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Republicans are soul searching after their fall from power. What changes are needed? Should the party of Lincoln drop social conservatism to woo voters?
This week it was announced that Frum is leaving the conservative movement’s flagship publication, National Review. Is there a coming split between Republicans and social conservatives as well?
The Republican Party has not always been a pro-life party, just as Democrats have not always been the pro-abortion party. Around the time of Roe v. Wade, it was much more mixed up than it is today, and even today, neither party is homogenous in its views on questions about life.
As Richard Land, a leader in the Southern Baptist Convention has recalled, neither party was pro-life in the mid-70s, when the Democrats rebuffed entreaties from pro-life Catholics and Southern Baptists that had supported them in the past; the move was on to turn the Republicans into a pro-life party. History would prove that, for the most part, the campaign was successful, so why change now?
P.J. O’Rourke writes in The Weekly Standard that “If the citizenry insists that abortion remain legal--and, in a passive and conflicted way, the citizenry seems to be doing so--then give the issue a rest.” He goes on to argue that activists should be focused on making sure government does not pay for abortions in country or overseas, that they should work on parental consent laws and laws aimed at curbing the timing of abortion rather than seeking to ban abortion altogether. O’Rourke it seems, is living in another land, maybe Canada, but even I can see from up here in the Great White North, that what he is calling for is exactly what activists have been doing for the last number of years.
Ronald Reagan built a coalition on what he called the three legs of the American conservative movement; fiscal conservatism, social conservatism and defense conservatives. What O’Rourke and Frum appearing to be calling for is cutting off one of those legs, or at least hiding it from view and telling supporters to shut up.
What these writers and others in the Republican Party need to remember is that the 2008 presidential election turned on the economy. In the final weeks of the election, an economy threatening to boil over since the summer of 2007, finally did just that. People were worried about their jobs, their savings and their homes. Had President Bush and Republicans in Congress stuck to conservative values on fiscal issues and kept the books balanced instead of ratcheting up ever greater deficits, then perhaps the American people would have felt more comfortable turning to Republicans when the economy soured.
David Frum is worried that when times are tough, Americans feel their wallets are safe with the Democrats. He should be worried, having your opponent steal voters on one of your key issues is bad for any party, but Frum looks at the problem and draws the wrong conclusions.
According to exit poll data posted by Steve Waldman, Editor of Beliefnet.com, John McCain carried the majority of both Catholics and Protestants who attend church weekly, just as George Bush did in 2004, albeit with slightly smaller numbers than Bush. These are the very people most likely to care about family and life issues. If you are losing voters to your opponent on one of your key issues, the handling of the economy, why switch to your opponent’s position on another key issue; it would be like handing them the next election.
G. Tracey Mehan makes this point over at The American Spectator, “If economic or business conservatives thinks they can win Midwestern, western, Southern and border states without Evangelicals, Southern Baptists, culturally conservative Catholics and advocates for the nuclear family as the first of all social institutions, they are kidding themselves. President Gerald Ford's primary victory over Ronald Reagan in 1976 was the last gasp of that worldview. You do not find many political volunteers, or voters, at the Union League or Bogey Clubs.”
Republicans lost this past election because they strayed from core principles; they abandoned fiscal prudence and they embraced big government programs such as No Child Left Behind. To win again, Peggy Noonan, another writer and former presidential speechwriter, says Republicans need to return to core principles, even core texts such as those of Edmund Burke or Russell Kirk.David Frum is right on some points; he argues that you cannot win by repeating the campaigns of the past; time and circumstance change. He argues that there has to be a Republican or conservative embrace of environmentalism, a point argued best perhaps by author and columnist Rod Dreher in his book Crunchy Con. Finally, Frum argues that Republicans need to come up with their own market based health care reform and stop carrying the bag of HMOs and insurance companies.
Conservatives should not be adverse to change; in fact, from Edmund Burke to Russell Kirk, serious conservatives have called for a union of permanence and change. In his Ten Conservative Principles, Kirk compares change to renewal in a human body; he says change must be regular but that the change must also follow a certain path, “harmonizing with the form and nature of that body; otherwise change produces a monstrous growth, a cancer, which devours its host.”
