Notes From D.R. | Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene

So how can we get all those young folks to vote Republican?

Shell-shocked by the large numbers of young voters who went for Barack Obama over John McCain, some conservatives have tried to fool themselves into thinking that Winston’s Churchill axiom (“A young person who isn’t a liberal has no heart, and an old person who isn’t a conservative has no brain” ) still applies in the present day. The problem is, that axiom is null and void.

The young folks who fell in love with Barack Obama and the Democrat Party will likely never abandon that political relationship. The Republicans have lost them for life. They’ve lost them in part because of the power of the dominant liberal culture. They’ve also lost them because of the GOP’s own stupid mistakes.

Young voters are not listening to the Republican Party and the conservative movement. They couldn’t give a damn about Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. They’re not reading National Review and the Weekly Standard. Why is that?

Conservatism simply does not appeal to them. And who can blame them? Conservatism, as currently constituted in America, only appeals to older people.

It’s almost as though you must be at least forty years old to be a legitimate conservative in this country. And that’s not the only prerequisite. You are also not allowed to criticize any facet, any tenet of modern-day conservatism.

God help you if you say anything negative about Sarah Palin. You’ll be demonized and branded a “moderate”, even if your conservative credentials are otherwise sound. You’ll get bombarded with hate e-mail and face calls to have your columns pulled from major conservative websites.

Young voters hear about this stuff. They understand that today, conservatism is nothing more than rigid ideology. They see that conservatism now brooks no dissent.

And they laugh—not only at the ideological stubbornness of modern-day conservatism, but also at the obsession so many folks on the right have with Ronald Reagan.

To young people, the conservative worship of Reagan is ridiculous. Young Americans don’t remember Reagan. They have no idea what Communism was, what “Morning in America” meant. They cannot relate to Reagan, and they don’t—and can’t—understand why all these older conservatives seem to love him so much.

Young voters also regard the conservative philosophy as fundamentally foolish. Partly, this is due to the indoctrination they receive in high schools and colleges, as well as the anti-conservative messages they see and hear in movies and on television. However, the conservative movement and the Republican Party share significant blame for creating permanent anti-right sentiment among voters under 30.

The idiotic actions of the Bush Administration and the embrace of said idiotic actions by prominent conservatives have radicalized young voters against all things Republican. Young voters who do not remember Reagan will always remember the “Mission Accomplished” banner, the seemingly unending war in Iraq, the controversy surrounding post-Katrina New Orleans, the billionaire’s bailout, and such icons of ineptitude as Alberto Gonzales and Harriet Miers.

When these young voters see conservatives on television, they don’t see the best of the movement; they see the worst. The conservatives they see are bombastic buffoons whose words are nothing but unending variations on the theme of “Democrats Suck and Republicans Rule!” These clowns make conservatism look like a cartoon—a cartoon that these young people find less than entertaining.

I remember having my mind stimulated by the words of William F. Buckley, Thomas Sowell, Ken Hamblin, Walter Williams, Jeff Jacoby and Don Feder years ago. Today, if I were a young voter, and the only conservative voices I heard were those of Bill Cunningham and Michael Savage, I’d be an Obama Democrat.

Conservatives and the Republican Party have squandered this decade, and as a result we have lost millions of young voters for life. I can’t honestly blame under-30 voters for casting their lot with the Obama-Biden team. What did the McCain-Palin ticket have to offer to voters fresh out of college? How could that ticket appeal to those who have no taste for social issues, who feel that Roe is a settled issue and that same-sex marriage is inevitable and/or a civil right?

Ultimately, we’re to blame for the loss of the youth. We alienated young voters by living in the past, drowning ourselves in Reagan worship instead of presenting a new conservatism for a new era. We claim to be pro-life, but we have aborted our future.

Jonah Goldberg, Martha Zoller and Erick Erickson on President-elect Obama and the GOP.

David Frum, one of the best political writers of the 1990s and 2000s, leaves National Review. Best of luck to him in his future endeavors.

UPDATE: Frum speaks.

Does Barack Obama’s election signal an end to the concept of “American exceptionalism”?

