A Generation In The Wilderness? Part II

By Ron Beasley

Below I discussed the pragmatic advice from Arnold Schwarzenegger  which will go unheeded.  There is still more advice for the Republicans from conservative Rod Dreher of The Dallas Morning News.  He thinks that the Republicans should oppose Obama at times but they must do it with ideas and not just the same old empty platitudes.

Conservatives must return to the philosophical sources of our tradition and reinterpret its insights and truths for the world we live in now. Ideas really do have consequences - as, obviously, does the lack of same. Yes, conservatives have to oppose the Obama Democrats when they overreach, but if the only response conservatives offer is defensive and obstreperous, they will not soon recover.

But most important they must recognize the Bush presidency and the conservative movement of the last eight years for the failure that it was.

Conservatives will go nowhere until the right owns up to the failures of the Bush years. They were chiefly a failure of competence and a corruption of professed ideals. They were also a failure of ideology. In particular:

•The idea that the American military is an omnipotent tool for spreading liberal democracy died in Iraq and Afghanistan. The right's romanticization of militarism, and its crusading pieties about the universality of democratic values, are done.

•The dogmatic conviction that the globalized free market is capable of regulating itself for the greater good of society is a spectacularly costly shibboleth, as even Alan Greenspan, the high priest of this religion, confessed recently.

•The GOP's knee-jerk hostility to environmental concerns is not only a betrayal of conservative tradition but also costs Republicans credibility with young voters. Similarly, though it's tough for social conservatives like me to admit it, we've lost the gay marriage battle, especially among the young. We're going to have to come to some sort of accommodation with it to protect religious liberty.

Dreher seems to recognize that both the neocons and theocons represent a dead end.  But I see no evidence that anyone will listen to Mr Dreher either.

Over at TMV Pete Abel sees the writing on the wall.

In my evolution from a would-be reformer of the GOP to a supporter of President-elect Obama, I have been asked the inevitable “why” and “how” questions — and I have answered those questions, indirectly. But I’ve never gone so far as to admit what I will admit now: I am no longer a Republican. I am no longer a conservative.

To be clear: I still believe in many of the principles that first led me to the Republican Party. I still have a number of conservative tendencies. But of this party and movement, as they are defined today, I am no more.

There are some, I’m sure, who will ask why, rather than leaving the fold at this darkest of moments, I don’t join the countless other voices who are now in various stages of bemoaning the shape of the party, offering opinions on what went wrong, re-assessing fundamentals, and suggesting steps to reform.

Two reasons. First, I’m not convinced any of it will do any good.