The Threats to Conservatism
by Patrick Ruffini :: August 16th, 2007 9:35 amPatrick Hynes has written a significant piece on the future of conservatism that’s sure to spark vigorous debate and get a lot of attention. I disagree with a lot of Pat’s analysis, but think this kind of spirited conversation about the movement is long overdue. Since coming to D.C. in 2001, I’ve retained a healthy skepticism of the inside-the-Beltway “movement” (a/k/a “the groups”). On the ideas front, the Reagan and Bush II administrations got to implement more than most, leaving the cupboard of emerging conservative ideas relatively bare. By contrast, there is a reason that liberalism’s energy isn’t spent, and it’s that Bill Clinton didn’t get anything done as President (in terms of legislative passage of his signature priorities).
Pat thinks the conservative brand is broken — from Iraq to immigration to the Michael Gerson critique of conservatism on compassion/”mercy”. I think he’s saying that conservatives need to be more flexible and tolerate some dissent within their ranks — except on abortion, where we are too promiscuous in tolerating Romneyite pandering. Speaking as Pat’s former adversary, the Ryan Sager attack is bogus, but it definitely looks like Pat’s analysis is colored by his personal experience with the base’s utter rejection of John McCain.
Whatever the way out of this is, I don’t think the answer is being Democrat Lite. That may sound cliched or Kos-like, but as any good operative knows (and Pat is one) once you start letting the other guys dictate the terms of the debate, you lose. It’s one thing to critique the botched execution of Iraq. It’s another to adopt the liberal frame that conservatives are out to screw the little guy, especially when the Federal Budget has lacked for nothing these last few years, and “tax cuts for the richTM” worked. Conservatism is going to have to find a way to address different types of challenges (outlined below) — but do so in a way that’s radically different than the left.
Pat also read the Economist leader on “Is America turning left?”, and the situation they depict is a bleak one. There are a whole bunch of cyclical reasons I believe we are at a 1968-like point in our political history, and Hillary is Nixon. I won’t delve too deeply into those here, but I think this a time when history is sending out clear warning signals, and there is still time to heed these lessons to avoid a complete Carter-like meltdown in 2016 or 2020.
With that said, what are the immediate threats to the center-right majority that I’m most worried about. Some of them track with Pat’s, some of them differ.
Conservative Hostility to Immigration in an Increasingly Diverse Nation. I disagreed with the Senate immigration deal. I think you can do a guest worker program without a pathway to citizenship (they are coming here to work, not vote). I think you can build the fence as a security measure without alienating the Latino vote, provided you communicate a basic openness towards the Latino community that President Bush projected masterfully in the 2000 campaign.
The problem is it’s too late. The time to do a deal on immigration that defused these tensions was three years ago, not now. The Administration went way out on a limb for extreme regularization, hoping to lead the party there, when they should have gone for achievable objectives that also gave serious conservatives like Duncan Hunter what they really wanted (basic enforcement). Instead, we now have the Tancredoites baying for mass deportation and buying into groups that are not only anti-illegal immigration, but anti-population and anti-growth, funded by radical environmentalists like John Tanton. And we have exposed an entire generation of Latino voters to this message, erasing whatever hard-earned gains we might have achieved. There was an enforcement-first road that could have worked, but it was not taken.
Ours is a changing society. 25% of the population over 40 is a member of a minority group. That number for those under-40 is 40%. 46% of the children born in the U.S. last year were non-white.
The fact alone is not a problem for conservatives. What is is that we increasingly have to find votes among groups that traditionally vote against us by 2-to-1 margins or more, and that task will be harder because of how the immigration debacle played out. Karl Rove made the not unreasonable calculation that it’s better to have 40% to 45% of a larger, immigrant-heavy Hispanic vote than it is to have 30% of a smaller, immigration-restricted Hispanic vote — and whether any act of Congress can keep it “small” for long is a dubious proposition. One may take issue with how they tried to go about implementing it, but that was the rationale.
So what is conservatism’s message for a multiracial nation? It seems to me there is a greater opportunity for a positive message of assimilation. The old identity politics are breaking down before our eyes. The inner cities that Mike Gerson built a worldview around are literally disappearing. African Americans are moving to the suburbs, and becoming middle class. Hispanics have shown that they behave more like swing voters if you treat them as such. (We bounced back nicely from our post-187 21% showing in ‘96.) Minorities are becoming more independent, and interwoven into the fabric of American society. That should create new opportunities for Republicans, if we remain the party that represents the hope of upward mobility.
