2012

The political foolishness of the common Conservative tendency to tar anyone to one's left with a common brush is more and more apparent.

While we do seem to have on the right a more defined topology of competing views -- witness the more idealogical difference between, for example, McCain and Huckabee, compared to that between Obama and Hillary -- there does appear to be at least one increasingly sharp division on the left.

The root of this division is the natural tendency of power to seek more power, which in politics results in the governing party seeking to expand the power of government. The greatest example of this is how the party of Ronald Reagan became the party of W Bush.

For all the efforts made, big government conservatism was always ill fitting and mostly shucked once Republicans lost power.

On the left, however, there is a strong core -- perhaps up to 15% of the electorate -- of, for lack of a better label, Socialists, who ideologically support an ever-expanding government. In the other corner of the left are -- again, for lack of a better label -- Liberals who believe that Government ought be part of the solution to national problems, but who also share, to some degree, with conservatives, belief in the traditional classically liberal American values.

With Obama's election, the "Socialists" are in now power and the "Liberals" appear to be slowly getting squeamish.

The earliest manifestation of this was, perhaps, Joe Lieberman's excommunication. Lieberman, who volunteered for Bobby Kennedy and freedom summer, remains very much a traditional Liberal. In his principled opposition to the current push for socialized medicine he expressed a very Liberal creed: "Sometimes the private sector does things that are wrong, and when they do, you regulate—sometimes you litigate, But never in the history of America ... have we tried to keep one industry honest by having government go into that business to compete with the industry."

Another illustration is Jon Stewart's antipathy towards the groupthink that increasingly appears to be part of global warming science -- intellectual integrity and independence is a core value of the Liberal, but not Socialist, left.

In an editorial today, the Times stated unambiguously its common-sense position that a bank that is too big too fail ought not be allowed to exist. The Socialists in power prefer, instead, to expand the power of government further by entrenching and controlling the largest firms.

In the 2012 elections, Republicans will have the option of nominating a staunch conservative who in the best of circumstances could win less than 55% of the vote. Democrats, then, would likely continue to respond with (stealth) Socialist candidates and our politics would continue to be played in the red zone.

I pray -- though am not optimistic -- that Republicans will find the wisdom to choose a principled moderate who can remind Liberals of our shared values. Such a candidate could hope to win upwards 60% of the vote, with meaningful coattails, presenting Democrats with the choice of marginalizing their Socialists or facing political irrelevance.