Norman Podhoretz provided a provocative and persuasive answer to that question in a recent Wall Street Journal column (September 10) based on his new book, Why Are Jews Liberals? Podhoretz wrote: The great issue between the two political communities is how they feel about the nature of American society. With all exceptions duly noted, I think it fair to say that what liberals mostly see when they look at this country is injustice and oppression of every kind — economic, social and political. By sharp contrast, conservatives see a nation shaped by a complex of traditions, principles and institutions that has afforded more freedom and, even factoring in periodic economic downturns, more prosperity to more of its citizens than in any society in human history. It follows that what liberals believe needs to be changed or discarded and apologized for to other nations is precisely what conservatives are dedicating to preserving, reinvigorating and proudly defending against attack.

The bitterness of the current health care debate demonstrates the power of this important insight. Liberals invariably plead that the United States must follow the example of Britain or France, Canada or Cuba, and expand the governmental role in medicine to guarantee health care as a sacred human right. The left insists that despite the high cost of American medical care we actually lag far behind more enlightened countries in health outcomes. Conservatives, on the other hand, while decrying the rise in costs, cite the many ways that the US system leads the world (in technological breakthroughs, as well as responsiveness where America is ranked number one by the World Health Organization of the UN). Conservatives want other countries to learn from us and follow our example; liberals long for the United States to learn from our European counterparts and to follow their example.

In international affairs, similar differences apply. The left wants the United States to act multi-laterally at all times and in all things, emphasizing the danger that we’ll probably make a mistake if we go it alone and ignore world opinion. The right concentrates on the need for American power in the world and stresses the positive role played by this country in every corner of the globe. Conservatives worry that if we wait for other (and often corrupt) international powers to join us in every endeavor, we’ll make a mistake by abdicating the leadership role only we can play by deferring to world opinion.

When it comes to the nation’s history, the divisions between left and right remain similarly stark. Liberals stress U.S. guilt for slavery, mistreatment of Native Americans, and more than a century of imperialist adventures oppressing nations around the world. The right dwells on the way that America introduced ideals of liberty to all of humanity, gave rise to the planets first anti-slavery society, and rescued the earth from two world wars and the danger of international communism.

The opposing instincts toward America also help explain the liberal-conservative arguments over religion and its role in our society. All recent polls show a vast difference in political alignment between those who place a priority on traditional faith and those who describe themselves as irreligious or unaffiliated. From the days of our Puritan and Pilgrim forefathers, the people who inhabited the New World always placed a higher priority on religious practice and Biblical beliefs than the communities they left behind in Europe. In the 1830s, the French observer Alexis de Tocqueville singled out the powerful influence of fervent Christianity as perhaps the most dominant force in American society, and the clearest distinction between the new Republic and the Old World. Even today, the United States remains by every measure the most religious nation in the western world. For conservatives, the religious character of our past and our people stands as a point of pride; for liberals, its one more reason for embarrassment and apology.

On all of these issues, liberals and conservatives differ dramatically and profoundly. This is not to say that all liberals hate America, or that all conservatives glorify their country unreservedly. But in questions of emphasis the contrast couldn’t be more clear: the left stresses Americas failures, shortcomings, hypocrisies, and embarrassments, while the right trumpets the nations achievements, blessings, and distinctive advantages. Nothing enrages liberals more than the conservative tendency for jingoistic flag-waving and super-patriotism; nothing bothers conservatives more than the liberal habit of blaming America first and concentrating on historic guilt and present problems.

The more negative attitude by liberals toward the nation in which they live even accounts for the well-known happiness gap, in which all survey data shows conservatives as far more satisfied and optimistic about their own lives. Even controlling for factors like race, age, economic and marital status, conservatives top liberals by all measures of happiness (as described in detail by Arthur Brooks in his valuable book, Gross National Happiness.) The liberal embrace of guilt rather than gratitude, and focus on the nations predicaments rather than its possibilities, clearly contribute to the gloomy temperament (and the inevitable calls for sweeping change) that accompany the leftwing world view.

The critical and even fearful attitude toward the United States has come to characterize the left in every corner of the globe, and it makes sense to extend the Podhoretz paradigm internationally. Contrasting visions of America distinguish every major conflict in todays world; the role of the United States has been the explosive, polarizing, outstanding international issue for the last twenty years.