The Young Voter Issue Matrix. Pat takes issue with my leaving of social issues on Agenda 2.0. That was partly an oversight on my part, but it’s also true that the contours of those issues are already pretty well defined. No one is going to figure out a clever new idea on gay marriage. That’s pretty much a black and white issue.
Over the short and intermediate term, social issues will continue to work for the Republican Party. Long term, I have questions. The trendlines are good on one and only one issue: abortion. And that’s because of technology, specifically the ultrasound machine. Things don’t look so great on one of the other triad issues, marriage. We already have de jure gay marriage in Massachusetts and de facto gay marriage in a growing number of blue states including New Jersey. And once established, gay marriage is very difficult to rescind. Within 20 years, most states with marriage amendments will have some form of judicially-imposed civil unions (which even President Bush supports). And public opinion will follow. People my age and younger have no problem with gay marriage — and when these voters hit 45 and 50, that changes the equation. The numbers for stem cell, on the other hand, are already awful.
Ironically, the issue set Pat is suggesting we hang our hat on is arguably the one with the earliest expiration date. (Perhaps that’s because he wrote the book on it.) There is no doubt that the religious right provides a lot of the enthusiasm and manpower for the Republican Party at election time. That was certainly the case in 2004, and will continue to be the case for the foreseeable future. But in his post, and in a few places in his book, Pat seems to endorse jettisoning issues with more long term promise to keep the religious part of the base happy in the short run. In a couple different places in his book, In Defense of the Religious Right, Pat channels the Christian Right’s anger with the Bush White House for putting Social Security reform before a marriage amendment. It’s just this sort of — what’s the term? — identity politics that sabotages the movement. Social Security reform was our chance to lock in a generation for the notion that individual responsibility beats collectivism every time. It was a play for the future, for the same kind of generational sway that FDR or Reagan had. But by not advancing the idea seriously enough we decided to pander to the old vote, just like we did on Medicare Part D. And it was clear that the Republican coalition was not “all in” for transformational reform — choosing instead to advance their pet issues.
The War. There is no doubt that our biggest short term problem is the war — specifically Iraq. It is the meta problem without which the “competence” critique would not exist, without which the economy would appear to most Americans to be doing as well as it actually is, without which overall confidence levels would be 20 points higher, and without which President Bush would enjoy approval ratings over 50%.
I’m not sure how much this problem extends to the broader GWOT, as Pat contends. Soren Dayton has done a bang-up job in the last few days of demonstrating that there is a grassroots pro-national security majority in Congress. The Blue Dogs are being successfully cross-pressured on stuff like FISA and the war supplemental. Remember: this is a war whose leading exponent is a President with 35% approval ratings. Any time his positions are embraced by a bare plurality, as is the case on FISA/Gitmo/GWOT issues, that’s 30 points better than his approval spread. Think how much success a new pro-war President would have with these issues, without the same Iraq baggage.
Health Care. I’ll put in a plug for health care. This is an issue I strongly feel conservatives need to come to grips with and own. Trends that favor us overall, namely the rise of small business, self-employment, and the eBayization of the economy, are also leading to the breakdown of the employer-based health insurance system, and leading entrepreneurial voters (that’s our voters) to scramble for health insurance. The solution, at least in large measure: Deregulate health insurance, just like we did the airlines.
Global Warming. There needs to be a cogent conservative response to climate change that’s not small ball stuff like lowering the thermostat two degrees and driving a Prius. That’s all nice, but even the experts would agree this does nothing to stop the existing buildup of greenhouse gases that’s more than to do the predicted damage. How about an Apollo-like project to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere, funded privately? (The hardcore enviros would hate it because it keeps Hummers on the road a few more years.)
Tagged: conservatism 
movement
Comments (21) 
Trackbacks (10) 
del.icio.us 
digg it 
subscribe
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
This, from someone who once called Puerto Ricans “immigrants” (and, no, it wasn’t a typo).
First, your support for massive numbers of “guests” is what they do in Germany and Saudi Arabia, and those aren’t exactly models we should be following.
And, since most Americans - with slightly larger percentages among Republicans - support our immigration laws, aren’t GOP politicians going to have to always pander to them? Won’t that conflict with their pandering to my-race-first Hispanics? If Hispanics “traditionally vote against us by 2-to-1 margins or more”, isn’t any further Hispanic immigration only going to make it even more difficult for Republicans to get elected in many areas, no matter how they pander? Won’t they always be underbid by the Dems?
