Alex makes the same old case. He writes:
Specter is not a partisan conservative; he is not dedicated to any particular movement. He is a true centrist interested in advancing a consensus agenda. He has usually leaned more toward the Republicans than the Democrats, and thus properly belongs in the Republican Party. He is not a party man, though, and doesn’t feel especially out of place siding with Democrats. Being neither a conservative nor a strong Republican, it begs the question: how could he betray what he was never committed to?
This is just inexplicable. Specter is a “true centrist interested in advancing a consensus agenda”? Really? I’d look at Jonathan Chait’s piece in TNR. Specter’s “consistency” over the years reveals him to be, in Chait’s words, an opportunistic hack. Nor do I understand Alex’s point about betrayal. Specter may not have been a conservative or a strong Republican, but he sure played one when Toomey primaried him in 2004, and every Republican establishment figure in creation saved his behind. So he swears up and down, to Republican Pennsylvanians, that he’s one of them, and adheres to the principles of Ronald Reagan (watch the videos of the that campaign)…and 4 years later he becomes a Democrat. And yet this isn’t a betrayal, according to Alex’s logic. Loyalty is awfully strange. Later, he writes:
And it’s why it’s absurd to declare Specter a “traitor” of any sort. Aren’t we the ones constantly saying that we’re conservatives first and Republicans second? Why is Specter not allowed to be a centrist first and a Republican — or Democrat — second? If the party doesn’t want him, why should he stay?
Does Alex expect us burn Specter at the stake? This isn’t Salem. Specter is certainly allowed to a centrist first, and a Republican second. But, it would help of course, if he’d told us that in the first place, instead of declaring ad nauseam, over the last decade, that he was a genuine and committed Republican. Next time someone gets elected on the Republican line and says “hey guys, I’m really just trying to spread my flowery centrism and I’m just using you guys, since you’re in the ascendancy” then I’ll watch passively when he defects. Until then, I reserve the right to call a spade a spade and I refuse, absolutely refuse, to rewrite the definition of a word to fit my political agenda. Specter betrayed Republicans who elected him, with the understanding that he would remain a Republican. No other explanation fits the action. Alex continues:
The party must stop whining about Specter, because it won’t do us any good in winning Specter types — which we need — back. Stop this ‘traitor’ talk, and start with the values talk.
Let’s take aim at liberal Democrats first. It’s something that we all — yes, including moderates like Specter — can agree on. Specter left because he consistently found himself, rather than liberal Democrats, the target of conservative ire.
We now live in a political era in which the Republican Party is more interested in purifying its own ranks than taking down leftists. In what kind of warped world is Arlen Specter a larger enemy than Jean Carnahan or Ted Strickland? Not a world in which the Republican Party is the majority.
This is the most bizarre bit yet. We’re supposed to “talk values”, apparently. But, of course we musn’t talk them too loudly, because then we might give someone, anyone, the idea that they don’t fit into our political tent. This is the incoherency of most of the reformist wing of the GOP. On the one hand, they’re upset because we’re forming “circular firing squads”. On the other hand, they insist that we need to focus on principle and values. There’s no mention, of course, that we’re forming circular firing squads because we’ve finally started to talk values. I’d rather not make this into a false dicotomy, but I’ll point out that the last band of Republicans, the Bush Republicans, spent an awful lot of time being inclusive and avoiding circular firing squads, and not very much time at all talking values (see the campaigns to save Specter, Chaffee, Burns, etc, etc, etc). Or they talked values that could encompass the whole universe, because they were happy to have a tent without bounds. Funny thing about a boundless tent; it’s easy to get lost. I suspect that this is what Alex and co. have in mind, even if they’re rather shy about citing their most obvious ally: George W. Bush.
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Matthew E. Miller can be contacted at Obilisk18@yahoo.com
May 2nd, 2009 at 7:31 am
The part I find most baffling about Alex’s position is how he expects the GOP to govern as a party of principle with principled leadership AFTER we accommodate all of the self-interested charlatans who cannot ever be challenged in primaries. His goal is completely at odds with his method. He is banking on the idea that appealing to politicians’ base motives and self-interest to achieve power will somehow (magically) produce statesmen of principle and virtue once they have power.
