Glenn Beck and Republicans

There has been a recent debate between conservatives about how they should regard Glenn Beck and other conservative personalities. One side applauds their success, the other is appalled by their antics. Some of this exchange has been hosted at Front Page Magazine which is run by a David Horowitz, Glenn Beck supporter.

The anti-Beck people feel that he is too polarizing and too far to the right. They want a non-threatening Republican party that will attract moderate swing-voters. To them, the Republicans have been losing ground because their message is too focused. Limited government does not attract enough votes. Beck and the others are too shrill and often make mistakes which discredits their side.

The pro-Beck people look at his success in forcing out some of the most ideological members of the Obama administration - people like Van Jones and groups like ACORN. They also support the idea that the Republicans need to stand for something.

So, how do we make sense out of all this?

First, let's admit that Glenn Beck and company are a two-edged sword. They are conservative but they are not automatically Republican. The Tea Party protesters are almost as mad at Bush as Obama. Both presidents pushed unsustainable spending. Some Republicans who tried to co-opt the Tea Parties have been told that they are not welcome. During last year's primaries, Beck, Coulter, Limbaugh, and others made it clear that they were unhappy with John McCain. The fact that these personalities have so much influence but are uncontrolled by the Republican party makes many Republicans nervous. With good reason.

But the question is if the Republicans are better or worse off because of these people. This is a more complicated issue than the anti-Beck moderates make it out to be.

As I said above, the moderates want to appeal to the swing-voters. They want to silence or, at least quiet, the far right who they think scares the swing-voters. They think that the secret to regaining control of Washington is to act as a loyal opposition, trying to moderate the Progrssives' excesses rather than opposing them. There are some severe problems with this strategy.

The first is that it assumes that the Progressives are correct and that the country has moved to the left. These people are trying to move the center to match the new realities. Are they correct in this assumption? The polls don't show it. Also, the idea of playing to the middle was originally proposed by George W. Bush and followed up by John McCain. Bush referred to it as Compassionate Conservatism. Outsiders called it big-government Republicans. It was not particularly successful. Bush lost the popular vote in his first race and won a narrow victory in his second against second-rate opponents.

The 2008 election showed some of the stress lines that this strategy has caused the Republicans. Many conservatives stayed home rather than vote for big-government McCain. Others were not excited about his ticket until he added Sarah Palin to it. Most telling, many Libertarians supported Obama, expecting him to be a pragmatic moderate. I've complained many times that, any time the Democrats can campaign as the party of fiscal restraint, the Republicans have lost their way.

So, the assumption that appealing to the middle and abandoning the principles of Reagan will win elections has not worked very well.

This brings me to the other big problem with the anti-Beck people - demographics. Polls show that the younger voters are far more liberal than the last generation. You can argue, and many have, that this means that the Republicans need to moderate their message in order to attract more younger voters. This is a losing strategy for the reasons I gave above. The Republicans will never win a bidding war against Democrats for more public spending.

The long-term solution is to reach out to the younger generation and start building a new conservative movement. Explain why big government is inherently inefficient and why giving too much control to the government means a loss of liberty. This takes the sort of theatrics that Glenn Beck does. It takes loud, noisy protests. It takes the sort of tactics that the Democrats have been using for decades.

The choice comes down to these two possibilities - move the Republican party to the left or try to revitalize the right. Moving to the left is easy and decorous but it means abandoning many core principles. Revitalizing the right is tougher but has the advantage of a hard-left administration to contrast with. Both options are risky and they are mutually exclusive. Cutting off Beck and the noisy right could result in a new third-party. Embracing them without attracting new outsiders could doom the party to permanent minority status.

Personally, I want the Republicans to stand for something again. I rolled my eyes during most of Bush's deficit budgets and was in shock after the TARP and the other bail-outs. I want to see someone speaking up for limited government and fiscal restraint again.

I don't agree with a lot of what Glenn Beck says but I think that he needs to be given at least as much leeway as the left has given its over-the-top personalities. No one on the left complains about Keith Olbermann and Al Franken was elected to the Senate. We need Beck, Limbaugh, and the others in order to build a new conservative movement and to keep it honest.