Will Buckley's death mark the end of the conservative movement as a force in American politics?
Herein Robert Tracinski of Real Clear Politics makes the case that the notion, advanced by the late Bill Buckley- of a 'fusion' of economic, social, and "security" conservatives is doomed- and was shown to be ultimately futile by the inability of the three wings of the movement to agree on a presidential candidate in 2008.
Tracinski overstates his case. The three branches of American conservatism are hardly mutually exclusive; I myself might be considered either a social or a "security" conservative, and many on the Right also embody two or more of these viewpoints. Further, the difficulty the three conservative groups Tracinski describes had this year in coalescing behind a single, mutually acceptable Republican nominee was to a certain extent a function more of the available choices rather of an inherent impracticality in principle of finding a candidate who can theoretically appeal to all three groups.
Still, Trancinski's viewpoint is one that ought to concern all three groups equally. While certain groups on the Right seem to have lost sight of this point, the fact of the matter is that conservatism cannot continue to be a viable political force in America if even one of the three subgroups Buckley argued could be merged into a single, ideologically more or less coherent coalition defects.
The ideological coalition may, in fact, be dead; it might well be that conservatives are simply going to have go grow up, and swallow some positions in a nominee they find unpleasant for the sake of getting the rest of their agenda through. That seems to be the only option this year if an Obama presidency is to be avoided. But the death of the tactical alliance between social, economic, and "security" conservatives would spell the end of conservatism of any kind as a force in American politics, and adherents of all three groups would do well to dread it and to seek to avoid it even at the cost of ideological perfection in the candidates they support.
Tracinski overstates his case. The three branches of American conservatism are hardly mutually exclusive; I myself might be considered either a social or a "security" conservative, and many on the Right also embody two or more of these viewpoints. Further, the difficulty the three conservative groups Tracinski describes had this year in coalescing behind a single, mutually acceptable Republican nominee was to a certain extent a function more of the available choices rather of an inherent impracticality in principle of finding a candidate who can theoretically appeal to all three groups.
Still, Trancinski's viewpoint is one that ought to concern all three groups equally. While certain groups on the Right seem to have lost sight of this point, the fact of the matter is that conservatism cannot continue to be a viable political force in America if even one of the three subgroups Buckley argued could be merged into a single, ideologically more or less coherent coalition defects.
The ideological coalition may, in fact, be dead; it might well be that conservatives are simply going to have go grow up, and swallow some positions in a nominee they find unpleasant for the sake of getting the rest of their agenda through. That seems to be the only option this year if an Obama presidency is to be avoided. But the death of the tactical alliance between social, economic, and "security" conservatives would spell the end of conservatism of any kind as a force in American politics, and adherents of all three groups would do well to dread it and to seek to avoid it even at the cost of ideological perfection in the candidates they support.
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