Posted by
Glen Albrethsen on Tuesday, January 15, 2008 10:48:00 AM
Folks--the factions which made up the Reagan coalition still exist.
Those factions, social conservatives, defense conservatives and fiscal conservatives, have not gone anywhere. They are alive and well and still living mainly within the Republican party.
However, they seem to be battling for supremacy, at the expense of the others, and perhaps even worse than that, at the expense of the country.
Here's why. Fiscal conservatives cannot be happy with how much the federal government has grown under the George W. Bush administration and the so-called "compassionate conservatism." The social conservatives, at the very least, are uneasy when it comes to talk about stem cell research, embryonic farming and cloning. These issues are being pushed by science and the medical establishment, and they are perhaps even more prevalent today than the comparatively simple idea of abortion because they are nuanced issues, affecting more people. The defense conservatives, also known as security conservatives, feel the threat of global Jihad and feel that if it is allowed to take hold here and around the world, freedom and democracy as we know it will come to an end. If that takes place, none of the rest matters.
Communism, while a threat, was in it's death throes after decades of the Cold War by the time Reagan came along. The fact that his administration gets primary credit for the demise of the Soviet Union relates more to its acceleration, rather than anything else. The Soviets simply couldn't keep up. In comparison, today's threat, radical Islam, has survived for hundreds of years and while not a super power in the same sense that the USSR was, it seems to be on the rise instead of declining.
So, now, more than ever, those factions are battling to be the voice that is heard within the Republican party. Unfortunately, in doing so, the distinction between it and its more liberal opponents continue to blur.
And when the Republican party cannot be contrasted with the Democratic party, there is a major problem.
I personally don't think that any part of the coalition can rise above the interests of the other. They are all equally important. We cannot have a strong defense without a strong economy. We cannot have a strong economy without strong families. We cannot have strong families without the other two. Each one relies upon the other.
I agree with the sentiment that we should not try to win at the expense of the coalition, or values. If anything, we should be strengthening that coalition, because we've seen it drift since the George H. W. Bush days, through the Clinton years and into the Bush II era. Republicans can be blamed for that, but conservatives, true conservatives, should not get party confused with values. The Republican party, by and large, embodies those who fall within at least one part of the coalition. We've apparently forgotten this, and considered the party and the coalition to be one and the same. That's due in large part to the success of the coalition. But they aren't the same, and that's why we're seeing what we see now, with our candidates, and within the voting of the electorate.
For the eventual nominee to be successful in November, to have any chance of any conservative philosophy to be carried to the White House, the Republicans need to whittle down the field. Seven candidates, five of which are still considered viable (Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson) is too large a number. Super Tuesday on Feb. 5 may go a long way to deciding how much the field shrinks, but it shouldn't go too far beyond that. Rotating victories among the candidates is not the way to produce a strong candidate. The best way is to eliminate candidates who are less about the coalition than they are about their own agendas and ideas.
That means there needs to be a process of elimination. It is the primary process. However, as each successful state votes for their candidate, those still to vote need to pay attention to what's being said and what conclusions are being drawn. Some side by side comparing is needed. I will tackle that in a subsequent blog.