One reason why there has been so much hand-wringing on the right over Obama’s November 4 victory is the fear that Obama will govern as a “citizen of the world”, i.e., he will not truly govern with America’s national interests in mind. Of course, if Obama is not concerned with defending America’s “national interests”, then it must be said that the millions of Americans who voted for him aren’t concerned with defending America’s “national interests” either. I’m not sure this is an argument that the right should attempt to make.

John McCain and Sarah Palin were embraced by conservatives because both individuals embrace the concept of “American exceptionalism.” As Roger Cohen wrote in a September 25 New York Times op-ed piece, “American exceptionalism” is “…the idea, around since the Founding Fathers, and elaborated on by Alexis de Tocqueville, that the United States is a nation unlike any other, with a special mission to build the ‘city upon a hill’ that will serve as liberty’s beacon for mankind.”

Conservatives admired Ronald Reagan because he was thoroughly committed to the concept of “American exceptionalism”; Reagan would not have worked so hard to render Soviet Communism defunct if he did not believe in this idea. The right loathed Bill Clinton in part because he seemed to have no real use for this idea.

After September 11, 2001, George W. Bush touched upon the theme of “American exceptionalism” in numerous speeches. Indeed, it can be argued that “American exceptionalism” served as the intellectual and moral foundation for Bush’s antiterrorism efforts. Unfortunately, as those efforts became controversial and unpopular, the concept of “American exceptionalism” also became controversial and unpopular as well.

McCain and Palin ran as the candidates of “American exceptionalism.” This decision doomed their campaign, as “American exceptionalism” is now seen by many Americans as a euphemism for jingoism and an “America-is-always-right” mentality. Cohen himself asserted that “….[E]xceptionalism has taken an ugly twist of late. It’s become the angry refuge of the America that wants to deny the real state of the world. From an inspirational notion, however flawed in execution, that has buttressed the global spread of liberty, American exceptionalism has morphed into the fortress of those who see themselves threatened by ‘one-worlders’ (read Barack Obama) and who believe it’s more important to know how to dress moose than find Mumbai.”

There’s no question that the Obama campaign appealed to those who had come to believe that during the Bush years, America had grown arrogant and aloof, blind to the opinions of those who had issues with Bush’s September 20, 2001 declaration that “…Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

Conservatives hated the “citizen of the world” rhetoric Obama used in his July 2008 Berlin speech, but the election results prove that millions of Americans actually liked that sort of talk. Many voters, especially those from families with members still living in Europe, have no problem with the idea of an American President taking European opinion into account before making foreign-policy decisions. “The damn-the-world, God-chose-us rage of [conservative] America has sharpened as U.S. exceptionalism has become harder to square with the 21st-century world’s interconnectedness,” Cohen wrote. “How exceptional can you be when every major problem you face, from terrorism to nuclear proliferation to gas prices, requires joint action?”

It seems that, on November 4, a majority of Americans affimed the accuracy of Cohen’s subsequent statement:

“America is distinct. Its habits and attitudes with respect to religion, patriotism, voting and the death penalty, for example, differ from much of the rest of the developed world. It is more ideological than other countries, believing still in its manifest destiny. At its noblest, it inspires still. But, let’s face it, from Baghdad to Bear Stearns the last eight years have been a lesson in the price of exceptionalism run amok. To persist with a philosophy grounded in America’s separateness, rather than its connectedness, would be devastating at a time when the country faces two wars, a financial collapse unseen since 1929, commodity inflation, a huge transfer of resources to the Middle East, and the imperative to develop new sources of energy.”

American voters aren’t stupid, and they surely don’t want another September 11-style attack. However, Obama’s victory demonstrates that the electorate’s concept of “American exceptionalism” and America’s “national interests” no longer dovetails with the conservative concept of the same. For how long will this be the case?

Quantum of Solace tops the charts.

Jeff Jacoby, William Kristol, Fred Barnes and Stephen Hayes on the future of the GOP.

It’s hard to shake the sense that the Republican Party is now, like Bruce Willis’ character in The Sixth Sense, dead but currently unaware of its own passing.

