Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

October 12, 2009 By Fausta

Liveblogging “The Future of Conservatism” at Princeton U

Questions
Unpopularity of talk radio: Conscious effort by Democrats?
Frum: Rush Limbaugh & Obama need each other desperately, they have a commonality of interests. You need to maximize your audience, and if you can extend your stay on the program it increases your numbers.

How do you work a political party?
Frum: Big believer in political parties. Core Republican message: national security and trade.
Douthat: The Medicare arguments are a disaster for conservatives.

The Republican party will have to go in the inner city and seek African American support, but they seem afraid to go in the inner city and talk to African Americans.
Douthat: The Republican party has 2 problems, Barack Obama, and the reputation of being a party based in the white south.
Postrel: The Republicans have found typical prosecutors that are tone deaf.
Larison: The Republican party has been terrible at building coalitions and providing something for the people in exchange for their support.

How do you take power?
Frum: The Republican party is going to exhaust all alternatives, and get to what they can do. In 2010 it will not be an issue on Medicare, and will have to reach out to immigrants.
Postrel: Envisions a coalition that is not necessarily a Republican coalition.
Douthat: Agrees with Frum that there are broad questions on how to draw voters, but it’s a country of 300 million people and as long as there’s a 2-party system and there’s a possible way to draw voters. Politics is an experimental science, and so is coalition building.

5:30PM Zelizer
Republican party, and ideas;
How do these come together;
Coalition of conservatives of the late 1970s doesn’t reflect current conservatives.

Two other issues:
Strength of the far right and how to contain it;
The political process itself.

5:15PM Virginia Postrel: Her intellectual agenda is about revitalizing liberalism. Brought incandescent lightbulb. It should not be possible for Congress to pass a law banning the incandescent lightbulb, and having it signed by a republican president. How did this happen?

Cap and trade has nothing to do with the concept of cap and trade: set a level and let consumers and business decide the best way. It means that you have a much more dynamic, decentralized pluralistic approach.

The incandescent lightbulb law represents the nadir of the conservative movement.

So what are you trying to conserve? Conservatism is not a movement with core values. Conservatism can be about conserving the status quo, particular values, institutions, and some underlying rules that allow for a plural society.

More media entrepeneurship today in a world where politics is entertainment. We as public intellectuals face a difficult question, where is this place for long, careful thinking? The challenge is how to conduct but also spread careful, analytical thoughtful research.

5:05PM Daniel Larison: As a political movement, conservatism doesn’t have much of a future.

There are many paradoxes on conservatism:

Conservatism rebels against the concentration of power and wealth, temperamental conservatism teaches that power corrupts, while the movement concentrates in acquiring political gain particularly on national security.

Nationalism vs federalism, respect towards other nations vs aggressive policies overseas.

The future of American conservatism depends on meeting these paradoxes.

The movement will continue to exist but will become increasingly irrelevant to the public unless it adapts.

4:50 David Frum: The movement known as conservatism is in a state of real crisis. Do conservatives face a change in the climate or a change in the weather?

We are living through a change in the climate, and will change the entire American political system; a change in what the debate is about.

Obama was the first Democrat to win whites with 4-yr college degrees since Lyndon Johnson. Why this enormous change?

Inflation, crime, challenge of Soviet Union, ossification of the economy, were what brought together the conservative movement, and after there was a sense of mission accomplished. The Republican is drawing more support from a smaller and smaller base.

Three possible paths:
1. Continue to draw non-poor, not college graduates, which can’t win for much longer. Fear, anger & resentment.
2. The path of becoming something like the European Christian Democratic parties. The party that was indicated by Bush-Rove strategies but that B-R didn’t deliver with their economic policies. Not Frum’s party, since Frum wants economic dynamism. The Douthat party.
3. Frum wants to reinvigorate the Jeffersonian idea of growth and economic ideas: have a relevant economic message. Focus on most urgent issues, the unsustainability of debt, and the welfare burden. Integreate environmental consciousness. Define where they stand on social issues. Need to reconnect to Republican tradition of competence and integrity, an identity the Republican party had. The party who gets things done.

4:40PM Douthat: The age of Obama good for conservatism. Many believe that Republican party lost its way by ceasing to be conservative; but he believes that the party lost its way over a variety of issues where the trend has been leftwards, including immigration trends and public opinion among the young. The age of Obama, however, has brought more conservative views to the front.

Right now there’s a resistance among Republican office holders to put conservative ideas to work in the everyday world.
The Republican party doesn’t need a single blueprint, but a variety of ideas; conservatives should look at the successful politicians in the past three decades and learn from them. All of them were willing to present themselves as engaged with ideas as to where their party should be going.

