Where Conservatives Go From Here

I spent my day yesterday feeling down because I didn't get the "presents" I wanted for "Electionmas" (as Ann Althouse put it). I'm done feeling gloomy, though and now its time to move on, disappointed but glad I live in a Democracy. As Mo Udall once said after losing an election, "The people have spoken.....the bastards".

The "soul searching" is now beginning for Conservatives and Republicans. There will be many calls for being more inclusive or for finding candidates who will argue conservative principles more forcefully. There have already been call for purging the GOP of Tea Party members or apostates like Chris Christie.

The GOP must take this look, but as it does, it must reflect on the fact that Obama's election and re-election tells us that the United States is not the same country it was 20-30 years ago. It is not simply politics, however. The culture has changed and unless conservatives find a way to get their ideas into the current cultural mainstream, they are doomed to political failure.

This piece by Andrew Klaven outlines the problem and offers a few suggestions for a plan of attack. He suggests that political success can only be built upon a foundation of ideas which must be spread through the culture. Here are a couple of excepts from his article:

"The smartest political writers in the country, all of whom are conservative, will now be addressing those questions. I’m an artist; I play the long game.
To win that game, to create an electorate more deeply committed to true liberty and resistant to the sort of cultural scare tactics the president’s campaign team used so effectively, there are three areas to which conservatives need to commit intellectual and financial resources—three areas that our intelligentsia and funders, in their impractical practicality, too often ignore."

Klavan goes on to outline those three areas, the mainstream news media, the entertainment industry and religion among intellectuals (particularly in academia). His conclusion:

"In the aftermath of a crushing electoral defeat, all this [Klavan's discussion of ways to change the current culture] may seem a distant business, an airy conversation for another day. It isn’t. The demography of the country is changing, but demography is not destiny. Ideas are. We must retake the culture and begin speaking truth to a new America."

I think Klavan is really on the right track. I encourage you to read it. I hope that conservatives and GOP leaders realize that the path to political victory lies, in part, outside of electoral politics.