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Oct
29
The Concept Of The “Moderate”
Filed Under Republican Politics
Ah, moderates. I’ve been hearing that term thrown around a lot lately, but unfortunately I haven’t seen a great deal of exploration of the concept - instead it seems like the “go to” word when describing a faction of the party which is not of the socially conservative ilk.
It is unfortunate that this article is necessary, but alas in many recent readings (such as here) I have come across descriptions of the friction within the Republican Party, and what has struck me has been the remarkable lack of understanding of basic political philosophy in not only the media, but in the right as well, including honestly grasping what a moderate is, and who exactly is about to “go to war” inside the right.
The upcoming “war for the soul of the GOP” as its being called lately is being described almost universally as “Moderates vs. social conservatives”.
::sigh::
First of all, lets get something straight - there are a lot more than just two factions within the Republican Party, and it is certainly a hell of a lot more in-depth than “moderates vs. conservatives”. Such descriptions hearken to the notion that politics is bi-polar, which is born of a two party system I suppose. You are apparently either left or right, or somewhere in the middle.
Sorry folks, but there is no “right” and “left” and “center”. Those concepts are artificial creations. We keep hearing, “does the republican party need to go further right?” - but what are they asking? Should the party go more right economically, socially or both? If you go left on one and right on another, does that make you a “moderate”? (no it doesn’t)
Such descriptions, as I’ve noted before, are completely divorced from reality or critical thought. There are at lest four main “groups” of political thought across the landscape of political philosophy, popularized by the libertarian party’s two dimensional model of political thought. For the sake of reference, I’ll be referring to them as such:
- Authoritarians - Economic statism, Social statism
- Libertarians - Economic liberalism, Social liberalism
- Progressives - Economic statism, Social liberalism
- Conservatives - Economic liberalism, Social statism
This isn’t just a theory, this is more or less the general makeup of everyone’s political brain. Yes, there are variations on all of these things - I’ve met libertarians for example that range from isolationists to broad internationalists on foreign policy - but lets not use those fractures distract from the fact that most people fall in these general categories. We can deal with the dozen or so verifiable “strains” of Republicanism at another time, but for now, lets deal with the three main factions that we see competing - conservatives, libertarians, and true moderates. I say true moderates for a reason that I will outline below.
When somebody says the war within the Republican Party is “moderates vs. conservatives” - what in the living hell are they talking about?
The only thing they can be talking about is social policy and the culture wars.
Why? Because primarily the grassroots of the Republican Party is made up of a collection of conservatives and libertarians, both of whom agree on economic liberalism. Yes, I know the leaders of the party have acted like authoritarians - who cares? We know they don’t represent the actual grassroots of the party, so lets just set that aside and agree that nearly everyone in this country who would be predisposed to vote for a Republican would be either a libertarian or a conservative. But then again, there are the “moderates”.
So what is a moderate? A true moderate is somebody who can’t make up their damned mind and just blows with the wind on any and all issues. These are the real cancer within the party - the folks who conspire with Democrats to increase spending, expand entitlements, raise taxes, support earmarks, and the entire litany of state loving activities of the left. They do so because they see compromise on those government issues as “the center” and don’t want to be extreme. They do the same thing with social policy as well for the exactly same reason.
These are the people that need to be excommunicated from the party. These state loving, compromising, wishy washy, sail where the wind blows you lawmakers are the ones who don’t belong with us, and aren’t helping us anyway.
But it isn’t where the war within the party is going to be fought. True moderates as I just described are widely hated by everyone within our party - libertarians hate them because they compromise all freedom oriented principles, both economic and social, as they run to the politically safe road. Conservatives hate them because they tax and spend like Democrats, and they are much more liberal on social issues. I think we’re all on board with not liking these people.
But the coming war isn’t with this definition of moderates, which is the essence of my problem with the description I keep seeing in the media about the Republican schism.
No, the real war is between the culture warriors and the libertarians, about what role, and how much of a role, social issues will play in the Republican Party’s new strategy. Since both libertarians and conservatives are agreed on economic liberalism, this is the only place they can fight - but since the media needs to label something they don’t understand, they do the intellectually lazy thing and say it is “moderates” vs. “conservatives”.
