REMANATIONS

For the intro to this series of posts, see here.

The aim of Anderson’s piece is to give some direction to conservatives and the Republican Party after the 2008 drubbing by the Obamachine. His direction is both positive and negative, meaning he criticizes one option and proposes an alternative. My hope is that I’ll do something similar in these posts. But before going to disagreement, I thought I’d mention a few places where Anderson and I are reading from the same page.

First, we both reject the trope of moderates and liberals in the Republican party that McCain lost because he was insufficiently progressive on social issues. No one has ever accused John McCain of being a culture warrior, at least not anyone possessing all of their mental faculties. McCain (and even Palin) rarely addressed “social” issues like abortion and gay marriage on the campaign trail. In fact, it seemed sometimes like he was going out of his way not to mention Barack Obama’s abortion radicalism and double-speak on gay marriage.

What’s more, Anderson hits the nail on the head when he seeks to discern the motives of “moderate Republicans” who seek to tie a millstone around the necks of social conservatives and cast them into the heart of the sea:

“They find support for authentic social values so contemptible that they’ll use any event as an excuse to argue for its elimination.”

Right ho, Jeeves. (I had my first Wodehouse experience this week; expect more of that in the future.) As Chesterton might say, “Any stick is good enough to beat social conservatives with,” even if, upon examination, you discover that said-stick is in fact a styrofoam noodle with “Maverick” written on the side of it.

We’re also in agreement about the continuing electoral relevance of social conservatives, though I am less optimistic about the trends than he is, as will become apparent. African-American voters put Prop 8 over the top in California, and Rudy Giuliani’s campaign never made it out of the gate, mainly because of his views on social issues (and his lackluster efforts in early states).

The desire for conservatives to reach out to similarly-minded minority voters is one that I share with Mr. Anderson, and in the short-term, if done properly, has the potential to put some more Republicans into office (if that’s your goal).

Finally, while Anderson is correct that Huckabee failed to reach beyond social conservatives (particularly evangelicals), I’m not convinced that this is because of his religious appeals as much as it was his perceived deviations from fiscal conservatism. Huckabee simply seemed like a continuation of the compassionate conservatism of George Bush, but with a more Southern Baptist-style. Many Republicans were tired of defending expansionist government programs. If government is going to grow by leaps and bounds, then at the very least let the other team be the ones to leap and bound.

In any event, Huckabee was never able to turn the corner, and would have probably gone down in flames much the same way as McCain did, though the debates might have been a little more entertaining.

The above points are not exhaustive of our agreement, and I’ll mention more as we go, but we’re about to part ways on some significant points, so now’s as good a place as any to close this post. We’ll pick it up again soon.