Take that Colin Powell!
You can tell that former Vice President Dick Cheney isn’t on the same wavelength with former Secretary of Defense Colin Powell by a bit of news that’s breaking that in a sense is…not news. Earlier this week, Powell argued that the GOP needs to reach out and offer a more moderate face to voters which provoked an angry response from a man Cheney has called a good friend, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh..
And so there’s now this (non) news making the rounds of the Internet and mainstream media: former Vice President Dick Cheney, in an interview to (what else?) a conservative talk radio host, says the party should not moderate itself:
Former Vice President Dick Cheney is weighing into the heated internal debate over the future of the Republican Party, declaring it would be a mistake for the GOP to “moderate.”
“This is about fundamental beliefs and values and ideas … what the role of government should be in our society, and our commitment to the Constitution and constitutional principles,” Cheney said in an interview with North Dakota radio host Scott Hennen Thursday, according to a transcript.
“You know, when you add all those things up, the idea that we ought to moderate basically means we ought to fundamentally change our philosophy,” Cheney also said. “I for one am not prepared to do that, and I think most of us aren’t. Most Republicans have a pretty good idea of values, and aren’t eager to have someone come along and say, ‘Well, the only way you can win is if you start to act more like a Democrat.'”
In one sense, Cheney’s point is well taken — if the party and Republicans had to jettison its ideals to be more moderate. But that’s a straw man argument: The GOP could keep its conservative principles intact and — at the same time — talk in terms that shows it respects those who may not agree with it partially or at all and welcome others under the GOP umbrella. Demonization and ridicule do not coalitions make: Conservatives are now being done in by an escalation in over-the-top, exclusionary, throwing-down-the-gauntlet rhetoric that short-circuits any hope of the party building new coalitions.
Most news and blog pieces on this story focus on Cheney’s comments, moderation in general, and the battle for the ailing GOP’s political soul. But the fact is that Dick Cheney has been on the same wavelength as polarizing, mega-partisan talk show hosts since he was in office, often using them to bypass mainstream news media that clamored for interviews. It was natural that he would consider talk show hosts kindred spritits, since he shares their concept of conservatism — and, often, their style of rhetoric.
But the news and blog stories miss a second part of this story: the tug-of-war between the Cheney concept of the GOP (as a tent that needs to grow no bigger but only needs to better explain what’s inside so others flock to it and then a new tent can be ordered) and the Powell concept of the party (as the need to build a bigger tent and convince others through the power of argument and coalition building to come inside and fill it).
The third part of this Cheney story is that it again underscores the kind of tug-of-war that likely went on within the Bush administration with the more dogmatic, inflexible Cheney versus the more flexible less dogmatic Powell. In the end Cheney won and the country was better off for it.
Who will the GOP listen to? From all indications right now…Cheney. Cheney is now so far down in the polls that he needs to start worrying about sniffing dogs. Powell remains one of the most respected figures in the United States.
In the end, the GOP’s choice will be whether to continue to follow the Baby Boomers with their entrenched-in-cement ideas on Republicanism and angry resentments of those who differ with them, or to follow younger leaders — or, at least, leaders who aren’t mired down with the Baby Boomer hubris that Dick Cheney represents. Bigtime.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.