For the past 30 years, Republicans have been attracting voters concerned with the sanctity of human life, the shared moral values of their nation. Now it seems some party stalwarts want to change that. The proposals that these Republicans suggest sound less like the change of renewal that will reinvigorate their party and more like the cancer Russell Kirk warns of.
Brian Lilley is Ottawa Bureau Chief for 1010 CFRB Toronto and CJAD 800 Montreal. He is also Associate Editor of Mercatornet.com
I guess any political party, post election defeat, goes through a process of evaluating its position on a range of issues but some of the postings here are amazing!. “Only in America” as the saying goes!
To pillory George Bush for not being pro-life and to attack the GOP for the same thing (Fr Larry and Stefan) is absurd.
In my view, Bush will be seen as a great American president in the years to come, economic crisis notwithstanding.
He has stood firm in opposing the use of federal funds for destructive embryo research, he has appointed pro life judges to the Supreme Court when the opportunity arose and, for the first time since Roe vs Wade a form of abortion was criminalised on Bush’s watch, he has supported and signed into law important legislation, notably the Unborn Victims of Violence legislation and the Born Alive Act ( the Illinois equivalent of which Obama opposed and then tried to hide the facts during the election just gone )and the GOP picked a woman for its VP candidate who is amazing and poses such a threat to the Democrats and the ‘sisterhood’ that they go into apoplexy at the mention of her name.
The VP candidates’ respective positions tells a story in itself. A mother of five and Governor gives birth to a baby with a disability and praises God for him and the Catholic candidate defends Roe and misrepresents the Church’s position on its opposition to abortion when appearing on Meet the Press.
God’s speed to Sarah Palin! Lets regroup for the fight that is coming and hope that a great ‘Catechesis for Life’ begins because alot of Catholics, beginning with Pelosi and Biden, are woefully ignorant. Whether that absolves them before the judgement seat of God, I’m not certain. I hope it does!
I think the real problem is that pro-lifers have to try a different route now. I am coming from a Canadian perspective, but I feel that we have gone about as far as we can politically.
We have to put more effort into changing the hearts of the people. Only through personal conversations and personal friendships are we going to be able to go any further.
There is such a great anti-pro-life, anti-Christian view in our society that we are no longer gaining any ground. We have to work harder in individually helping people understand why abortion is wrong.
We can go no further on the political route.
If the GOP does what the Conservative Party of Canada has done and drops its pro-life stand and basically disses traditionalists, the sound you will hear is a stampede over to the Constitution party and the Party of Lincoln and Reagan will be no more…
I totally agree with Fr. Larry Gearhart here above ("Not wanting to make a big deal about it, [Republicans] will readily bend and stretch pro-life principles to accommodate other interests if it strikes them as expedient to do so.")
I also totally agree with Brigitte Pellerin ("It’s just that some things - say, breathing, having a nice regular heart rate - are actually pretty dandy when they remain the same… I’d argue a pro-life position is a bit like [that]).
I totally DISagree with Wendy Sullivan.
I wish some comments had mentioned that George W. Bush never was pro-life. See:
Right-Wing Christians Against Bush’s Sins
http://www.inquisition.ca/en/polit/artic/anti_bush.htm
In Christ
Let’s get this straight.
Are all these middle-of-the road Americans-- who want a fiscally prudent, small government-- really abandoning the Republican party because they can find what they want in the Democratic Party AND because they don’t like the abortion issue?
Pro-lifers have been a serious factor in the Republican Party for at least 20 years now. Did they not notice that? Is it that they all of a sudden woke up and said “oh crap, this party is full of people who oppose abortion!”
I would suggest that people who hated the pro-life stance that much never voted Republican and would not vote for them to begin with.
Cater to your base. People forgot that lesson. Start with the base and then find policies Middle America will like.
That’s how you win.
The other part is that right-leaning people must not only want political change, but cultural change. And by cultural change, I’m not only talking about “religious change”. I’m all for faith, but the reason people keep coming back to left-wing lunacy is that the culture is full of it. It’s like the air we breathe. We need more writers, artists, film-makers, etc. I suggest that the moneyed interests in the Republican party who are really interested in solid, long-term change (not election-to-election change) start thinking about ways to fund that cultural change.