Yes, indeed, the GOP of 2001-2006 was the Knepper Party.
May 2nd, 2009 at 8:36 am
Alex is using sophistry to sell a politician who has used “centrism” — whatever the hell that is — as a means to reelection. This sophistry in the service of intangible centrism he calls “pragmatism.”
The problem is that “centrism,” “pragmatism,” and “moderatism” (if there were such a creature) are devoid of meaning in themselves. They require a minimum of two other clearly defined -isms for them to be relative to.
Because you can no more figure out which way such untethered politicians might drift than you can nail Jell-O to a wall, he prefers turning on the state party’s members and the national party’s interest groups — the ones who work actively to get people elected — as the scapegoats who prevented Alex from getting what he wants: The election of a politician with an R of convenience in front of his name — one whom Alex would persistently rail against if he could achieve reelection as a Republican.
So it’s a total win-win set and match for Alex all around. Either way, he gets to nag and gripe because he didn’t get his way — the one in which the Republicans lose and Alex gets to bemoan that failure.
Here’s the thing: It was well known that the Dems had been attempting to get Specter to jump the partisan fence. It is also logical to imagine what the White House told him: If you make it through the primary, we’ll put all our national efforts in backing our party’s nominee against you. We’ll remind everyone of your support from Bush and Santorum. If you don’t switch you can’t win.
Specter gets to keep his political scalp, and Alex gets to drone on in interminable monotony about how the party fails to follow his own directionless clarion call — that the GOP finally do something different that whatever it may happen to be doing at any given point in time.
May 2nd, 2009 at 9:29 am
Matthew already won this debate in the FDR post (with some help from MWS and Demint). PA is ground zero for the GOP of the future, we have to stand strong in PA.
What we need is a Paul Ryan type in PA, sorry but I agree with Alex on Toomey, he seems like an opportunist, not the type of guy we want the future of the GOP to be built on. I think we need some regional identity politics with shared core values.
Ryan who is young, articulate, Roman Catholic, is perfect in the industrial north. We just need a PA version of him.
May 2nd, 2009 at 9:32 am
Frankly, although he’s pro-death, and I hate the interference from his DC cronies, at least Ridge is an honest man of character. I’d rather have a straight shooter like Ridge than weasels like Spector or Toomey.
May 2nd, 2009 at 9:39 am
Regarding regional identity politics with shared core values, in addition to ‘Ryanites’ (an Ohio Joe shout out) in the north, we simply must find more Jindal and, especially, Rubio types to appeal to minority voters.
I even think if we can identify enough Rubio’s and Jindal’s in CA, the GOP could win there.
May 2nd, 2009 at 9:48 am
I love this quote from CS Lewis so much I just have to cut and paste it here in case anyone missed it, thank Doug!
Doug Forrester Says:
May 2nd, 2009 at 1:01 am
#100 sounds much like CS Lewis’s essay in Men without Chests.
“And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more ‘drive’, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or ‘creativity’. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
May 2nd, 2009 at 10:04 am
I agree with Noonan here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124112865488674761.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
We can’t shrink the party and expect to win. There has to be room for anyone who wishes to call themselves republicans.
May 2nd, 2009 at 10:19 am
7
Martha,
Matthew addressed this in the FDR thread:
“But, you don’t give away the whole bag, and you don’t waste time trying to integrate, into your coalition, the views of people who aren’t a part of the new majority you’re trying to build. You can have Collins’ and Snowe’s, but make them sit quietly in the corner.”
May 2nd, 2009 at 10:26 am
Yes, that’s a winning strategy: “Come to the party so you can sit quietly in the corner!”
May 2nd, 2009 at 10:37 am
I’m not fully taking a position on this whole thing, but Matthew, the 2-party system forces those who don’t fit either ideology to pretend to in order to hold public office.
May 2nd, 2009 at 10:39 am
9
Alex,
I agree with MWS, we’ve tried your strategy and it’s a stinker.
“Yes, indeed, the GOP of 2001-2006 was the Knepper Party.”
May 2nd, 2009 at 10:46 am
Alex, go sit in your corner
May 2nd, 2009 at 10:50 am
#11:
How many national/ congressional elections did we win between 2000-2005? Oh yeah, every last one of them. I would call that a little successful.
