Brooks thinks the Traditionalists (represented by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, etc.) will win out in the short term because they have the money, current Congressional Republicans, and the
infrastructure. He's not particularly happy about that since hs considers himself one of the Reformers (along with Ross Douthat, Ramesh Ponnuru, Yuval Levin, Jim Manzi, Rod Dreher, and Peggy
Noonan). Brooks' prediction:
Me: Is he right? Maybe. But I don't think so. Furthermore, I doubt whether Ponnuru and Levin would be entirely comfortable with his label. -- Aha, I was right. Here is Yuval Levin responding:
".. The David Brooks column gets the basic picture wrong. I don’t think the notion of reform conservatism should be contrasted with or opposed to the views of the people Brooks calls the “traditionalists.” As I see it, the basic idea is to apply conservative principles and ingenuity to a
broader range of problems than we have been used to thinking about—to think in concrete policy terms about the worries of American families, and offer concrete conservative proposals for reforming our governing institutions. These need to be extensions of conservative successes in the past, like tax and welfare reform: applications of our basic view of the world to the problems of the day. This kind of reformism is the conservative tradition, not a substitute for it. And its aim is not to move conservatives to the center, but to move the country to the right. It is not, to my mind at least, opposed to what Brooks’s “traditionalists” are trying to do, let alone is it trying to exclude social conservatives—as you might imagine, that’s not something Ramesh, or Ross Douthat, or I would want to see.
Rod Dreher for his part, responded this way:
Let me make a point that's going to be overlooked among secular conservatives of Reformist impulse: no conservative movement that hopes to be successful can do so without religious conservatives. It will be very easy for secular Reform conservatives to sell op-ed pieces to newspapers, in which they argue that the GOP will not be revived until and unless it cuts itself free from the Religious Right. It'll be easy for them to sell that point because it suits the prejudices of the kind of secular liberals who run the media. But it's quite wrong. (Emphases Dreher's)
Dreher goes on:
As the Southern Baptist leader Richard Land points out in today's Wall Street Journal, religious conservatives can easily move toward a Reform agenda that
keeps them faithful to their core principles. Indeed, my entire
"Crunchy Cons" book and its reformist ideas is based in my religious
conservatism. The key will be to convert Evangelicals, observant
Catholics and other religious conservatives to a conservative Reform
agenda. The emerging leadership class among younger Evangelicals
totally get this. When I wrote my original Crunchy Cons cover story for
National Review, I heard from an Evangelical seminarian who said Jim
Wallis had just been to speak to their class, and everyone there had
agreed with what Jim had to say about addressing poverty and the
environment as part of our Christian commitment -- but they couldn't
take that last step Jim asked them to, and embrace a progressive
Democratic agenda, because, said this seminarian to me, "We're pro-life
conservatives."
See, this is really interesting to me. These Christians know themselves to be conservatives, but they found nothing in principle to object to the call to serve the poor and to be good stewards of creation, as articulated by the most prominent Religious Left pastor in America. But they knew how far they could go in sharing common ground with him -- and it stopped at abortion, at the very least. Still, there's a lot to work from in that common ground, and a solid basis for a Reform conservatism informed partially by a new kind of religious conservatism.
Finally, here's a column worth considering. Deroy Murdock today calls for a "purge" of the GOP leadership ranks. He's not exactly going after ideological deviation, but after those in the conservative leadership class who have proven their ineffectiveness. He's right, as far as that goes, but I take issue with this final paragraph:
Once the GOP's detritus is dislodged, rebuilding can begin. The best way Republicans can redeem themselves is to ask daily: "What would Reagan do?"
No, no, no! The best way Republicans can redeem themselves is to ask daily: "What should conservatives do?" No disrespect to the great man, but this Reagan worship has got to stop. Reagan wasn't the end-all and be-all of conservatism, its most perfect embodiment. Conservatism did not start with Ronald Reagan! Making him a cultish religious figure prevents conservatives from doing the hard thinking out of our own tradition about what's needed for the conditions that exist in 2008, not in 1980.
Jim Manzi offers his own thoughts. Speaking of divisive social issues he says:
As I have argued at length, I think that the only workable compromise is not to try to force the creation of uniform national law when no national consensus on the morality of these issues exists. Instead, I believe that we should have an agenda of devolving as many of these social issues, as a matter of law, to as local a level as possible.
Politics, properly considered, has limited aims. Attempts to use it to create heaven on earth, whether motivated by secular or religious thinking, usually backfire. Fortunately, most practical people realize this. We should be looking to build political bridges across moral divides by lowering the temperature of such debates, and keeping our expectations of what politics can accomplish appropriately humble.