In 1989-91, with the Western victory in the Cold War, disputes over American influence and values came to replace the issue that had divided the world for the previous 70 years: the response to Marxism. For more than two generations, attitudes toward socialism and the rise of all-powerful (often totalitarian) governments not only separated the nations of the world, but also characterized political disputes within each nation. The Russian Revolution created the prospect of world-shattering revolt, and conservatives defined themselves by their implacable opposition to that prospect just as liberals argued for the need to embrace or accommodate it. Anywhere on earth, your approach toward Marxist ideology placed you in one political camp or the other, just as your response to Americas influence and example will shape your ideological position from Moscow to Mumbai, from Mombasa to Maracaibo.

Some partisans on the left (in America and around the world) will resist this formulation, insisting that they love the United States just as much as any right winger. The distinction, progressives regularly aver, involves their affection for a perfected America that might, through hope and change, come into existence sometime in the future, or else their nostalgic reverence for an America that once was, but ceased to exist through some malevolent influence (greedy businessmen, the religious right, conniving conservatives, take your pick).

Anyone with a modicum of experience in human relations will tell you that a devotion based on what your love object might become, or may have been in the past, is a suspect and toxic form of affection. If, in a moment of insecurity, a wife asks a husband, Honey, do you love me? the last thing she wants to hear is, Actually, I love the idea of you if you changed completely. In other words, its not advisable to tell the woman in your life that you’d adore her if she’d only lose fifty pounds, submit to liposuction and breast augmentation surgery, get a new set of gleaming white caps for her teeth, and complete a post graduate degree so she’d offer more intriguing conversation.

By the same token, it always seems bizarre to hear liberals insist that they consider themselves committed patriots and enthusiastic America lovers because they love the notion of a new U.S. purged of racism, and pollution, and economic exploitation, and sexism, and homophobia, and Mickey Mouse, McDonalds and the Designated Hitter Rule.

Conservatives have an easier time connecting with the sentiments of everyday Americans because our love of country remains less complicated: we admire and relish and savor the United States just as it is, even with all its quirks and imperfections. For us, the sight of Old Glory in the autumn breeze inspires a sense of instant pride and exaltation, not the bittersweet ruminations of a guilty liberal who automatically evokes embarrassing episodes associated with the flag and sighs over the gap between U.S. ideals and contemporary reality.

The more that conservatives understand and adopt the idea that attitudes toward America divide the left and right everywhere, the better our chances of building durable majorities. The health care debate offers a fine opportunity to spread this notion. While the left hopes that we’ll abandon our distinctiveness and welcome international influence in shaping a new health care system, the right hopes for a clear-cut victory for liberty and against big government — a victory that can advance the cause of Americanism as a unique and valuable creed both here at home and around the world.

One characteristic common to both Conservatives and Liberals is that they are both completely convinced of the correctness of their own ideas.

Now to be clear, we are not referring here to those individuals who show no interest or appetite for the world of political ideas – those who manifest the naivete of thinking that political concerns are matters they can take or leave, without meaningful consequences for how they live their daily lives. These are the people who like to refer to themselves as “moderates” or “independents”. In an ideal world, none of us need concern ourselves with abstract political or philosophical theories, or expend precious time and energy studying the details of our own legal, economic and social histories. Be we do not live in an ideal world. We live in a world in which people we have never met can gather in a city we have never visited, conduct deliberations in which we are not welcome to participate, and reach conclusions which will determine where we may live, how freely we may travel, how our children must be raised, what work we may do, which employees we must hire, what portion of the fruits of our own labor we will be allowed to keep, and soon perhaps even when we must die. In such a not-so-ideal world, indifference to political matters is inexcusable.

While they may share a common level of commitment to their core principles, the Conservative and Liberal camps could not be further apart in the approaches they take to carrying their beliefs into action.

Conservatives operate from the basic premise that the world is, or at least should be, a fundamentally rational place. Consequently, they approach the task of advancing the Conservative agenda on the assumption that they have a responsibility to develop and articulate reasoned arguments, which lead open minded listeners to rational conclusions. In this respect, conservatism is very much in keeping with the theistic rationalism of the nation’s founders. Conservatives, in accordance with the principles which define conservatism itself, believe that America’s founders were correct in their assertion that each individual, endowed with immeasurable faculties of reason, fortitude and resourcefulness, has not only a right, but a moral obligation to govern himself in all things, and that the proper role of government in a free society is to ensure that each citizen’s opportunity to govern his own affairs is not improperly impeded by the unlawful intrusion of another.