Nine days have now passed since Barack Obama’s historic Presidential win, and with the exception of a few bloggers and pundits—Matthew Continetti of the Weekly Standard and Rich Lowry of National Review among them—conservatives have not yet come to grips with the severity of what has happened. Disturbingly, some prominent conservatives have decided to downplay the events of November 4, implying that Obama’s victory was a fluke and insisting, against all reason, that America remains a “center-right” nation.

These conservatives—many of whom can be found on the national talk-radio circuit—must know that this statement is a lie. A “center-right” nation would have scorned Obama as a socialist and consort of radicals; if America was as conservative as the conversation czars claim it to be, John McCain and Sarah Palin would have won in an Electoral College landslide.

It is near-impossible to seriously analyze the breadth of Obama’s victory without concluding that the country has fundamentally changed from where it was during the Reagan era. Obama would not have won if the left hadn’t successfully turned large portions of the United States against conservatism. Therefore, America is a “center-right” nation only in dreamland.

Why are certain conservatives so reluctant to acknowledge the deep impact of Obama’s win? Perhaps the truth is too hard for some on the right to comprehend.

For years, serious conservatives have contemplated a nightmare scenario: what would happen if a majority, or at the very least a voting majority, of Americans began to accept as fact the progressive argument that “conservative” is little more than a euphemism for “greedy bigot”? That nightmare scenario is now a reality.

The left has spent decades promoting the idea that conservatism, as a philosophy, is but a thin veneer for the old racial, religious, economic and gender prejudices of the past. Progressives wrote books, authored columns and produced documentaries analyzing the various ways conservatism was, in their view, little more than an intellectually weak amalgamation of views advocated by those who wished to hoard wealth and social privilege for themselves at the expense of the remainder of society.

For years, conservatives have fought against these stereotypes—but the flaw-filled Bush years convinced many nonpartisan Americans that these stereotypes were actually true. These nonpartisans—whose ranks include millions of young voters, black voters, Latino voters, women and suburbanites—joined with die-hard Democrats to deliver the White House to Obama.

Conservatives can scream “Center-right country!” on the AM dial all the live-long day. It won’t change the truth: over the past eight years, millions of Americans have become radicalized against all things associated with the Republican Party and the American right. The length and cost of the Iraq War inspired hatred of “neoconservative” foreign policy. The 2005 Terri Schiavo controversy generated contempt for social conservatives. The 2008 bailout convinced many Americans that Republicans also believed in spreading the wealth, but only to those already rich.

Today America may not be pro-liberal, but it is deeply anti-conservative. Huge swaths of the country want nothing to do with the GOP. A party that won forty-nine states in 1972 and 1984 now seems to have lost its appeal to anyone who doesn’t live in the Deep South or portions of the Midwest.

This is a problem that conservatives and Republicans must deal with—but how can they deal with it when so many figures on the right insist upon peddling the notion that Obama’s win was a fluke? How could it be a fluke when two candidates equally as liberal as Obama—Al Gore and John Kerry—came uncomfortably close to victories in the last two Presidential elections, with the former actually capturing the popular vote?

America is simply not a center-right nation. Too many Americans have a negative view of conservatism and the Republican Party for the “center-right” concept to be concrete. Conservatives and Republicans won’t be able to achieve at the ballot box until they figure out ways to counteract these stereotypes and once again convince voters that Republicans are a suitable alternative to the Democrats. That can’t happen if prominent figures on the American right continue to assert, falsely, that Obama’s win does not reflect a significant shift in America’s political outlook.

Of course, some on the right may believe it’s just easier to wait for Obama to flop as President. If so, one must ask: how pathetic is it that conservatives have to wait for Obama to fail before they can succeed?

David Keene, Jonah Goldberg and David Brooks on President-elect Obama.

Matthew Continetti on the GOP’s future demographic peril.

It appears that Republicans have changed their tune on marijuana legalization.

That’s the only logical explanation for the November 5 poll from Rasmussen Reports indicating that sixty-four percent of Republicans want Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be the party’s nominee in 2012. While Palin was unfairly demonized by the mainstream media this year, it’s hard to imagine her being competitive against Obama unless she rehabilitates her image and he destroys his.

