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

Does Washington Monthly writer Steve Benen really think former National Review writer Byron York is a racist? Or is York merely pointing out that black support for President Obama is based primarily on the historic nature of his victory?

Kristen Soltis on the GOP’s near-nonexistent appeal to young Americans. (The comment poster who cites the GOP’s “anti-urban”/”anti-cool” image has a great point.)

UPDATE: More from John Pitney.

It was great to appear once again on Patriot Games Radio last night!

No, I won’t miss Arlen Specter. In fact, I can’t think of anyone who will.

So the Pennsylvania moderate has finally decided to wash his hands of the GOP. “I have been a Republican since 1966,” Specter said in a statement explaining his defection to the Democrats. “I have been working extremely hard for the Party, for its candidates and for the ideals of a Republican Party whose tent is big enough to welcome diverse points of view. While I have been comfortable being a Republican, my Party has not defined who I am. I have taken each issue one at a time and have exercised independent judgment to do what I thought was best for Pennsylvania and the nation.”

The independent man continued: “Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans.”

Specter finds more in common with donkeys than elephants now? Well, good for him. As Billy Joel once said, do what’s good for you, or you’re not good for anybody. The pursuit of happiness, and all that.

I’m sure Specter is a good husband and father, but I’ve never found him impressive as a Senator. I tolerated Specter’s “moderation” for some time, but I wrote the guy off in the fall of 1998, when he expressed his reluctance to find President Clinton guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice in the Monica Lewinsky mess. Remember when he cited “Scottish law” and declared that the charges against Clinton were “not proven?” Ugh.

Specter had been a thorn in the side of conservatives for years, but his support for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (known to conservative talk-radio listeners as “porkulus”) drove that thorn further into the right’s flesh. Those who desired fiscal responsibility in Washington—and those who were sick and tired of Specter’s self-righteousness—found their own hope-and-change hero in Pat Toomey, a former Pennsylvania congressman who almost defeated Specter in the 2004 Senate primary and planned to challenge the incumbent again in 2010.

Clearly, Specter realized that his support for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act would lead to his defeat in next year’s primary. “When I supported the stimulus package, I knew that it would not be popular with the Republican Party,” Specter noted. “But, I saw the stimulus as necessary to lessen the risk of a far more serious recession than we are now experiencing. Since then, I have traveled the State, talked to Republican leaders and office-holders and my supporters and I have carefully examined public opinion.”

He continued, “It has become clear to me that the stimulus vote caused a schism which makes our differences irreconcilable. On this state of the record, I am unwilling to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate.”

I’d like to see a solid conservative like Toomey defeat Specter in a general election, but I’m under no illusion that it will actually happen. By the time November 2010 rolls around, Toomey will have been successfully smeared as a right-wing troglodyte, a demented demagogue who takes his marching orders from Rush Limbaugh and his ethical cues from Dick Cheney. There would have to be an anti-Obama backlash of extraordinary intensity to sweep Toomey to victory—and so far, there’s no real evidence of such a backlash in the making, those tea parties notwithstanding.

However, if Specter beats Toomey, at least he’ll do so as a member of a party with which he has actual affinity. Specter was always a poor match for the GOP; the age of the moderate Republican has long since passed. Most moderates are known by another name today: Democrats.

Perhaps Maine Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins will also hear voices encouraging them to leave the GOP for the Democrats. They should listen to those voices. Snowe and Collins are simply not conservative enough for the Republican Party; they are throwbacks to the Bob Michel era, an era that few conservatives miss.

Granted, the GOP will not survive if it engages in an overly broad ideological purge. The party needs its centrists; a political organization that demands ideological fealty to every last issue is a political organization that is doomed. However, centrists and moderates are two different creatures. A centrist is someone who agrees with the lion’s share of a given party’s views but dissents on one or two issues: someone like former McCain campaign adviser Steve Schmidt fits this description, because he lines up with the GOP on most of the major issues (except for same-sex marriage). A moderate, on the other hand, is someone who is technically a member of a given party, but has no real ideological connection to that party. That’s what Specter is—or was.

Ross Douthat on former Vice President Cheney’s criticisms of President Obama.

Hugh Hewitt speaks to former McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt. A must-listen.

President Obama must be pretty bored right now.

Of course, he has his share of problems: a severely troubled economy, two wars yet to be concluded, the continued threat of another terrorist attack. Yet, he has to find the whole White House thing dull at this point. How could he not? He has no political competition, and he knows it.

Obama is king right now, and he will be for some time to come. While the Republicans continue to trip over their wingtips, he will continue to move the country to the left with absolute impunity. Not a bad gig, if you’re the one sitting in the big chair.

The first 100 days of the Obadministration have been hideous for the American right, as conservatives and Republicans continue their downward spiral. Yes, an estimated 340,000 Americans expressed their frustration with Obama’s actions at the “tea parties” earlier this month, but it was blind frustration. After all, where will those protestors go? Back to the Republicans, who started this socialism sewage last fall with the Billionaire’s Bailout?