Liberals do not see the world in quite this same way. They envision a world that is neither reasonable, nor rational, nor inhabited by a populace of functionally reasoning individuals, amenable to the suasion of logical argument. Indeed, a central tenet of the modern Liberal view of human nature, is that an incredibly small percentage of the population is possessed of the intellect or discipline necessary to formulate a meaningful opinion of how the world ought to be. This very stratified view of humanity is at the core of the modern Liberal instinct for collectivist government in all its forms. Communism, socialism and fascism, all movements which emerged from the ideological left, each in its own way reflects the same core assumption: that most people are not capable of governing themselves, and must, therefore, be controlled and manipulated for their own benefit and for the benefit of society as a whole.

The notion that ends always justify means is absolutely endemic to the process of Liberal activism. Achieving the goal of moving “the People” to a point that is deemed better for them and for the country is considered equally legitimate, whether the means of arriving at that point are honest or dishonest. The important thing is that you get them there, and the means become incidental. The Liberal politician or policymaker will tell the voters and the general public whatever they need to hear to act as they are expected to act, or to stand passively aside, while others act in their name. Fidelity to the truth will never stand in the way of a compelling story the voters might be convinced to swallow. Legal restrictions will never stand in the way of an electoral victory, honestly or dishonestly obtained. For this purpose, no tactic is morally out of bounds. District gerrymandering; voter intimidation at polling places; misappropriation of taxpayer funds; solicitation of illegal campaign contributions; voter registration fraud; ballot tampering; judicial activism, bordering on judicial misconduct; and suppression of dissenting opinions in print, over the airwaves, on the internet and in our public spaces — all are deemed appropriate means to the “right” end, and all were employed extensively by Liberals in the last election cycle.

Let us be clear about the purpose of this article. The point here is not to bemoan the fact that one side tends to be honest while the other habitually shades the truth and abuses the system. It is not to, once again, illustrate the obvious challenges of delivering an unadulterated message through the willful distortions and propagandistic fervor of established media outlets, which simultaneously offer shameless promotion and fawning protection to the opposition. None of that matters if such complaining is used as a ready excuse for allowing tyranny to prevail. One cannot withdraw from the contest on the excuse that the referee has sided with the opposition. Surrender is not an option, when America’s survival as a free society hangs in the balance. The purpose of this argument is to understand how Conservatives have failed to champion their ideas in this environment, and suggest more effective strategies moving forward. What follows are three broad suggestions, but opportunities for their implementation are manifold.