The “throw the so-cons under the bus” stance is a stance of fear. The Republicans lost and they’re afraid. Republicans survived the Clinton years, and came out even stronger. There’s no reason that can’t happen now.
Sure, the GOP can kick social conservatives out of the party. Then we’ll have ten minutes of excitement as the remaining two legs scramble to join whatever party the exiled social conservatives form. It’s interesting that while the Democrats moved to the right and fielded several ‘pro-life/pro-family’ candidates to great success in 2006 and 2008, the Republicans failed miserably with McCain, a moderate with an affinity for social liberalism. I don’t know how Frum misses this - perhaps because he’s neither a fiscal conservative, foreign policy conservative or social conservative.
Frum’s right that the GOP needs to focus on environmentalism. It would be quite easy to develop a consistent ‘ethic of life’ founded upon the twin pillars of environmental stewardship and social conservatism. That would be a very attractive combination to crunchy-conservatives, independents and Democrats who are anxiously awaiting a party to authentically address green issues.
Lilley’s reflection clearly outlines the reasons for the GOP’s failure in 2008. What it does not do is identify why the party has been so ambiguous in its identification with the pro-life cause. It strikes me, however, that the reasons are not that difficult to discern.
The “leg” of defense conservatism, today, is largely populated by a new group of people, the neo-conservatives. The great majority of neo-conservative thinkers are former leftists. This group feels very uncomfortable with social conservatism. Combine this group with the Rockefeller wing of the Republican Party, and you have a near majority of folks who don’t like making a “big deal” about pro-life issues. Not wanting to make a big deal about it, they will readily bend and stretch pro-life principles to accommodate other interests if it strikes them as expedient to do so. Because of this, the GOP opposition to embryonic stem cell research is completely ineffectual, and the great reluctance to speak of a pro-life “litmus test” in the appointment of judges is obvious to everyone. Combine that with the general opposition to a federal marriage amendment, and you find that there is very little consensus in the Republican Party in matters of social conservative principles.
The dominant leg of the Republican Party leadership, today, is clearly defense conservatism of the neo-conservative variety. The other two legs clearly play second fiddle, and defense conservatism of the so-called paleo-conservative variety is deeply marginalized.
Personally, and in view of the foregoing, I see little hope that the Republican Party will find its soul any time soon.
It seems like Frum et al. think the conservatives need to succeed to “The Reign of Pragmatism.”
As a local elected official in a very Red portion of the US, I think Social Conservatism will continue to dominate a large portion of the US. I have many friends who sided with Obama and voted against their socially conservative selves simply out of frustration with the Republican Party. Their party had abandoned them to pork, self-interst, and had not accomplished much on a Social Conservative’s agenda. Our Party had a chance to do big things, but chose instead to line its pockets. Social Conservatives need to keeep their issues at the fore, and fight for change within the Republican Party. We need a Party that cares, but is still fiscally prudent and socially conservative.
E Unum Pluribus
From the ONE, many.
If the Republican party wants to survive without giving up it`s basic conservitive tenets it will have set it`s sites directly on diminishing the power of an over-reaching judiciary.
Yep, change is as good as renewal in a human body. It’s just that some things - say, breathing, having a nice regular heart rate - are actually pretty dandy when they remain the same… I’d argue a pro-life position is a bit like a political “will to live”. You can go on without it for a while. But not very long. A conservative party supported only by fiscal conservatives uninterested in life issues (and/or by libertarians whose position is closer, in practice, to that of the pro-choice/pro-euthanasia crowd) would not prove very successful. We all need a strong reason to get involved and stay involved. Marginal tax rates rarely qualify.
As much as it pains me to agree with Frum (I’m not hopping on the anti-Frum bandwagon, I actually stopped liking him when he was still “cool"), he’s right. The abortion argument will not win us friends and will not win us elections. In fact, single-issue voters have probably gone the way of the dinosaur, at least for the rest of this generation.
Today’s voter is better informed and equipped (not all, but a larger proportion) to make their voting decision based on multiple issues, not just one. And the party/candidate who provides the best overall list that one can agree with will be the one that wins.
Wendy
It’s agreed that the GOP has to reinvent itself, in what direction is that going to be. I think the classic definition of social conservatism by the GOP is sort of dead. The new United States electoral has changed that much.
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