~What has Gone Before, for the Benefit of NEW READERS; also, see Packer's Piece~
Rick Moran has begun his set of posts on "What Ailes Conservatism." The first post is absurd and contradictory, but it would not surprise me at all were it to be respectfully clucked over in the sad and barren countries of 21st-century Conservative Thought as if Moran had uttered a profundity. These are people, remember, who took Steven den Beste seriously, and who inhabit a land where Jonah Goldberg is afforded rather a nice living. Moran is thus a symptom of a wider malignancy. He figures himself as a physician investigating an illness. But he is little more than a talking tumor loudly diagnosing a cancer.
We might as well start off where Moran does, with him misunderstanding my FDL post.
In the end, Packer’s omissions about the origins of today’s politics skew his entire narrative toward a view I found shockingly common among left wing analyses of his essay; that these tactics are unique to the right and that because they are employed by conservatives that they represent a strain on the right that will do “anything” to elect their candidates. Or what one armchair psychologist referred to as “an essentially nihilist politics of vicious opportunism, where the entire goal is power for its own sake.” Considering how much conservatism has altered the landscape in America, “for its own sake” rings hollow indeed. The road to power is always run with a mixed bag of good intentions and self-aggrandizement. It’s what gives politics its charm and attracts not only the wide eyed reformers but the gimlet eyed operators.
I am this "armchair psychologist"; hi, kids! By contrast, Moran apparently is some class of highly credentialed, non-armchaired veteran scientific professional... blog-guy... dude. Person.
Whatever. The analytical error here is far more interesting than the confusing insult: Moran is talking about "conservatism"; I was talking about movement conservatism. The first is an alleged "philosophy" consisting of certain "timeless principles." The second is a specific social grouping of actual individuals and institutions with a definable history -- a history of embracing, as some wise fellow once put it, "an essentially nihilist politics of vicious opportunism, where the entire goal is power for its own sake."
My argument was, and is, that these "timeless principles" of an idealized conservatism are in fact more properly seen as doxa (in Bourdieu's sense; scroll down here)-- or, to get less fancy about it, banal, vapid, self-flattering crappola, utterly incapable of providing any framework for responsible government. Hence, in practice, on the American right, the scope for political activity is going to be left entirely to nihilistic opportunists and self-deluded ideologues whose "policies" will always end in catastrophe. All "conservatives" today are movement conservatives, by choice or default, and be they wide-eyed or gimlet eyed, in the end they're going to screw up royally.
Moran's post is organized into three major claims, and when you put them all together, you come up with further evidence that I'm right:
1. Every political party does "whatever it takes to win" and always has.
Conservatives plead guilty to doing anything necessary to win – as should those who deliberately tell seniors that Republicans want to take away their social security checks or run commercials in African American communities hinting that the GOP wants to reimpose Jim Crow. Doing “anything” to win is what elections are all about – have always been about in America.
2. In its pure, Platonic state, Conservatism is Teh Awesome.
I will say this to all my friends on the right; the point is not whether conservative principles are in need of overhauling. Capitalism, freedom, belief in a just God, even American exceptionalism don’t need to be tossed out or given a scrub and repackaged with some kind of snappy jingle to accompany them. These principles are timeless, have born [sic] the test of time and cannot be abridged or destroyed because of some temporary electoral setbacks.
3. Many soi-disant conservatives Just Go Too Far.
It is not Packer who is confused. It is all those who talk about the conservative movement and confuse it with the philosophy of conservatism who are in need of being straightened out. Sean Hannity is not conservatism. Ann Coulter is certainly not conservatism. They use conservatism as a slot machine – put in a few raggedy ideas, pump the handle, and out pours a book or two that sells well, gets the author notoriety, and creates legions of worshipful fans who salivate at the opportunity to buy the next book.
Shazam! Need I remind you of what my neighbor said about the return of my kettle?
Less snarkily, Moran wants to call out Packer for not fully considering historical context, but rather spectacularly whizzes the opportunity to contemplate the, uh, actual subject of Packer's article. Like I said at FDL, the issue allegedly under immediate consideration is Movement Conservatism, and secondarily the relationship between this identity formation and an idealized, Platonic Conservatism. In this regard, surely it is worth mention that, objectively, there is no essential difference between the specific people who would fall under Category 1 and Category 3 in Moran's account.
The rise of talk radio and publication houses like Regnery and similar; the role of organizations like the College Republicans; the subsidization of journals like the American Spectator and, later, embarrassing websites like Red State; the funding of right-wing think tanks; the direct mail lists; the goofy conferences and coordinated media strategies and so forth -- look at the career of Karl Rove, for heaven's sake, or Dick Cheney, or George W. Bush. As a matter of pretty well-known fact, the left doesn't have anything like this kind of an institutional, top-down framework and ideological integration. The right is not a monolith, but it's a hell of a lot more monolithic than the left is, and what this means is that when it comes to elections, they're going to be run according to the playbook of resentment Packer tells us originated in the Nixonian 1960s.
The point is not that fostering resentment and capitalizing on electoral divisiveness are "unique" to conservatives, something neither I nor anyone else ever said. That's a straw man. The point is that conservatism has nothing else and can go nowhere else, and anyone believing otherwise is either playing or getting played.
Examine the "principles" that Moran finds so reassuring: "Capitalism, freedom, belief in a just God, even American exceptionalism." These are all entirely meaningless as "principles." Here is a principle: "don't start stupid wars enabled by propaganda and fearmongering." Now look at the actual war in Iraq, a stupid war enabled by propaganda and fearmongering. That debacle could be (and was) justified according to all of these "timeless principles" -- and, importantly, that debacle could have just as easily been opposed according to all of these "timeless principles."
Conservative "principles" cannot put the brakes on the excesses of "movement conservatism." Because, you know, if they were capable of doing so, this would have happened. Moreover, it's more than a little disingenuous to claim stuff like "belief in a just God" or "freedom" as a "conservative value." Might as well include "ice cream" and "sunshine" while you're at it. (Though it is hard luck for any atheist or agnostic "conservatives." So much for divisiveness not being at the core of conservatism.) Banalities and crapola: gosh, I wonder how a rigorous commitment to these "values" didn't amount to very much in the face of Rove and Limbaugh.
Barring any thoroughgoing and unlikely overhauls, movement conservatism and Southern Strategy-class thinking will always dominate the right. John McCain is not any sort of an agent for change in this regard. If he wins, it will be because of advice from people like Rove -- anyone who thinks the Maverick won't run the same old campaign is deluded or dumb or a pundit, and the same old folks will cash in as usual, and it will all end in another policy trainwreck. If he loses? Well, this proves the movement conservatives were right all along, and they'll cash in anyway. Hopefully, we might not get the policy trainwreck, though. We will probably get another preposterous impeachment horror show, though, if the Dems somehow blow it (always a good chance of that!) and lose the legislative branch. At any rate the institutionalized racket that now constitutes conservatism isn't going anywhere -- in every sense that phrase implies.
Moran is simply wrong on every level. "Everybody does it" is not a defense for the politics the GOP has taken as its own, and besides, it's ridiculous to claim equivalence with the Democrats here -- the entire point of the left blogosphere is frustration with elected and influential Democrats for not acting like freaking partisans. Sheesh.
See also Phila, who has a sensible post that reminds us that lefties are not without blind spots of our own, and who furthermore pithily remarks, "Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!"