• Get off your knees — Maintaining enlightened civility in the public forum is a laudable goal, but when that impulse descends into an obsequious deference to individuals and ideas that are intellectually and morally inferior, it is a cowardly act of political, ideological and cultural surrender. Like a dog who licks an abusive master’s hand in the hopes of avoiding an unjust beating, Conservatives who grovel and pander to their inferiors should expect neither respect or affection in return. Let us dispense with the delusion that we face a philosophical dispute among congenial fellow citizens. Liberal politicians, their most rabid supporters and their embedded media allies do not just disagree with you, they despise you. They despise all the aspects of American history, philosophy and culture you most fervently cherish. They not only seek to defeat you today, they intend to exterminate any hope that people who believe the way you do will infect the thinking of even a small percentage of the population in the future. To quote recently departed “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones, in describing Republicans for an audience in Berkeley, California, “They’re a**holes!” Far from shocking the sensibilities of his partisan audience, this witty rejoinder was instantly met with an outburst of laughter and applause. Make no mistake, their opinion of you never gets any more sophisticated or any less hateful. Throw aside the Stockholm Syndrome that keeps you searching for ways to earn their friendship, and pick up the gauntlet they have thrown down. Act decorously, but act! Conservatives may not instinctively look for a fight, but running from this one is a certain recipe for extinction.
• Stand for something — Stand on the principles historically proven to make America a strong, prosperous and just nation. Stop cowering behind the empty platitudes and calls for consensus favored by beltway consultants and career politicians. Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius once said, “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” The insane rush towards unrestrained statism now gripping America can only be reversed by individuals who believe in our founding principles, and are willing to fight for them rather than apologize for them. Don’t run from them — articulate them, defend them and adhere to them. Countless Republican political hacks, calling themselves Conservatives, have counseled that candidates must appear more Liberal to have any chance of election. Operating on this false premise, election after election has seen milksop, mealy-mouthed “centrist” Republican candidates go down to defeat. It seems that, given a choice between a Democrat and a Republicrat, voters prefer the obvious villain over the calculating fraud — every time. Contrary to disastrous conventional wisdom, voters are not looking for compromisers, willing to jettison all convictions in the interest of shoveling legislation, any legislation, out the door. Voters are looking for candidates and elected officials who declare their beliefs, without evasion or equivocation; and then live their beliefs, without surrender or opportunism.
• Identify opposition propagandists — Identify main stream media personalities, who consistently engage in distortion and deceit, and call them out — name by name, point for point, day after day. These people the are Kool-Aid drinking, standard bearing, propaganda apparatchiks of the Democratic National Committee. In a nation which values freedom of the press, they are at liberty to publish fiction as fact, if that is what their audiences prefer to ingest, but you have no obligation to help them close the deal on the snake oil they’re selling. Stop lending them the unwarranted credibility of treating them like legitimate journalists. There are certainly tireless and dedicated independent critics of “mainstream” media bias, notably the Media Resource Center and Accuracy in Media, but how much more effective would it be if elected officials themselves began routinely punctuating public appearances with good natured, light-hearted comments like, “I’m glad to have the chance to offer the truth behind that whopper Katie Couric told the other day.” To be sure, if you’re going to call someone else a liar, you’d better have unvarnished facts at your fingertips. But how difficult is that, when the distortions these people routinely practice are blatantly obvious to all but the most closed-minded partisan, once they are dragged out into the light of day? If this sounds too peevish or picayune to serve as an effective stratagem, consider that Barack Obama demonized Rush Limbaugh, to great effect, with nothing more than generalized character assassination, in complete absence of fact. How much more compellingly can Conservatives seize the initiative, by illustrating one lie at a time, each in its sleaziest detail. Remember, these are the same media outlets who have consistently denigrated Fox News for telling the truth. By what rationale should questions of their integrity be placed off limits? Some will decry the necessity of stooping to such crass measures to further a political cause, but such hand wringing is ironically reminiscent of His Majesty’s generals railing at American Colonists for their unseemly refusal to stand on open ground and fight like gentlemen.

None of this suggests that Conservatives resort to the sort of legally questionable and morally bankrupt “political action” that has become the bread and butter of the American Left. However, if Conservatives continue to practice the sort of political pacifism which has characterized their decline in recent decades, they invite not only short-term political losses for their party and their movement, but the permanent loss of individual liberties for all Americans.

That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.

King Henry V Act 4. Scene III

The man raping the girl in the alleyway, or the passive bystander who neither stops the attack nor calls the police? The mother beating her children, or the husband who goes to work and leaves the children with her?

Who is worse? The abuser, the attacker is worse. But we are revulsed and disgusted by the people who aid and abet and ignore the perpetrators, and rightly so.

Last week, ten women were the subject of a cyber-rape. That is, without their consent, they were subjected to one misogynist, Guy Cimbalo, and his rape fantasies, which appeared in his Playboy article titled “Ten Conservative Women I’d Like To Hate F***.” (The article has since been taken down.)

Perhaps you think “cyber-rape” is extreme. But consider what was said about Mary Katherine Ham:

You get this one pregnant, she stays pregnant. Karma’s a b****, isn’t it?

Implying that she wouldn’t want a baby resulting from rape, but because of her belief system, she’d have the child. Of course, she would deserve this treatment and fate, because Ham is pro-life. Carrying the baby would be karmic retribution for holding her disagreeable belief.

Cimbalo says of Amanda Carpenter:

She is also a columnist at TownHall, a website for illiterates who disprove evolution by their very existence.

She has been dealing with the fallout all week. Amanda Carpenter shared that on Monday — instead of working — she had to explain the controversy to her male coworkers. She said it was embarrassing and distracting. A friend sent her an excited email: “You made a list of the best conservative blogger women for Playboy!” The friend hadn’t read the article.

