Conservatives Seek To Cultivate Next Generation Of Leaders
You’ve all read about how many conservatives are inching — and in some cases running — to the lifeboat as the Titanic Bush administration seemingly begins to sink.
But conservatives are hardly giving up and don’t consider the administration’s polls going down faster than my laptop as signifying the conservative movement’s actual end. To some conservatives, the Bush administration a)is not really conservative, b)has given conservatism a bad name and c)must not be allowed to destroy the movement nurtered by William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.
So they’re looking to encourage and cultivate a new generation of leaders. The Washington Times:
Conservatives are looking to revitalize their movement by trying to heal divisions in their coalition and finding younger leaders as the 2008 elections approach.
“We want to rebuild a conservative movement independent of the Republican Party and of George W. Bush — and to emphasize that it is a third force, not a third party,” said Phyllis Schlafly, 82, founder of the conservative Eagle Forum.
“The Democrats own the liberals, and the Republicans own the conservatives,” said Paul M. Weyrich, 64, president of the Free Congress Foundation and a longtime social conservative leader. He organized a recent “third-force” conservative summit attended by Mrs. Schlafly and about 180 other activists on the right.
“The modern conservative movement has always been a fusion of economic, national defense and religious conservatives who have banded together to fight for common interests,” said David A. Keene, 62, chairman of the American Conservative Union. “But today, the tension among those groups is greater than it has been in the past because of their disappointment with this generation of political leaders who they believe have let them down. We have achieved power but lost our unity in the process.”
And that is the crux of traditional conservatives’ complaints: the days of “He’d Rather Be Right Than Be President” have been replaced by “They’d Rather He Be President No Matter What It Takes Or No Matter What Positions Have To Be Tossed Overboard To Cling To Power.”
Former Reagan White House adviser Gary Bauer, 61, says conservatives must stick together because “those who believe in lower taxes, smaller government, a strong national defense, the sanctity of life and family values are still a governing majority in America.”
Several summit attendees suggested that Mr. Bauer is unduly optimistic. They say the 2006 elections and the competition for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination underscore significant divisions in the conservative movement, which have become especially apparent since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Religious conservatives, fuming at the support of many economic and defense conservatives for former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s presidential candidacy, say his nomination would be a “deal breaker” because of his liberal social views on abortion and other family issues. Some social conservatives say they hope former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee will emerge as the Reaganesque nominee who keeps the coalition together. But contentious disputes over foreign policy and immigration continue to tear at movement unity.
It won’t be easy for the conservatives.
They need to look at the internal wars among Democrats and liberals in the Vietnam and post-Vietnam era (an internal war that could break out again but is kept from exploding because the Democrats also now sniff a strong odor of potential power at the ballot box).
Attracting younger candidates by echoing the demonization kings Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh won’t do . It will be hard to get The Next Generation enthused if the pitch is simply “We are the non-Democrats and non-liberals.” The Rovian “hot button” politics may not be enough. Conservatism has to clearly stand for something — versus stand for preventing something.
A big task? It has been done (successfully) before.
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37 Responses to “Conservatives Seek To Cultivate Next Generation Of Leaders”
“We are the non-Democrats and non-liberals.â€
It’s not enough for France with respect to the USA.
It’s not enough for Canada with respect to the USA.
It’s not enough for Quebec with respect to the ROC.
It’s not enough for convervatives and Republicans, either, any more than with the Democrats when they are nothing but obstructionist and antagonistic in Congress (as they have been with Social Security) — only somewhat less bad than Bush has been toward Congress.
The sad thing is, the Right hosts those who are normal, traditional, authentic English-libertarian-heritage Americans, yet the Right does not do much to attract voters (it relies on liberalism and Democrats to repel better voters), even though the GOP has the potential to define itself as authentically American (A Democrat next to a US flag is still oxymoronic). Part of it is natural conservative “stuffiness” that is largely appreciated only with age, experience, and wisdom; the children of this country are firmly in the grip of the Democratic Party (and Greens) and liberalism, which continues to offer all kinds of exciting, seductive promises to the next generation of suckers (just ask the accountants managing the income stream of Noam Chomsky). Plus there is the delusional, dishonest crowd who sees victims and oppression everywhere, and naturally goes left and Democratic, our version of totalitarian nations’ decades-old-ever-ongoing “revolutions.”
Do voters really just want Republicans who are perfectly at home with an oversized Washington, happy to live there forever, and who are merely not as bad as the Democrats? We see this again with the GOP presidential candidates. Yuck. Democrats Lite! (We saw it in 1996 — Bob Dole. Yuck.)