May 2nd, 2009 at 10:50 am
“Yes, indeed, the GOP of 2001-2006 was the Knepper Party.”
Yes, the Knepper Party would really be big on expanding the federal government’s role in education and health care. It would be really big on attempting to flout the Constitution to interfere in Terri Schiavo’s affairs. It would be really big on putting people like Tom DeLay in charge. It would be big on running up a massive deficit. Yeah, that’s the Knepper Party alright. Sure.
May 2nd, 2009 at 10:52 am
How many national/ congressional elections did we win between 2000-2005? Oh yeah, every last one of them. I would call that a little successful.
Indeed. We just squandered what we had by using it incorrectly. We have to keep in touch with the American people once we’re in office and speak to their needs. The self-interested are just as capable of this — perhaps moreso — than the ideologically pure: if they want to hold onto power, they need to do that. They, with the ideological crusaders (who are hardly non-self-interested themselves), can form a winning combination.
May 2nd, 2009 at 10:53 am
13
It was a house of cards, now we’re sifting through the rubble. We need a foundation, Matthew, MWS and Demint want to build a foundation.
May 2nd, 2009 at 10:53 am
15
Alex wants to rebuild the house of cards.
May 2nd, 2009 at 10:55 am
14
The point of that quote, and you know it, isn’t necessarily about your stand on certain issues, it’s about how you want to build the party, which is a repeat of the same mistakes of the past.
May 2nd, 2009 at 10:56 am
#16:
House of cards? In 2004, Bush won the Catholic vote against a so-called Catholic, got over 40% of the Hispanic vote, and the GOP won most of the 100 fastest growing counties in America. The Bush/Cheney campaign also organized the best Republican grassroots effort in 20 years. That is the foundation of a long majority. We just screwed up on the delivery of those promises and are now like this.
May 2nd, 2009 at 10:58 am
Those against building a majority party would like to pretend that there was something built in to the makeup of the coalition that made it destined to fail, as if they are biologically incapable of changing their priorities. It’s completely absurd. And I guess we’re doomed to failure, then, since most of the Republicans we still have in Congress were part of that coalition. What are we going to do, send them all packing? Give me a break. We made some mistakes, now it’s time to learn from them.
May 2nd, 2009 at 11:00 am
19
“We just screwed up on the delivery of those promises and are now like this.”
The reason, some would argue, that we screwed it up is because we had no foundation.
May 2nd, 2009 at 11:02 am
20
“We made some mistakes, now it’s time to learn from them.”
How about you start with the man in the mirror being humble enough to admit that Matthew has hit on something in the FDR post and that he and MWS might be right and you might be wrong?
May 2nd, 2009 at 11:05 am
22 – Oh, God. I hate this. It’s a last-resort kind of argument: “Gosh, Alex. You’re just so not humble. Why don’t you just admit you might be wrong?” It’s a debate, mac. If you’re gonna be a little girl about it, don’t debate.
May 2nd, 2009 at 11:09 am
#21:
We had a common cause in 2004; re-elect President Bush and vindicate Republican post-9/11 policies. That provided us with a coherent foundation which led us to victory in 2004. In 08, there was no overriding goal. Sure, we wanted to beat Obama, not elect McCain. Some wanted Palin or Romney or Huckabee in 2012. That election had us with no foundation and we got our butts handed to us.
May 2nd, 2009 at 11:10 am
Jonathon, in 2004 the GOP won big because the war on terror was still a big deal and Bush and the RNC played on fear of Islamofascism to gain seats. That’s not going to work now. A lot of the country have changed their minds about the Iraq War. Without another 9/11 fearmongering over defense won’t build the party.
May 2nd, 2009 at 11:12 am
23
Ok Alex, you didn’t weigh in on Matthew’s FDR post as I remember. Where is he wrong?
May 2nd, 2009 at 11:15 am
Jonathon, in 2004 the GOP won big because the war on terror was still a big deal and Bush and the RNC played on fear of Islamofascism to gain seats. That’s not going to work now. A lot of the country have changed their minds about the Iraq War. Without another 9/11 fearmongering over defense won’t build the party.
