GOP Resurgence Needs More than Run to the Center
Dennis, I in no way intended to malign moderate Republicans as ‘milquetoast’ or suggest that there was anything wrong with moderate conservatism. As you well know, I’m anything but a far right-winger. Rather, I was trying to point out that simply bringing the party to the center is not enough. Centrists can be just as disingenuous and unprincipled as their far-right counterparts. Now, admittedly David was not suggesting that this was the only answer. He suggested that competition was good for the conservative movement, and that a center-right conference could compete against CPAC and make everyone more honest – and I couldn’t agree more! I would be the first to sign up for this hypothetical CenPAC.
Nevertheless, I think moderates make the same mistake that the purists do in imagining that their own brand of conservatism is the right way forward. I would argue that neither the moderate or conservative approach is right or wrong, but rather that there are sincere, genuine and reasonable people representing both camps. These people are the ones that moderate and conservative members of the Republican party should support, despite some political differences.
Furthermore, these distinctions become fairly muddy as we look at the plethora of policy positions that actual Republicans hold. Take former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, for instance. As governor he cut several hundred state jobs, tightened the state’s fiscal belt, and vetoed 750 bills – more than all other 49 state governors combined. He was against both the TARP and the stimulus. And unlike Sanford and others in the GOP who claimed to be against the stimulus before accepting very large chunks of federal cash, I think Johnson would have refused the federal dollars if he were still in office. In this respect, Johnson might be considered very far to the right. But at the same time, Johnson opposes the war on drugs, and believes that the billions we spend locking up non-violent marijuana smokers each year is an expensive waste of time. Johnson has a legitimate shot at the 2012 Republican nomination for president if he chooses to run – but is he a moderate or a full-blooded conservative? Or is he a libertarian in Republican clothing? Does any of it really matter, so long as he is a principled, reasonable man with sound ideas about how to fix some of this country’s problems?
I fully embrace a reorientation within the Republican party, and personally I believe that reorientation should be toward the center – or at least away from dogmatic thinking and purity tests (and if Jonah Goldberg is correct, conservatism is after all an ‘unsettled dogma’ - but I believe the more important task is supporting good ideas and honest leaders willing to embrace those ideas. In a political climate like the one we have now, this is no simple thing. Perhaps a center-right conference to provide counter-balance to CPAC is one place to start.