You Say You Want a Revolution?

By Kevin D. Williamson

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Nigel Farage of the UK Independence Party paid National Review a visit last week, and two things stood out: First, he is an extraordinarily charming man, almost suspiciously so; second, he is a man of the Right who is manifestly more excited by the prospect of beating Conservatives than by anything else he spoke about. In this, he reminded me of any number of conservative figures here in the United States. I do not follow U.K. politics especially closely, and Mr. Farage may in fact be absolutely correct that there is not a dime’s worth of difference between Labor and the Conservatives back home.

But there are many dimes’ worth here.

A strange phenomenon on the right is that many of the same people who believe Barack Obama to be not a mere feckless academic progressive but a conspirator against the interests of the United States and an active malefactor are precisely the same people who vow to stay home or write in Donald Duck if the Republicans should be so crass as to expect them to go to the polls in support of . . . Mitch McConnell, or Marco Rubio, or Rick Perry, or Ted Cruz, or Chris Christie. It is one thing to believe that Barack Obama is Antichrist Lite or to believe that Mitt Romney was something less than a vision of perfection from a conservative point of view. But while I am sympathetic to the view that what currently ails the United States may be beyond the power of elections to reverse, to believe that in terms of the presidency that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are roughly interchangeable is poppycock. To believe that, in terms of the Senate, it makes no difference whether we have Mitch McConnell or a fairly fruity Democrat is unsupportable.

My own belief is that such changes as we are likely to be able to achieve through winning elections and passing laws (as opposed to dealing with economic reality per force when the bill for those unfunded liabilities lands on the budget with a meteoric thud) is likely to be marginal, but that, over time, an accumulation of marginal changes can make a substantial difference. I do not see how those marginal changes can happen without electing Republicans and passing laws.

Which is to say, it is possible to be uncompromising as a matter of philosophy while at the same time taking a good-enough view of operational politics. Is Paul Ryan’s budget something that satisfies my every fiscal priority in a way that is absolutely consistent with my values and preferences? Not by a long shot. Is it good enough? Yes, it is. Enacting it would represent an important step in the right direction. And not a baby step, either. I like Rick Perry and Rand Paul. Marco Rubio? Good enough. Scott Walker? Double-plus good enough.

Organizations such as the Club for Growth and the various tea-party groups do important work keeping Republicans honest, and I am all for challenging incumbents in primaries. That’s why we have primaries. But when defeating conservatives becomes more important to you than moving conservative reforms forward, you become part of the problem. And don’t tell me that Mitch McConnell or John Boehner aren’t “real conservatives.” Either one would have been well on the right side of congressional leadership in the Reagan years. If you cannot figure out why you’d rather have Speaker Boehner than Speaker Pelosi, you need to take a deep breath.

Conservative critics of Republican leadership have two options for advancing the cause: First, come up with conservative proposals that can move forward in the current political environment, which includes a Senate run by Harry Reid and an Oval Office occupied by Barack Obama. That is not easy. The second option is come up with a plausible program for changing that political environment.

It’s there that conservatives, particularly conservative populists and media figures, go spectacularly wrong. We are constantly hearing from talk-radio and Fox News pundits that the United States is just waiting to rally behind a right-wing candidate who can articulate the conservative agenda in a persuasive way with a smile on his face. But both experience and our best research suggest that that is far from the case. The American public is decidedly mixed in its political views: Americans think taxes are too high, but they also think that the minimum wage is too low. They think that there is too much regulation of many businesses but that free trade is a net loss for the country. They are not simply waiting for a conservative who is conservative enough.

But it does not follow that they are necessarily waiting for a moderate. They have short attention spans. Barack Obama, no moderate, was elected president twice, once as a repudiation of George W. Bush’s foreign policy (which is not looking nearly so bad in retrospect, though, is it?) and sundry Republican congressional shenanigans, and a second time when Republicans nominated an excellent man who carried the baggage of being a gazillionnaire private-equity guy with the common touch of Thurston Howell III. But Barack Obama did not fool Americans — not the first time, and certainly not the second time. They knew what they were getting. And now, as H. L. Mencken would appreciate, they’re getting it good and hard.

Reform is a long-term project; elections, unfortunately, are about what is happening right this minute. But it is a safe bet for conservatives that they should prefer, sight unseen, whomever the Republicans nominate in 2016, because historical trends suggest that we already have a good idea who it is that the Democrats are going to select to replace President Obama: Someone worse.