Re: The Political Season

Ezra, you make a nice point about the central conservative principles of Life and Liberty. I do not think it is an accident that fiscal and social conservatives have joined in a formidable coalition these last 30 years or so. Life and Liberty, the philosophical foundations of social and fiscal conservatives, respectively, are indeed complementary, if not dynamically synergistic. After all, Jefferson separated them with only a comma in the Declaration of Independence.

As for your question, I think you are being premature. The first question that needs answering is: can a full-throated conservative, in both the fiscal and social sense, win elections nationally, even in the Northeast precincts? Contra your speculations, I do not think yesterday's elections definitively answered this in the negative.

Let me make a preliminary point: politics is the art of the practical. Most successful political campaigns are a deftly managed series of feints, drawing the attention of the electorate away from those issues where the candidate is weakest, towards those he is strongest. This is commonly called "staying on message," and is an extremely difficult thing to do these days, given the near instantaneous, 24/7 media spotlight every campaign struggles under.

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In the northeast, generally considered to be hostile territory for social conservatives, the task would be to keep the electorate focused on fiscal and good government issues, and downplay any differences on social policies. Again, this is difficult, but not impossible, for a disciplined and experienced campaign organization.

As always, Ronald Reagan gave us a good example of this sort of thing. In the election of 1979, he did not ignore or prevaricate about his social conservatism. As a matter of fact (and this is from memory), when John Sears, his soon-to-be fired campaign chief, demanded that he forgo campaigning as a Pro-Life abortion opponent, Reagan angrily threw a pencil across the conference table and exploded, "This is my campaign!"

Reagan, of course, got his way, and as a result, he was able to galvanize the Religious Right in his favor, which became a critically important grass-roots component of his campaign. But at the same time, he deftly kept the national focus squarely on the depressed economy and foreign policy weaknesses of the Carter Administration, and away from divisive social issues, and ultimately won the election handily.

A good bit closer to hand, the recent Virginia Governor's election gives us another example of this. Consider this analysis of Bob McDonnell's victory from Jennifer Rubin of Commentary's Contentions blog:

[McDonnell] didn’t budge from his pro-life and gay-marriage stances (in fact, his social conservatism so scared the editors that they made particular mention of it in their endorsement of his opponent). Moreover, it is hard to think of a single non-conservative position he took on anything else: he opposed taxes and was in favor of charter schools and against cap-and-trade, card check, and ObamaCare. ... It is more accurate to say, then, that a conservative candidate held the center of the electorate. But he didn’t do it, as the Post suggests, by splitting the difference and running on mush. McDonnell didn’t run on raising taxes less than his opponent; he ran on no tax increase. He didn’t run on a modified cap-and-trade position or a tweaked version of ObamaCare; he ran on opposition to big government. It doesn’t sit well with the mainstream media and liberal pundits when this happens — as it suggests that conservative ideas have resonance beyond the right-wing base. It suggests that Olympia Snowe-ism, a pastel version of the liberal agenda, isn’t the way to rebuild a winning Republican coalition.

Tactically, Bob McDonnell kept the focus of the campaign on fiscal conservative issues, and as a result, won almost every county in the State.

Beyond tactics, however, note her central point: "conservative ideas have resonance beyond the right-wing base." That is, conservatives can win elections, even in places like purplish northern Virginia, by running as conservatives. This suggests what you and I and many others have always intuited, that the middle slice of the electorate, so-called Moderates or Independents, are not some amalgam of equal parts liberal and conservative, but in fact are very much more conservative than liberal. Republicans, then, do not have to bend their conservative principles to get elected; as a matter of fact, doing so might lose more Independents than are gained.

And I include social conservative principles within that last statement. Ms. Rubin manages to finesse McDonnell's social conservatism out of the equation in her conclusion, but his social conservatism was well known in this election, and northern Virginians were not frightened by it (despite the best efforts of the Washington Post).

I think it is because he stayed adamantly on message (it's the economy, stupid), and by doing so, kept from being categorized as a narrow, parochial, ignorant social conservative. The latter has been the Left's incessant Talking Point for going on 20 years now, and Bob McDonnell, I think, has shown how to handle it: emphasize the issues that have the widest voter appeal, and let social issues rise to whatever level the current campaign demands - but no more. If this is done correctly, in any Blue or Purple State a politician’s social conservatism should recede as a defining characteristic, to simply one political position among many, reassuring the Moderates and reducing the number of knee-jerk negative votes.

In conclusion, then, there is no reason at this time for conservatives to consider off-loading social conservatives to win elections in northeast America. Doing so might very well harm our electoral chances more than it will help.

So there it is, my preliminary conclusions derived from a very small sampling of tea leaves served up this election season. But Ezra, Ms. Rubin's conclusion has wider implications than just whither social conservatism in the Republican Party in the northern reaches of the United States. However, I have gone on too long already. Perhaps more on this later.