Conservatives, we got lazy.
A couple of weeks ago, I finally finished “Conscience of a Conservative” by Barry Goldwater, considered by many to be the spark of the conservative movement. Senator Goldwater wrote the book in advance of his 1964 bid for the presidency, paving the way for decisive Ronald Reagan victories in 1980 and 1984. The book was a great read, but after finishing it, I began to understand why the 2016 Republican primary results confounded so many.
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I credit a good friend of mine, a Democrat in fact, for pointing something out to me over lunch recently. Reagan-era conservatism focused on the solutions to a number of very specific problems: Cold War de-escalation, high inflation rates, obscene taxes, and enormously powerful labor unions. Of course, as conservatism was grounded in logic and reasoning, Reagan’s application of the principles during his presidency ended up solving the problems. Goldwater’s book, while a great read and a rallying cry for his generation’s voters, does not answer a lot of the questions on voters’ minds today. I say we became lazy because we did not allow conservatism to continue addressing the problems of our time.
Today, a new set of challenges face the country. We should have adapted, and modernized conservatism, but we became too focused with quoting Goldwater and hanging Reagan posters to turn our attention to the present day. While strong unions were once a major issue facing the country, labor issues are not tearing apart the country in the present day. While it was true in the 1980s that we needed to rebuild our military after the Carter administration, we now spend more on our military than any other country in the world. Today, we the people care deeply about the answers on immigration and trade and energy and political correctness.
Is it any surprise, then, that Scott Walker touting his union-busting credentials did not mobilize swaths of voters in the primary? Can we really fault the Republican electorate for glazing over when Jeb Bush outlined a four-point plan to rebuild what is already the strongest military in the world? Goldwater’s movement mobilized college students en masse because, unlike the Republican Party proper of the day, he was talking about the real problems and giving solutions. Those solutions must be updated if we want, again, to get our country frenzied about advancing conservatism.
I fundamentally disagree with many of the ideas of the left, but I give them credit for recognizing the issues that carry the day and driving voters to the polls with relevant rhetoric. Progressives have gone from free silver to civil rights to protecting the environment to free healthcare, capturing the hearts of many across the country looking for solutions to their everyday struggles. Meanwhile, we rattle off a few vague platitudes about “liberty,” without relating it to the voter, and call it a day.
It seems that we have three strategies, each one less effective than the next:
1) We use buzzwords and phrases like freedom, liberty, Reagan, conservatism, big government, and so on.
Many who are not yet convinced of our message immediately tune us out when we start to substitute these words and phrases for substance in what we say. Instead of articulating a vision for the country that applies to our audience and appeals to both their emotions as well as their better judgment, we have become comfortable in an echo chamber of other diehard Constitutionalists who applaud us when we employ Strategy #1. We are not reaching out to the electorate, and we have made up a bunch of passwords for our secret conservative club. One thing about secret clubs: they are usually very small.
You see, Goldwater and Reagan and William F. Buckley and other conservative leaders explained to the American people just why free markets were good and big government is bad. We assume that everyone understands that now, but the problem is that we are appealing to a new generation. We must win the argument again before we can speak as though these points are settled. When so many millennials are comfortable with socialism, it is clear that the case must be made again for the free market, instead of simply touting legislation because the free market “is good and you know it is because it is.”
2) We deliver a dense speech about a set of very nuanced issues, not bothering to explain the implications of the policy to our audience.
Essentially, this is Jeb Bush syndrome. Governor Bush had unimpeachable conservative bonafides, and was not afraid to be specific, but could not talk to the average voter. We are not going to be a winning party if we continue to drone on about 4 percent growth, and the electorate cannot connect to that growth on a personal level. It is not enough to speak about the 19 million jobs that could be created if the people do not know what it will mean for them specifically. We must have sound policy, but we also need to speak to the voters instead of speaking to the leading scholars at think tanks. The American people are looking for answers, and we need to translate our policy diatribes into comprehensible appeals. Grand policy speeches and position papers are important in their own way, but we are doomed to failure if we refuse to supplement them with a real “Agenda 2016,” summed up succinctly and full of substance the American people can get their hands on.
3) We go on and on about how bad the other side is, making us the default choice.
Hillary Clinton’s name was mentioned no fewer than 15 times during the first Republican presidential debate. We trash Bernie Sanders supporters and run advertising campaigns about President Obama’s executive overreaches. As Speaker Ryan said recently, “Let’s face it. People know what Republicans are against.” Just because Clinton is bad or President Obama is not who we want in the White House does not make us any more qualified to do the job.
I get so frustrated by companies like BuzzFeed and NowThis because they are just so good at what they do for the left. They relate to Americans, framing complex policy in terms voters can understand, with a liberal bend. We need to start doing the same on our side.
I posit, also, that it is no surprise Donald Trump is our nominee. From the beginning, he moved away from Reagan-era conservatism (a part of the overall conservative philosophy that addressed current problems and fixed them, but is not as relevant today), and talked about the issues that mattered to voters: immigration, energy, trade, and political correctness/culture. He spoke in a way that many voters could understand. He appealed to everyday Americans, not some secret club of conservatives or a group of senior fellows at think tanks. Mr. Trump has been the only one to make those issues into truly central planks of his candidacy, and they are the issues that win the day in 2016 (not union busting and rebuilding the military).
If we are going to continue the conservative movement, let’s bring it up to speed. Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater were two honorable, great men who helped to build the conservative movement, and we owe it to them to have conversations about trade policy and border enforcement (two of today’s policy planks). Conservatism can solve a new generation’s set of problems, as long as we cease trying to fit the round peg of Reaganism into the square hole of 2016.