And, even with your in-depth knowledge of this issue, are you sure there’s a “Latino vote”?
And, Tancredo doesn’t support mass deportations, and there aren’t any well-known leaders who support that either.
Bush’s “openness” to the “Latino community” included small things like waving a Mexican flag, making questionable comments in various speeches (like the one here: freerepublic.com/~raybbr), Rove pandering to the extremist-funding National Council of La Raza (”The Race”), and Bush even making a pledge to the Mexican government and the Mexican people. I guess he’s a new type of “conservative”.
Tell us more about those Puerto Rican immigrants, please.
After reading Hynes’s piece, I was ready to check reservations on Quantas.
One problem the social conservatives have is they project an image of dourness and despondency at unwelcome social changes. And Hynes certainly is dour.
I think a majority of Americans do not want a liberal social agenda forced upon them, but we need to be perceived as “conserving” the positive values of society, not perceived as imposing our own wedge issues upon folks.
Only one point in the ’save the endangered conservative’ recipe is enough to show how serious the right wing is: ‘An Apollo-like program to suck the CO2 out of the air, funded privately.” HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH!!!!
Wonderful. Didn’t you write for Seinfeld?
Demographic suicide, not only of the Republican party, but of America itself. On the watch of these RINO traitors, Americans has lost a continent 400 years in the winning. You are dreaming if you think a Brazil-del-Norte of tax-eaters is ever going to vote for genuine conservatism. “Conserving” is the key. Why would they want to conserve something which was never theirs to begin with, and that they have a deep-down resentment of?
Talk about an exercise in wishful thinking. If you have any doubt about how the Republican base feels about serious immigration reform read some of the postings on this site. The fact is, as the Economist points out with breathtaking clarity, the Republican party has got itself on the wrong side of just about every major issue of the day. Global warming, it’s a hoax. Stem cell research, a moral wrong. Immigration, arrest all illegals immediately. Income inequality, but the stock markets up x percent. Healthcare angst, the market will take care of it. Do I have to go on. Add to this that Bush has effectively destroyed the Republican brand’s traditional claims to managerial competence and fiscal probity, and you have a perfect storm. Given demographic changes, it is blindingly obvious that the GOP is going to have to tack back to the middle. Ruffini almost but can’t quite bring himself to admit it. Hynes more or less does. Implicit in this of course is the fact that the last six years of almost total Republican governance have be a considerable failure. The problem is that accepting this is going to be an exceedingly messy process because the party is essentially in the control of people who don’t want to tack back to the center. Even worse, again as illustrated by many of the comments above, they seem to have neither self doubt nor any interest in reflection or self criticism. This makes it probable the GOP is going into a very bleak period in its history. I have little doubt that barring an event, some conservative clowns are openly discussing how the party could be saved by another terrorist attack, the Democrats are going to achieve a landslide victory next year. The desire to turn the page on all things Bush and that includes the GOP is almost universal in my every day experience. And btw I’m a long time Republican voter.
It’s difficult to ignore the racist undertones in JM’s comment.
I’m just calling it as I see it. The vast majority of the opposition to CIR is not racist at all, and is rooted in post-9/11 security concerns. I’m generally pro-immigrant, but 9/11 has definitely changed a lot about how I look at the issue.
But opposing immigration writ large because you don’t want more brown people is something that simply has no place in the Republican Party.
Ironically, America has faced this exact situation before. The country was swamped by a sea of Irish, then Italian, immigrants in the late 19th century. As improbable as it seems now, the European immigrants of the 19th century were viewed as foreigners whose culture was utterly incompatible with ours. Like Hispanics, Italians spoke a different language, were Catholics, and despite a Christian, European lineage, came from a home country whose culture was rife with corruption and didn’t always govern itself very well. At the time, the mainstream culture worried about whether these immigrants could assimilate.
Today, the descendants of these immigrants are wholly, 100% American. They are just as Republican as the general population. The “home country” is just a distant abstraction for them. I’d suggest Thomas Sowell’s Ethnic America and Michael Barone’s The New Americans for some excellent background on this.
John, thanks for the concern troll comment. Somehow I doubt you were ever a Republican, or a conservative.