Palin is the New Age Newt Gingrich: a solid conservative who is loved by the GOP base and hated by non-Republicans. To conservatives, she’s a political trailblazer who’s committed to limited government and traditional values. To the rest of the country, she’s a religious zealot and hayseed, someone manifestly unqualified for high office.

Palin was victimized by the same line of attack the mainstream media used against Independent Counsel Ken Starr ten years ago. Like Starr, Palin was depicted as a crazed wingnut who hated anyone who didn’t share her “ultraconservative” views. Palin and Starr could probably share stories about being the targets of the “politics of personal destruction.”

However, just as Starr could not have had a successful national political career after being smeared by the press, Palin will likely not become a credible Presidential candidate in her own right. Even voters who don’t hate her will remember Tina Fey’s Saturday Night Live caricature of her, and have second thoughts. Fey has done to Palin what Chevy Chase did to President Ford in the mid-1970s; it’s hard to imagine Palin recovering from such a pop-cultural attack, especially considering the power of the entertainment industry.

Palin will be in the running in 2012—the cool running, that is. Are the Republicans who want her to be the nominee serious?

According to the poll, “The next closest contenders are two former governors and unsuccessful challengers for the presidential nomination this year — Mike Huckabee of Arkansas with 12% support and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts with 11%. Three other sitting governors – Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Charlie Crist of Florida and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota – all pull low single-digit support. “

It’s hard to explain why Romney and Jindal would poll so poorly. Have identity politics really infiltrated the GOP to this extent?

Unless Palin finds a way to overcome the negative media stereotype imposed upon her, and unless Obama becomes the Presidential equivalent of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick during his first term, Obama could well destroy Palin in a head-to-head contest. Right or wrong, many Americans regard Palin as unfit for command. If she cannot change that perception, her 2012 candidacy will be remembered as a perverted joke.

The fact that Republicans have apparently blinded themselves to Palin’s flaws is also a joke. One imagines Republicans rolling up fat ones and passing them around, dreaming of a positive Palin performance on the 2012 campaign trail. Already one can see signs of Republicans divorcing themselves from reality, presumably under the influence of some really strong Acapulco Gold. Just read some of the prominent conservative pundits: “We’re still a center-right nation, dude!”

If Palin runs for President in ’12 the same way she ran for Vice President in ’08, Republicans who actually see Palin’s problems will probably have to reach for the Mary Jane themselves, just to blunt the reality of a second GOP loss. Will Palin continue the winking, “You betcha!” act four years from now? If so, it will play to movement conservatives only. Everyone else will be looking on in laughter.

One must really love the leaf if one assumes that independents and moderates will suddenly fall in love with an “unreformed” Palin four years from now, absent an epic failure on Obama’s part. How will Palin attract these voters if she doesn’t remake her image? What does she plan to do—hold more rallies that only draw people who already love her? (I can imagine her showing up to these rallies with Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up” as her theme music. She can even work lyrics from the song into her campaign speeches: “Democrats, we’re sick and tired of your ‘ism and schism’ game!”)

If Obama fails as President, and Palin refines her act, perhaps she’ll have a chance to recapture the White House for the GOP. However, if Obama governs from the center, and Palin fails to install the necessary upgrades on her political computer, the GOP will get jobbed for a second time. Even if every Republican in the country heads to the polls on Election Day (at 4:20, presumably), it won’t be enough to stop the slaughter.

Of course, I could be completely off base. Maybe Palin doesn’t have to change a thing in order to kick Obama out of the White House in four years. Maybe she can exploit anti-Obama sentiment generated by currently unforeseen circumstances in order to go over. In that case, I’d like to declare my support right now for a Palin-Selassie ticket in 2012. With Jah as their co-pilot, they’ll seize the crown—and bring Obama’s Babylon down.

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa tops the charts.

Jeff Jacoby and James Peyser on President-elect Obama and the future of the GOP.

William Kristol, Stephen Hayes and Fred Barnes on Barack Obama’s win.

November 4, 2008 will be remembered as the day America gave two middle fingers to the Republican Party.