I’m sorry, but moderates aren’t going to war with anyone. They’re out of the equasion, and to even bring up that label when discussing the future of the party is a dis-service to the conversation. If for no other reason that it irritates the living hell out of libertarians to be labeled as moderates, because they are moderate about nothing.
In any event, social issues is where the friction really is within the party - but the continual, inaccurate description of the conflict that is coming as “moderates vs. conservatives” feeds into the insanity that Soren Dayton talked about the other day - the idea being propagated by Rush Limbaugh and others that the problem with the party is that “true conservatives” have been betrayed, and that “moderates” have corrupted our core principles.
This gets us into people within the party labeling other people RINOs, when some of those “RINOs” are anti-government crusaders that would just as soon eliminate 10 executive departments, cut taxes by 20% across the board, and institute market reforms on every entitlement we have, but simply have a disagreement about the role of social warfare within our politics.
This is an ideological contest between people who want to almost exclusively fight the Republican political war on the culture battlefield vs. people who want to downplay the culture wars, and focus on what unifies the two camps, economic liberalism and good government reform.
Count me squarely with the libertarians in this fight - and not just because I am one. I, nor anyone in this camp is a “moderate” about anything - indeed I would argue it is likely I am more hawkish on economic liberalism and government reform than 95% of the Republican Party.
We simply see that stressing a message of economic freedom, low taxes, spending restraint, balanced budgets, government reform and a strong national defense are much more effective in uniting people across multiple regions than the culture wars are. Hell, I’m a religious person (Catholic), militantly pro-life, and I’m not exactly the biggest fan of the homosexual lobby, but that doesn’t mean I want that to be my sales pitch to the American people.
Many social conservatives that I know are in this line of thinking as well, because they recognize that no matter how “right” the Republican social agenda is, it remains divisive and will shrink the base of support of the party if it is the focus and lead argument for the party. Such fights may be appropriate to make - but by defining your movement by them, you give the impression that you aren’t really interested in serious governing, you simply want to use the government as a tool of social control.
For better or worse, my friends, people want to elect people they believe will be good stewards of government. They want it to be as efficient and minimalistic as it can be, they don’t want it to waste resources or profit on its existence, they want common sense, good solutions, they want their money protected, and they want to feel safe living in this country. They don’t like power being more important than protecting the people, and they want to trust.
That appeals to our common agreements between libertarians and conservatives. Moderates do in fact have a place, and I would not dream of throwing them out with the bathwater (no political party in a two party system competing with such an unbreakable wall in entertainment and education as the Democrats have, could ever hope to be viable without at least a few moderates) - but the real division in the party has nothing to do with moderates.
Ronald Reagan built an electoral model on unifying the splintered, broken and seemingly defeated Republican Party, and he didn’t do it by campaigning on a gay-marriage ban in the constitution. He did it by asking us to believe in ourselves, take individual responsibility, fight the growth and power of the Federal Government, and reform our most basic institutions so they serve the people.
Unifying narratives work. If you think that somehow not fighting the social wars as a central theme of campaigning will somehow mean we cede those issues, or “give up” on them, you are a political novice. Messages to voters that unify and inspire are what work - things that inherently divide us (like culture) do not work. This is why Barack Obama has thrived on quite literally nothing. He got people to buy into a message - and for better or worse, he portrayed it as a message of pragmatic unity.
Well, the right has its own unifying message of common sense and pragmatism, and its about time we stopped sniping each other over social and cultural issues, and set out to push forward with a unifying message - such as what was done during the Reagan Revolution and the 1994 overthrow of Congress. Those movements were about common sense, good government ideas, and a positive inspiring vision of America.
We’ve lacked “that vision thing” for quite some time now, and become little more than economic statists increasingly fighting one battle - culture. Lets hit the reset buttom and understand not only what our common causes are, but what any random generic American - yes independents and democrats - can see about our agenda that they like. Small government, reform, efficiency, and intelligence.
That is a message we can all come together on (hell, even the moderates can probably hop on board that train), and if the Republican Party had any sense left in it, this would be the focus of our party as we pick up the pieces from 2008. But more than that, we can’t just sell ourselves that way, we must behave that way once we regain power.
I for one am hoping that this is the consensus the party arrives at after the election. But for the love of all that is holy, lets stop speaking about ourselves as though there are “true conservatives” and “moderates”, because politics is not bi-polar, and the people being labeled as moderates are not moderate by any definition of the word.
