I was chastised in an e-mail recently from a reader about this post regarding the decline of conservative thought in the wake of Glenn Beck. Being a fan of Mr. Beck the reader was annoyed that I would suggest that his brand of nonsense was unhelpful if not all together silly in the context of current political discourse.
This morning on “Meet the Press,” Republican political strategist Mike Murphy who has advised Sen. John McCain among other prominent Republicans in the past sparred with MSNBC political commentator Rachel Maddow over the value of cable news. Mr. Murphy characterized Fox News and MSNBC as the Republican and Democratic television networks.
Maybe he’s right, although I think Pat Buchanan and Joe Scarbrough, both paid commentators on NBC as well as well know Republicans, would disagree. (Fox News has no such Democratic equivalents.)
A column today in the Washington Post written by Steven Hayward evaluates the state of conservative thought in America now that noted intellectuals, Irving Kristol and William F. Buckley Jr., particularly, are dead.
During the glory days of the conservative movement, from its ascent in the 1960s and ’70s to its success in Ronald Reagan’s era, there was a balance between the intellectuals, such as Buckley and Milton Friedman, and the activists, such as Phyllis Schlafly and Paul Weyrich, the leader of the New Right. The conservative political movement, for all its infighting, has always drawn deeply from the conservative intellectual movement, and this mix of populism and elitism troubled neither side.
Today, however, the conservative movement has been thrown off balance, with the populists dominating and the intellectuals retreating and struggling to come up with new ideas. The leading conservative figures of our time are now drawn from mass media, from talk radio and cable news. We’ve traded in Buckley for Beck, Kristol for Coulter, and conservatism has been reduced to sound bites.
Juan Williams would surely be considered progressive
If only these mean elitists [snerk], would take their ruined christianity, their meanness and ignorance, go to Mars where they won’t be bothered by any oppostion to their thinking.
It would be perfect; no environment to concern their stockholders with, no poor, halt or maimed. Take their insurance & pharmacutical giants and get! It will be the new Eden – No sympaty, no warmth and no love. They can have all the toys and perhaps they will finally go at each other for a change.
Susan Estrich (managed Dukakis’ 1988 campaign), Bob Beckel (managed Mondale’s 1984 campaign), and Howard Wolfson may all disagree with the idea that Fox does not have Democrats on air. I think Martin Frost, who as a Congressman was significantly more of an accomplished political figure than Joe Scarbrough is also a Fox contributor. And this just off the top of my head, there are quite a few more. Point is – while Fox’s commentators are all conservative, you hear plenty of liberal voices on the air. Especially in foreign affairs, I have ever seen anyone on MSNBC who represents the muscular internationalist point of view, which is the dominant position in the GOP today. Pat Buchanan, whatever past accomplishment he may have, no longer not share views of modern day conservatism in some significant respects – he is isolationist (and anti-trade), whereas the Republican party is for using American power abroad (and for trade). This is not to say that what Murphy said is not right – but there is still a very significant difference between Fox and MSNBC; liberal positions may be less represented on Fox than conservative ones, but at least you hear a variety of liberal positions, which is not what happens to conservative positions on MSNBC.
Conservatives who want to trash Coulter, Beck etc., can be free to do so, but there are plenty of very thoughtful conservatives who actually are the source of conservative ideas today, and simply ignoring this by saying, oh its all Beck etc., is simply dishonest. Kristol’s son for one, Yuval Levin is another (he just restarted a magazine which will try to do something similar to what Public Interest did under Irving Kristol), Victor Davis Hanson, etc., these are all very thoughtful intellectuals who are very critical of the President and they are at the core of GOP’s ideological development, not Beck.
David Brooks is a smart man, but he is doing his own cause a disservice by columns like the one he wrote earlier in the week. And he is not a conservative in the sense of a typical GOP conservative, as much as he may want to claim that he is – he is far more to the middle, and being critical of conservatives because he wants to moderate a party that does not want and does not need to be moderated is not honest.