National Review Online
Wednesday, November 07, 2012
Conservatives suffered a terrible defeat last night, and
there is no point pretending otherwise. President Obama won with an improving
but still weak economy, and while running a campaign that was quite liberal by
historical standards. His plan for the economy was almost entirely built on
government-directed investment and government-based employment, and he
supported abortion more strongly than any previous Democratic presidential
candidate had. The Senate saw at least one loss, even in a cycle with far more
liberal than conservative seats. The House was the only bright spot, and that
only because of a favorable redistricting.
Blame for this debacle is widely shared. Mitt Romney made
many mistakes in this campaign. Yet with the exception of his failure to press
the case against Obamacare — a failure partly explained but not excused by his
own record on health care — those mistakes reflected party-wide decisions. The
party hasn’t kept up with the political technologies Democrats are using. More
important, Republicans from the top to the bottom of the ticket did little to
make the case that conservative policies would make the broad mass of the
public better off. It wasn’t a theme of the convention in Tampa, for example,
or a consistent theme in Republican ads.
Most of the post-election discussion, we can predict,
will dwell on the predictable demographic divides of sex, race, and age. Most
of this conversation will be unproductive. Until conservatives devise a
domestic agenda, and a way to sell it, that links small-government principles
to attractive results, they are going to have a hard time improving their
standing with women, Latinos, white men, or young people. And conservatives
would be deeply unwise to count on the mere availability of charismatic young
conservative officials to make up for that problem.
Social conservatives usually get unfairly blamed for
Republican electoral defeats. There is certainly no reason for Republicans to
stop defending the right to life, and little prospect that they will. Too many
social conservatives have, however, embraced a self-defeating approach to
politics — falling, to take a painful example, for Todd Akin’s line that his
withdrawal from the Missouri Senate race would be a defeat for their causes. It
would have been an advance. And while we continue to believe same-sex marriage
is a grave mistake, calls for a constitutional amendment against it are now
quixotic.
Conservatives are going to have to do all of their
rethinking under pressure, because liberalism will not rest. If the president
offers a serious reform of entitlements, or some other worthwhile policy,
conservatives should be willing to bargain with him. If he continues on the
path of his first term — and why would he not, after this election? — we should
feel duty-bound to oppose him. We will have to do it more effectively, while
articulating better alternatives, than we have so far.
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