Posted on 19 November 2008. Tags: Fiscal Conservatism, John Boehner, Republican Party, Thaddeus McCotter
Via Fiscons, here’s a start:
House Republicans voted today to decide their leadership structure in the 111th Congress. Here are the results, from Minority Leader John Boehner’s office:
Republican Leader: John A. Boehner of Ohio
Republican Whip: Eric Cantor of Virginia
Republican Conference Chairman: Mike Pence of Indiana
Republican Policy Committee Chairman: Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan
Republican Conference Vice-Chair: Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington
Republican Conference Secretary: John Carter of Texas
National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman: Pete Sessions of Texas
Boehner is insipid, and generally useless, but the shake-ups elsewhere are useful. Pence and Cantor have been an unapologetic fighters against various forms of wasteful spending and are dependable fiscal conservatives, even if they have their own weaknesses (Pence supports the inane ban on online gambling, while Cantor’s refusal to consider any separation between U.S. and Israeli interests leads to some pretty bizarre
assertions).
McCotter might be slightly insane, but anybody who references the Rolling Stones, bathos, The Magical Mystery Tour, and Wiliam Wordsworth in a speech on reviving the GOP is a good guy in my book. He is mostly certainly an “ideas” man, and one of the few Republican Congressmen who remember Russell Kirk at all. The RSC is the perfect place for him.
Rodgers, meanwhile, is a bit of a mystery character. She’s only a sophomore, and hasn’t really made any splashes. However, if she’s still on good terms with the Spokane County Republican Party, then she may be the closest thing the GOP gets to an anti-war conservative in power (read this). Here’s hoping she leads the opposition against the inevitable interventions of the Obama Administration.
Carter’s an immigration hawk and ID fiend, and Sessions is not only very connected with Jack Abramoff, but also voted for the Bailout Bill. As a general rule, the Republican Party should avoid putting former Abramoff clients at the head of their fundraising arm.
Still, 4 out of 7 isn’t bad at all.
Posted in Current Affairs, To the Right
Posted on 19 November 2008. Tags: conservatism, National Review, Republican Party
One of the subjects that M&R will cover in the non-election season is the primordial soup that is the Conservative Revival. Contrary to the gleeful schadenfreude on the Left, the GOP is not a “dead” party, if for no other reason than the fact that their entrenched presence in elections laws ensure that no serious third-party threat can break through to take the niche of the second-party. It was but four years ago that each side found itself in entirely opposite positions, yet as times turn, so does the wheel of political strength.
As conservatives wallow in the wilderness, the focus will largely shift away from political maneuvering, and more towards ideas. What does it mean to be conservative? How can conservativism be re-introduced to a young generation that has overwhelming rejected the ostensibly conservative party? How do libertarians, agrarians, neoconservatives, moderate conservative, paleocons, theocons, intellectuals, populists, and Old Rightists fit in?
Already, much e-ink has been spilled in the upcoming Battle of the Right, but one good place to start is the New York Times’ write-up of the turmoil at the National Review. NR was the first widespread intellectual conservative publication, and with Will Buckley behind the helm it set the stage for the conservative intellectual movement as it stands today.
However, times have changed. Where once the Review was the only source of high-brow conservative considerations, now there are many — The American Conservative, The Weekly Standard, City Journal, to say nothing of the multitudinous online offerings. Where once dissent about, say, the Palin pick would have be aired within the pages of NR, now it is aired elsewhere. The NR responds with internal dogmatism, and punishes those who dissent — in this case, the prime examples being Chris Buckley and David Frum.
Seeing the National Review go will be a sad day. But a magazine that has long trumpeted the values of the free market should recognize Schumpeter’s creative destruction when they see it. It applies not just to business, but to ideas as well.
Posted in Current Affairs, To the Right
