From the Economist via my Republican dad.
SHIP OF FOOLS
Nov 13th 2008
Political parties die from the head down
JOHN STUART MILL once dismissed the British Conservative Party as the
stupid party. Today the Conservative Party is run by Oxford-educated
high-fliers who have been busy reinventing conservatism for a new era.
As Lexington sees it, the title of the "stupid party" now belongs to
the Tories' transatlantic cousins, the Republicans.
There are any number of reasons for the Republican Party's defeat on
November 4th. But high on the list is the fact that the party lost the
battle for brains. Barack Obama won college graduates by two points, a
group that George Bush won by six points four years ago. He won voters
with postgraduate degrees by 18 points. And he won voters with a
household income of more than $200,000--many of whom will get thumped
by his tax increases--by six points. John McCain did best among
uneducated voters in Appalachia and the South.
The Republicans lost the battle of ideas even more comprehensively than
they lost the battle for educated votes, marching into the election
armed with nothing more than slogans. Energy? Just drill, baby, drill.
Global warming? Crack a joke about Ozone Al. Immigration? Send the bums
home. Torture and Guantanamo? Wear a T-shirt saying you would rather be
water-boarding. Ha ha. During the primary debates, three out of ten
Republican candidates admitted that they did not believe in evolution.
The Republican Party's divorce from the intelligentsia has been a while
in the making. The born-again Mr Bush preferred listening to his
"heart" rather than his "head". He also filled the government with
incompetent toadies like Michael "heck-of-a-job" Brown, who bungled the
response to Hurricane Katrina. Mr McCain, once the chattering classes'
favourite Republican, refused to grapple with the intricacies of the
financial meltdown, preferring instead to look for cartoonish villains.
And in a desperate attempt to serve boob bait to Bubba, he appointed
Sarah Palin to his ticket, a woman who took five years to get a degree
in journalism, and who was apparently unaware of some of the most
rudimentary facts about international politics.
Republicanism's anti-intellectual turn is devastating for its future.
The party's electoral success from 1980 onwards was driven by its
ability to link brains with brawn. The conservative intelligentsia not
only helped to craft a message that resonated with working-class
Democrats, a message that emphasised entrepreneurialism, law and order,
and American pride. It also provided the party with a sweeping policy
agenda. The party's loss of brains leaves it rudderless, without a
compelling agenda.
This is happening at a time when the American population is becoming
more educated. More than a quarter of Americans now have university
degrees. Twenty per cent of households earn more than $100,000 a year,
up from 16% in 1996. Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster, notes that 69%
call themselves "professionals". McKinsey, a management consultancy,
argues that the number of jobs requiring "tacit" intellectual skills
has increased three times as fast as employment in general. The
Republican Party's current "redneck strategy" will leave it appealing
to a shrinking and backward-looking portion of the electorate.
Why is this happening? One reason is that conservative brawn has lost
patience with brains of all kinds, conservative or liberal. Many
conservatives--particularly lower-income ones--are consumed with
elemental fury about everything from immigration to liberal do-gooders.
They take their opinions from talk-radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh
and the deeply unsubtle Sean Hannity. And they regard Mrs Palin's
apparent ignorance not as a problem but as a badge of honour.
Another reason is the degeneracy of the conservative intelligentsia
itself, a modern-day version of the 1970s liberals it arose to do
battle with: trapped in an ideological cocoon, defined by its outer
fringes, ruled by dynasties and incapable of adjusting to a changed
world. The movement has little to say about today's pressing problems,
such as global warming and the debacle in Iraq, and expends too much of
its energy on xenophobia, homophobia and opposing stem-cell research.
Conservative intellectuals are also engaged in their own version of
what Julian Benda dubbed LA TRAHISON DES CLERCS, the treason of the
learned. They have fallen into constructing cartoon images of "real
Americans", with their "volkish" wisdom and charming habit of dropping
their "g"s. Mrs Palin was invented as a national political force by
Beltway journalists from the WEEKLY STANDARD and the NATIONAL REVIEW
who met her when they were on luxury cruises around Alaska, and then
noisily championed her cause.
TIME FOR REFLECTION
How likely is it that the Republican Party will come to its senses?
There are glimmers of hope. Business conservatives worry that the party
has lost the business vote. Moderates complain that the Republicans are
becoming the party of "white-trash pride". Anonymous McCain aides
complain that Mrs Palin was a campaign-destroying "whack job". One of
the most encouraging signs is the support for giving the chairmanship
of the Republican Party to John Sununu, a sensible and clever man who
has the added advantage of coming from the north-east (he lost his New
Hampshire Senate seat on November 4th).
But the odds in favour of an imminent renaissance look long. Many
conservatives continue to think they lost because they were not
conservative or populist enough--Mr McCain, after all, was an
amnesty-loving green who refused to make an issue out of Mr Obama's
associations with Jeremiah Wright. Richard Weaver, one of the founders
of modern conservatism, once wrote a book entitled "Ideas have
Consequences"; unfortunately, too many Republicans are still refusing
to acknowledge that idiocy has consequences, too.
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Now go back into your caves and leave us alone while we try to get things going
again.
