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Over at The Next Right, Matt Moon, a young conservative who believes Ronald Reagan the country's greatest president and lauds the Heritage Foundation's wonderful work, authors an intense plea for his party to move beyond its continual worship of a president from the 80s and start looking forward. We'll see. If McCain loses, it's going to be an odd time in the Republican Party. Everyone agrees that reform is necessary, but few seem united on which direction they'd like it to move in. The conservative elites like Brooks and Frum and Kristol seem to want a Ross Douthat-style party that's less allergic to government intervention in the economy and more attentive to its downscale base. The House Republicans and many of the grassroots leaders want to blame the party's fall on insufficient opposition to government spending and the continued existence of earmarks. The problem is made more acute y the reality that this election will probably tear the GOP's last-ditch firewall to the ground. As Mark Schmitt presciently argued back in May:
The politics of American-ness needs to be cloaked in policy, simply because it's unpalatable otherwise. Without the helpful crutches of symbolic issues like welfare, crime, and immigration, the raw edges of the politics of people-not-like-us would be a little too uncomfortable, and not just for those of us who fall into one or more of the "pluribus" categories. But thanks to the unlikely trio of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and John McCain, the usual game is impossible...This year the Republican argument is reduced to its barest essence: Americans versus "pluribus," unprotected by the politeness of issues or safer symbolism. Hence McCain's slogan, the politics of the flag pin, the e-mails charging that Obama doesn't salute the flag, and the attempt to associate him with the anti-American politics of 1968, when he was 7 years old. This, then, may be the ultimate high-stakes gamble for the party of confident risk-takers: Accept that everything else--ideas, competence, governance--is gone, and instead of trying to reconstruct it, as the books recommend, bet everything on the bare essentials of Republican identity politics, "The American President Americans Are Waiting For."If it works, it will be in part because we--by which I mean the media and many Democrats--believe it will. We are easily spooked by the confident swagger of the Republicans, who not so long ago were plotting permanent world domination. But then, so was Bear Stearns.If it fails, the Republican Party will be left with nothing. It will be a regional party, with no hold on government, no up-and-coming generation of politicians, no noble ideas which might have their day again. For Republicans, that may be the better result. It might take a decade, but like the British Conservatives, one day a new leader will emerge, read the books about reforming conservatism, embrace a new vision, and rebuild a party that can compete for power without trying to monopolize it.Alternately, The National have a good take on this:
