Posted by
ClearCommentary.com on Wednesday, February 06, 2008 10:46:37 AM
The latent, which is to say, longer-term analysis of yesterday's political contests, confirms our electoral diagnosis that a significant number of voters are beginning to inhabit that broad swath of ground known unaffectionately among conservatives as the land of moderates.
On Laura Ingraham's radio program this morning, Fred Barnes, the Executive Editor of The Weekly Standard, was asked whether he felt the nation was becoming liberal. He responded that although he's been reluctant to accept it, he believes that's the case. He then wove an historical argument, one echoed in many of our posts, that there are broad cyclical changes in the political make-up of our nation, and that this may well be yet another tectonic shift.
We have taken that argument further by observing that the early edge of those movements are all but invisible until after their impacts have been more fully realized. The 2006 elections were the precursor, not unlike the early stages of a disease not yet widely expressed in the body politic. Although, as Mr. Barnes predicted, either Obama or Clinton will likely win in November, McCain is the Republicans' best chance of defeating the Democrats' choice, which yesterday's results also make so glaringly apparent.
These are not conclusions we come to lightly or with even a trace of happiness, because we're thoroughly convinced that modern liberalism is a political relic of a past best left interred. However, for reasons we've explored at length in previous posts, unalloyed conservatism, that is, the stuff of Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley, et al, is starting to lose its electoral resonance. It's the equivalent of teaching people about string theory or Etruscan art--it seems remote, impenetrable, and not applicable to their lives.
That's a manifest tragedy because the truth is that everything from our economic vibrancy to our civic freedoms are the product of the values and principles derived from the beliefs enshrined in the thinking of our Founding Fathers, who, it's axiomatic to note, wouldn't recognize our Republic in its current state.