policy but overall it was the memory of not only failure, but incompetence. The stagflation and weakness abroad that Jimmy Carter and his vast Democratic majorities in the legislature could not reverse, branded a generation. The most liberal portion of the Democratic base always blamed it on Carter and his failure to be more liberal (hence the Kennedy challenge in 1980). Americans under thirty do not remember that time. I do not think their overwhelming fealty to Barack Obama and the Democrats is unrelated to this.
There is now great ferment on the Right. Its various factions have fractured and often view each other with enmity and contempt. But a generational gift may be forming for conservatives in the form of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party he leads. The most liberal member of the U.S. Senate, with the most fawning press coverage of any presidential candidate achieved the presidency. He is a man of sterling personal character, with an attractive family, and holds the credentialist baubles of degrees from Columbia University and Harvard Law. With him came enormous Democratic majorities. He also had a perceived crisis and the leeway to address it in the manner he chose. And it is not working. Everywhere President Obama’s policies face someone who opposes them, they lose. Enormous and growing deficits projected to run forever, combined with high unemployment is not a winning formula.
By themselves President Obama and the Democrats may be discrediting liberal governance. Conservatives, it strikes me, are correct to reaffirm their principles and oppose him. The failure of President Obama and the Democrats’ polices may discredit them for a generation. But the GOP will need to have a plan to do something different that works if they are to cement the sea change that is in the offing. As Michael Barone notes you do not want to be the dog that catches the car and has no plans on what to do with it.