Might I suggest for all those urging us to run to the left of where Bill Clinton was in his second term, perhaps we ought to see how badly David Cameron gets whooped by Gordon Brown when Gordo calls a snap election across the pond….
Compare how he does to Nick Sarkozy
Certain industries do better then others in terms of regulation. Further privatization of the health care industry would be a bad move. Treating patients like consumers isn’t fair to the patient or anyone who works in the health care industry. Why would we ask a patient to question a doctor’s medical decision concerning their care via concerns of cost and coverage for treatment and anything else that may be discovered in the doctor’s office. Knowing the terms of one’s health coverage is a non-answer in that it reads like a 300 page legal text. The other option is for the patient to make consumer decisions while in the doctor’s office, asking for price tags before care is given, this could undermine the entire heatlh care system. If this occured on a regular basis, it would anger many who work in the health care profession and compromise the patients care.
A doctor is in a notable position of power over it’s patient, that relationship has to be a smooth as possible. For this reason, a patient is going to be highly reluctant to openly question a doctor’s decision via cost. If a patient drills a doctor about the necessity of a procedure, it could also create resentment in the doctor towards the patient and ruin the relationship, if this happens on a large enough scale it could ruin the entire industry. Also, you’d need a system in place to deliver price tags to patients while in the doctor’s office. On top of it, if a medical procedure is needed, the patient is going to agree to it regardless of the cost. In such a situation, the patient, as a consumer, is powerless and all the power in the relationship is in the hands of whoever is providing the insurance.
With these few reasons, and many more unmentioned, a market based system for health care, and further deregulation, would only marginalize the power of the patient/consumer even more.
There are very clear reasons why other OECD countries get better results with there health care systems while costing much less, while having less GDP per person to pay for it as well. We need an efficient health care system, ours clearly is not. Investing in the american people is the best investment we can make in our own economy.
Mr Ruffini,
Are you calling me a liar. I’m a retired banker, I’ve voted Republican for years, my family has been Republican for generations, most of my friends are Republicans, and most of them like me think the Republican party has been wrecked by a bunch of idealogues who place ideology above fiscal probity, sensible management, a realistic foreign policy and basic commonsense. I suggest you base your assumptions on facts and not suppositions.
I’m sorry Patrick but pandering to the left is not why I am a conservative, or why I signed on to the revolution in 1980. The problem with the party is that there are too many multi-term Arlen Spector types that torpedo our agendas and our younger conservatives (you) want to pander to far to the left and THEIR issues instead of changing the argument.
Green conservativism is a Teddy Roosevelt idea. We need to latch onto that tenant without attaching the need to debate about bogus Global Warming debate. Take a page from Newt Gingrich’s playbook and say yes, we agree that temperatures have trended upwards and we care about our planet. But our idea is incentive based to change behaviors, not tax based.
Healthcare is another area to take the high ground when discussing the options of how we move to a citizen based insurance that follows the citizen with choice.
We need to reshape the arguments that are formented by the MSM and the ‘elites’ and challenge that thinking to fit the capitalist model.
Look at the polls and you’ll see conservatives stand for what the majority of people believe.
-nation under God in the pledge…Big majority
-illegal aliens, not made citizens…Big majority
You think in a general campaign, when everyone is paying attention and Hillary starts giving the juicy details to how she’s going to raise taxes, ala Mondale she’s gonna win?
I doubt that VERY much. Americans need the solutions packaged to how we are going to deal with fixing the bureacracy and I hope Fred Thomson can come out after labor day and show he’s ready to lead this party back to the majority, We’ll see…
Patrick, I know you’re trying to have a sensible debate. But look above. See what I mean.
Obviously we are going to need to jettison much of our congressional “leadership” if we are going to become a party of “fiscal probity” once again.
I also wonder if Patrick Hynes explained why it was prudent to drop SS reform in spring ‘05 to spend a month on the Terri Schiavo issue?