Liberals have an advantage. They can at any time present themselves as optimists while characterizing conservatives as pessimists; liberals are positive, conservatives are negative — light versus dark, high versus low — it’s inaccurate and dishonest, but always natural and possible to claim.
It doesn’t help if conservatives don’t act clearly and intelligently to define what they are as well as what they offer!
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the conservative movement:
the Right hosts those who are normal, traditional, authentic English-libertarian-heritage Americans
The Reppublicans cannot recruit enough 20 somethings because any small goverment conservative intuitive knows that hispanics and blacks are never going to vote for Republicans. As long as the Democrats can give away more government goodies than the republicans, the Democratic Party will continue to grow and the Republicans will be buried under the demographic changes in the U.S.
Why would any middle class or upper middle class 20 something who has various options in front of them become interested in politics when the Democrats are trying to give the vote to ten’s of millions of Hispanic and Asian immigrants who will never vote Republican.
a) The Right is uncool;
b) The GOP is uncool;
c) Liberals and Democrats offer what youth wants, while conservatives (actually, non-liberals) and Republicans offer what their parents want.
*DING*
Children don’t defer gratification, but postpone the unpleasant as long as possible. Adults aren’t so fun; they defer gratification and face the unpleasant as soon as possible. Democrats are more fun than the GOP!
Rob several Peters to pay many, many more Pauls, and the Democrats get the votes of all those Pauls.
One thing remains from New Deal dinosaur times:
“We will tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect.”
At least, until limits to taxing and spending arrive.
That’s going to probably take another 10-20 years. We will probably go beyond traditional limits to federal government share of GOP (at a huge cost to the economy and to the major taxpayers’ well-being) while reducing growth of social-spending programs or even making absolute reductions (which will result in howls like you’ve never heard before). All this during a large-scale long-term sell-off of assets by Baby Boomers to finance their retirements (what isn’t taxed and given to others, that is), a big bear market. Should be interesting.
And what are the Republicans’ chances then, other than to appeal to the abused, ignored taxpayers?
The Republicans cannot recruit enough 20 somethings
To this very day, the liberal media typically arrange what was described decades ago by a frustrated conservative (immigrant from Europe — in favor of gun control, incidentally). The liberal point of view of something is presented by some young, attractive, articulate person. (The media also gives him or her most of the air time.) The conservative counterpart is played by some sour old buzzard…
I sometimes wonder if DLS has ever left the house or read a newspaper. Pandering spending programs are the sole hallmark of the Democrats? Really. There are facts in this world, and you may want to look at some tiny, inconvenient facts like the federal budget of the past six and a half years.
Conservatives Seek To Cultivate Next
Generation Of LeadersClonesMaybe if the old geezers, youngest mentioned is 62, embraced a Goldwater/Paul libertarian policies instead of what they pushed for the last eighteen years young voters would come to them. Ron Paul has support amongst the younger crowd. Jeb Bush married an hispanic and controlled the hispanic vote in his state. DLS, look up the CPAC videos with Ann Coulter, it was college Republicans that climaxed over her speech. Many of the staff at Reason are young, but to libertarian for the Schaffly’s and Dobson’s.
There is just not enough libertarisn not ever develop a majority party.
The real question for the Democrats is when are the blacks, hispanics and government employees unions tire of being in the same political part with the elite, prep school, Ivy leagued whites who want to tell everyone else want to do but not do it themselves. My guess that as soon as the U.S get close enough to being 50% non-white that the future Al Gore’s will not have any better a political future than the Republicans have now.
Jeb Bush really did not get the Hispanic vote. He, as most Republicans, got the Cuban vote despite, not because, of his mexican-american wife.
This is an illogical response to what I post here (at least if I choose to remain overly kind), but it’s a free country…
We all know the real liberal-conservative proportion on college campuses (including among the faculty).
Cubans aren’t hispanic? SD – “the elite, prep school, Ivy leagued whites” are both Republican and Demoncrats. The MSM is also populated by the same elite. Enough of the “limousine” strawman, name some working class Repug leaders.
The question to ask is why the GOP is ‘unpopular’ right now?
Is it because voters have nothing against the GOP per se, but are taking out their anger at Bush on the GOP as a whole? If so, then once the GOP sheds Bush, and the public no longer has a GOP whipping boy who is actually disliked more than Edwards, Hillary Clinton and the others, the GOP can expect voters to return to the fold. Maybe 2008 is too soon for voters to disassociate the GOP from Bush, but it ought to happen no later than 2010.
Or is it because voters dislike what the GOP espouses as a matter of policy, that the public no longer (if it ever did) goes for lower taxes, fewer regulations, strong national defense, etc., etc.? If this is the case, then the GOP needs to get itself a new act.
