After a 16-day government shutdown that seems, from this side, to have been pointless and fruitless, plenty of conservatives are trying to make sense of today’s GOP, the Tea Party, and conservatism.
I’m not talking about the K Streeters or the GOP’s perpetual scolds of conservatism, but thoughtful people with an interest in a Republican Party that effectively advances conservative and libertarian policies.
For your reading:
1) Jonah Goldberg on the dangers of populism
I have explicitly called on the GOP to be more populist since at least 2009 — populist in both policy substance (opposing corporate welfare) and in tactics. The shutdown fight employed populist tactics and required a populist trait of not caring what Big Business thought.
Earning the ire of Wall Street doesn’t make you a populist, and I don’t count shutting down the government or threatening to hit the debt ceiling as “populist policies,” but the insurgency here had a populist tinge to it. Which makes it fair for Jonah Goldberg to issue this warning:
2) Ross Douthat worries if there’s a path to sanity
3) Conservatives are suffering from radicalism envy, argues Scott Galupo
Galupo goes way too far here, but he has good points, and you should read it:
Movement conservatism has always been half-crazy.
Lately it’s more like three-quarters crazy.