According to Christopher Buckley’s forthcoming memoir, his legendary father William F. Buckley considered suicide in his final pain-filled months, but his strong Catholic faith prevented him from doing so. Presumably, strong faith is the only thing preventing conservatives and Republicans from ending it all en masse, as they watch the so-called loyal opposition continue to botch any effort at resisting Obama’s agenda.

Why can’t the right get it together? Why can’t conservatives of all stripes unite as one to thwart Obama’s efforts to move the country as far to the left as he can? Instead of unity, we have division—rhetorical fights over old-school conservatism and new-school conservatism, fights that come across to the rest of the country as nothing more than grade-school conservatism.

The American right is losing power at the exact same rate that Obama is consolidating it. Unlike President Clinton between 1995-1998, Obama has no fear of the conservative movement; he sees his supposed opponents as weak, without muscle or intellect—and sadly, he may be right.

Instead of clearly and coherently explaining the flaws in Obama’s policies, they’re engaging in kindergarten name-calling. Instead of finding new voices to raise questions about the Obama vision, they’re relying on the old faces—think Dick Cheney and Karl Rove.

What happened to the right? Where are the new organizers, the new breed of leaders who can revive the ailing body of conservatism? Where is the modern equivalent of Richard Viguerie and Paul Weyrich? Where is the 2009 version of the 1994 Newt Gingrich and William Kristol?

The American right is a team without a coach, a parish without a priest. There is no true intellectual leader on the right today, no one who can fill the shoes of the dead and aging icons. Without a leader who can provide a focus, a mission and a purpose, the right has turned into a raging mob.

Obama couldn’t care less that the American right’s natives are restless. Why should he? These men and women now have no power but the power to complain. Those who oppose Obama’s vision are now considered third-class citizens, isolated from the rest of America culturally and politically.

Obama is not the President of conservative America. He’s the President of the remainder of the country–the President of those who, either through their own conclusions or through propaganda, have come to regard the GOP as beneath contempt, and conservatives as nothing more than crazy Christian capitalists contemptuous of change. In his first 100 days as President, Obama has intentionally finished the job President Bush unintentionally started: the complete disenfranchisement of the American right.

Even if the Republicans manage to recapture the House and Senate in 2010, Obama will still have enough institutional power to frustrate the GOP and conservatives. Even if the economy continues to limp along into 2012, he will still have a broad coalition of progressive whites, blacks and Latinos that will turn out in droves to help him secure a second term (independents may also stick with him, if they buy into the notion that “he needs more time to fix George Bush’s mess”). If the economy turns around, watch out! He could have the first blowout victory in 28 years.

You just know Obama sits in the Oval Office chuckling to himself as he reflects upon the haplessness of his political adversaries. Sadly, the right was losing steam even before Obama became President, as conservatives stood behind Bush’s numerous big-government schemes. Credibility on limited-government issues is like virginity: once you lose it, you don’t ever get it back. Well, the Republicans lost it in the early- and mid-2000s; heck, they gave it up without so much as a kiss and an “I’ll text you later” afterwards. Thus, Obama is somewhat justified in regarding his loudest critics—those who rallied around the flag for a Republican socialist—as moral hypocrites.

Obama knows that the American right doesn’t have a damn clue as to how to stop him from permanently institutionalizing liberalism. So he’s coasting and boasting. It stands to reason, does it not, that Gingrich has emerged as one of the media’s most prominent anti-Obama voices? Just as the sight of a newborn child indicates that it’s been nine months since that child’s parents had sex, the sight of Gingrich indicates that it’s been fifteen years since the American right had smarts.

Obsessed tops the charts.

Jeff Jacoby on energy.

Actress Bea Arthur passes away at 86.

Linda Chavez on affirmative action’s excesses. A must-read.

UPDATE: More from George Will.

Stuart Rothenberg and Fred Bauer on the GOP’s woes.

Reihan Salam on the possibility of an anti-Obama backlash.

Former Bush speechwriter Lee Bockhorn: The challenge facing Republicans and conservatives goes deeper than cosmetics or personalities. It demands that we revisit our core principles and apply them to formulate compelling solutions to a host of challenges to American prosperity and leadership–such as mounting health care costs, middle-class wage stagnation and rising income inequality, the collapse of authority, and the increasing dysfunction of fundamental institutions, ranging from our financial system and the federal government to our public schools. These problems cannot be addressed convincingly by merely dusting off the 1980 GOP platform. Damn skippy, as they used to say.

Matthew Dallek argues that the GOP shouldn’t try to force moderates from its ranks. I have no problem with the GOP/conservative movement washing its hands of moderates, but when the GOP/conservative movement starts trying to wash its hands of centrists, you can tell something’s really wrong on the right.

UPDATE: Conservative blogger Warner Todd Huston engages in some good old-fashioned centrist-bashing. See, this is the problem…