Or is it because the public likes GOP policy and values, but feels the current batch of GOP leaders have abandoned these values (insert reason here: misguided attempt to curry favor with liberals, inability to resist taking the spoils of power, pushing amnesty for illegal immigrants, etc.) and/or been so incompetent at implementing GOP values (Bush’s pathetic execution of the WOT, or his botching the Iraq conflict, for instance)? If this is the case, as I think might be, then the GOP needs to find new leaders who can be counted on to not only resist going ‘Washington’ (defined as trying to suck up to the Washington Post, unable to resist sucking money for pork and using the levers of power to enrich themselves, friends and contributors), but also to be somewhat competent in managing both domestic and foreign affairs.
For me, I sure hope it is the last (and to a lesser extent, the first) that accounts for the problems the GOP has. I’d sure hate to think the country has really gone the way the likes of Hillary and Edwards.
Rudi,
The last Republican speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, went to public universities and was a school teacher. The ten richest Senators are all Democrats.
Cubants are the only Hispanics who report Republican at anywhere near the 50% rate. And the Cubans who live in the U.S. are of European extraction. In demographics, Cubans are very different from all other Hispanics living in the U.S.
Democrats ran from the latter days of the LBJ administration, Republicans ran from the latter days of the Nixon administration, Democrats ran from Carter to elect Reagan, Republicans ran from GHW Bush to elect Clinton.
Anybody here over 35? Otherwise, the idea that an administration can indeed lose its natural philosophical constituency ought not to evoke the “oh-my-gawd” rhetoric evidenced in Joe’s lead-in.
But, the age cut does have ramifications for any “rebuilding” of a future conservative party (in the near future, at least) for the reasons alluded to above, as does the unwinding of strict social mores (even amongst today’s 50 year olds). Finding a 2008 candidate that can effectively bridge and coalesce these demographic and personal philosophy fissures is why Republicans look so scattered right now.
Nonetheless, it is easy on this blog to spot the left of center philosophites when there is incredulity expressed or implied over the flight from Bush II. If you were a fiscal conservative, you would have already understood for awhile and if you also happened to be socially conservative, it would now recently be the icing on the cake. Yes, call us fools for letting our concern for national security impair our better judgement for a long time. And perhaps he did use that concern to play us for the fools.
Republicans are indeed scrambling right now to find a coalescing platform while simultaneously trying to weed out false standard bearers. Better late than never is the best thing we get to say at this point.
Nonetheless, if we don’t do it in time for November 2008, then we will at least have the perverse joy of watching the Dems fracture during the Clinton II administration.
Superdestroyer was saying it was a specific, smaller sub-group, not a larger group. It wasn’t all Hispanics, but just Cubans that Jeb Bush targets (as its origin is those fleeing Castro’s revolution and they are largely conservative as well as anti-Castro). Hispanics aren’t just located in the Southwest any more; they are everywhere (not only citizens but legal and illegal aliens; it was fun in upstate New York joking with Central Americans about snow and ice in winter). But Florida is a special case. It isn’t the same, say, around New York metro, which is not limited only to Puerto Ricans from decades ago as well as the other Cuban community (one I visit whenever I can) in the USA of note. What you have in Florida is a special case and something of a conservative-Republican sacred cow.
Rudi:
look up the CPAC videos with Ann Coulter
The start of “Fahrenheit 9/11″ shows young GOP goons (woof-woof-woof-woof), but we know that the young are overwhelmingly liberal. They normally are anti-partisan, which is why so many “independents” are obviously young liberals; they just don’t want to declare themselves to be Democrats; it may be only somewhat less uncool than becoming Republicans to many of them. To anyone developing their own identity, it’s weird merely to copy what their parents did ages ago.
Take K. Ritter versus me, for example…
1. Hell, it may inject one last shot of life in Rush Limbaugh’s show before that guy retires or drops dead one day. (Can you imagine, given the lousy GOP field this time, what they’ll have to go though to end up in party-hack mode approaching next November? I haven’t listened to them in ages and don’t know if I want to, frankly.)
2. There will probably be another backlash as soon as Hillary lunges left following the taking of office.
Incidentally,
We are the true, classic liberals, but — liberalism abandoned us by the 1930s and began to attack us ferociously by the 1960s. Thank the Left for having us find if not actively seek shelter on the Right and for making the vision of a Democrat next to the US flag so often oxymoronic.
Mr. Steve asked:
Yes, the last. Note the difference between the elections in 2000-2002-2004 and the elections in 2006. It was mainly about Iraq but not only about Iraq; it was also about corruption and too much big-government behavior by the GOP in Washington.