America did not necessarily take a dramatic turn to the left, but the country clearly positioned itself in an anti-GOP direction. Anti-Republican sentiment generated by the left and the Fourth Estate became mainstream somewhere along the line, and Barack Obama’s election brought this hatred full circle.

Conservatives now must ask themselves, “Why do they hate us?”

One reason why conservatives are now so loathed by the general public is that conservatives are very poor at overcoming stereotypes. From Newt Gingrich in the mid-1990s to Sarah Palin in the late-2000s, major post-Reagan conservative figures are seemingly unable to destroy the perception that they are intolerant, bigoted, unreasonably religious, or otherwise unfit for polite company.

George W. Bush appeared to shatter stereotypes about his intelligence after his 2000 appearance on Oprah Winfrey’s show, but his questionable actions as President ended up reinforcing those stereotypes. By taking too long to make legitimate progress in Iraq and demonstrating excessive loyalty to incompetent Cabinet members, Bush seemed to confirm the left’s worst fears about his ability to lead. Five years ago, conservatives could take comfort in the idea that anti-Bush sentiment was little more than a reflection of the left’s “Bush Derangement Syndrome.” Considering the outgoing President’s record-low approval numbers, it seems “Bush Derangement Syndrome” has become an epidemic.

It can be argued that intense anti-GOP sentiment in this country began before the Bush era but intensified during the dominion of Dubya. Americans seemed to blame Gingrich and the GOP-led Congress for such controversies as the 1995 government shutdown and the 1998 Lewinsky scandal. Regardless of what really happened in each case, Americans came away from both events believing that Republicans were hyper-partisans who could not control their contempt for Clinton.

The 2000 election helped to deepen anti-Republican sentiment in the United States. It would have been so much better for the GOP and the country as a whole had Bush defeated Al Gore in a non-controversial fashion. The fiasco in Florida convinced large swaths of the country that Bush had “stolen” the election with the help of his brother Jeb Bush, then-Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, and five Justices on the US Supreme Court. While conservatives correctly regarded this interpretation of events as ridiculous, to many Americans it was reality.

Since the 2000 election, the GOP’s reputation has gradually worsened due to “a series of unfortunate events.” The numerous scandals involving Republican members of Congress. The fallout from Hurricane Katrina (whether Bush and the Republicans deserved blame or not). The negative public reaction to GOP-led efforts to preserve the life of Terri Schiavo. The emergence of divisive pro-Republican commentators such as Ann Coulter. The aborted effort to place Harriet Miers on the US Supreme Court. The controversy over the selection of Palin as John McCain’s running mate.

In addition, one cannot ignore the role social conservatism plays in the GOP’s current lack of popularity. The day after Obama won, conservative talk show host and blogger Hugh Hewitt noted that Republicans “…got thumped by the young vote [and] lost the 30-44 year old vote…As the GOP thinks through its leadership/chairman role, it has to realize that these demographics matter more than the older voters, and that the GOP is almost largely though not irreparably disconnected from them.” In the responses to his post, numerous readers argued, correctly, that many voters under the age of 45 loathe the GOP because they see the party as a hotbed of social ultra-conservatism and Christian fundamentalism, obsessed with abortion and same-sex marriage. Granted, this is a stereotype—but to millions of Americans, it’s the truth.

It’s an inconvenient truth for the Republicans, who cannot appeal to these voters without alienating their base. Social conservatives—religious traditionalists, evangelical Christians, those who believe that the Republican Party should stand as a bulwark against the rising secularism of the age—are the heartbeat of the GOP, and they cannot and will not be jettisoned to accommodate socially libertarian voters.

This reality will ultimately doom the GOP as a political force. It stands on the principle of social conservatism in a country, a culture and a climate in which social conservatism is commonly seen as a mask hiding the ugly features of racism, sexism, anti-Semitism and homophobia. The Republican Party believes that it should stand athwart history, yelling “Stop!” Unfortunately for the party, more and more Americans have decided to plug their ears.

George Will on Obama’s win.

UPDATE: More from Jonah Goldberg, Jed Babbin and Karl Rove.