Click here for the final round in my debate with David Horowitz that started with David’s critique of my posts on Glenn Beck and Cass Sunstein.
In the debate, David offers as explicit and considered a defense as I’ve heard anywhere of the political strategy followed by conservatives this year. I offer my countervailing vision, along with some evidence for doubting that the approach championed by Horowitz will work.
One final comment in reply to David Horowitz’s third-round presentation. He writes:
I think Republicans generally want a fighter. You can be a centrist and a fighter. Why not? But in the first nine months of the Obama Administration, it is Palin who has set the standard in facing down the Left.
You say that angry protests did not work for the Left during the 60s. Are you forgetting that our angry protests were aimed at the Democrats and that by destroying the Democrats we elected Reagan governor of California, and Nixon president in 1968? Psychotic anger worked for the Democrats in 2006 and 2008 and brought them victories in Congress and the White House. What can you be thinking?
For those conservatives who want to import into our politics the style and attitudes of the 1960s, from the demonstrations to the promiscuous flinging of the accusations of “fascist” and “Hitlerite,” please note David’s description of its main accomplishment:
The 1960s Left succeeded in destroying the party most closely associated with it – and electing instead its fiercest opponents.
Good plan!
13 responses so far
1 joemarier // Oct 2, 2009 at 8:53 am
“The Plan,” is also the title of the book by Daniel Hannan, every conservative’s favorite Tory.
2 sinz54 // Oct 2, 2009 at 10:16 am
Horowitz:
It wasn’t “psychotic anger” in 2006 that caused the Dem victory, it was the deteriorating situation in Iraq, with steady U.S. casualties, over a war intended to find Saddam’s WMD but didn’t find any.
And it wasn’t “psychotic anger” in 2008 that caused the Dem victory, it was the U.S. economy falling off a cliff just 3 months after Bush had assured our G-7 partners that our economy was sound. (Of the GOP candidates for President, only Huckabee and Ron Paul found anything negative to say about the U.S. economy and Bush’s stewardship of it.)
Bill Schneider, political analyst for CNN, agrees. He says that the GOP lost in 2006 because of Iraq.
It was Bush’s failure as a President (right up there with Jimmy Carter and James Buchanan) that handed the nation to liberal Dems. Bush failed Reagan’s famous test: Are we better off than we were 8 years ago? In Bush’s case, the answer is no.
The GOP base will never admit that, because they still adore Bush and Cheney. They can’t admit to themselves how bad those leaders were as strategists.
3 Cforchange // Oct 2, 2009 at 11:09 am
On a superficial note, the protesting 60’s were youthful. Scruffy looking but youthful. No matter how the GOP activists try to frame it, they appear old which infers tired.
While the anti war protesting grannies have their appeal, health care activism will be discounted and will never be perceived as futuristic partly because of the wrinkled face delivering the message. It works with the issue of war because there you have a motherly figure trying to help youth by saving them from the battlefield. Protesting against healthcare reform differs because for one, the population at large doesn’t agree that nothing should be done. So when the whole activity is distilled, this won’t be considered activism. This will largely be considered just some old geezers doing what geezers do – bitch. Starbucks has nailed it.
Angry grey faces will not succeed in demanding a following – it just won’t work.
4 EscapeVelocity // Oct 2, 2009 at 11:44 am
Youth are attracted to activist politics. They like marching int he streets. Appealing to their sense of non dotiness is good. Furthermore the 9/12 marches while angry at government were genial and the sense of togetherness and comraderie, good vibes was very high. So you are lashing out all over the place in wrong directions, people (you too Frum).
Furthermore, the base is motivated and Democrats through the sheer act of ruling will drive away coalition members that voted for them, in recent elections as they feel betrayed, ingnored, or otherwise dissillusioned in Hopey Changiness.
Sarah Palin is a nice young fresh face, we also need to get the College Republicans active and out there.
Duplicating the New Lefts successful strategies and tactics is a fantastic idea. One reason it is so successful is that New Left Radicals have places to go with their radical political ideas that pays a good wage, to pursue those ideas. They have developed a net of support, awards ceremonies, carreer opportunities which support their politics and political goals.
Furthermore, this movement should be about more than just getting Republicans or Conservatives elected to office. It needs (like the Left did) to focus on Institution Infiltration and Coercion….this goes for any institution….corporate, environmentalist groups, government. After acquiring employment within the institution, any power acquired should be used to promote political ideology and fellow travellers. This is long established by teh Left as a tactic. You get ahead by mouthing Politically Correct doctrine, because they have taken over the hen house and clubbed, sued, threatened, insitutions into moving away from unprofitable conflict with these ideologues.
We need to be thinking deeper than just winning elections.
Finally, Conservatives/Republicans caught on that they couldnt just keep appointing middle of the road judges….because the Left had targeted judicial appointments in their strategy to promote their agenda, of subversion of the Constitution, law, and legislatures….and promotion of a Leftwing Agenda.
Its time to get serious with these folks. They have tenure at Universities (our Think Tanks were a response to that and other Leftwing organization which was a good start), and sit around in Fill in the Blank Studies Departments, English, Humanities, and Anthropology, Sociology, and Psychology departments thinking up ways of undermining and waging war against, infiltrating Western Civilization.
Lost my train of thought, distracted.
5 sinz54 // Oct 2, 2009 at 12:31 pm
CforChange: I don’t think that’s the problem at all. You can check out the videos of the TEA Party protests on YouTube. They’re not all seniors. There are plenty of younger folks as well.