“Take K. Ritter versus me, for example…”
Thanks, I think but seriously -who’d want to?
DLS – Would President Goldwater leave his vacation home in Arizona to sign a bill that tramples over state rights and small government(Schiavo)? Would President Teddy R reward Haliburton with blank checks or call them robber barons? The GOP is just as guilty as W, for being his enablers.
I hope they take the hint. I’d tire of losing even more than I do now.
And then perhaps they’ve just finally realized that even if the Republican policies were enacted it would be a disaster for huge sections of the population because few of their business friends are really that interested in the welfare of their employees.
Rudi:
No. (He’d repeal as much of the New Deal as he could, too.)
The latter, if not nowadays raid Halliburton and haul its officers before courts (or courts-martial in the case of war overseas).
I’d say they’re bad in and of themselves and that the reaction to that is what explains a lot of 2006 (in addition to tiring of Iraq).
This is true in the case of many businesses and their employees. Are cost savings merely pocketed by those on top, etc.
I’d like to see a Republican like Eisenhower win the presidency. He was one of our presidents who gets the least amount of attention from historians, but his decisions were always based on what he deemed was best for the country. He couldn’t be bought or intimidated. As time goes on, Ike gets more impressive.
Maybe its his military background, but Colin Powell has always reminded me somewhat of Eisenhower in his bearing and ideology. (no I don’t remember him personally, I’ve read about him recently, lol) It seems to me that we could use a nonpartisan like Ike.
Kim: I think it’s wrong, and a bit of a cheap shot, to ascribe to Presidents you don’t like that they were ‘bought or intimidated’. I give them all credit, including Bush II, and even Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, for doing what they thought was right for the country.
I believe Carter thought letting Khomeini take over would be good for America, as did Clinton when he chose not to resign over the Lewinsky affair, and just as Bush II thinks having Americans die to keep Iraqis from killing one another is good for America.
I happen to disagree, and think their policies have been very bad for America, and I’m fine with calling them stupid for thinking what they did… but I’m not prepared to call them corrupt.
Now, our Congressmen and Senators…. I’ve got no problem saying their names and the word corrupt in the same sentence.
stevesturm- did I name any presidents I don’t like? I never said thatI believed he was the only recent president who wasn’t corrupt. Eisenhower warned of the influence of the military industrial complex and I believe that our current government is under that influence- if you want to call it too much influence exerted by big donors, fine.
Its possible that the way we elect our politicians invites pressure from special interests and big donors. Eisenhower saw it coming and was able to resist it, and also to resist the pressure coming from his own party to end the Korean War.
DLS – LOL – We agree on those points. Talking about repealing the New Deal, how many know about Ron Paul monetary policies. Get rid of the Fed Reserve and bring back the gold standard. Some of the Libertarians policies would scare both the entrenched Repugs and Demonocrats. The storing food, SW radio and bunker mentality of the Libertarian Party is crazy, I guess I go for Ron Paul Lite…
The End of Dollar Hegemony
ABOLISH THE FEDERAL RESERVE
LOL I guess I’m only a social libertarian not a fiscal one- repealing the New Deal sounds too extreme for me. I like Ron Paul except for his fiscal policies.
Steve Sturm – I think Obama described what I think has happened to our government today- the executive branch is being used asa tool to reward well-connected partisans and to allow corporate lobbyists to write their own regulatory policy. There is almost no accountability for huge errors or for overcharging the taxpayers, and no bid contracts are now the norm. To me that means the administration has been bought and paid for.
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I’ve been a Republican voter for just over 25 years and I’ve grown completely sick of what conservatism has become. IMO, the social conservatives destroyed conservatism and the GOP. The whole idea of limited government is dead.
Instead of trying to limit the scope of government the social cons tried to actually corner the K-Street lobby which resulted in an unprecedented expansion of government. And with this President completely mismanaging the war any notion of conservative national security expertise has totally dissolved. All we’re left with is the stupid pro-life bullshit which I’m totally against. I’m with Goldwater, the government should stay the eff out of our personal lives.
My only hope is Rudy get’s the GOP nomination. He’ll be the only Republican who will get my vote in 2008. I’ll be damned if I’ll vote for a stereotyped caricature as in Fred Thompson.
The problem is that the GOP seems hell-bent on finding the next Ronald Reagan. They may nominate a cheap imitation and not notice his flaws in the process. Bush 43 was supposed to be the next Reagan, but the real one would be rolling in his grave at the comparison, lol.
I can’t say that I’d vote for Giuliani, though, because he seems to have some unsavory connections and also has a strong authoritarian streak. We need someone who won’t give Congress the middle finger-unlike now.
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