Posted by
Always To The Right on Sunday, October 25, 2009 12:45:22 PM
The other story, playing out in the background, is the second act of
one political saga beginning, even as another draws to a close. The
rising star of Sarah Palin passes over the melancholy ruins of Newt
Gingrich, who spent the last of his credibility endorsing Scozzafava.
The Republican Party of Gingrich dies, unloved and irrelevant.
Something else is replacing it. The new opposition party is not
guaranteed of victory – such guarantees are issued to no one. Palin may
never choose to campaign for an office beneath its banner, but she’s an
integral part of its identity. She’ll certainly never be a governor, or
anyone’s vice presidential candidate, again. For the Republicans, it
will never be 1996 or 2006 again. There’s no more room for school-lunch
debacles, government shutdown miscalculations, Trent Lott, George
Allen, Mark Foley… or Newt Gingrich.
It pains me to say this about Gingrich. He accomplished some amazing
things, in the mid-90s. He’s a smart man who has offered some
interesting ideas, in his second life as a conservative intellectual.
The problem is that Newt is a political tactician, and in the final
stages of a losing war against collectivist ruin, the time has come to
focus on grand strategy, rather than tactics. The second decade of this
century will be an existential war for the American soul, not a police
action.
Meanwhile, the political battlefront
has shifted into the fatal terrain of essential liberties and economic
freedom. This is the time for courage, conviction, and bold action… not
whining about “big tents,” while pushing a product of the Pataki
machine with a Margaret Sanger award dangling around her neck. A
Republican party that embraces Scozzafava over Hoffman isn’t a “tent.”
It’s not even a lean-to.
The most urgent task for conservatives is building a logical, consistent vision
to place before the voters. They’re looking for a comprehensive
explanation of why Democrat policies are wrong. They can see Obama’s
failures all around them, but in the absence of a compelling narrative
from the opposition party, they’re likely to conclude those failures
were inevitable, and learn to accept them. If no one presents a
coherent alternative to socialism, it wins by default, because too much
of the political and media culture desires it. We’ve already tumbled
far past the point where anyone views the Constitution as even a speed
bump, let alone a barrier to socialist ambition. The principles
embodied in that incredible document will perish, if they are not respected, explained, and defended.
A party that supports Scozzafava over Hoffman cannot mount
that defense. They can’t run candidates to the left of the Democrats,
then expect a spellbound audience when they explain why the Democrats
are wrong. This is not a question of rigid idealism, or remaining a
“perfect minority.” The voters, including the fabled “moderates,” need
to be persuaded, not pandered to. Running a liberal squish in a largely
conservative district will not cause moderate voters to squeal with
excitement over the billowing expanse of the GOP’s enormous tent, and
rush to see what other wonders might be hidden inside.