The Problem with Centrism for Moderation’s Sake
Andrew Sullivan posted this video in response to David Frum’s 9171,1960311,00.html#ixzz0eezPvQFq">call for a center-right conference to provide counterweight to CPAC which has become the epicenter of doctrinaire conservatism. Recall when Daily Caller editor-in-chief Tucker Carlson was booed offstage by CPAC attendees for saying that the New York Times was a good newspaper and that conservatives should emulate its news model. Anyways, here’s Frum:
If moderates are to flourish, they need an infrastructure to support them. The Democrats worked hard in the 1980s and ’90s to showcase their centrist governors. They invented superdelegates to balance the left-wing activists who had saddled them with unelectable presidential candidates. They altered their primary schedule to enhance the clout of must-win states in the West and border South.
Republicans can learn from these examples. But first they have to say it loud and say it proud: The time has come to restore the center to the center-right coalition. Maybe it’s even time to start a new convention so the centrists can meet face to face at least once a year, just as their conservative colleagues do. CenPAC, anyone?
This is a sensible idea, and I imagine there are a good few moderate Republicans who would join up. My only qualm with the concept is more with the terms “moderate” or “centrist” themselves. Simply because someone isn’t fully in line with all the proper talking points that the GOP expects, or that talk radio conservatives like Limbaugh or Beck demand out of thinkers or politicians on the right does not mean that one is a “centrist.” If anything, that term seems either a convenient way to take the easy, comfortable middle road or, conversely, to sling around as a pejorative in order to marginalize political opponents. One man’s centrism is another man’s radicalism, or something to that effect. Either way, I don’t think the debate is really between “moderates” and “conservatives” so much as it is between reasonable people and people who are in it entirely to win.
In this sense, the reasonable people may be very conservative – Paul Ryan, for instance, is hardly a “centrist” but he is in every sense of the word a reasonable man whose politics are well grounded in first principles. Bruce Bartlett has added to the conversation not by being a “moderate” but by coming up with new and relevant ideas. Conversely, there are those on the right with very little grounding in conservative first principles who take so well to the rightwing populism of the day that no one would ever consider them to be “centrists”, even if philosophically they are anything but principled conservatives. A certain former governor of Alaska leaps to mind.
The fault lines on the right these days are too many to count, and just as difficult to parse out. I think Frum is on to something here, but I think the problems run much deeper than merely a battle between two points on the political left-right spectrum. I’m leaning toward placing equal blame on establishment – and indeed “centrist” – figures in the movement, and on the recent uptick in aimless populism manifested not just in the Tea Parties but increasingly on the right since the Iraq War. Until both these elements can own up to their shortcomings and work to bridge the gap, I don’t think there’s much hope that anything terribly interesting will emerge out of CPAC or Frum’s imagined CenPAC. The right has lost its center, no doubt, but it won’t necessarily find it by simply being “moderate” any more than it will find its way through purity tests.
Originally posted at True/Slant.