Rick Moran monitors the state of conservatism at CPAC:
Classic conservative principles are timeless; immutable tenets that have inspired great changes in government over the last 400 years and spoken passionately and plainly to the needs and hopes of ordinary people. Since the end of World War II, those classical principles have informed a devastating critique of the welfare state, presenting a reasoned and logical alternative to statism and dependency. Conservatism has stood for human liberty based on the fundamental idea of natural law; that from his first breath, man is born free.
But conservatism has gone off the rails, becoming in some respects a parody of itself. A philosophy that is all about honoring and conserving tradition while allowing for change that buttresses and supports important aspects of the past, has been hijacked by ideologues who brook no deviation from a dogma that limits rather than expands human freedom. Conservatism has become loud, obnoxious, closed-minded, and puerile, while its classical tradition of tolerance and hard-headed rationalism has been abandoned in favor of emotional jags and a vicious parochialism that eschews debate for “litmus tests” on ideological purity.
So, what does the right need to do to turn itself around after eight (or more ?) years wandering in the desert of George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” ?
The movement is seen as intolerant of gays, immigrants, and other non-white, non-middle class citizens — a perception that the Republican Party does little to counter and makes attacking conservatism on these issues extremely easy. When one of the stars of the conservative movement (and a CPAC speaker on Saturday), Ann Coulter, can get up in front of conservatives at the CPAC conference in 2007 and refer to Arabs as “ragheads” to loud applause, there is more to reform than just the message.
Until conservatives can practice some painful introspection, looking with a self-critical eye at the reasons for the debacles of 2006 and 2008, most in the movement will continue to delude themselves that simply reaffirming conservative love of small government, low taxes, and less regulation will be enough to convince a majority of Americans that they recognize their shortcomings and have changed their tune. There must be a reckoning with those who violate the very nature of conservatism by obstinately adhering to exclusionary, anti-intellectual precepts that have thrown classical conservatism over in favor of ranting, ideological tantrums.
Moran doesn’t seem to find any evidence that happening just yet, and if this or this is any indication, it’s going to be a long time in the wilderness.