Actually, the war still is a big deal. People have just forgotten about it because of the recession.
If — when — another 9/11 happens — and it will — people will wake up to the realities of the world once again.
26 – I only vaguely remember the post.
May 2nd, 2009 at 11:16 am
#25:
Fear mongering? Not at all. We Republicans in 04 simply showed America what the drastic stakes were in that election. Kerry is not as bad as Obama, but he is damn close; having that guy as our President there would never have been the Surge and Iraq today would make Rwanda look like a walk in the park. Besides, if anyone fear mongered, it was the Democrats and the Kerry campaign. MoveOn.org had ads comparing Bush to Hitler, they accused us of warmongering and claimed Bush would throw the elderly out in the snow and take away their health care. The Democrats are the fear mongers, not the Republicans.
May 2nd, 2009 at 11:16 am
You think this stand-off with Iran isn’t part the war against militant Islam?
What’s going on in Afghanistan?
Everything that goes on in Israel and the Palestinian territories?
The war against militant Islam isn’t over. We’re not even at the end of the beginning.
May 2nd, 2009 at 11:18 am
Fearmongering.
As if there’s nothing to fear from militant Islam.
May 2nd, 2009 at 11:19 am
27
Since it is central to the discussion, maybe you could scroll down and refresh your memory?
May 2nd, 2009 at 11:24 am
30
It’s interesting, I’ll attribute it to our liberal MSM, that radical Islam hasn’t been mentioned much in the piracy coverage. I found this article interesting:
Piracy, Islam, and the Modern Age
Posted: Friday, May 01, 2009 at 2:19 am ET
It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. The prophets of secularization were absolutely certain that religious belief would recede in the modern age. As they saw the new age coming, they were confident that religious belief — or at least any strong form of belief – would burn away like the morning mist as modernity took shape.
As Peter L. Berger explained in “Secularization Falsified” [First Things, February 2008]: “Ever since the Enlightenment, intellectuals of every stripe have believed that the inevitable consequence of modernity is the decline of religion. The reason was supposed to be the progress of science and its concomitant rationality, replacing the irrationality and superstition of religion.”
But the new age did not turn out to be so secular after all. Berger comments:
It has been more than a century since Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God. The prophecy was widely accepted as referring to an alleged fact about increasing disbelief in religion, both by those who rejoiced in it and those who deplored it. As the twentieth century proceeded, however, the alleged fact became increasingly dubious. And it is very dubious indeed as a description of our point in time at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Religion has not been declining. On the contrary, in much of the world there has been a veritable explosion of religious faith.
Peter Berger is one of the most authoritative voices in modern sociology. He understands better than most that the prophets of secularization were too hasty in writing religion off as a major force in the world. Looking back at the very figures who helped shape the modern world, he comments, “Not to put too fine a point on it, they were mistaken.”
In his own way, Stephen Prothero makes the same point. In a recent column in The Wall Street Journal, Prothero argues that one cannot understand the current crisis of piracy off the coast of Somalia without understanding the religious roots of this resurgence.
Prothero serves as chairman of the Department of Religion at Boston University (where Professor Berger also taught for many years). He is also author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — And Doesn’t. When it comes to religious literacy, a bit of knowledge would serve the foreign policy elites, the military, and the media when it comes to the revival of piracy.
As Prothero explains in “Muhammad of the High Seas:”
The late spate of piracy off the coast of Somalia has been analyzed so far almost entirely in political and economic terms: Somalia is lawless and impoverished, so Somali men are taking world trade for a ride. Religion comes up in this analysis only in terms of fears about potential ties between Somali pirates and Islamist groups such as al Qaeda and al Shabab.
But according to Boston University’s World Religion Database, the Somali population is 99% Muslim, and the last time the U.S. was menaced by piracy, in the late 18th century, the so-called Barbary pirates of north Africa also operated out of Muslim havens. For those who know something about Muhammad and the origins of Islam, more than coincidence is at work: Religion, it turns out, should be factored into the piracy problem.
