In his piece for Real Clear Politics yesterday, Tony Blankley (Newt Gingrich's former Chief of Staff) made, for the one millionth time, a case for Conservative solidarity that is quite frankly specious. Not because unity isn't a necessity in winning elections, but because submerging the inherent conflict between the party's establishment and it's political base undermines it's ability to form a lasting, "insuperable," majority.
To understand the fallacy of Mr. Blankley's argument one has to properly understand the conflict within the party. Mr. Blankley and too many other conservartive pundits declare there is somehow a divide between what are termed "Social," conservatives and those defined as, "Economic," conservatives. Except within intellectual circles, as far as I know, this conflict does not exist. Not really. No, the divide is between the Conservative base (which is overwhelmingly so in a social as well as an economic sense) and the Republican establishment whose commitment to either strain is more rhetorical than real.
Caught in between these two factions are the Evangelicals. Americans who have come to be identified more and more exclusively with the Republican Party by the so-called, "Mainstream Media," but who as recently as thirty years ago were at least as likely to be Democrats voting for Jimmy Carter as Republicans for Ronald Reagan. In fact, if you read periodicals from the 1980 election (in which Republicans gained a Senate Majority) most of the GOP candidates for state and congressional offices that year downplayed the role of the so-called Moral Majority. They put them at arms length.
The origin of the social vs economic conservative myth started after Reagan left the White House. As it turns out, even though Reagan won a substantially greater portion of the Evangelical vote than his Republican predecessors, he didn't go much further than rhetoric himself in addressing their concerns.
So when it came time to nominate someone to succeed Reagan, Evangelical Republicans pushed for one of their own: Virginia televangelist, the Reverend Pat Robertson. Mr. Robertson did surprisingly well in the primary contest of 1988 coming in second in the Iowa Caucuses and actually winning in Michigan, before getting lost in the battle between Senate Leader Bob Dole and Reagan's Vice President and self-proclaimed heir-apparent George H. W. Bush (the father of 9-11 era George W. Bush). At this point the Vice President, with the help of his recently, "born-again," son, astutely cultivated Robertson's supporters and completely wiped Dole off the Super Tuesday map. He didn't win a single state and soon conceded the nomination to the man who would become President. Evangelicals were highly indebted to Mr. Bush for bringng them into the mainstream of Republican politics and flocked to the party in droves.
This is where the myth got its start. Having more to do with the lack of cultivation under Reagan than any philosophical difference with Reagan supporters, the myth of Evangelical exclusion came to be used by the party establishment to regain control of the GOP as Reagan accolytes failed to stake a claim to his mantle.
There really is no philosophical contradiction between the Evangelical faith and Reagan conservatism and there is no evidence in recent history that competition within the Republican Party over philosophy or the purity of it's commitment to Reagan's principles has endangererd the party or been the cause of its recent defeats, starting with Mr. Bush's loss to Bill Clinton.
It wasn't Pat Buchanan's culture war (which Mr. Bush didn't really subscribe to) that doomed his re-election. Only a year before, the President had successfully executed the defeat of Sadaam Hussein in Kuwait and presided over the ultimate demise of the 70-Year Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Polls in 1991 put him so far ahead, all the Democrats' leading candidates for President declined to run. Consequently, it was left to the man from Hope, Arkansas to make their case. No, it was Mr. Bush's failure to articulate a compelling conservative vision for his re-election, now that his skills as a Cold Warrior seemed no longer required, that determined his defeat. (This sheds a little light on why America returned to Iraq so soon after leaving it.)
Those, like Mr. Blankley, would insist, that disunity caused by opposition from Mr. Buchanan and then Ross Perot cost Mr. Bush his re-election. That if only democracy had been curtailed, he'd have beaten Mr. Clinton. While this would have been convenient for the former President, America doesn't work that way. At least not yet. And the lack of compelling conservative candidates decades since belies the accusation that conservatives at the base of the party are the cause of its woes.