And now, when someone Googles her name, the Playboy list shows up prominently.

So imagine, if you will, that the list consisted of liberal women bloggers. Imagine if Amanda Marcotte, Jane Hamsher, Jill from Feministe, and some of the more vocal feminist bloggers made up the list. Right now, they’re all upset over a National Review caricature of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. (It’s called satire. Remember this?)

First, the list would never be made. Why? Because Playboy considers liberal women to be sympathetic compatriots. Ironically enough, they’re on the same team.

Second, the outrage would be vocal and ubiquitous. Playboy made the miscalculation of assuming that conservative men are misogynistic pigs and, yes, sent the press release to them. They thought they would have a friendly audience that would link back.

Did liberal men bloggers get the list? Probably not, but Playboy would have found more sympathy with them. As conservative women know, the most vicious attacks come from leftist male bloggers. Spending some time in the comment section of an opinionated conservative woman blogger will curl toes. It’s not for the faint of heart.

Conservative women bloggers are used to being sexualized, objectified, and called names. Conservative women generally know that any voiced public opinion or any public involvement will mean attempted personal destruction. Which is the point of the Playboy list — get conservative women to shut up. Specifically, get beautiful, smart, young conservative women to shut up. Get them to leave the public sphere. Can you say Sarah Palin?

When Teri Cristophe — executive director for Smart Girl Politics, a conservative women’s activist group which includes male members — contacted liberal U.S. News blogger Bonnie Erbe about Playboy’s list, here’s what Erbe said:

A couple of caveats are in order. First, I probably disagree politically with much of SmartGirlPolitics.org’s agenda — I know I disagree completely with the group’s position on abortion rights. But as a nonpartisan, I’m also a firm believer in supporting all members of my gender when attacked due to their gender. I am supporting these women herewith.

I also want to note that at least one woman on the list is so venom-spewing, she unfortunately invites venom to be shot back at her: Michelle Malkin. Her posts and her “routine” are so venomous and predictable, in fact, I stopped paying attention to her years ago.

Others on the list, however, are not venom-spewing at all. One woman mentioned on the atlasshrugs2000 blog is a regular guest on my PBS show. Amanda Carpenter, on the show at least, eschews personal judgment of people with whom she disagrees politically. So her inclusion on the Playboy list is much more offensive to me than is the inclusion of Ms. Malkin, although their political views may not differ greatly.

So a rape-fantasy list is fine for a “venom-spewing” woman. That’s right. Most women don’t deserve rape except for the ones who “have it coming.” You know, the girls wearing short skirts, they kinda ask for it.

It’s nice to see a modern feminist clarify her position. Cyber-rape is fine for some people.

Bonnie Erbe’s opinion is rare — rare in that she actually hinted, if mildly, that the list is distasteful. She actually said something. Anne Schroeder Mullins of Politico acted the role of passive bystander by whitewashing and sanitizing the list.

Most feminist women did what they abhor the most: they remained silent.

Rather than coming to the defense of the sisterhood, feminist writers and bloggers turned their heads. Conservative women get what they have coming. They aren’t sisters anyway. They are women who have the nerve to disagree with the “real” women. Real women have one central belief and that is the right to abortion.

Ray Cimbalo committed the crime that the Playboy editors and public relations department set up. Feminist women watched the crime from the sidelines and did nothing. They remained silent. Feminist men defended the cyber-rape.

Meanwhile, besides the women on the list and other conservative women media members (Megyn Kelly, Michelle Malkin, Elizabeth Blakney, the Smart Girls ladies, etc.), who presented the most vociferous defense?

Conservative men. That’s right. Conservative men wrote ardently for of the attacked women. Ed Driscoll, John Hawkins, Ed Morrissey, Caleb Howe, Allahpundit, Jim Treacher. One liberal man likely lost his job for decrying Playboy’s misogynistic actions.

The feminist women remain silent. I don’t expect them to find their voices anytime soon. These are the same women who defended Bill Clinton’s sexual harassment and blamed the victims. These are the same women who savaged Sarah Palin based on her hair, her clothes, and her choice to have a special needs child. And now, these are the women who stand by and watch other women get attacked because they are beautiful and believe differently. The feminists say nothing.

