No, "Moderates" Are Not The Answer

There have been a couple articles lately that are worth discussing, particularly as they give rise to a clarification that I think is important. I’ve spoken a good deal recently about the problems conservatism is having, both in terms of message and in terms of substance, and I get the feeling that some of you think I’m suggesting we become moderates. I’m not.

Let me start with the two articles because they’re instructive. The first involves a group called the Republican Main Street Partnership. They’re a lobbying group whose goal had been to get moderate Republicans elected to office. They’ve decided to drop the word “Republican” from their name and change their mission to getting moderates of either party elected. The other involves a couple of moderate Democratic groups called The New Democrat Coalition and Third Way, who claim the real base of the Democratic Party is moderates who want Obama to act in a bipartisan manner to get things done. Their message to Obama was, “Work together and fix it.” That’s actually kind of funny since Obama is signaling that he’ll take a nasty, hard-left turn now that he’s been re-elected and he intends to run over the Republicans.

Both of these groups are advocating an end to partisan rancor blah blah blah and that we all get warm and fuzzy in the squishy middle... can’t we all just get along.

Forget it.

Here’s the problem with moderates and why “becoming moderate” is not the answer. Moderates have no ideas. They are just people who can’t tell good from bad and who don’t have the nerve to come to firm conclusions. They mistake non-mindedness for open-mindedness.

Let me put this another way that might help explain the problem.

Imagine two ideologues and a moderate. Ideologue A suggests something utterly utterly stupid. Ideologue B opposes it and demands something equally stupid but in the other direction. Along comes the moderate. It never occurs to the moderate that Ideologue A and Ideologue B are BOTH wrong. No. They just assume the right answer must lie somewhere between the two and the moderate believes that if the two of them can just come together and reach a solution that makes them both happy, then we will have found the right result. That’s simply stupid. . . splitting the baby on two bad ideas does not produce a good idea.

And that’s my point.

Right now, the problem with conservatism is NOT that has taken it’s good ideas to an extreme. The problem is that it’s abandoned its good ideas and what’s left isn’t selling. Moderating what’s left doesn’t help. Indeed, wrong at half-speed isn’t any better than wrong at full-speed. And mixing conservatism with liberalism won’t help either because liberalism is even worse when it comes to being wrong.

Basically, conservatives are wrong. . . liberals are wrong-er. . . and moderates are suggesting we try to find a way to implement both sets of wrong ideas. This is why we should ignore calls to moderate. This also highlights the problem with Chris Christie. He’s trying to sell the idea that the solution for the GOP’s problems is to become nasty moderates. He offers NO ideas except to do what the Democrats propose only swear to do it better and be grumpy about it. This is idiocy, and he’s obnoxious and self-righteous about it. This guy is the worst kind of politician.

What we need to do right now is move conservatism in a different direction. This is something many conservatives are not understanding. They seem to fear change because they think our only choices are continuing along blindly and praying the public changes their mind, or becoming conservative-lite/liberal. But that’s not true. There is a third choice. . . doing something else.

That is what I’m talking about. I’m talking about creating a new agenda, an agenda based on things that will make people’s lives better and advocating conservative ideas to make that happen. In a couple weeks, I hope to start releasing just such an agenda. I’m working on it right now, but I can’t release it just yet because I want to get it into book form and Amazon gives me grief when they find things already published on websites. But it is coming.

In the meantime, let's do some brainstorming. Think about the world around you. Tell me what kinds of problems you see that you think need to be fixed?


UPDATE: As an aside, this appeared online today:

According to excerpts of Cantor's speech provided to Yahoo News, the Virginia Republican is planning a wide-ranging address at the American Enterprise Institute that he believes promotes policies that work for the "most vulnerable," and boosts working and middle-class citizens. Reflected within the excerpts is a desire to put a personal face on politics, as opposed to one that dwells on numbers that tally up government spending and the size of the national debt.

"Our solutions will be based on the conservative principles of self reliance, faith in the individual, trust in the family, and accountability in government. Our goal: To ensure every American have a fair shot at earning their success and achieving their dreams," Cantor will say.

It almost sounds like they've been reading my articles! Let's see if they follow through or if they just go back to the same old garbage.