Save the RINO?Here's an interesting
Mark Steyn column. Discussing the lethargy affecting the British Tory Party, Steyn notes:
I’ve remarked before on the Canadianisation of British politics. In Canada as in Britain, two of the three national parties are left of centre. So is the principal separatist party, in Quebec as in Scotland. And the token right-of-centre party spends much of its time either lecturing itself or being lectured by the media on its need to move towards the ‘political centre’ in order to make itself barely distinguishable from the other parties. Michael Heseltine was tilling this barren soil the other day, explaining to Radio Five Live’s Brian Hayes why the present method of electing the Tory leader needs to be changed: a lot of these activists were awfully hard-working people, nothing wrong with them and all that, but MPs were by definition better suited to understanding what it took to reach out to the ‘centre ground’ where British elections were won. What an inspiring message to the party’s base: leave it to us chaps to figure out which squishy unprincipled trimmer is best suited to selling you out.
As a general proposition, the Heseltine thesis is doubtful: successful conservatives don’t move towards the ‘political centre’. They move the political centre towards them. That’s what Thatcher and Reagan both did. Whereas if you move towards the political centre, all you do is move the centre. If Labour is at 1 on the scale and the Tories are at 9, and their focus groups tell them to move to 5, they have ensured that henceforth the centre will be 3, and they’ll be fighting entirely on the Left’s terms and the Left’s issues. There’s been quite enough of that already in this last election, with Michael Howard challenging Blair only on the precise degree of ‘additional resources’ we need to lavish on wasteful state activities. It’s hard to see quite what the Tories could do to prostrate themselves more abjectly before the clapped-out ‘centrist’ consensus, except perhaps to replace the white male heterosexuals pledging lavish ‘additional resources’ with fetching young ethnic gays pledging lavish ‘additional resources’. That’s what the calls for ‘modernisation’ seem to boil down to.There are two basic points of view on how opposition parties should comport themselves if they want to get back into the majority. The side that Steyn endorses is what I call the Tug of War theory. Both sides are energentically engaged in trying to pull the debate into their territory. If you just yank on the rope (the voters) hard enough, they'll come over to your side.
The other side was best argued by Richard Nixon, who noted that the secret to winning elections was to get the nomination, then run to the center as fast as you can.
Which is right? At times this blog has endorsed both viewpoints. I have argued at length that the Democrats need to stop trying to finesse their opinions on controversial topics. For example, on abortion the latest Democratic finesse (argued by John Kerry) is that it's morally wrong, but that politicians shouldn't be legislating morality. This is unfortunate for the side of the debate he nominally represents because a) I doubt strongly that John Kerry really feels abortion is morally wrong, and if he does he does not reflect the views of his supporters; and b) it cedes a major part of the argument. As Steyn puts it up above, if 1 is abortion is wrong and should be banned and 9 represents abortion is fine and should be government-paid, then moving to a 5 as Kerry did simply means that the argument will be debated from 1-5 and settled near 3, which is not where the pro-abortion folks will enjoy it.
At other times I have argued the opposite, that the problem with the Democrats is that they pay far too much attention to their radical base, that they need to repudiate the Move-Ons and the Moore-Ons in their midst.
But there is an inherent contradiction between the two arguments, and it matters a great deal which of them is right. Take for example, the case of Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. Chafee's widely considered the Riniest of the RINOs (Republicans In Name Only), and following the announcement that Chafee would not support ending the filibuster for judicial nominees, Hugh Hewitt argued the other day for supporting the Democrat in that election. If you buy the tug of war argument, then Chafee should be ousted because he is not pulling on the rope. If you buy the "run to the center" argument, Chafee is just doing what he has to in order to get reelected (IIRC he's up again in 2006).
My take is that it's a little bit of both. You need to articulate your positions and argue that they are right; the Democrats' failure to do so has cost them both in terms of advancing their side of the debate and in terms of getting elected, because the voters sense they are lying. But you also need to trim your sails occasionally and recognize that some battles are not worth fighting.
A year or two ago, I spent an afternoon trying to figure out what the most liberal state in the USA was. My conclusion was that it was a toss-up between Massachusetts (no surprise there) and its tiny neighbor, Rhode Island. So my opinion is that we're awfully lucky to have a Republican Senator from that state.
Don't get me wrong; this doesn't excuse some of the other RINOs out there. John McCain and Chuck Hagel are both from rock-ribbed Republican strongholds. It's their job to do the tugging on the rope while the guys who have to moderate their positions in order to get elected should be cut a little slack.
Yeah, it's exasperating when we've got a big vote coming up, like the nuclear option. But look at Chafee's voting record. He gets a
41 lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union. High numbers here are better, with 100 being the tops, so a 40 is not very impressive. In fact, it marks Chafee as the least conservative Republican in the Senate.
But look at the other Senator from little Rhodie, Democrat Jack Reed. His lifetime rating is an 8, and he managed to score a goose egg for 2004. Look at the other Democrats in the area. Clinton & Schumer score a
9 and a 6 lifetime, respectively. Joe Lieberman, who gets a lot of slack from the Republican side, has a lifetime rating of 17 while his fellow Connecticut Senator, Christopher Dodd has an 8. Le Fraude Kerry and Le Swimmer Ted garner ratings of 5 & 3 respectively. Jumpin' Jim Jeffords has a 25 lifetime rating, but that's bolstered by his years as a Republican; in 2003 he rated a 10 and in 2004 only a 4, lower scores for those years than his Vermont Democratic counterpart, Pat Leahy. The two other Republicans in the area, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe (both from Maine) are rated 57 and 51 respectively; more conservative than Chafee, but not by as much as Chafee is more conservative than the Democrats in the area.
Get the point? Chafee may not look very conservative to those of us lucky enough to live in Red States, but for the Northeast he's not liberal. Yes, he will continue to frustrate us at times. But he's a darned sight better than any Democrat who would replace him (like Patrick Kennedy, for example).
As for Reagan and Thatcher, they were both incredible individuals who would in ordinary times have never been elected. They did pull on the rope quite effectively, but they both had the advantage of a public that was ready to move in their direction due to disenchantment with the other party.