The fact is, feminists want conservative women muzzled. And evidently, even cyber-rape is an acceptable way to silence their ideological opposition. Duly noted.

When the Gipper left office in January of 1989, the Republican establishment remembered these vital lessons. For about an hour and a half.

George H.W. Bush ran in 1988 on a pledge to be Reagan III. But he soon reverted to his own form. We all remember what then happened to “Read my lips, no new taxes.” And the Federal Register under George the First soon regained the elephantine heft it sported before Reagan put the brakes on federal regulation. Since then Republican poobahs and money-men have supported countless RINOs (often against solid conservative candidates), careerists with no philosophy or soul, and other me-toos who gave us a Republican president and a Republican Congress better at spending than even the Democrats and no detectable progress on any conservative social issue. This was the lot that was routed in ’06 and again in ’08.

Democrats decry to every open mike they can find how conservative the Republican Party has become. If only it were so.

Considering recent history, it should come as no surprise that with what promises to become an exciting 2010 Senate primary race shaping up in Florida between a substance-free, moderate-to-liberal governor and a conservative former speaker of the Florida House, the Republican establishment has lined up to give the liberal governor a big, wet tongue kiss, and has not so subtly tried to elbow the conservative aside. These guys clearly miss Arlen Specter already, and are searching for his replacement.

They think they’ve found him in moderate-to-liberal Florida governor, Charlie Crist, who campaigned in his own state for our rookie president’s bank-busting goodie package, aka the stimulus bill. Crist has tried to get the Florida Legislature to adopt a carbon cap and trade program and to force Florida utilities into generating an unreasonable percentage of their electricity using “renewable fuels,” the kind that excite environmentalists’ erogenous zones but exist in but trifling amounts and are bloody expensive. He also wants California-like auto emissions standards that would cost a packet but provide a negligible improvement in Florida’s air.

You’ll never hear an encouraging word from Crist on any conservative social issue. He’s pro-abortion and thinks marriage-like legal arrangements between homosexuals are fine. He recently put a liberal Democrat on the Florida Supreme Court.

In Crist’s speeches, conservatives will wait in vain to hear any of their principles promoted. What they hear are endless lullabies about “bipartisanship,” “diversity,” and other warm-sounding, non-sequiturs from the Democratic hymn book. These are just the most actionable of Crist’s sins against conservative principles.

No matter. Less than an hour after Crist threw his hat in the ring last week, Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Republican Senatorial Campaign head John Cornyn of Texas both endorsed him. In Florida, Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer endorsed Crist. These quick endorsements came in spite of the fact that national Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele has said Republicans who’ve supported the president’s stimulus plan shouldn’t themselves be supported, and in spite of the fact that there’s another very solid Republican candidate in the Florida race. Steele said Sunday that in spite of McConnell’s and Cornyn’s premature coronation of Crist, the RNC would stay out of the Florida race until after the primary.

The “other guy” clueless Republican leaders would like to ignore is Cuban-American attorney Marco Rubio of Miami. In eight years in the Florida House he compiled a conservative voting record and has been a frequent speaker across the state on issues such as holding the line on taxes, limited government, and the importance of the family. He hit these themes and others Friday afternoon at a meet-and-greet at Crabby Bill’s seafood restaurant in Tampa.

“We’re scheduled for the largest deficit in the history of the world,” Rubio said of the stimulus package Crist fancies. Rubio was critical of the recent automaker bailouts, saying, “The jobs will be gone and we’ll still owe the money. Washington should just get out of the way.” On Obama-Care, “We shouldn’t put the government between patients and their doctors, or do anything to increase costs. There are free market solutions to health care.”

Rubio was critical of politics by poll and focus group, and critical of the Republican Party’s recent melancholy record on limited government and spending.

“America hasn’t solved a major problem in 20 years. That’s because politics now isn’t about solving problems, it’s about getting elected. Leadership and popularity are not the same thing.”

Rubio not only has a message, but he’s enthusiastic and deft in putting that message across. He gives every appearance of a conviction politician who knows what he wants to accomplish in office. His remarks went over well with the 120 or so who gathered during working hours to hear the candidate the McConnells and Greers of the world would as soon Republicans ignore. Many on hand were members of Central Florida Republican executive committees where there is considerable resentment about Greer’s attempt to announce an end to the Republican senatorial race before it starts.

