A fighting retreat

Conservatism, which as recently as the early 1990’s was ascendant, is clearly in full scale retreat. We are mere weeks away from a Barack Obama landslide victory and very likely a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. Reliably conservative Kentucky has polls showing that Mitch McConnell is tied in his race for re-election, something unthinkable a few years ago. The older liberal Supreme Court justices will likely retire shortly after Obama takes office confident that he will replace them with other far left, pro-abortion justices who are younger, packing the court for decades to come and eliminating the hope of overturning Roe v. Wade. Given a sufficient majority in the Senate, Obama will be able to breeze through sweeping new legislation that will reorient the private-public spheres in a way we haven’t seen since FDR and Lyndon Johnson. Once people get a taste of “free” government health insurance and unlimited access to doctors for every sniffle, it will be nigh impossible to wean them back off. Future Republican candidates will have to cede the huge new government programs lest they be accused of trying to take away health care from kiddies. Once the camel gets it’s nose under that tent, it is all over but the triumphal Rose Garden signing by Obama.

Conservatism has by and large, at least to the masses, hitched its star to President George W. Bush, for good or ill. In the weeks following September 11th and even early in the liberation of Iraq, it seemed as if we had backed a winner and thus many conservatives, especially more populist and Christian conservatives, were willing to overlook chinks in the armor: the one-sided coverage of the Iraq war that universally portrayed it as a disaster with daily body counts that gradually turned public opinion sharply against the war; general ineptitude in events like Katrina and now the financial debacle that made Bush look disinterested or incompetent; an abandonment wholesale of conservative small government principles that led to enormous increases in spending and the national debt. Now Reagan is no longer the face of the Republican party, Bush is. Fair or not, that face is one that the media has convinced people (in fairness with some justification) as one of uncertainty, incompetence and general stupidity. John McCain has done little to change that perception. With the exception of the GOP convention introduction of Governor Palin, McCain has been on the defensive and has allowed Obama and his media surrogates to dictate the tone and the topic of the campaign. Right after the convention with interest in Governor Palin at a fever pitch, they hid her away (Put her away privily in King James lingo!) and we didn’t hear from her again until she revealed her daughter was pregnant. This has been a grossly incompetent campaign since McCain sewed up the nomination, with no central message and a seeming defensive posture throughout. Obama is grossly underqualified to be President, and yet the conversations have all focused on whether Governor Palin is qualified to be President in the unlikely event of McCain’s death. She gets grilled on her qualifications while Obama gets a free pass on the same standard, and we hear nary a word from the McCain camp. If they had any honor, the McCain campaign staff would all ceremonially fall on their swords. So in general, as conservatives, we are hosed in November 2008 and we can only hope that the bloodbath isn’t as bad as we fear.

The question becomes what kind of retreat we are in. Is it a drop your rifle and run rout? Or is it a fighting retreat where we shed blood over every inch we give up? Do we flee to the hills, do we start a scorched earth guerrilla war or do we back up fighting until we get to favorable ground from which to launch a counter-offensive? William F. Buckley Jr., to paraphrase, described conservatism as standing in front of progress and shouting “Stop!”. But for conservatism to gain the high ground and go back on the offensive, merely being against progress is inadequate. The movement needs leadership. Not people in leadership positions, but actual leadership. Leadership like Ronald Reagan, someone who articulated clear conservative principles that average voters understood (government is not the solution, strong national defense, etc.). Leadership like Newt Gingrich, who for all of his personal failings and faults was the catalyst behind the Republican party taking control of the House in the 90’s. Just calling Obama a “liberal” isn’t going to cut it unless there is a clear declaration of what it means to be a liberal and what it means to be a conservative. If liberals spin the debate as being about them wanting you to have health insurance and those mean Republicans wanting kids to get sick and die for lack of insurance, conservatives lose that debate. If we can frame it in such a way that we show that the enormous inefficiencies of a government single-payer systems means enormous tax increases and worse health for everyone, and that with no cost to consumers every sniffle will lead to the doctor’s office means long waits for health care, that is a debate we can have and we can win. But without leadership to make that clear, it will never happen and without leadership to reign in “conservatives” in Congress who rail against wasteful spending except when it benefits their district, we will look like hypocrites.

There is plenty of high ground to retreat to and make our stand. Liberalism is intellectually bankrupt, the equivalent of policy cotton candy that tastes yummy but gives you a stomach ache. But without a new generation of leaders who can articulate the high ground, in an environment where they will have to cut through the static of a hostile media that still controls the access of many Americans to information, the message will never get out. Now is not the time to drop our rifles and run, nor is it the time to start a scorched earth policy. Now is the time, in the face of almost certain catastrophic defeat, to start planning for the future and finding the hills on which to make our stand.