“Conservatives” do the Lieberman mambo

In his syndicated column last week, National Review editor Richard Lowry, whose main job as a “conservative” political writer is to keep coming up with ways to make the latest conservative surrender to liberalism seem acceptable to conservatives, laid out a strategy by which McCain’s possible choice of Joseph Lieberman as his vice presidential running mate could be made to seem acceptable to conservatives. Lowry’s big idea: the one-term pledge. Only at the end of the piece did Lowry turn off his spin machine for a moment and acknowledge that picking Lieberman might not be such a winning move:

A McCain-Lieberman ticket might have an unbecoming pleading quality—please, we’re not really Republicans, so let us in for just 1,461 days. The ticket would make McCain, the experienced hand, the steward of a campaign verging on the gimmicky.

Verging on the gimmicky? Sounds as if Lowry is talking about himself—especially since, right up to the last two paragraphs of the piece, he takes his own Lieberman gimmick seriously and does his best to make it seem viable.

In contrast with Lowry, National Review Online editor Kathryn Jean Lopez makes it plain from the start of her article on the same subject that she is totally opposed to the choice of Lieberman, who, she points out, not only supports abortion but voted against a ban on partial birth abortion. But what, in practical reality, does her stalwart opposition to Lieberman mean? She pointedly neglects to say that she would refuse to support such a ticket. Meaning that, notwithstanding her opposition to Lieberman, she would support him. Her article is a fascinating example of a person twisting back and forth, seeming to say that something is unacceptable, then indicating that it is acceptable after all. How does that poem go about the woman who says no, no, and then says yes?

Then there’s mighty Jay Nordlinger of National Review, who writes:

Okay: If the Republican nominee picks as his vice-presidential nominee a man who supports abortion on demand—a lot of people might say, “There goes my rationale for supporting the Republican party—doesn’t really matter to me who wins now.”

Listen, I think the election of McCain over Obama is absolutely critical—if for war-and-peace issues alone. But if McCain had as his running mate an out-and-out abortion-on-demander, even I, to be frank, would gulp at pulling the lever for him.

Wow! Nordlinger would “gulp” at voting for a Lieberman ticket. Meaning that he would gulp, and then vote for it. I’ll bet that stern warning really has McCain shaking in his boots at the thought of picking Lieberman.

Then there is the National Review editorial on the same subject that was published this morning. The editors start off by saying that if McCain picks Lieberman (or the amazingly overrated Tom Ridge), it would “shatter” the recent momentum he’s built up among conservatives. And the upshot of that dire warning? “For vice president, [McCain] should make a choice that’s conservative in both meanings of the word.” Oh, yes, indeed he should. But if he doesn’t, we know that NRO’s editors will still be in his corner anyway.

Moving beyond NRO, there’s John (“Thanks to 9/11 we can forget about that stupid culture war and just focus on fighting terrorists”) Podhoretz, the editor designate of Commentary. Far from reluctantly acceding to the prospect of Lieberman as GOP running mate, Podhoretz positively embraces it. He writes:

It appears, from the consistency of McCain’s numbers in the polling data, that he has shored up the Republican base—or, perhaps, that the base has spent the spring and summer taking the measure of Barack Obama and has decided it must unite against him….

So McCain no longer has to close the sale with conservatives, which is a good thing for him, because to win, McCain is going to need to pivot to the center, especially after spending most of the past year trying to reassure the Right. His advantage going into the fall, with the number of Republican voters apparently declining and the number of independents increasing, is that he is not a conventional Republican. But it won’t be enough for him to say it, or to invoke his record; that record is unknown to most voters, who really don’t pay that much attention. He will have to reinforce it with action. And he may want to do something dramatic, especially if Obama’s convention goes well and his baseball stadium speech before 75,000 cheering fans makes a huge impression on the voting public. [LA comments: In other words, it’s not enough that McCain is already the single Republican most famous for leaning left and appealing to Independents and Democrats. No, he has to do more, much more to show how truly non-conservative he is. Nothing will suffice for Podhoretz until the Republican party is transformed into a sibling of the Democratic party with a strong foreign policy.]

McCain’s most dramatic possible play would be the selection of Lieberman—a Democrat who was only eight years earlier his party’s nominee for vice president and, after losing his own party’s line in a Senate reelection bid in 2006 and winning instead as an independent, now calls himself an Independent Democrat…. In choosing Lieberman, McCain can credibly say that he is the candidate of change in 2008—a candidate of political change, willing to throw out partisan categories in pursuit of two specific goals.

Those goals are first, constructing a post-Bush foreign policy that aims to solidify the gains in Iraq and face down the threats posed by Iran’s march forward and (the new entry) Russia’s effort to reconstitute some kind of empire. And second, to do something about the corrupt political culture in Washington through an aggressive campaign of reform that can unite Republicans and Democrats just as he has sought to bring them together by creating a coalition ticket. [LA comments: That’s now one of the two major goals of the Republican party—to reform the corrupt political culture through bipartisan reform? Have you ever heard anything so empty?]

