In the aftermath of Senator John McCain’s presumptive victory last week in the race for the Republicans presidential nomination the fur is starting to fly.
It’s a bit disappointing to see folks like writer Mark Helprin, along with Jack Kemp and others, dragged out to spank the reluctant orthodox conservatives into line. It makes you think that the McCainiacs actually want to expel the conservative wing from the Republican Party and reconstitute it as a moderate party.
Jonah Goldberg, on the other hand, does have something useful to say. He reminds disappointed conservatives that McCain’s agenda is not so far different from the agenda of the “compassionate conservative” President Bush. Both McCain and Bush are pro-immigrant amnesty. Both are pro-big-government. And when it comes to the judges, well, it was President Bush that nominated Harriet Miers.
If you take the drift of Goldberg’s argument, he is saying that Reagan conservatism ran out of gas about ten years ago. Since then it has been running on the fumes.
On that view McCain is not such a dreadful compromise, especially if you are willing to concede that the official conservative in the race, Mitt Romney, signally failed to catch fire and win the support of the broad Republican Party.
It also points out that conservatives have a lot of work to do before we can hope to return to the American people with a winning message. After all, if a true conservative can’t win the nomination of the conservative party it’s not likely that he could win the support of a majority of the American people.
No comments:
Post a Comment