The predictions of the conservative crack-up anticipating John McCain's defeat appear to have come to fruition. We hear of the post-election GOP power grab among the Governors in Florida, contenders for the chairmanship of the RNC, or the future presidential nominees racing to Iowa. Conservative politicians, pundits and intellectuals are openly struggling to define the reasons for Republic defeat, blaming everything from incompetence to immigration to incumbency.
Each reported argument, disagreement or challenge is welcomed by the progressive media as signs that the conservative crack-up is finally upon us. It isn't. In fact, the Left is in far greater danger of cracking up than the conservative movement ever has.
Conservative infighting is nothing new. Ideological fissures have existed since the battle between the libertarians and traditionalists of National Review in the 1950s to paleoconservative revolt from (alleged) neoconservative dominance in the 1980s. Nothing came of it. Movement conservatives under Eisenhower, Nixon (twice) and G. H. W. Bush threatened to leave the Republican Party and start afresh. It never happened. Evangelicals and anti-immigration zealots said "never" to McCain. They rallied before the convention.
The "conservative crack-up" trope goes back to a 1987 edition of The American Spectator. Disillusioned with Reagan's second term, conservatives debated whether the movement had a future. It was followed by the rise of the Christian Coalition, the founding of Fox News and The Weekly Standard, the explosion of conservative talk radio, Gingrich's Contract for America victory, and the Bush era of Republican dominance. Some crack-up.
Yet, the prediction persists relentlessly. Journalists like to dramatize high-profile defections and public criticisms within conservative circles as tectonic shifts or historic re-alignments. Conservatives threaten defection to pressure their superiors to toe their ideological line. For liberals, it's an exercise in wish-fulfillment: unable to unite themselves, they project their frustrations on hoping for the conservatives to "crack-up" instead.
But what exactly is going to crack-up? Is the Heritage Foundation going to stop sending policy memos to Republican staffers? Are Weekly Standard columnists going to stop appearing on Fox News discussion panels? Is Pat Robertson going to join forces with Howard Dean? The questions are rhetorical for a reason: the conservative Counter-Establishment is the most cast-iron entanglement of alliances and dependencies known in modern American history.
Uniting the factions is a strong cultural base. Becoming a conservative is more than signing up to a handful of policy positions or pulling the Republican leaver. It is a personal calling, a cause and crusade.
For the elites, conservatism is a privileged club with its own histories and rituals that are passed down across generations from experienced mentors to ambitious aspirants. They tell a story that runs from the fragile beginnings of the 1950s, the coming out party of the 1960s, the great advances of the 1970s, the victories of the 1980s, the struggles of the 1990s and the missed opportunity of the 2000s. They give them books to read, memorize and quote, together with the Brooks Brothers uniform to wear and Buckley poses to adopt. Soon, the young conservative has a job at a conservative organization, a new self-affirming social group of like-minded friends, from whom a spouse will the chosen to raise the next generation all over again.
Whether or not they trace their intellectual lineage to the traditionalism of Burke, neoconservatism of Strauss or libertarianism of Hayek, they share a common stigma that conservatism brings in the liberal settings they're forced to inhabit, for the most part, college or graduate school. It is their rejection from the "Liberal Establishment," and their rejection if it, that demarcates the boundaries of the big-tent of conservativism. The discomfort of ideological over-crowding never exceeds the dangers, real or imagined, of venturing out to a hostile, "Liberal" world.
For the grassroots conservatives, conservatism is a not a political game, but a moral struggle against Communists and terrorist appeasers, sex educators and abortionists, regulators and redistributors. These moral categories map onto Democrats and Republicans so perfectly that the loyalty to the GOP never requires reward as the opposing side doesn't hold a different point of view, it's in league with atheism (at best) and evil (at worst).
Newt Gingrich failed to pass a single pledge of the Christian Coalition's Contract with America, and George W. Bush did little to promote school prayer or fund faith-bases groups or ban gay marriage, despite the hot rhetoric. It was Bill Clinton who delivered them the V-Chip, school uniforms, the Defense of Marriage Act and Charitable Choice for faith-based groups. Yet Hillary Clinton was the one deemed the "Antichrist" among these campaigners, not the political secular and adulterous Gingrich .
The organizational matrix of the conservative Counter-Establishment maps perfectly onto this cultural arrangement. The genius of W. F. Buckley, Jr. was to place those with different ideological leanings within the same organization, NR. As conservatism expanded, this model was replicated. Major think-tanks and PACS embraced the diversity of the conservative movement under a single roof.
Sure, there are a few strict ideologues such as The Weekly Standard or The American Conservative, but these are small, elite outfits. They are noisy but have little impact on the grassroots activists, powerful interest groups and corporate-funded think-tanks that make up the core partnerships of the conservative coalition. And these partners are carefully catered for. Conservative entrepreneurs from Buckley to Weyrich to Norquist invest heavily in keeping them united, from banquets in Stamford, Connecticut to weekly meetings at the offices of American's for Tax Reform.
It is the Left that should be fearful of a crack-up. Its past is a history of fractures between whites and blacks, unions and feminists, moderates and radicals. The Left has never been culturally or organizationally unified but has always been and remains a balkanized mish-mash of interest and constituency groups, factions of the Democratic Party, partisan journalists and a disparate academic intelligentsia. The new progressive movement, and its rapid institution-building, represents another, albeit highly significant, Balkan state, not a new Leftist confederacy or empire.
Yet, for the first time, every stripe of the Left and center-Left has united, brought together through their mutual opposition to Bush expressed through the Obama candidacy. Now that Obama has won, the real test has begun. Once the excitement of victory passes, the interest groups will remain united so long as they get their piece of the pie and their privileges are protected. The first test will be the unions whose demands for card-check or the auto industry are already looking contentious among Democrats who they have invested in so heavily. Once Obama takes office, further conflicts will no doubt ensue. Activist journalists and bloggers will peel off as compromises are struck, half-measures are settled for, and his hawkishness towards Pakistan becomes foreign policy (we already saw the first signs of this when the Netroots revolted over Obama's support for the FISA bill last summer).
America has spoken: it is ready for change. The question for Left is: are you? Can the Left become a united front or will it remain a house divided against itself?