Politics

Has The GOP Re-Established Itself?

Matt K. Lewis Senior Contributor
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Rather than gloating over Republican midterm victories, or (the other extreme alternative) resuming the self-flagellation as if it were 2012 again, conservative opinion leaders have risen to the occasion, producing some terrific columns outlining the way forward.

Though there are many examples, I call your attention to two that were especially illuminating.

Over at The New York Times, David Brooks spent some time examining the résumés of some of the GOP’s electoral winners. And what he discovered was this: The newly-elected Republican candidates “have deep roots in four of the dominant institutions of American society: the business community, the military, the church and civic organizations.” After years of conservative soul-searching and wandering in the wilderness, Brooks seems optimistic the GOP has finally “re-established their party’s traditional personality.”

He also implicitly suggests the bloodletting we’ve endured since the rise of the tea party might have had a salutary effect. Perhaps the pendulum swung too far to the moderate “establishment” side of the spectrum during the Bush years, and then perhaps it overcorrected during the Obama years. But maybe, just maybe, we are finally reaching the sweet spot between the squishy RINOs and the crazy right-wingers — which is to say that maybe conservatism is closer to being a serious, thoughtful and consistently conservative intellectual movement again:

“The new Republican establishment is different from the old one. It is more conservative. It’s shaped more by the ideas of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page and the American Enterprise Institute than it is by the mores of the country club. But, at least judging by the postelection comments coming from all corners, it does believe in politics, in legislating, in compromise.”

Wisdom and conservatism were never supposed to be mutually exclusive; in fact, they should be synonymous. Brooks sounds optimistic that things are finally starting to settle down on the right. But before we get too optimistic, I present Exhibit B …

Over at Slate, Reihan Salam offers some sharp analysis suggesting the conservative movement — and by extension, the GOP — has unique challenges when it comes to governing and/or satisfying the conservative base:

“The Democratic Party is a collection of interest groups that seeks to, among other things, redistribute income and wealth from people who are not Democrats to people who are, or who will be, and they do a pretty good job of it, even when they lose elections. Noam Scheiber of the New Republic did an excellent job of explaining why this was the case way back in December 2002, after a big Republican midterm sweep not unlike this week’s. Scheiber explained that the biggest headache for any masochist setting out to lead congressional Republicans was that ‘unlike interest groups on the left, which tend to accept the transactional nature of government, many movement conservatives have a genuinely coherent worldview they want to see reflected—in its entirety.’ To put this differently, while Democrats generally recognize that half a loaf is better than none, ‘[t]he right wing of the Republican Party is simply incapable of accepting the kind of compromises a Senate majority leader must make,’ or for that matter a speaker of the House, or a president.”

(This is just an excerpt; you really need to read this whole piece.)

Both of these columns, I think, reflect truisms about the state of conservatism. The prudent conservative should (as Brooks does) celebrate the fact that, by virtue of competition and a series of “market corrections,” the GOP is evolving. But the prudent conservative is also humble enough to be introspective — and honest enough to admit serious challenges lie ahead.

Winning the future requires a mixture of both confidence and cautiousness. Hubris is a fatal flaw, but an inferiority complex is equally destructive. Wisdom is in finding the balance; we need the yin and the yang. And these two columns provide it.