In recent Republican executive committee meetings in Hillsborough (Tampa), Pinellas (St. Petersburg-Clearwater), and nearby Pasco and Hernando counties, Rubio’s campaign has generated interest, including lots of folks volunteering to volunteer. The Hillsborough committee passed a resolution objecting to Greer’s attempts to get the state party behind Crist. There have been similar rumblings in Republican groups across the state.

The Republican muftis doubtless like Crist because he has the appearance of a winner. After two years in office Crist still has approval ratings in the sixties. He’s about as popular among Democrats and independents as among Republicans, largely because he often sounds like a Democrat. This is the reason Crist gets better press treatment than most Republicans. If the election were next week, Charlie would likely beat Rubio and any of the Democrats likely to seek that party’s nomination. Of course, the race isn’t next week.

Charlie is a charming fellow who knows how to work a room, and has floated from one Florida office to another on an engaging smile, a few populist bromides, a great tan, and the ability to convince voters he has their best interests at heart and knows how to make their lives better. He is in fact empty political calories. He’s accomplished next to nothing in the many Florida offices he’s held, none of them for long before he was seeking the next office. The only thing he’s worked hard at, or seems really committed to, is keeping himself in office.

But populists often fall quickly when voters finally discover there’s no there, there. This may happen with Charlie. Florida has serious problems about which Crist has done little in his two years as governor. So the muftis’ sure thing of today could be problematic a year from now. And a candidate with real conservative principles could look pretty appealing in a state that has traditionally supported conservative candidates, the deliriums of the recent presidential race notwithstanding.

During the war Dwight Eisenhower said that De Gaulle, supposedly on the same team, caused him more trouble than Mussolini did. Right now Republican “leaders” are causing Rubio more trouble than the Democrats. Looking at his record through the post-war years, le Grand Charlie never did figure out what team he was on. Perhaps Jim Greer still can.

Listen up Jim, this isn’t complicated. The sequence goes in this wise: primary first — then close behind a candidate. Not the other way around.

By Mark Steyn

Is conservatism over?

Well, of course it is. Everyone from James Carville to Colin Powell says so. “The Republican party is in deep trouble,” General Powell told some group willing to pay him serious money to deliver this kind of incisive insight. “Americans do want to pay taxes for services. Americans want more government in their lives, not less.”

Whether or not they want it, they’re certainly going to get it. And if you like big government now, just think how big it’ll be once both parties are fully signed up to the concept. You’ll recall that General Powell voted for Barack Obama, coming out and publicly stiffing his “beloved friend” John McCain, after years of more discreetly stiffing (in leaks to Bob Woodward and others) his not-so-beloved colleagues in the Bush administration. But, in fairness to the former secretary of state, his breezy endorsement of more government and more taxes is as near as we’ve ever got to a coherent political philosophy from him. If the GOP refuses to take his advice, I would urge him to run a third-party campaign on this refreshingly candid platform.

One of Powell’s more famous utterances was his rationale, after the 1991 Gulf War, for declining to involve the U.S. military in the Balkans: “We do deserts, we don’t do mountains.” Actually, by that stage, the U.S. barely did deserts. The first President Bush’s decision, at Powell’s urging, not to topple Saddam but to halt the coalition forces at the gates of Baghdad sent the world a message about American purpose whose consequences we live with to this day. As for the Kurds and Shiites to whom it never occurred that the world’s superpower would assemble a mighty coalition for the purpose of fighting half a war to an inconclusive conclusion, Saddam quickly took a bloody revenge: That’s an interesting glimpse of what it’s like to be on the receiving end of Colin Powell’s much-vaunted “moderation.”

So I have no great regard for Powell’s strategic thinking, at home or abroad. As the general sees it, the Republican party ought to be a “big tent”: Right now, the tent is empty, with only a few “mean spirited” and “divisive” talk-radio hosts chewing the limbs off live kittens while gibbering to themselves. By comparison, over in the Democrat tent, they’ve got blacks, gays, unions, professors, Ben Affleck: diversity on parade.

