And Now, Politics

Reihan wonders:

The lesson of DeLay and Bush and the last six wasted years is that a united front comes at a steep price--the disputatiousness at a magazine like The New Republic under Andrew Sullivan and now Frank Foer is what a creative, thriving movement needs, not lockstep preaching-to-the-choir. The Weekly Standard gets this, certainly on domestic policy, but I worry that conservatives just don't have the right personnel, at least not yet.

Can you think of many conservative opinionistas as open to persuasion and as intellectually curious and as un-partisan as my co-blogger?

It seems to me that one of the reasons conservatism has done well (at least electorally) this decade is because conservatives have figured out how to allow disagreement, yet also contain it and keep it fairly congenial. The libertarian wings of the right are increasingly suspicious of this and are grumbling ever-more-loudly about going along with the Republicans. But, as a general rule, dominant conservatives subgroups tend not to be as harsh on other subgroups as liberal subgroups, such as Kos or TNR. There are disputes aplenty, but it's rare to see prominent conservatives go head to head with the vitriol that, say, Bienart and Tomasky displayed in their Slate debate this week. The right keeps private forums for that type of infighting. So while conservatives may be willing to offer up a dozen brands of conservatism, it doesn't usually make the nastier fights public. This means that the disputatiousness Reihan prizes in TNR and its writers (I like it too, even if I rarely agree with anything beyond their arts and books coverage) is a little less apparent on the right. Those “opinionistas” are out there, but they're not making their presence as known.

The upshot is that conservatives have been unfortunately yoked to Bush, who is, let’s just say… not always the best conservative, despite what the crew at TPM think. However, it's also what has allowed conservatives to keep their power. And, of course, conversely, the tendency of various liberal subgroups toward strongly-worded, public, internecine bickering has helped keep them out. Vocal dissent and uproar within a party may make for great reading, but it can play hell at the polls.

At this point, though, conservatives are realizing a need to vent some of the harsher criticism, and the trick will be to do it without splintering into angry, self-righteous subgroups.

Addendum: Back to the original question, I think—to no one’s surprise—that much of the best intellectually curious, non-partisan stuff on the right(ish) is coming from the libertarian writers; Wilkinson, Sanchez, Balko, etc, though the paleocons and religious traditionalists seem to be giving them a run for their (free-market loving) money.