“Factored into” the problem might be an understatement. Prothero is careful to put the issue of Islam and piracy into its historical context. As Muhammad and his followers left Mecca for Medina in the early seventh century, they needed income. As Prothero explains, “Muhammad turned to the longstanding Arabian practice of the ghazu, or bounty raid.” Muhammad’s raids were on land, but the practice of sea-based piracy by Muslims follows the same logic.
Prothero makes that logic very clear:
All this might be of purely antiquarian concern except for the fact that Muslims today regard Muhammad not only as God’s final prophet but also as the human being par excellence. The Hadith, an Islamic scripture second in authority only to the Quran, records thousands of instances of Muhammad’s beliefs and actions, so Muslims can follow his example on matters as detailed as the cut of his beard. If Christians ask, “What Would Jesus Do?” Muslims ask, “What Would Muhammad Do?”
Islam is a worldview, and many of its most central presuppositions run counter to Western ideals. At the same time, Western intellectual elites seem still committed to the basic idea of secularization and the irrelevance of religious belief. At the popular level, most Americans wouldn’t know the difference between the Barbary pirates and a Disney movie.
All this does not necessarily point to any specific policy proposal or military response. It does, however, remind us that beliefs really do matter. Just ask those shipping crews looking warily across the Gulf of Aden.
http://www.albertmohler.com/
May 2nd, 2009 at 11:30 am
27
Here you go:
FDR’s Gift
Jay Cost has a nice piece on PA’s changing political reality, over at realclearpolitics. He writes:
This statewide consistency masks major changes within the state. There have been two big developments in Pennsylvania’s political geography in the last 20 years that have counteracted each other – so that neither party has really gained a net benefit on the presidential level. However, these changes have cut decisively against Arlen Specter. I believe they are key to understanding why he left the GOP.
For the last twenty years or so, metropolitan Philadelphia in the southeast has been moving to the Democratic Party. However, this movement has so far been countered by movement toward the GOP in metro Pittsburgh in particular and the west in general. That, plus the population growth of the strongly Republican, exurban counties of Lancaster and York, means that the state as a whole still votes for President as it has for fifty years….metro Philadelphia continued its movement to the left while metro Pittsburgh moved to the right. McCain did better than Bush in five of the seven counties that make up the latter. He did no worse in Allegheny County, where the city of Pittsburgh is located. And he did only a point worse in heavily Republican Butler County, which has voted for the GOP in every election but 1964…
This part of the country [metro Western PA] was staunchly New Deal Democratic for decades following the Great Depression. Ronald Reagan lost every county of metro Pittsburgh save one in 1984. However, in the last twenty years the steel industry has all but disappeared – with only the Edgar Thompson Works and the Steelers insignia as the last vestiges of what used to be. As the industrial jobs have gone overseas, greater Pittsburgh has moved to the right. This is a movement that has also been exhibited in the tri-state area. George W. Bush and John McCain did well in southern and western Ohio, as well as West Virginia. It’s not coincidental that John McCain and Sarah Palin made their final stand here in Western PA…
In 1980 four of the five counties in Philadelphia voted for Reagan while five of the seven counties in metro Pittsburgh voted for Carter. This has basically been inverted in the last quarter century – and while neither party’s presidential candidate has been better off statewide for this shift, Arlen Specter has personally been on the losing end.
As an alternate explanation for Specter’s defection, it’s worth more than a look, but Cost’s analysis seems particularly useful for a broader perspective on changing demographic realities. Pittsburgh was one of the center’s of the New Deal coalition and, despite the loss of the steel industry which Cost highlights, is still an urban and blue-collar area. Yet, it’s becoming increasingly Republican (in 2008 McCain actually made net gains here). Reagan couldn’t crack the nut; McCain and Palin split it open. This sort of development isn’t trivial. To be sure, Democrats have numerous stories like this; of former Republican bastions, becoming increasingly Democratic. But, we should be thankful for small miracles, and looking to expand them into bigger miracles. The story of the 60’s and early 70’s was the story of the Republican Party peeling off various centerpieces of the New Deal coalition; in particular, they made enormous gains with Southerners and among white-Catholics, two groups that had nearly reflexively voted Democratic for more than half a century.