But what the TEA party protesters share with the youthful protesters of the 1960s is raw anger and negativity. Those antiwar protesters wanted America to bug out of Vietnam. What would happen afterward in the world, they just didn’t care. The “boat people” disaster, they’re partly responsible for.
Likewise, these TEA Party protesters are animated more by what they’re against (Obama’s entire domestic agenda) than what they’re in favor of.
And as with the 1960s protesters, just cutting and running from the issue, whether it’s Vietnam or health care, won’t work. The issue will still be there, whether our government faces up to it or not.
You can read Michelle Malkin’s blog day after day, and never find one positive proposal for the nation. It’s all AGAINST–against ACORN, against immigrants, against Obama, against liberals.
So the appeal of these protesters will always be limited, until they can explain to the rest of the nation what their positive vision of the nation is.
“Happy Days Are Here Again” has always worked much better than “Stop the POTUS Before He Destroys the Nation.”
6 EscapeVelocity // Oct 2, 2009 at 12:39 pm
You are absolutely wrong sinz.
The 60s protesters werent just anti Vietnam War, they were pro Socialist/Communist…however that had to be downplayed for obvious reasons.
7 balconesfault // Oct 2, 2009 at 12:49 pm
sinz – you are right.
The motivation for much of the anti-war activists in the 1960’s wasn’t really pacifism … but not wanting to have their ass shipped over to Vietnam.
Similarly, the motivation for a lot of teaparty marchers isn’t really an ideology of pushing back against big government … but pure anti-taxism (thus the name “teabag”, and their initial rallies coinciding with April 15th last spring). If it was really a coherent ideology, we’d have seen the same people marching years ago as Bush expanded government.
But anti-taxism only goes so far … particularly since most of the rally-goers aren’t going to see significant if any tax increases. So they need the “against” talking points to keep them cohesive.
8 Reason60 // Oct 2, 2009 at 1:19 pm
I think it is noteworthy that the biggest argument against movement conservatism is not a championing of socialism, but the charge of hypocrisy.
Specifically, the charge that “fiscal conservatives” embraced massive deficit spending on pork; that “small government conservatives” embraced a massive enlargement of the police powers of the state via the Patriot Act; that “traditional morality conservatives” were entangled over and over again in lurid sex scandals.
I find this interesting, since the overall conservative principles of limited government, fiscal prudence, and honest morality are not being attacked; rather, the conservative movement is charged with abadoning its own beliefs in exchange for political expediency.
I read these passages:
“Furthermore, this movement should be about more than just getting Republicans or Conservatives elected to office. It needs (like the Left did) to focus on Institution Infiltration and Coercion….this goes for any institution….corporate, environmentalist groups, government. After acquiring employment within the institution, any power acquired should be used to promote political ideology and fellow travellers.”
and it makes me weary- this is the stuff of college sophomores wanting to play Che Guevara/ V.I. Lenin. It is all about gaining power, destroying enemies, and nothing about winning arguments or attracting converts to a belief. Hell, it isn’t about beliefs at all- it is all fury and rage without an underlying belief.
Sarah Palin is the product of this movement- no ideas or principles, but pure identity politics and class hatred.
9 Cforchange // Oct 2, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Sinz – I don’t mean seniors. I mean mid aged.
While we pervceive we are young- we are not young influencers. The mass of influencers have mostly registered Dem and now they are influencing the next generation. That’s the point I’m trying to make. The tea baggers won’t be the ones marching into this turf. There is a tremendous gulf between mid aged and young Republican’s in both age, viewpoint and the number of voters.
I saw the pics of the DC rally and it struck me as primarily “mature” but as Balc notes an inchoherent message – timing of the rallies precludes them from being an issue of taxation.
10 ProfNickD // Oct 2, 2009 at 2:41 pm
The “anger” of the Left in the late 1960s and early 1970s took the form of: the Black Panthers, the SLA, Weather Underground, anti-Vietnam War rioters, and various other anti-American violent and criminal scum.
The “anger” of conservatives today is entirely peaceful and largely middle-class, and seeks to reverse the Leftward drift of the country being engineered by the very same 1960s-1970s Leftist radicals who have since come to hold political power.
How is the comparison remotely comparable?
11 Coda: Frum v. Horowitz « NewsReal Blog // Oct 3, 2009 at 12:28 pm
[...] Here’s what David wrote along with my reply: “The Plan [...]
12 SpartacusIsNotDead // Oct 3, 2009 at 10:54 pm
profnickd wrote: “The “anger” of the Left in the late 1960s and early 1970s took the form of: the Black Panthers, the SLA, Weather Underground, anti-Vietnam War rioters, and various other anti-American violent and criminal scum . . . The “anger” of conservatives today is entirely peaceful and largely middle-class . . .”
Since you obviously are not capable of reading, please ask your caretaker to explain the links below to you.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/us/11shoot.html (James von Brunn)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/us/11shoot.html (Scott Roeder)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/20/national/20oklahoma.html (Timothy McVeigh)
The last one killed more people than all the “Leftist” terrorist of the 60s and 70s combined.
13 “The Worse the Better” (NewsReal Blog) – by David Horowitz | FrontPage Magazine // Oct 18, 2009 at 2:05 am
[...] Here’s what David wrote along with my reply: “The Plan [...]
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