Jeffrey Hart, a former National Review Contributor and speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, says that the GOP must acknowledge the modern world if it is going to survive:
A major– perhaps insoluble – problem conservatives face is that the aggressive “social conservatism” of the Republican base and its activists does not appeal to moderates and independent voters.
It is no good conservatives trying to revive Ronald Reagan, for whom I used to write speeches. Historians may rate Reagan as a near-great president. But our problems now are different from the ones he addressed. And “supply-side economics” is now widely recognized as nonsense. Let me try to advise them on how to rediscover a Republican party that is both viable and electable.
Hart goes on to list what the GOP should do to change:
First, the Republican party must distance itself from evangelicalism as the policy preferences of evangelicals have only minority support. In 2000, Bush received 70 percent of the white evangelical vote, this becoming the indispensable base of the Bush Republican party.
America separates church and state by constitutional right: people can worship as they please in church, synagogue or mosque, which often have differing policy views. But public policy must be justified by fact and result, not by one or another religious doctrine.
This is something I’ve believed for awhile. Social conservatism may work in the South, but it doesn’t work in the Northeast or the West (anyone remember when California used to be a reliably Republican state ?), and as this year’s election showed, it’s a non-starter for voters in the middle for whom the economy is more important.
Moreover, this year showed us that even when public opinion on a social issue is in tune with the GOP’s social conservatism, it doesn’t translate into votes for Republican candidates. The gay marriage ban won in California quite decisively. John McCain lost California even more decisively.
Second, science today, empirically based, has great authority because of its manifold achievements, from the interior of the molecule and the human cell to the age of the universe (13.7 billion years). Therefore science also has cultural authority
(…)
Bush blocked federal funding for embryonic stem cell research and advocated teaching intelligent design along with evolution. Teaching intelligent design? Where? Biology class? Not since the 1920s has evolution been a subject of political controversy. Astonishing. Now it is controversial again because we are in what historians describe as the third evangelical awakening.
Even though I generally oppose federal funding of scientific research, I opposed Bush’s ban on embryonic stem cell research because it was based on religious dogma rather than scientific merit. If the government is going to fund scientific research, its decisions should be based on scientific merit not public pressure.
Third, both Bushism and movement conservatism forgot the founder of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke, who understood abstract (republican) theory as the basis for revolution in France, but also understood historical force of social change, as in the famous passage from Thoughts on French Affairs (1791), celebrated by Matthew Arnold:
If a great change is to be made in human affairs, the minds of men will be fitted to it; the general opinions and feelings will grow that way . . . and those who persist in opposing it will appear rather to resist the decrees of Providence itself than the mere designs of men.
As Hart notes, the GOP has turned into a party that seems intent on using the power of the state to stop social change, rather than adapting to it.
Fourth, Burke and Leo Strauss are the indispensable conservative political philosophers and should guide the leaders of any form of modern conservatism. But the immediate paradigm for the revival of the Republican party should be the successful presidency of Dwight Eisenhower. I doubt Eisenhower studied much political philosophy at West Point, but he was a fact-based prudent realist, as any successful general must be: matching means with ends, making risk calculations, etc.
In 1953 Eisenhower ended the Korean war with a nuclear threat against Beijing, built the nuclear-powered navy and brought forward the unstoppable Polaris missile, initiated the U-2 spy-plane flights, began to build the interstate highway system, and also balanced the budget three times. He certainly would not have trapped an American army in Mesopotamia. He was practical, solid, and surely a near-great president.
Domestically, I’m not certain that Ike was as great as Hart makes him out to be, but on the foreign policy side it’s fairly clear that the former General of the Army was quite adept at guiding America through what may have been the most dangerous period of the Cold War. Republicans would do well to study and learn.
Unlike Hart, I doubt that the GOP will go the way of the Federalists or Whigs if it fails to adapt immediately. More likely, it will enter a state of near-permanent minority status during which someone will arise to lead it back to it’s founding principles. Judging from the immediate reaction to Obama’s victory from some corners of the party, though, I think it’s going to be a long, cold winter.