What are the risks? First, there is the disaffection of pro-lifers and other social conservatives, who don’t like Lieberman’s record. That can be dealt with in part by reminding people that Lieberman was an ally of social conservatives on issues of family and morality and the crudity of popular culture in the 1990s. But that will not be enough. Lieberman will have to pledge not to seek the presidency, and to make the point that he is a man of his word. Indeed, there is a strong case to be made that the Lieberman choice all but requires McCain himself to pledge he will serve only one term, because the goal of his presidency will be to right the ship of state and change the atmosphere in Washington, and then get out of town. [Why should a one-term pledge change the fact that McCain would be asking Republicans to put a liberal Democrat a heart beat from the presidency?]

… Here’s what we do know. We know McCain and Lieberman are very, very close. We know that McCain is a very personal politician, and the condition of his relationship with his vice president will matter to him. We know, primarily, that McCain believes Lieberman is a patriot and that he has shown political bravery in going his own way and not being cowed by the forces in his own party that sought to destroy him. Mostly, we know that McCain likes to make ambitious political gestures in the direction of bipartisanship. He doesn’t when it doesn’t help him; now that it might help him, he might be even more tempted to go for it.

Will McCain really do such an odd thing as pick a liberal Democrat for Republican VP? At first thought it seems impossible, because, even though the chestless ones of National Review will obediently go along with it (and, of course, John Podhoretz will greet it enthusiastically), a core GOP constituency, the pro-lifers, would presumably refuse. But who knows? In this upended world, anything is possible.

Personally, I hope that McCain chooses Lieberman. I want to see the establishment conservatives squirm and moan and groan, then sign on to the Partial Birth Abortion ticket, thus giving up the last tatter of their conservative credibility.

* * *

However, based on the fact that, with a few exceptions, nothing I’ve hoped for during this election cycle has come to pass, it’s a pretty good bet that McCain will not choose Lieberman.

- end of initial entry -

James P. writes:

Podhoretz says,

“McCain no longer has to close the sale with conservatives,”

Gee, so that means there is absolutely nothing he can do to “unsell” himself, or reopen the supposedly closed sale? No matter what he does between now and November, no matter how many more reasons he gives conservatives to vote against him or stay home, conservatives will fall into line? If that is true, McCain is right to treat conservatives with open contempt. Yet from all appearances, it is absolutely true that no matter what McCain does, no matter how liberal he acts, Podhoretz and the lightweights at NRO are going to support him anyway. If Podhoretz and NRO are willing to abandon any pretense of conservatism now, in order to win the election, are they suddenly going to rediscover their conservative principles after the election? Of course not! They will continue truckling to McCain (“at least he’s not Obama”) for four years or more just as they have truckled to Bush for the last eight years. The support of “flagship” conservative publications will allow liberals to attach the “conservative” label to McCain’s disastrously liberal policies, and the doom of the conservative movement will be all but sealed.

To take Podhoretz’s logic to its ultimate conclusion, why don’t McCain and Obama have a unified ticket? McCain as President for four years, then hand off to Obama for eight? Wouldn’t that show the greatest “unity” and “bipartisanship”?

MG writes:

JPod has a prediction record rivaled by no one.

See his books for sale at Amazon and marvel at his foresight. Note: the price for his Dubya book is rather interesting.

“Bush Country: How Dubya Became a Great President While Driving Liberals Insane,” by John Podhoretz (Hardcover—Feb 23, 2004) 130 Used & new from $0.01

“Can She Be Stopped?: Hillary Clinton Will Be the Next President of the United States Unless…”, by John Podhoretz (Paperback—Oct 23, 2007) Buy new: $14.95 $11.66 32 Used & new from $5.95

Paul Gottfried writes:

I entirely agree with your arguments. The only problem is that the minicons now control a large chunk of the “conservative” media. Unfortunately we don’t, and therefore our critiques are not likely to sway Republican voters or too many self-described conservatives.

August 20

Josefina writes from Argentina:

May be I do not understand America’s political parties but here are my thoughts:

Democrats are supposed to be left wing and liberal, while Republicans are supposed to be right wing and conservative.

But for what I’ve read in the last years I really can’t see anything conservative about the Republican party,and this thread actually confirms my thoughts.

If the Republican party represents American conservativism , then conservativism in the US is doomed.

If there is no possibility for this party to reform itself, why not create a new party, a really conservative one? Maybe it will not win a presidential election but conservatism will be safe for the years to come.

LA replies:

You are correct. And what you suggest is exactly what I’ve always advocated. It would be better to form a real conservative party. Even if it couldn’t win power right away, it would offer a real alternative to liberalism, something we do not have now, and eventually, as liberalism becomes more and discredited, this new party would gain power, power based on conservatism, not on liberalism.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 18, 2008 11:44 PM | Send