Copyright 2008 © Political Capital
Related Articles: Libertarians > Moderates > Republican Schism
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I would love to see a Republican party that can practice what it preaches when it comes to small government, reform, efficiency and intelligence. It might just offer the Democrats some real competition and higher aspirations to strive for.
If it’s not too presumptuous of me to offer an outsider’s observation, here’s what I see when I look at the Republicans. There’s the libertarians who take Regan’s “drown government in a bathtub” mandate almost literally and should eschew the moral legislation of the values voters on principle, except that they don’t and delegate that to “State’s Rights”. Then you’ve got the Moral Majority or Values Voters (or whatever they’re calling themselves) who are essentially one or two issue voters and I’m not sure they even have a coherent enough agenda beyond that to be in a position to effectively govern. And there’s the neo-conservatives who just want to go to war with the rest of the world while being completely fiscally irresponsible and running rough-shod over our civil liberties. They are anathema to libertarians and should be to the Moral Majority except that they pay lip service to things like Roe v. Wade and Constitutional amendments defining marriage. These three major groups seem to have very little to do with each other other than the fact that they all believe themselves to be “Real Republicans” (and the others are just RINOS.)
With all this extremism in every different direction, John McCain ended up with nomination precisely because he was “moderate”. He was a little bit of everything to everyone and at the same time, not too threatening to anyone, and the independents could get behind him. He is the emblem of a very disparate party and a nation that doesn’t like the direction it’s been going in. He’s weak tea. He’s too tasteless to be either invigorating or offensive, but he also doesn’t excite the palate.
The Republican’s problem is not lack of vision, it’s that the people camped under the Republican tent all have very clear but very divergent visions. For a party that is more known for being in lock-step, while the Democrats have traditionally been the ones in the big tent with the circular firing squad, it will be interesting to see how this is reconciled.
Its always amused me how the democrats got the big tent label - because while that is true in terms of WHO is in the party (African Americans, Latinos, working class whites, homosexuals, etc…), ideologically the only real division from a philosophical perspective is the blue dogs vs. the liberals, and even that is a mild difference.
The republican party, while always a party of older white men, has been a philosophical melting pot that brings together groups that are as wildly opposite as libertarians and the Christian right.
The reason people like Reagan were able to dominate politics was because he found COMMON GROUND with all the splintered groups, and unified them under common concepts.
For republicans to not only win elections, but to be respected and liked by the population as a whole, they need to understand what part of their agenda unifies people. Social policy, while unquestionably a republican value, can NOT be the leading argument… it can NOT be the thing that we use to attempt to persuade others, because just by its very nature, it breeds contempt between groups of Americans - us for them and them for us.
When we preach (and practice) limited government, reform, common sense governance, balanced budgets and all around good government with a conservative social twinge, that’s when you get 500+ electoral votes going to your candidates… that’s when you win Congress… and that’s when your leaders are actually liked and respected by the people that voted for them.
I’m not saying ditch the social agenda (I mean, I as a libertarian would like to, but I’m a pragmatist and realize its just part of the game), what I’m saying is don’t make it the sword and hammer with which you attempt to beat your opposition into office with.
Think of it like selling a house - you want to appeal to all the people who are coming to your open house, so you don’t paint your walls blood red or pink - you give neutral tones and clean furniture that appeal to all people who walk through the door.
You can call that “selling out” if you want, but the fundamental misunderstanding that there is a separation between building an electoral mandate, and ones agenda, has been our biggest problem. Republicans think elections are forensics debates being held by the nation at large, used to convince people about who is right. That’s not the case.
People who are socially conservative and socially liberal can both get on board with a republican when they preach to common sense, reform and limited government. So, lets make that the staple of the party, because it is what typically unifies the splintered groups in our tent.
[...] The (Lie) Term “Moderate” We can deal with the dozen or so verifiable “strains” of Republicanism at another time, but for now, lets deal with the three main factions that we see competing - conservatives, libertarians, and true moderates. … [...]
[...] The Concept Of The “Moderate” We can deal with the dozen or so verifiable “strains” of Republicanism at another time, but for now, lets deal with the three main factions that we see competing - conservatives, libertarians, and true moderates. … [...]