Just before I left the office last night, this Politico piece landed in my Inbox:
It’s a tough time to be a conservative intellectual.
From the Weekly Standard to the Wall Street Journal, on the pages of policy periodicals and opinion sections, the egghead right’s longing for a presidential candidate of ideas — first Mitch Daniels, then Paul Ryan – has been endless, intense, and unrequited.
Profoundly dissatisfied with the current field, that dull ache may only grow more acute after Ryan’s decision Monday to take himself out of the running.
The problem, in shorthand: To many conservative elites, Rick Perry is a dope, Michele Bachmann is a joke, and Mitt Romney is a fraud.
They don’t publicly express their judgments in such harsh terms but the low regard is obvious…
“It just does seem to be a little crazy in a year when you have a chance to win the presidency that a lot of leading lights aren’t putting themselves forward,” said William Kristol, the Weekly Standard editor and indefatigable Ryan advocate who hopefully brandished a Ryan-Rubio button on Fox News Sunday…
There’s a reason for that, Bill. Actually, a couple of them.
Early on, when some of the smarter conservatives — I count Mike Huckabee among their number, for instance — decided not to run, I attributed it in part to the widely-held belief (and one I still hear smart Republicans express, sotto voce) that Obama was going to win re-election.
Since then, the president has suffered a number of setbacks, and retreated to Martha’s Vineyard to rest and recuperate. And he’s looking vulnerable.
So why don’t we see people the more intellectual conservatives could respect step forward? Because of what Rick Perry has realized: Anti-intellectualism sells, big-time. There’s nothing original about this. Anti-intellectualism is as American as blue jeans. And anyone willing to stoop to conquer is going to have a wild ride upward, at least for a time. And when you find a candidate who doesn’t have to stoop, who doesn’t dumb down because he or she truly doesn’t know any better, well you’ve found electoral gold. For a time, at least. Because the voters love the real thing.
I’m not saying the voters are dumb. It’s just that, if you don’t hesitate to think, you can say things very forcefully, and without complicating caveats, you can charm a crowd — sometimes. This seems to be one of those times, at least for a portion of the electorate.
Unfortunately for those who would like to see a change in the executive branch, that portion numbers less than 50 percent of the overall. But within the Republican Party right now, it’s big enough to scare away the deep thinkers. I’ll be surprised if anyone who would have been to William F. Buckley’s liking emerges.
Related Posts
I don’t care about a conservatism that would appeal to William F. Buckley; I’d just like to see one that might show some of the temperament of Dwight Eisenhower or Gerald Ford.
A very interesting article.
I would largely agree with the conclusions, as to why the “rational right” are probably frustrated now.
Many Americans do seem to lionize stupid, folksy-talking, anti-science (ultra-religious) extremists. . .perhaps the fact that such people do poll so well suggests that the US education system is in a great deal of trouble.
The notion of the conservative or right-wing as the anti-intellectual in American politics is a common cliche that has been used for decades. It’s not that terribly a compelling argument to make. OK, so maybe Rick Perry cannot recite the finer scientific points on the issue of climate change – but then again, what politician on either side can? (last time I checked, there aren’t any legitimate scientists-turned-congressmen around). But the ironic thing about all of this in the context of the “conservative=anti-intellectual” meme is that on the climate change issue (like so many others) it’s actually the left who often holds the anti-intellectual ground. To be an intellectual means to also be curious, and those politicos that blindly say “man-made global warming exists because everyone says so and that’s the popular thing to think and if you don’t believe in it you are stupid and everyone knows this” are the ones who are summarily shutting down thoughtful debate and discussion on this issue.
The so-called big thinkers in the GOP are those who understand what the core values of the conservative movement really are today. Simply put, it’s a scheme designed to fool enough gullible Americans into voting for an agenda that works against their best interests in order to create an environment for the extremely wealthy to grab an ever larger share of a slowly shrinking American economic pie. These intellectuals have no real intersts in the welfare of their fellow Americans, at least those who actually work hard for a living. Rather they scheme and connive and plot how to market their absurd supply side nonsense “reforms” that serve only to enrich a few.
These schemers have for the most part taken over the Republican party and it’s success has been nothing short of spectacular as the share of the nation’s wealth residing in the hands of the wealthiest 1% of Americans has become astounding, eclipsing even the robber barron era of the early 20th century. But what these “intellectuals” didn’t factor in was how their early support of the tea party movement, seen as a tool to further their interests, would backfire into a dangerous movement that would kill the goose that laid the golden egg. In fact the success of the tea party may be sufficient to kill the economy to such an extent that even the super rich might actually have to give up a yacht or 2 to make ends meet. Even the craven rich never envisioned a time when something as basic as a debt limit increase would be questioned.
