Can the Republican Party Get Its Groove Back?

If you've been engaging in commentary on the various blogs on the Internet and around various places on the Internet, I'm sure you've become quite familiar with many of the changing attitudes within the Republican Party, both nationally and here in Massachusetts as well.

Somewhere in the last 10-15 years or so, many of the columns and pundits who were, for a long time, the standard bearers for the conservative movement strayed off the beaten path and began speaking in tongues foreign to our own. Is this another "Rosemary's Baby Moment"? The last changing attitude most folks dealt with was the big dot com boom in the late 1990s which insisted that many of those companies were worth billions of dollars despite they had a barely rented office space with a cheesy name plate on the door. Ask many folks, and they'll tell you that they recall that there was a bubble thing and it popped and people stopped talking about the 'changing attitude'.

Well, the Republican Party has a changing attitude within it and here's how it works. First, a self-appointed group of well-moneyed country club rat pack-wanna bes go out and pick a new star to replace the outgoing star. The new star needs to look differently from the previous star, who likely squandered a lot of his political capital and ticked off the base. The 'elites'.. they don't care much for the base though, as it interferes with their ambition to create a world where they can take advantage of 'markets'. Nationalism, patriotism, sovereignty, the US Constitution and family values mean little to them. In fact, the elites are perpetually frustrated with repeatedly being forced to have to compromise their agenda with conservatives as a shibboleth to power and they just aren't going to do it anymore. Instead, they will do what the 'neo-liberals' did to the 'old liberals' in the 1960s and 1970s. They're going to change the language. The new language will ignore facts and promote a new kind of high-minded truthiness used in building personality cults. The old star was George W. Bush. They've yet to find us a new star.

The pre-Bush Republican Party rose to power largely due to ideas that were fostered, cultivated and communicated by President Reagan in the 1980s and were then harnessed and sold by the Newt Gingrich-led Contract with America in 1994. Republican registration was exploding and at it's strongest point was around 32% and that was largely due to Reagan Republicans (and a few Reagan Democrats too). The Conservative Democrats became known as "Blue Dogs". They came to power as the ruling conservative coalition even before the GOP took over all three branches of the national government and the majority of the Governorships. The problem was that this conservative agenda, no matter how popular it was and continues to be with most folks, actually became an obstacle for those who finance the campaigns. Now, these financiers look for candidates who can sell themselves and give them stuff quid pro quo. Like Humprey Bogart said to Peter Lorre in "Maltese Falcon"; "You'll take your slapping and like it!"

Such feats of circumlocution cannot be accomplished without obfuscation. It is not easy to convince people that this new cancer will cure all that ails you. It is also very expensive. After all, cancer doesn't sell itself. The arguments cannot be made within the old paradigm of conservatism and so they create a new rhetorical language that introduces new terms and words around which to build new "ideas". And anyone who disagrees will be marginalized by being labeled as hard-headed, unreasonable, out-of step with reality, or whatever. Just read many blog commentaries if you need a comprehensive list. This new cancer is spreading quickly throughout our ranks and is already metastasizing.

So conservatism is being destroyed from within by a new political correctness whereby conservatives are not allowed to defend themselves or their principles. Doing so is not nice. Politics is going through a scary change right now. Politics, in theory, are based around disputes. We wouldn't have the need for government at all if there were indeed, no disputes between humans that needed to be resolved. Rather than talking about our problems and talking about matters with which we disagree, voters, Republicans, Democrats and everyone else for that matter seem to be flocking towards 'nice' politics. Instead of focusing on the things we disagree on, we'd rather focus on the things we agree on and make nice with each other. Politics, as we all know now, is only for "nice" people and it is not nice to have well-defined ideas or a list of specific issues to fight for. Nice people don't have ideas because ideas cause tension which leads to arguments. To this new breed of political thinkers, How can you have a democracy if people are arguing all the time? For nice people, the new human brain is a "fantasy reinforcement machine", not a "truth-seeking machine". The world is so much nicer when speech conforms to fantasy rather than reality. Don't believe me? Two words: Deval Patrick. It produces a world full of nice people. People like Michael Medved and the pussified George Will, nice people all. No room for that trouble maker Ann Coulter. Nice people must be forever vigilant to avoid the temptation of succumbing to a sense of humor. Being nice is serious business. Please upgrade your brains by downloading the new software as soon as possible. Someone told me Vista won't screw it all up.

What makes this new shift within the political system in general, and more specifically our party, ironic, is the fact that the neo-Republican takes liberties in eating it's own at every possible opportunity. Names like RINO, neocon, absolutists, single-issue fundamentalists, social conservatives and so on, infest out blogs, discussion forums and general dialogue in the party.
As long as you're 'nice', you may be 'mean', so long as it's a, uh, 'nice' way. The GOP to these folks is a 'big tent' where everyone is conservative, but their form of conservatism is nicer because it doesn't get bogged down in ideas. Instead, they dub it 'intellectual diversity'. We are all conservatives somehow and we should be willing to listen to each others' 'ideas' even when 'ideas' are just vague attitudes about completely irrelevant issues. All ideas are equal, especially the ones we steal from the Democrats, because after all, that makes people 'electable'.

The New Conservatism has turned into a vast ocean of diversity-filled goodness where nice people continue to avoid discussing issues people might disagree on. 'Big Tent' is reserved only for folks who play nice and do what they're told by people who apparently 'know' stuff and can explain it to them in a more truthy, earthy- crunchy way. "Don't think too much kids, you might confuse yourselves!". "Who are you going to believe, me or your eyes?" I've heard this song before. Just like "Whoomp There it Is!" sucked the first time it was released as a single, so did liberalism in the late 1980s. Yes, we've turned into the Democratic party, circa 1990. If you'll remember, they dropped the term 'liberal' because it got a little too hot to handle. What're we going to do when 'conservative' becomes and adjective for sucking at thinking?

Our movement right now is utterly confused. It would help a lot of we made the distinction between being conservative as opposed to being Republican. Cut it any way you want, they're not interchangeable terms. To me, it feels like this is the reason we're all talking past each other these days. There are far more people who consider themselves 'conservatives' than are registered Republicans. Do you think our moneyed political elites in the party know this? A third party! Ooh mommy look! A unicorn!

I like to consider myself at least a semi-reasonable guy. Like a lot of folks, I probably know a hell of a lot less than I think I know, but I AM at least, willing to discuss my ideas and views intelligently. Being asked by new Republicans to compromise for the sake of the team isn't healthy. Most marriages fail because couples don't communicate effectively. Let's try and not end up like them and begin to hammer these issues out and entertain alternative and new ideas. As for myself, I refuse to surrender to a personality cult.

All the money and organization in the world are no replacement for ideas, Just as all the slogans in the world are no replacement for actually knowing what you're talking about. We need to stop running from conflict and once again, become a party of ideas, not convenience.