So much of what the two Pats say is right on the mark, but where to start? A friend of mine who studies immigration politics carefully says the Republicans face real trouble in a couple of states, FL, AZ, NM, and CO (not to mention California, which we write off, along with New York every four years). Because of the high degree of racism/nativism, fueled by people by Tanton, we’ve probably lost the Hispanic vote for a long, long time, and that means those states I mentioned are gone for good. There are 45 million legal Hispanics in the U.S., and they are the fastest growing minority group. Why should they, or the other 55 million minorities in the U.S., vote for Republican conservatives? Hillary Clinton won New York twice in landslides. Remember New York? It’s the state that gave us James Buckley (Bill’s brother)as a U.S. Senator. The next Republican Senator (yes, James ran as a Conservative, I know) from New York or California (or lots of other states) hasn’t even been born yet. When a much-praised blogger on Townhall told me every country south of the border was a “cesspool,” I told him to stop. But of course no one stopped. When Bobby Inglis of SC said we were in danger of becoming an American version of a South African apartheid Party, nobody listened. There is NO poll data showing that a majority of Americans are opposed to decent, humane immigration reform. ORC said that the hard core opposition to the Senate proposal was 30%. Forty-seven percent supported either the proposal or something more “liberal.” I have been in the conservative movement since the 1960s and wrote for National Review and other publications almost before the movement existed. I’ve never seen it this bad. I’ve never seen so many ideologues who are acting precisely like the Gadarene swine. Good luck Patrick. You’ll find that telling these truth at this point in history will earn you a lot of animosity. Come commiserate with me: http://camp2008victorya.blogspot.com/
steve maloney
ambridge, pa
In a recent Economist article (other than the one mentioned), they talked about the Hispanic vote in California. In the early 90s, Pete Wilson got 47% of the Hispanic vote and Diane Feinstein got 51%. After Wilson’s anti-immigrant moves, the vote has paraceled out to roughly two-thirds Dem. and one-third Republican (unless you’re Arnold S.). In some elections, it’s worse. Now, after the immigration debacle, with the Dems supporting reform and getting no negative consequences, we’ll be lucky to get 20% of the Hispanic vote in CA — and those votes will be from people who aren’t paying attention. Hispanics generally are family-oriented, Christian (Catholic and evangelical), and hard-working. They should be voting Republican, but almost none of them will. I tell my conservative brethren this; I cite statistics; I talk about the criticality in many important states of the Hispanic vote. What I get back is a glassy-eyed look. It’s creepy. We’ve done this before, with the Black vote. Nixon got 32% of that vote against JFK. Then, Goldwater (very wrongly and stupidly) opposed the Civil Rights Act. Now, we get regularly our 6-7% of the Black vote. We’re even starting to lose evangelicals (as per the 2006 election). In politics, you win elections by making people feel more secure and generally more satisfied with their lives. Hello? We’ve stopped doing those things. Instead, we sharpen our ideology and start calling people like Jon Kyl “RINOs.” I see Tom Tancredo drawing 4% of Republicans in CO and Hunter getting less than that in CA, but that seems to escape the notice of the absolutists, who insist that we’re not “conservative” enough. What exactly do they have in mind? The Third Reich as a model? A large gaggle of angry white males — aka “The Base” — is not a political movement.
steve maloney
I am glad to see fellow Republicans understand how the anti-immigrant wing of the GOP is destroying our party. We can debate back and forth the merits of specific policies, the war, etc. But no one is listening. Most people, when they feel threatened vote tribally, and Latinos now see the GOP as a hostile tribe bent on punishing immigrants for having the audacity of wanting to be Americans.
The balkanization of America is at this point irreversible. Race/culture-based interests trump almost all others. Hispanics will do as blacks have done for decades. They will vote for their racial/ethnic interests and white America, the country I grew up in, can be damned. Indeed, more and more it seems my beloved America is no longer even a country - just some kind of giant plantation.
JM had it right, the slow descent into a Brazil-like dowager empire will continue. And, I very much agree with Thomas Sowell when he said he wonders if the only solution at this point is a military coup. Sad to say, but the corruption and decay is so deep, so entrenched, that I fear a 10-year “housecleaning” is the only way back. Left alone it is going to get much worse. Get ready! The recent mortgage crisis is just the appetizer.
Think about it! Who’s going to save us? Who’s going to lead the Renaissance of our “shining city on a hill”. Immigrants? Media? Black America? Politicians? – they are the root of the problem, corrupt to the core. Am I the only one who sees what’s happening? It’s Rome all over again, just speeded up to Internet time.
I left the States over 3 years ago and am quite happy living in a country where I can walk the streets at night without surveillance cameras and bodyguards (police) on every street corner. Around me are people who look and act like me, which I can say quite unashamedly, makes me feel comfortable and safe. It’s a place where diversity doesn’t equal strength, where people understand that race equals culture, and that multiculturalism is a sham bringing only slow motion chaos. Go ahead, call me a racist! If ethnic self-interest makes me a racist, than I am definitely not alone.
