The new Republican philosophy: Be Democrats?

[ElvisL1ves]

A puff piece (and consider the source, yes) highlighting four self-styled philosophers of Republican renewal has some points to ponder.

Luigi Zingales says it’s time for conservatives to fall out of love with businesses, and fall back in love with the free market. In an argument that’s begun to catch the ear of a few conservative thinkers, Zingales suggests that it’s often business itself, rather than the government, that the market needs protection from…Zingales believes rescue funds should have focused on workers rather than firms, and wants stimulus funds disbursed according to dispassionate algorithms, to minimize favoritism/

Sounds like pretty familiar populist stuff, just a century or so late. Who else?

The threat for (W. Bradford) Wilcox is not gay marriage, but two old taboos that have lost much of their force in modern America: divorce and single parenthood…“The retreat from marriage in the United States over the last four decades has been important in fueling increases in inequality as well as child poverty,” he says.

Another one catching up.

(Megan) McArdle and bloggers like her, in other words, have created their own intellectual ecosystem.

Not presented as a thinker as such, just a conservative Republican who knows what the intertubes are and uses email herself. But that’s an advance too. And lastly, we learn that “big government conservatism” could be redefined as not an oxymoron:

Drawing in part on the work of scholars such as Wilcox, (Reihan) Salam and (Ross) Douthat craft a vision of a government that is activist in a different way, putting priority on stability and responsibility, along with opportunity. They push for child-care subsidies, market-friendly healthcare reform, more affordable housing, and for wage subsidies to boost the incomes of poor young men and make them more eligible for marriage and stable fatherhood…A very early Sarah Palin supporter, he has also started to write about the wrenching changes caused by shifting gender roles, both here and in the developing world where the manufacturing jobs once held by working-class American men have gone - a process that has, he says, been accelerated by the global recession. He admits that, like squaring big government and conservatism, it won’t be easy to craft a policy to deal with it.

“The problem with this is that when you start talking about it you’re acknowledging that these things are hard,” Salam says. “It’s much more fun and much easier to talk about ‘Let’s just get rid of the income tax.’ ”

Let them call it whatever they like, as long as it’s choosing to participate in the 21st century. If there really is going to be a final rejection of “government is bad” dogma, along with nativism and Christianism (not mentioned in the article), that can only be good for both the Republicans and America.

But is this really the next generation of influential conservative thought? What would make it “conservative” at all anymore?

[Tom_Tildrum]

Note that McArdle voted for Obama.

In general, this seems like the standard navel-gazing that follows every election. Half the commentary about the losing party (call it party A) says they have to move to the center, and half says they need to return to their core principles. In truth, every election is really the incumbent party’s to lose: Eventually party B screws up enough to lose power, and whichever half was backing the party A candidate that then gets into office hails themselves as geniuses. Thus Clinton won supposedly by tacking the Democrats toward the center, while Obama supposedly won by articulating a clear alternative. Similar examples can be found for the Republicans (Reagan winning as a revolutionary vs. Bush II winning after campaigning as a uniter).

[Chronos]

In general, this seems like the standard navel-gazing that follows every election. Half the commentary about the losing party (call it party A) says they have to move to the center, and half says they need to return to their core principles.

The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Some of the Republicans’ key principles are more moderate than what they’ve been pushing these past years. A true focus on the free market (as opposed to businesses specifically) would be both a move to the center, and a return to key principles.

[DSYoungEsq]

We should be remiss if we did not point out that the Republicans were instrumental at the turn of the last century in promoting and passing numerous governmental schemes that expanded the role of government and/or protected individuals, albeit in a way consistent with a more conservative philosophy than perhaps the Democrats would have espoused.

[Chessic_Sense]

How is any of this stuff new? I’ve been hearing “Divorce and single parenthood threaten marriage more than gays” for years and years from churches and conservative organizations. And you’re claiming that email usage makes one Democratic? Seriously?

You don’t detect just a liiiiittle bit of bias in your post? You gotta love these SDMB threads where the OP is basically “Republicans are stupid jerks. But here’s some that aren’t. So they’re actually Democrats?”

[Der_Trihs]

@Chessic_Sense

You gotta love these SDMB threads where the OP is basically “Republicans are stupid jerks. But here’s some that aren’t. So they’re actually Democrats?”

The GOP leadership has pretty much defined being a Republican as being a “stupid jerk”. They have worked hard to drive anyone who isn’t out, or labeled them "RINO"s.

[athelas]

I seem to remember the same kind of “advice” for the Dems after the 2004 election. Why is it that I am always a little skeptical of “advice” from one party to another, when the two are fundamentally in conflict and the best that they can say to each other is “I wouldn’t despise you if you started agreeing with me”?

[BrainGlutton]

@ElvisL1ves

The new Republican philosophy: Be Democrats?

:rolleyes: If only! The Pubs could, at this point, play a constructive role as a loyal-party-in-opposition, but I deeply fear they’re gonna go Limbaugh’s way instead of Frum’s.

[ElvisL1ves]

@athelas

I seem to remember the same kind of “advice” for the Dems after the 2004 election.

But not, typically, from the Dems themselves. The OP article, however filtered, spotlighted some prominent young *Republicans *and their philosophies.

The assessment that their approach is to catch up with the Dems is mine, but supported by the evidence.

