The NYT ran an op ed today by two writers from the Economist (one was my old editor there for a short while). They argue that the right is winning in part because it stands for something positive, rather than simply running on a platform of "throw the other guy out."
It still seems that liberals are purely reactive. Barry Goldwater may have been strong meat, but at least he had ideas. By contrast, Americans Come Together's entire raison d'etre (like that of the John Kerry campaign) remains negative: to send Mr. Bush back to Texas.I think they have a point, though I also think their analysis is somewhat naive. Many of the right's "causes" are for show - be it tax cuts and flag burning - or are sops to the far right of the party (opposition to abortion and gay rights). Don't get me wrong, these are all serious issues (save flag burning), but the Republican party leadership's motivation in raising these issues is anything but serious. I simply don't believe the party honchos care a lick about any of these issues. They care about winning office, and the recipe for success, they've found, is to always tout a few standard straw-man issues, like tax cuts, then spend 90% of their time demonizing their opponent by linking him/her to either of the Clintons, flag burners, or the French. To suggest that the conservatives win elections and legislative battles based on their affirmative message, or their clear-cut stance in favor of something - is simply wrong, or at the very least, not nearly nuanced enough an explanation. The conservatives tend to win based on throwing a few bones to the electorate (again, tax cuts), then scaring the hell out of the public that the other guy is coming to get them, and he's probably wearing a dress.
'There is no such thing as spontaneous public opinion,' Beatrice Webb, the great British leftist, once said. 'It all has to be manufactured from a center of conviction and energy.' The American Conservative Union is just one of many such centers on the right; it's a lesson that liberal America seems unable to learn.
That's why, I think, that new liberal groups like David Brock's Media Matters, and others, will be incredibly successful, if they do their jobs well. They are carbon copies of the kind of smart attack-dog organizations that the conservatives have been running successfully for years. The only question that remains, and the NYT article alludes to it, is whether we have it in our heart to be as take-no-prisoners-ish as the bad guys. In Brock's case, I know he does. Hopefully the rest of our new groups do as well.
