Finding a Home for Genuine Conservatives

Here’s Jonathan Rauch attempting to draw some distinctions between genuine conservatism and what he terms right-wing populism. Calling on some historical analogies, he holds up Barry Goldwater as an example of the former and George Wallace as an example of the latter, and goes on to conclude that the current Republican party (with the Tea Partiers leading the charge) is letting its inner-Wallace run rampant.

“To dismiss George Wallace as a racist or a demagogue is to seriously underestimate his allure,” said the National Observer in 1968. “His appeal is broader, far broader, than racism, and his themes too vital to be contained within mere demagoguery.” Wallace drew a map for Republicans’ subsequent inroads into the South and blue-collar America, and he pioneered legitimate issues to which establishment politicians paid too little attention: easy money, dysfunctional welfare programs, perverse crime policies.

What Wallace did not do was frame a coherent program or governing philosophy. His agenda was “this strange conglomeration,” says Dan Carter, a University of South Carolina historian and biographer of Wallace. “I don’t expect politicians to be running a seminar, but there’s an absolute incoherence about the thing that is more a cry of angst than a program.”

Wallace’s national appeal came neither from the racial backlash he exploited nor from his program, such as it was. “It was a deep sense of grievance,” Carter says — a feeling that elites “are not only screwing you over but at the same time they’re laughing at you, they’re looking down their noses at you.”

Fast-forward to the present. The hottest ticket in the Republican Party is Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and the party’s 2008 vice presidential nominee. In a recent column, George Will compared her insurgent libertarianism to that of Goldwater’s, which electrified the Right in 1964. Fair enough. But Goldwater served for 30 years as a respected insider in Washington’s most exclusive club, the U.S. Senate; he was never interested in cultural and social issues; resentment and rage were alien to him. Palin’s style and appeal are closer to Wallace’s.

On a personal level, I’ve been challenged and improved by encountering principled representatives of Rauch’s genuine conservatism. I’m thinking here of Bruce Bartlett, Andrew Bacevich and Andrew Sullivan, to name a few off the top of my head. So I think it’s telling, tragic, and an indication of the intellectual collapse of the Republican party and “conservatism” writ large that all three men are considered to be apostates to varying degrees by the conservative movement.

At the same time, I also have to agree with this bucket of cold water tossed by Matt Yglesias. If by “genuine conservatism” you are referring to a coherent set of philosophic and practical principles which can be more or less traced through the likes of Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, Friedrich Hayek, and the like – and this seems to be what Rauch means – then you are referring to a group which is not just relatively small now, but has always been relatively small in American politics.

It’s true that modern-day conservatives don’t seem especially interested in reducing government outlays, but that’s always been the case. The idea that “small government” is the goal of conservative politics seems to me like a piety that’s never had much grounding in reality. The idea is to represent the interests of economic elites and the prejudices of the sociocultural majority and modern-day conservatives do this very well.

All the “populist” disdain for “Chablis-drinking, Brie-eating parties in San Francisco” in the world doesn’t stop John Boehner from raking in financial industry money in exchange for taking their lead on regulatory matters. Newt Gingrich is very comfortable running what he describes as a “trade association” for health care firms. Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks organization, the main institutional backers of the Tea Party movement, are basically an arm of his lobbying activities.

When the prejudices of the sociocultural minority clash with the interests of economic elites, as they do on immigration, then we see splits inside the movement. But ordinarily business conservatism and right-wing populism work together extremely comfortable and always have. Rauch, I think, really wants to see public expenditures reduced and is correct that the contemporary conservative movement is not a political movement driving toward that goal. But I don’t think any iteration of it has ever been or realistically ever will be.

I’m much, much more sympathetic (though still not always in agreement) with the kind of philosophic conservatism Rauch is championing than with the pseudo-populism of the Tea Partiers, Palin’s Republican party, and their cheerleaders at National Review, The American Spectator, and so on. I think he’s right to draw some very bright lines between the two. I’m a fan of getting one’s intellectual distinctions and taxonomies straight.

At the same time, the conservative movement ultimately is what it is, incoherence and populism and all. I don’t blame Rauch for wanting to reclaim the conservative label, but sooner or later you have to defer to the realities on the ground.