And now we have the rise of Bachmann, Palin and Perry who may have at one time served the good of the super rich community but now are seen as increasingly dangerous to that movement. So what is a billionare supposed to do? My how the worm turns.
Michael, I didn’t say “conservative=anti-intellectual.” I said that at the moment, the intellectuals on the right are getting pushed out by all the populist turmoil and ferment that their party is experiencing. The left is not too proud to stoop to foolishness when it sees the opportunity. Hence all those “Paul Ryan wants to starve Grandma” pronouncements. Oversimplification works.
And Bud… I’m not sure we’re describing the same things here. People like Palin and Perry are populists, hence the anti-intellectualism. I don’t see all that much overlap, at least culturally, between them and the old country-club GOP crowd. Of course, it’s sometimes hard to draw clear lines. For instance, the Tea Party — as populist as it presents itself to be — is said to mostly consist of fairly well-off people (of the sort who are well-situated and don’t, by God, want to be asked to share it with anybody, especially not THOSE people). But from what I’ve seen, they are not exactly what one thinks of as elites, although sometimes they seem to want to aspire to that, with all their DAR-type talk.
There is a tendency among liberals to want to run all the various strains on the right together, as though they were the same — which they’re not. For instance, neoCons like Wolfowitz and the Kristols are interested in very different things from the Tea Partiers…
@Michael: Actually, there is Rush Holt of New Jersey, who holds a Ph.D. in physics, specializing in alternative energy. Before entering Congress, Holt was Assistant Director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory at Princeton University. He is also known for beating IBM’s Watson computer playing Jeopardy.
I’m not saying the Tea Party is equivalent to the Country Club Republicans. What I’m saying is the power brokers within the conservative movement used the Tea Party as a means to an end. By tacitly supporting the Tea Party the folks in the 1% world were hoping to stir up converts to the GOP with the goal of gaining votes for their diabolical scheme to fool the working masses into supporting supply side economics, something clearly not in their interest. The plan was a type of class warfare accomplished by stealth and propoganda. But to some extent that has backfired on the country club crowd by dragging down the economy even to the point that it could cost even the super wealthy.
I own a set of CD’s of radio commentaries that Reagan gave in the late 70’s.
He wrote those on his own, no speech writer, just the ruminations of someone who had time to think deeply about the issues of the day, and use his broadcast skill to sum up his thoughts succinctly and cogently.
I’m not sure that guy I hear on those CD’s would last long in the primaries today. For while I think Reagan had a lot of populist appeal, he was grounded fairly deeply in all the different strains of conservative thought, as people who come to things later in life often are.
I think Bachman, for instance, is an intelligent woman, who has a great personal story – raised 22 foster kids, for instance. What is working for her isn’t that story, it’s the populist anger.
It’s what happens to majorities; they splinter. What is happening to the Reublicans is just what happened to the Democrats a couple of generations ago.
Until someone is ready to fight for the middle ground, all this noise from the far right is just that – howling.
What will be interesting to see is whether the Republican party will survive itself, as the Democrats just barely managed to do, or whether it will go the way of the Whigs.
Mark, just so you know: It turns out that the Whigs are back. And they’re sort of intriguing…
One reason why the intellectuals don’t step forward: Unlike Bachmann, they have no plan for stopping the rise of the Soviet Union…
Except they lost me when they called their Whig philosophy “Whiggery”.
They may need a little PR reworking on that one.
I don’t see a whole lot of overlap between the tea party and the old country club GOP crowd either – that is, culturally and on the surface. But talk to the typical upper income, civically engaged “normal” Republican in South Carolina, and you hear exactly the same things that have become associated with the tea party. But that is a good thing – just goes to show you that this is how normal people think.
Michael may be spending a little too much time in South Carolina, if he thinks that the combined thought processes of both the “country club” and “Tea Party” wings of the GOP are “how normal people think.” It’s a big country out there, Michael. Even bigger world.
Um, Michael, count me out on that one. I don’t have any interest in the tea partiers’ fireworks – or their simpleton prescriptions. Sorry. That world is far narrower than it’s adherents seem to understand. Really.
@ Michael–and it’s not that Rick Perry doesn’t “know the finer points of climate change”–he denies that it is occurring. He denies the accuracy of the theory of evolution. The finer points of these theories are up for debate, but no credible scientist disagrees with the general principles!
You are entitled to your opinions, but you are not entitled to your facts!