There’s good news and bad news. The good news is that modern conservatism is in trouble. The bad news is that the opposition hasn’t been much of a force in helping the trouble along.
But for now, let’s just enjoy the positive: Conservatives are finally beginning to eat their own. This isn’t at all unusual for an ideological movement. In fact, using history as a guide, conservatives’ troubles have been quite expected and somewhat overdue.
Every revolution begins with an organized group of roughly (in modern conservatism’s case, very roughly) likeminded ideologues who suppress internal differences in the cause of acquiring power. As they solidify their power by elbowing or slaughtering the opposition, those once-suppressed differences begin to take on more prominence and sharper cleavages form within. And invariably there’s a revolutionary core that perceives its work as incomplete -- though completion is impossible because an even more radicalized core develops in an attempt to keep the revolution vibrant -- while fellow revolutionaries tend to moderate and enjoy their day in the sun.
The purifying bloodletting then ensues.
The Platonic Ideal of internecine ideological warfare remains the French Revolution. And oddly enough, it was that revolution that inspired the Burkean brand of conservatism that held forth for roughly 200 years in the United States before withering from the onslaught of its own revolutionaries.
The most radical element within the resulting conservative elite -- calling itself “movement conservatism” to distinguish it from the real kind -- are, of course, the autocratic evangelicals. Traditional conservatives once used them to get an electoral leg up, but soon found themselves subject to a hostile merger and used in return.
The most proximate cause of conservatism’s potential suicide is, as everyone knows, the looming Supreme Court battle. It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood when one reads Godly totalitarians like the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins say that unless their judicial demands are met -- principally meaning no Alberto -- “there will be a problem within the coalition.” Or Manuel Miranda, the one-time political hit man for caporegime Bill Frist, who has declared that the presidential pal’s insufficient commitment to radicalism “is something that [movement] conservatives on this nomination cannot tolerate.”
Most satisfying, Sir, as Edmund Burke would say. Most satisfying, indeed.
What is it that movement conservatives can’t tolerate about the president’s possible choice? Emory University law professor David Garrow explains: “Conservative in [Gonzales’] mind means following the statute as written by the legislature.” Oh my, that won’t do. No, that won’t do at all. What movement conservatives require is judicial activism, labeled, naturally, as strict constructionism.
As one GOP strategist lamented, “We need to be inclusive to all. If it’s ‘our way or no way’ [by movement conservatives], that’s really not a party.” He got that right, excepting that the “if” was wishful thinking.
Yet to be fair to the religious revolutionaries, it is not just they who’ve been busy remaking the Republican Party. Economic conservatives have done more than their fair share, promoting habits of grotesque deficit spending that would have made Eisenhower Republicans heave. And then we’ve those imperialist adventurers wrung of neoconservative fantasy who would put the Bob Tafts of yesteryear’s party into absolute apoplexy.
Each of these camps -- the religious zealots, the big-spending debtors and the faith-based imperialists -- is more than a little hostile to more than 200 years of American political tradition. Yet Democrats have failed to drive this fundamentally anticonservative, antiAmerican reality home to conservative Americans. And that’s a real puzzler.
There’s a chance that the GOP’s internal warfare will drive a stake through its own radical heart -- that its infighting will be more than its usual discipline and excellent organizational talents can handle. But it’s bad news for Democrats that they’ve been incapable of driving the stake themselves.
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