The ideas are out there, what’s lacking are politicians with the vigor to put them into action.

———————————-

I’m waiting for the panel The Future of Conservatism to start. Panelists are Kevin Kruse, Ross Douthat, David Frum, Daniel Larison and Virginia Postrel; the moderators are Kevin Kruse and Julian Zelizer.

UPDATE, Tuesday 23 October
Welcome, New Majority readers. Please visit often.
Analysis at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen.

Update, Wednesday 14 October
Welcome, Balloon Juice readers.

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Filed Under: politics, Princeton University Tagged With: conservatism, Fausta's blog

Comments

  1. saveliberty says

    October 12, 2009 at 5:20 pm

    I tweeted thanks to you, and am adding it here.

    I read 9/12 differently and I am amazed that individuals can ignore the financial concerns that join us together and prefer a woe is me kind of view.

    Not you, Fausta, but Frum and Larison.

    Thank you once again.

  2. saveliberty says

    October 12, 2009 at 5:25 pm

    Cap and trade is a tax on poor people.

  3. saveliberty says

    October 12, 2009 at 5:33 pm

    Conserve? Did Virginia not read Ted Lowi’s End of Liberalism in which he illustrated that an 18th century liberal is a 20th century conservative and an 18th century tory is a 20th century liberal.

    What we want is to protect the Constitutional rights that individuals smarter than the likes of those whom we’ve elected established for us, as the American Enlightenment understood how to protect against the abuse of power.

    Conserve? We conserve our rights as free men and women under the United States Constitution.

  4. saveliberty says

    October 12, 2009 at 5:35 pm

    Wow, no one on the panel seems to know of Ronald Reagan’s interview with Reason Magazine in 1975 in which he saw confluence between libertarians and Republicans. This is how he brought aboard the “Reagan Democrats”.

    http://reason.com/archives/1975/07/01/inside-ronald-reagan

  5. Shane from PV Radio says

    October 12, 2009 at 6:03 pm

    Since Frum represents the guilt ridden, dilute-the-message defeatist wing of the conservative movement, who’s there to represent the optimistic, proud to be free and self-sufficient wing of the conservative movement? Is Fausta all by herself? Here we are at a time when the conservative infosphere (cable, book and internet) is succeeding greatly and all the panel participants can do is beg us to moderate and prepare for climate change???

    WTF? Where’s the passion?

  6. BD57 says

    October 12, 2009 at 8:42 pm

    Agree with Shane ….

    seems the deck has been stacked against conservatism.

  7. Pat Patterson says

    October 12, 2009 at 11:57 pm

    Before trying to make deals with urban black voters I would think that trying to appeal to southern blacks would make more sense. Until sensing that it was better to take over the Democratic Party in the South most urban and rural blacks were registered as Republicans but it was Northern college-educated and Democrat allied anti-segregation workers that came into the south and fashioned with the existing black elite the takeover of the Democratic Party. Which in turn has been resting on its laurels for almost 50 years now and Southern blacks have about as much to show for it as Northern urban blacks. Little!

  8. Obloodyhell says

    October 13, 2009 at 6:45 am

    > the reputation of being a party based in the white south.

    Uhhhh…. HUH?!?!

    I’ve lived my entire life in “the south”. The party down here is the Dems. PERIOD.

    You want to vote in local primary elections, you register Dem. There will be at most one GOP candidate, so there’s no relevant vote for you, if you aren’t so registered.

    You want to vote in local regular elections, you register Dem. There MAY be a GOP candidate. Probably not. And if not, then the primary election was the actual opportunity to express your franchise, since the Dem candidate is now running unopposed.

    This, BTW, is the reason for complaints about how the panhandle of Florida has so many registered Dems, yet solidly went for Bush in 2000 and 2004. The registration rolls do not reflect the individual’s politics.

  9. DaMav says

    October 13, 2009 at 9:49 pm

    Putting aside the internal politics of conservatism for a second, I’d like to point out the sheer awesomeness of Fausta’s snark free, terse and to the point summary of this material. Damn good job!

    RE: POSTREL
    Brought incandescent lightbulb. It should not be possible for Congress to pass a law banning the incandescent lightbulb, and having it signed by a republican president. How did this happen? … The incandescent lightbulb law represents the nadir of the conservative movement.

    Well let’s hope that was the nadir. Still, I think she made a darn good point. What a great example of government power run amok — and under a Republican President.

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