Remarkably, despite all of our recent losses, those two groups remain among the most stable elements of the Republican coalition. The reliably Republican Mainer left. The ethnic Catholic who’d beaten down doors to vote for Al Smith and JFK stayed. And it seems to me that if old Republican bastions are collapsing, while New Deal strongholds are becoming Republican firewalls, then it makes all kinds of sense to complete the journey. Why not make the New Deal coalition, the New Republican coalition? There are perils to this analogy; for obvious reasons, Republicans are unlikely to re-align black voters, another crucial element of FDR’s gains in the 30’s, into the Republican Party. And arguably the demographics that made up the New Deal coalition are a smaller chunk of the population today. But, there’s an awful lot of margin for error if your baseline is roughly 60-65% of the vote. The ethnic Catholic, the Solid South, and the Industrial North (such as it is) are still capable of forming the backbone of a strong coalition. We should focus on completing the transformation of places like Pittsburgh, to make that coalition a reality.
May 2nd, 2009 at 11:33 am
Here’s a golden quote by MWS from the FDR thread:
“The kind of populism I support isn’t the anti-rich kind, but the kind that opposes those who use their power or access to power to gain unfair advantage (such as sweetheart bailouts). All good capitalists should support that kind of populism, as well as libertarians. A powerful government can and will pick winners and losers, largely based on who has the dough to buy influence. This is a populism that can unite union members, small business owners, federalists, libertarians, and true capitalists.
So if I attack the “elite” I’m not talking about rich people per se, but those who use their power or access to big government to enrich themselves at the expense of others.”
May 2nd, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Alex of course we aren’t safe from militant Islam and we never will be until either humankind is annihilated or Islam overruns all other cultures. I am only saying that the Republican party will not be building any more majorities as a reaction to Islamofascism until such time as we have another 9/11 event, and maybe not even then. Not only have a lot of dems and independents been turned off by Bush’s nation building and preemptive war, but so have a significant number of republicans.
And yes Bush and company did fear monger, and so did the dems in the other direction. The problem is that when a party uses hyperbole it loses credibility. Much like the boy who cried wolf.
May 2nd, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Yep. Don’t vote for Alex. Sometimes complexity is a cover for vacuousness in what seems to otherwise be a sophisticated argument.
May 2nd, 2009 at 3:09 pm
“the last band of Republicans, the Bush Republicans, spent an awful lot of time being inclusive and avoiding circular firing squads, and not very much time at all talking values”
So Bush became unpopular because he was too inclusive? The public turned on him because he supported Arlen Specter’s reelection bid?
Those are issues that I don’t think even appear on the radar of your average voters. There are two words that explain Bush’s sunk popularity, Iraq and Katrina.
Another thing I don’t get is the dismissal of Bush as a squishy moderate vs the idolization of Reagan. For all his flaws, Jimmy Carter left America with the same amount of debt as when he came in. Reagan was the first President since WWII to really blow a hole in the federal budget and get us in debt, and we haven’t recovered since. In fact, Bush and Reagan had almost the exact same fiscal priorities. They slashed taxes while increasing spending at the same time. Republicans who really care about fiscal responsibility should be talking about returning to the days of Ford not Reagan.
May 2nd, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Yes, Alex. The GOP of 2001-2006 is the Knepper Party.
They followed your advice of “Damn principles, win at any cost. And somehow, once we’re powerful, all these unprincipled schlups we elected will see the light. Power makes bad people good.”
Sure, we won elections….. for a while.
May 2nd, 2009 at 6:43 pm
The only reason the public “turned” on GWB is because of the Soros promoted MoveOn, the Huffy Post, etc. If the MSM had been honorable and decent he would have completed his term with very high ratings, and we would not have Barack Obama in office today. But, the media, like the far right conservatives betrayed GWB.
If the conservatives who are wrecking the GOP were just the least bit honest, they would admit that Bush was far more conservative than Reagan, but they will NEVER ever to that.
We are a center right nation, not a far right nation. Any idiot who thinks you can win elections and not say center right, are fools. In fact, the same “conservative leaders” who denigrate Bush, are the very same ones who denigrated Reagan. But – no one dares tell the truth about that one.
SJR
The Pink Flamingo
May 2nd, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Well said Pink Flamingo.