[ElvisL1ves]

@DSYoungEsq

We should be remiss if we did not point out that the Republicans were instrumental at the turn of the last century in promoting and passing numerous governmental schemes that expanded the role of government and/or protected individuals, albeit in a way consistent with a more conservative philosophy than perhaps the Democrats would have espoused.

We would be similarly remiss if we did not point out that, a century ago, the Republicans were what we would now call the liberal party and the Democrats were the conservatives.

[Chessic_Sense]

@ElvisL1ves

The assessment that their approach is to catch up with the Dems is mine, but supported by the evidence.

But it’s not supported at all, because you have a warped view of the parties. For chrissake, you think Republicans don’t use computers. There’s nothing Democratic about assertions like “falling in love with the free market” and “Divorce is bad”.

In other words, these Republicans don’t have a new philosophy and they’re not acting like Democrats.

[Bricker]

@DSYoungEsq

We should be remiss if we did not point out that the Republicans were instrumental at the turn of the last century in promoting and passing numerous governmental schemes that expanded the role of government and/or protected individuals, albeit in a way consistent with a more conservative philosophy than perhaps the Democrats would have espoused.

It’s interesting that Republicans are generally willing to heavily regulate cultural standards and actions, and yet recoil (correctly, IMO) at the thought of economic regulation.

In the mid-1960s, the economist Aaron Director wrote an article on this subject: “The Parity of the Economic Marketplace.” Director noted that government regulation of cultural “markets” and of speech has many of the same flaws as government regulation of economic activity; at their heart, the same forces drive cultural shifts as drive economic ones. Director’s point at the time was to highlight the hypocrisy of the Left, who sought to curtail or remove government regulation of culture and speech, but advocated strong government regulation of the economy. But the point stabs those on the Right just as cleanly – or, at least, those on the Right who seek strong government interference in cultural trends. If the marketplace trends to porn, why is this dismissed by a social conservative who argues for limiting porn… when that same social conservative is aghast at the regulation of, say, minimum wage?

[ElvisL1ves]

@Chessic_Sense

For chrissake, you think Republicans don’t use computers.

Apparently you didn’t get the references to Stevens and McCain. One of their recent Senate leaders and their most recent Presidential nominee.

There’s nothing Democratic about assertions like “falling in love with the free market” and “Divorce is bad”.

But there is with “Business can be the problem just as much” and “But not as bad as letting gays marry.”

In other words, these Republicans don’t have a new philosophy and they’re not acting like Democrats.

The former may be true, the latter may be better expressed as “they’re not acting like Republicans anymore”.

[Captain_Amazing]

@ElvisL1ves

Apparently you didn’t get the references to Stevens and McCain. One of their recent Senate leaders and their most recent Presidential nominee.

I don’t know if that’s due to the fact that they’re Republicans rather than the fact that they’re kind of old and not all that computer literate.

[Chessic_Sense]

@ElvisL1ves

Apparently you didn’t get the references to Stevens and McCain. One of their recent Senate leaders and their most recent Presidential nominee.

But there is with “Business can be the problem just as much” and “But not as bad as letting gays marry.”

The former may be true, the latter may be better expressed as “they’re not acting like Republicans anymore”.

1. I’m well aware of those two references. Yet Bush said that one of the main things he was looking forward to was getting to use email again. I use it. I coworkers (who trend strongly R) use it. It wasn’t presented in the OP as a joke, it was presented as legitimate, which is stupid.

2. You sure you meant to say “It is a Democratic thought that divorce is not as bad as letting gays marry”? Anyway, the Ds don’t own those ideas. I’ve heard them both said for years from churches that divorce/single parentage is a huge issue that needs addressed well before anyone considers SSM a threat to marriage. I’ve read in conservative journals, including an op piece in the Wall Street Journal (3 years ago?) about how big business also threatens the market. It focussed on the ability to skirt regulations, monopolies, and such.

3. Thus, these people quoted in the OP are still acting like Republicans. Nothing Democratic about it.

[Liberal]

They flip every so often. It’s new to us, but it’s recycled stuff. The last time it happened was, I think, in the Wilson era.

[BrainGlutton]

@ElvisL1ves

We would be similarly remiss if we did not point out that, a century ago, the Republicans were what we would now call the liberal party and the Democrats were the conservatives.

Yes . . . I recall a political cartoon of that period, where Lincoln is leading the way to the new Millennium and asking his followers what they want. A Negro states, “White folks got no rights a collud person is bound to respect, I jest want that understood.” And a person of indeterminate gender says, “I am an advocate of Free Love and want to be free to pursue that.” And a layabout says, “I want a hostelry where folks who ain’t inclined to work can be found in whisky and terbaccy.” So it goes.

[DSYoungEsq]

@ElvisL1ves

We would be similarly remiss if we did not point out that, a century ago, the Republicans were what we would now call the liberal party and the Democrats were the conservatives.

You could try doing that, but you would be wrong. A century ago, the Republican President, elected in 1908, was William Howard Taft, who beat out William Jennings Bryan. And the sea change to the current alignment of Republican = conservative; Democrat = liberal came around the time of the 1896 Presidential election and the years following.

Now, if you lengthen your statement to 125 years, you would be on more solid footing (though truly, the tems conservative and liberal as we define them didn’t apply in a straight-jacket way to the two parties back then).