Patrick,
I revisited this morning to see where the discussion went. Maloney/Malanga’s comments about the Hispanic vote are entirely relevant. Of course most Americans want proper border security but they also recognize that with around 12 million immigrants here, many cutting their lawns, painting their houses, picking their tomatoes, etc. the round them all up and send them home simplicities of people like Tancredo are absurd. I seem to remember reading or perhaps it was seeing Gigot from the WSJ essentially recognizing that a large part of the nativist wing of the GOP’s reaction to immigration reform was “cultural.” Now you can put whatever construction on that you want but some of the above postings give a fair indication of what he meant.What there is no doubt about is the electorally damaging outcome for the Republican party.
Another interesting unintended consequence of the polarization strategy of the past 15-20 years is it’s impact on the upper middle classes. These are generally smart, pragmatic, well educated and succesful people many of whom live in the suburbs. The simplicities of religious fundamentalism and OTT nationalism are questionable to many of these people because they recognize that the world is much more complex than the believers in these oversimplifications realize. They also abhor incompetence, recognize govt is here to stay and want it managed well and frugally. Instead they are dismissed as elitists and RINO’s as if a Republican president who went to Andover, Yale, Harvard and is the fifth generation of old money wasn’t also an elitist. That’s why the GOP is losing the burbs and VA will probably become a blue state. There’s a theory out there that people aren’t paying attention to the Gonzales matter. That’s wrong in my opinion based on the reaction of a few succesful lawyer friends and relations of mine. They were appalled at the legal mediocrities that have come creeping out of the woodwork at the DOJ. These kids who went to third rate law schools wouldn’t have been able to jobs with top law firms like Sullivan and Cromwell, or Debevoise, but all of a sudden they are senior staffers in the admin or DOJ on the basis of their party loyalty or cronyism. There’s a name for it. Brownie-ism. The GOP’s predicament is an interesting topic but I’m not sure you’ll get far with it. As I pointed out originally there’s not a lot of introspection around. Have fun, time for breakfast.
I would concur the Gonzalez mess has hurt the GOP in the legal community but I doubt graduates of second and third tier law schools like me wanted to see Cravath Swain wannabees running Justice either….there are pleanty of competent folks out there…but for whatever reason were not hired…and don’t doubt the career Justice folks ran rings around the folks who were.
I’m not sure immigration hurts in the burbs, many of whom see little Marmaronecks of day laborers camping near the hardware store….hardline non-yahoos like Shays and Gerlach won races they were supposed to lose and were against open borders. Watch the Democrats….notice those facing the voters in ‘08 dropped CIR like a bad habit at the first opportunity….why would we want to be stuck defending an issue they would not defend?
Unfortunately our party doesn’t sound or look like upwardly mobile northern suburbia these days. Appearances matter. And we are not appearing
OK, Frank. I’ll bite. You’re a racist. And you’ve demonstrated–with that hair-trigger knee jerkism so characteristic of your type–the accuracy of Mr. Ruffini’s comments regarding the nativist wing of the GOP.
John, Gus, and others demonstrate that the Republican Party consists of more than a bunch of nativist Mexican-haters and evangelicals meditating on the Biblical necessity (Proverbs, you know) of hitting children with wooden spoons. Patrick Ruffini mentioned the name “Tanton” in his piece. I urge all the sane people in the GOP to Google this man and find out exactly what kind of hate-monger he is — and what a key role he and his ilk played in the CIR debate. I’d like it very much if people of good will e-mailed me (or visited my blog and left a comment) so we can continue the process of rebuilding the Republican Party on a sustainable basis. If we hand it over to the Townhall and Tanton characters, it will become the world’s smallest third party. My e-mail address is: TalkTop65@aol.com. A very important blog that deals regularly with the immigrant-haters, including Mr. Tanton, is Cindy’s PinkFlamingo at blogharbor.com/ She directed me to Patrick’s fine article.
steve
Ok Phil, while you’re biting, take a moment and bite on this:
The U.S. breaking down in every possible way, communities falling apart physically and culturally, a bloated corrupt government, oceans of money
squandered on a war no one wants, debt at every level from here to the moon, prisons overflowing, hospitals closing, empty factories,
and borders that aren’t borders, surrounding a country that isn’t a country.
I’ll say it again. The game is over. Read the David Walker article. He is spot on with his analysis.
“declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal
irresponsibility by the central government”.
Now add in the racial/ethnic correlations (for most taboo) and you have the “decline and fall of the American Empire”.
But please, continue to rearrange the deck chairs. Ignore Putnam, Tanton, and all the rest. The smart money has already headed for the exits.
[…] I am flattered and encouraged that people like Matt Lewis, Patrick Ruffini, Soren Dayton and Jim Geraghty have all read and responded seriously to my long and—okay, I’ll admit it—overly emotional blog post about the state of the conservative movement. (And I’m also flattered that Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Sullivan linked to the piece, too!) […]
[…] UPDATE: Patrick Ruffini and I are on similar pages… The time to do a deal on immigration that defused these tensions was three years ago, not now. The Administration went way out on a limb for extreme regularization, hoping to lead the party there, when they should have gone for achievable objectives that also gave serious conservatives like Duncan Hunter what they really wanted (basic enforcement). Instead, we now have the Tancredoites baying for mass deportation and buying into groups that are not only anti-illegal immigration, but anti-population and anti-growth, funded by radical environmentalists like John Tanton. And we have exposed an entire generation of Latino voters to this message, erasing whatever hard-earned gains we might have achieved. There was an enforcement-first road that could have worked, but it was not taken. […]
[…] The threats to Conservatism […]
[…] The Threats to Conservatism By Patrick Ruffini […]
[…] Hillary is Nixon? These guys have got it sooo backwards. They’re letting party labels get in the way of clear thinking. Certainly this election has parallels with 1968, but not the obvious ones. Have I not said so myself? But the labels have shifted. […]
[…] I’ve stayed surprisingly silent the past few days about Peter Bienart’s most recent column, which insulted my employer and trashed the conservative movement. While I’ve been busy planning to take over the world, some of my friends in the conservative blogosphere (Soren Dayton, Patrick Hynes, Matt Lewis and Patrick Ruffini) have engaged in a rather spirited debate about the state of our movement. I’m going to hold off writing anything at the moment (mostly because I’m exhausted after a long week), but I do want to say that I’m pleased to see conservative bloggers having this important conversation. Posted at 12:27 AM in Conservatism Save to Del.icio.us Share on Facebook […]
[…] The Economist has penned a must-read piece on the twilight of American conservatism and the nation’s imminent leftward swing. Patrick Hynes responds, as does Patrick Ruffini. I would recommend perusing all of these pieces in order to gain a better understanding of the gathering storm; my two cents on the matter follow. […]
[…] The Economist has penned a must-read piece on the twilight of American conservatism and the nation’s imminent leftward swing. Patrick Hynes responds, as does Patrick Ruffini. I would recommend perusing all of these pieces in order to gain a better understanding of the gathering storm; my two cents on the matter follow. […]
[…] And it is also appropriate to acknowledge that Dave G has several prominent thinkers in his corner. John Podhoretz notes that liberal candidates won 51% popular vote in 2000. Perhaps, JPod argues, 2002 and 2004 were exceptions to the rule, brought about by the recency of 9-11? John Judis and Ruy Teixeira have been voices in the wilderness for years, hypothesizing as early as 2001 that demographic changes would make Democrats the majority party by decade’s end. A widely-cited Pew Poll shows conservative name identification plummeting. This may be the most widely cited poll on the internet; today Pew’s Andrew Kohut and Carroll Doherty are touting their polls results, citing changes from 1994 and 2002 as evidence that conservatism is losing its luster. And conservative bloggers Patrick Ruffini and Patrick Hynes have added their two cents about what’s going wrong. […]
[…] And it is also appropriate to acknowledge that Dave G has several prominent thinkers in his corner. John Podhoretz notes that liberal candidates won 51% popular vote in 2000. Perhaps, JPod argues, 2002 and 2004 were exceptions to the rule, brought about by the recency of 9-11? John Judis and Ruy Teixeira have been voices in the wilderness for years, hypothesizing as early as 2001 that demographic changes would make Democrats the majority party by decade’s end. A widely-cited Pew Poll shows conservative name identification plummeting. This may be the most widely cited poll on the internet; today Pew’s Andrew Kohut and Carroll Doherty are touting their polls results, citing changes from 1994 and 2002 as evidence that conservatism is losing its luster. And conservative bloggers Patrick Ruffini and Patrick Hynes have added their two cents about what’s going wrong. […]