While Conservatives Fiddle

Does anybody really and truly believe that the number one problem facing the United States of America right now is illegal immigration, closely followed by unnecessary public works projects? That’s certainly the impression that a reader of the right-of-center blogosphere would have gotten over the past few weeks. The elite media and the Demented Left screech that every action taken by the Bush Administration is a “scandal” – from declassifying information that the Left would prefer be kept secret to spreading vicious truths (as Walter Winchell would have called them) about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to ignoring a minority opinion about Iraq’s pre-war bioweapons research to inviting wounded soldiers to accompany the Vice President in throwing out the first pitch at a baseball game. In reply, conservatives glare at each other.

The Right is engaging in politics as usual, with a multiplicity of issues jockeying for priority, while much of the Left – certainly its most energetic segment – has embarked on the nonviolent (so far) equivalent of civil war. Conservatives with differing ideas about immigration policy revile each other; leftists are willing to ally de facto with friends of Islamic extremism, whose ideology they would ordinarily abhor, for the higher purpose of winning their “war”. I don’t doubt that they see themselves as doing nothing worse than what Roosevelt and Churchill did when they joined with Stalin against Hitler.

It should be no surprise that, when one side of a conflict isn’t really engaged in it, the other has a tremendous advantage. Thence comes President Bush’s low standing in public opinion polls and the general perception that the Democrats could gain control of one or both Houses of Congress.

Yet, as last weekend’s election in Italy reminds us, voters’ minds concentrate as the day of decision nears. Silvio Berlusconi had all of the current Bush/GOP problems, – too much government spending, too little economic reform and a full quota of media-driven sourness toward the liberation of Iraq – with the additional burden of an economy that has barely grown over the past five years. Polls two weeks ago showed his Casa delle Libertà coalition hopelessly behind. Yet, once Italians thought about the choice between the current government and an assortment of leftists headed by one of Europe’s dullest America-haters, they came within a whisker of choosing Berlusconi again. In fact, voters who actually reside in the country gave the CDL majorities in both chambers; expatriate votes tipped the scale, an unexpected happenstance that may or may not be suspicious.

The lesson from Italy is that gloom about the November elections in America is premature. Nonetheless, the Left’s dominance of newspapers and television is a powerful weapon, as evidenced by its success in molding public opinion through sheer force of slanders regularly repeated. Republicans and conservatives can’t ignore the fact that we start as a serious disadvantage.

Unfortunately, while Karl Rove is more of a political genius than I, there are occasions when geniuses in a field can go badly wrong. Many signs suggest that the GOP intends to avoid a “national” campaign this year, counting instead on the magic of incumbency and the mantra that “All politics is local” (which Democrats chanted right up to November 8, 1994). As Abraham Lincoln might have said, “All politics is local some of the time, and some politics is local all of the time, but all politics isn’t local all of the time.” This is one of those times, unless I misread the portents badly, when the local aspect will be secondary. Here, then, are my suggestions, which the Roves of the world can doubtless improve, for national themes:

1. The economy, stupid. Conservatives have been lamenting, not unreasonably, the misguided parts of the White House’s economic agenda, particularly ever higher levels of spending and the President’s unwillingness to veto anything. Isn’t it time to attend to the fact that, less than ideal though they are, the policies of the Administration and Congress have been highly successful at producing growth and jobs while keeping inflation at a relatively low level. If Bill Clinton got credit for the 1994–2000 economic expansion, and George W. Bush was pilloried for the effects of the end-of-term Clinton recession (which began before Bush took office and was cut short by his tax cuts), aren’t Republicans entitled to credit for the current expansion? Shouldn’t they at least talk about it as loudly as Dems did about the dotcom boom?

2. Contrasting opinions on dealing with terrorism. The Democrats’ strategy for defeating Islamofascism amounts to wishing problems away, bugging out if they don’t vanish, and objecting to existing anti-terrorist measures (e. g.,, eavesdropping on al-Qa’eda’s telephone and computer communications) in favor of imaginary ones (like inspecting every cargo container that enters U.S. ports, which would be a quick way to bring economic growth to a halt). The President and his allies need to say more about what is actually happening in Iraq (e. g., declining violence and major economic progress, neither of which gets a lot of attention even on the right, and what the world would look like if Saddam Hussein were still in power. Correcting the media’s instant misdraft of history may be a hopeless challenge, but its biased picture of the present is less fixed in the public mind.

3. Tax cuts, health savings accounts and anti-Kelo legislation. All are popular as well as intelligent, and we can promise more far-reaching reforms after Democratic obstructionism has been rebuked at the polls.

4. Judges. Winning a pair of Supreme Court fights was heartening but not the end of the contest between Rule by Judges and the Rule of Law. The electorate should be reminded that two of the best qualified nominees ever did not get a majority of Democratic Senators’ votes and that the Dems are still blocking important appellate appointments. It also wouldn’t hurt to compare and contrast the two parties’ ideal judges: The Democrats’ favorites gave us Kelo and Grutter on the federal level and same-sex marriage by judicial fiat in Massachusetts.

5. Honest elections. Conservatives were outraged by the slovenliness and outright fraud in the 2004 elections, but memories seem to be fading. In the long run, democracy will not survive if phony voters can cancel legitimate ones. I modestly reiterate my own package of electoral reforms.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t elevate earmarks, immigration, cloning, abortion, rights/privileges for homosexuals or other issues beloved of certain elements of the Right and loathed by others to the national level. I don’t say this in hopes that they’ll go away. All will have to be settled someday, and they may be important in particular races this year. But a good political campaign plan, like a good plan of battle, is clear and simple, not cluttered with multiple objectives and opportunities for debilitating friction. Clarity and simplicity demand the application mutatis mutandis of Dr. Johnson’s advice to writers, “Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.”

Conservatives have been fiddling all winter while matches are lit beneath our country. The first goal this year must be to keep the Demented Left out of power. Next year will be time enough to deal with border crossings and bridges to nowhere.