George Will has written a sensible column on why conservative carping about the ideological flaws of the leading GOP presidential candidates is unjustified. As he concludes, “Conservatism comes in many flavors.” This point is often overlooked these days as commentators try to gauge whether Romney, McCain, or Giuliani is fit to inherit Ronald Reagan’s mantle.
The truth is that the conservative movement, especially inside the Republican party, has been broadly defined for some time. Members of the mainstream media seem incapable of seeing a Republican as something other than a “conservative” or a “moderate,” as if those were the only two possibilities. But the GOP has been influenced by a range of thinkers, from Kirk and Hayek to Buckley, Kristol, and Gilder. That’s why asking whether a Republican candidate for President is a “true conservative” doesn’t yield that much information. Far more important is whether the candidate can articulate a set of ideas that will foster a new conservative coalition.
What might such a coalition look like? Noemie Emery has an interesting take in The Weekly Standard. She argues persuasively that important litmus tests of past Republican campaigns—abortion, gay marriage, guns—are no longer so vital; everyone in the party agrees that these are issues that should be decided by legislatures, not courts. According to Emery, this allows the less traditionalist conservative candidates to “make deals” with the social-conservative base.
True enough. But Republican primaries of the past have been about more than brokering deals. Almost every intraparty contest of the past 30 years has been a battle among personalities who all subscribed to some set of conservative ideas: Bush v. McCain in 2000, the fights with Buchanan in 1992 and 1996, George H.W. Bush v. Dole in 1988. Even the Ford-Reagan contest in 1976 was not a “moderate v. conservative” battle. It was more a dispute between established Republican leadership and forces for change within the party (remember that Cheney and Rumsfeld were then on Ford’s side).
The 2008 primary will be not be different. The press will insist that it is a fight between the “socially liberal” Giuliani and the “conservative” McCain or Romney. In fact, this will be another battle of outsized personalities, each trying to place his brand of conservatism at the philosophical forefront of the Republican party.
