Normally splits on the right -- over, say, McCain, or the war -- create one side saying "we're the real conservatives." Buchanan's entire project for the last decade and half has been along these lines, condemning the GOP, National Review et al as "hijacked" institution by non-conservatives. Bush supporters said Kristol & Co. were not "real" conservatives. Sometimes this stuff can be silly, or absurd or just truthful enough to be annoying, or, in some cases absolutely true. It all depends on the circumstances. I think every intellectually honest conservative writer has at one point or another been charged with the sin of insufficient purity.Ohio is a main battleground in this fight. For far too long we've let establishment Republicans who, as Ken Blackwell says, campaign like Reagan and then govern like Celeste to run the table.
What is remarkable about the Miers nomination is that the pro-Miers side managed to define the debate as one between elitists and "heartlanders" or some similar nonsense first. There was no way that anyone could say NR, the Weekly Standard, the Federalist Society, Bork, George Will and Krauthammer were somehow collectively of insufficient conservative authenticity, especially when the defedners -- with some exceptions -- do tend to be more moderate or, as the Judge says, lukewarm. Hugh Hewitt, for example, is famously dismissive of ideological conservatism preferring to talke about Republicans versus Democrats, not liberals versus conservatives.
I actually think this is a profoundly significant signal in the ongoing -- and at times somewhat lamentable -- transformation of the GOP into a populist party. For example, I've written many times about how liberals don't understand that Fox News' popularity has had less to do with conservatism and more to do with populism than they are prepared to see. Liberals think they're the party of the people, so they tend not to understand populism when it comes from non-liberal quarters. But it is Fox's anti-elitism which pulls in the ratings more than its conservatism. This has been hard to see in the past because Fox's anti-elitism has generally been aimed at liberal institutions -- the New York Times, the ACLU, Harvard, etc. But anti-elitism and conservatism are not and never have been the same thing. And I do think this will be more obvious in the months and years to come. I think this new "elites" versus "heartlanders" trend is only going to grow within the ranks of the GOP. I can't say it's all bad or all good. But it is a major sociological change if the arguments within conservatism are now going to be about "loyalty" to our people (trans: our Party) instead of loyalty to our ideas.
The Ohio GOP has been building their "Big Tent" by moving left to take ground abandoned by the Democrats who are moving even farther left. The result is that the GOP has been winning elections, but not accomplishing a conservative agenda. Now, if your goal is to win elections, then this is grand strategry. But if your goal is to advance a conservative agenda, the Ohio GOP has not been the place to do it.
Is Ohio the vanguard? Are we now seeing a similar divide nationally? It is beginning to look like it. But I don't think we'll see near the complete breakup as we've seen in the Democrats.
Lastly, I don't think that the Republicans should just abandon the center. The cetner is an important constituency, but they are not as powerful as they might think. That's all I'm saying...
