Where Does Conservatism Stand?

David Brooks has another insightful editorial in The New York Times, one that the leaders of the GOP and the leaders of conservatism should take seriously.

The lesson is not that the conservative establishment is headed for the ash heap. The lesson is that the Republican Party, even in its shrunken state, is diverse. Regular Republican voters don’t seem to mind independent thinking. There’s room for moderates as well as orthodox conservatives. Limbaugh, Grover Norquist and James Dobson have influence, but they are not arbiters of conservative doctrine.

In his South Carolina victory speech, McCain defined a more inclusive conservatism: “We want government to do its job, not your job; to do it better and to do it with less of your money; to defend our nation’s security wisely and effectively, because the cost of our defense is so dear to us; to respect our values because they are the true source of our strength; to enforce the rule of law that is the first defense of freedom; to keep the promises it makes to us and not make promises it will not keep.”

And McCain’s success has raised an astonishing specter: Republicans may actually have a shot at winning this year.

Some conservatives are horrified by the thought of a McCain victory, not least of which Rush Limbaugh and The National Review -- the ersatz "voices of the GOP."

Many professional conservatives do not regard Mike Huckabee or John McCain as true conservatives. “I’m here to tell you, if either of these two guys get the nomination, it’s going to destroy the Republican Party,” Rush Limbaugh said recently on his radio show. “It’s going to change it forever, be the end of it.”

Some of the contributors to The National Review’s highly influential blog, The Corner, look to Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney to save the conservative movement. Their hatred of McCain is so strong, it’s earned its own name: McCain Derangement Syndrome.

Robert Tracinski agrees with this view and thinks McCain must be stopped. He fears that McCain will abandon the GOP's isolationist approach and actually work with Democrats to get things done. God forbid that should ever happen.

Yet, while the talking heads debate the merits of the various candidates and try to decipher where the conservative movement is heading, there is a new element in the mix: conscious conservatism.

Conscious Conservatives are those conservatives, mainly Republican, who have become compelled by the events of the past seven years to start putting some distance between themselves and George W. Bush as their political chief executive. They and he may still share some core ideologies and philosophies, but they have just become too conscious of Iraq and Katrina, cronies doing a heck of a job, executive power grabs, the word “terrorism” as a political tool, dangerous detainee policies, national surveillance practices and end runs on the Constitution. Unconscious Conservatives have witnessed these same things, and some of them may be nervous about Bush, but they wouldn’t give up his guarantees to pro-life, guns, and James Dobson, if Bush declared Congress unconstitutional and locked out the Supreme Court.

The irony is, they can have those things, and a competent chief executive, too, when the nation’s electorate becomes conscious-based, a consciousness that takes into account globalization, and terrorism, and the price of being lured into asymmetric warfare against the wrong enemy. No president may have been available, who could measure up to the demands on this country after 9/11, but President Bush’s record would not be too difficult to top. If consciousness, and not political railroading, had been a feature of the 2000 conventions and election, the nation may still have had a pro-life, evangelical Republican president, whose record today almost certainly would have to be preferable to that of George W. Bush.

These would seem to be some of the voters in the GOP who like McCain, who is tough on terror but not willing to use torture to get information (having been tortured oneself is surely the best way to know that torture is inhumane and seldom works).

The rejection of Bushism by conservative voters is a hopeful thought. We don't need more dumbass, short-sighted policies and programs -- we need a government that works for the people it is supposed to represent. If we, the voters, can elect a president who sees cooperation between parties not as a mortal sin but as a duty to the country, we might have hope of overcoming some of the serious issues we face.

Tags: Conservatism, politics, David Brooks, GOP, Republicans, John McCain, Conscious Conservatives, presidential race