In fact, the GOP’s tent has many poles: It has social conservatives, libertarians, fiscal conservatives, national-security hawks. These groups do not always agree: The so-cons resent the libertarians’ insouciance on gay marriage and abortion. The libertarians don’t get the warhawks’ obsession with thankless nation-building in Islamist hellholes. A lot of the hawks can’t see why the fiscal cons are so hung up on footling matters like bloated government spending at a time of war. It requires a lot of effort to align these various poles sufficiently to hold up the big tent. And by the 2006 electoral cycle, between the money-no-object Congress at home and a war that seemed to have dwindled down to an endless, half-hearted, semi-colonial policing operation, the GOP poles were tilting badly. The Republican coalition is like a permanent loveless marriage: There are bad times and worse times. And, while social conservatism and libertarianism can be principled to a fault, the vagaries of electoral politics mean they often wind up being represented in office by either unprincipled opportunists like Arlen Specter or unprincipled squishes like Lincoln Chafee.

Meanwhile, over in the other tent, they celebrate diversity with ruthless singlemindedness: In the Democrats’ parade, whatever your bugbear, government is the answer. Government is the means, government is the end, government is the whole magilla. That gives them a unity of purpose the GOP can never match.

And yet and yet . . . Last November, even with the GOP’s fiscal profligacy, even with the financial sector’s “October surprise,” even with a cranky old coot of a nominee unable to articulate any rationale for his candidacy or even string together a coherent thought on the economy, even with a running mate subjected to brutal character assassination in nothing flat, even running against a charming, charismatic media darling of historic significance, even facing the natural cycle of a two-party system, the washed-up loser no-hoper side managed to get 46 percent of the vote.

Okay, it’s not 51 percent. But still: Obama’s 53 percent isn’t a big transformative landslide just because he behaves as if it were.

To put it in Powellite terms, the general thinks the Republican party is in the desert, when in fact it’s climbing a mountain. All things considered, the resilience of American conservatism is one of the most remarkable features of contemporary Western politics. It’s up against significant members of its own party. It’s up against media for whom the Democrats’ positions are the default positions on almost anything that matters.

Consider this cooing profile of Secretary Powell from Todd Purdum in the New York Times back in 2002: “Mr. Powell’s approach to almost all issues — foreign or domestic — is pragmatic and nonideological. He is internationalist, multilateralist and moderate. He has supported abortion rights and affirmative action.”

So supporting “internationalism,” “multilateralism,” abortion, and racial quotas means you’re “moderate” and “nonideological”? And anyone who feels differently is an extreme ideologue? Absolutely. The aim of a large swathe of the Left is not to win the debate but to get it canceled before it starts. You can do that in any number of ways: busting up campus appearances by conservatives, “hate speech” prohibitions, activist judges’ more imaginative court decisions, or merely, as the Times does, by declaring your side of every issue to be the “moderate” and “nonideological” position — even when, in many cases, the “extreme” position is supported by a majority of voters. Likewise, to Colin Powell, it’s Ann Coulter who’s “vicious,” not Michael Moore, who compares the jihadists who blow up Western troops in Iraq to America’s Minutemen and gets rewarded with a seat next to Jimmy Carter in the presidential box at the Democratic convention.

It’s a mountain, and it’s getting steeper. Promises of “free” government health care will make more voters susceptible to the blandishments of the nanny state. The Democrats have plans for talk radio and the Internet that will diminish conservative voices. Another retirement on the Supreme Court, and the First and Second Amendments will start getting nibbled away. Obama’s buddies at ACORN, already under investigation in multiple states over fraudulent voter registration, will have a prominent say in the 2010 census.

But, when the going gets tough, you don’t, as General Powell advises, “move toward the center.” You move the center toward you, as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher did. It’s harder to do it that way, but if it’s a choice between more government and more taxes, or more liberty and more opportunity, I’ll stick with the latter, and so should the Republican party — however difficult it is. Unlike Colin Powell, conservatism does do mountains.

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Arlen Specter has kept his promise.

As he told me over a week ago in an exclusive for The American Spectator, he was going to play “hard hardball.”

Yesterday, staring at polls that had him losing a Republican primary to his 2004 rival former Congressman Pat Toomey, Specter did just that. Stunning the political world in both Pennsylvania and Washington, Specter became a Democrat.

Yet one of the “hard, hardball” facts of political life here in this state is that from the grave, Ronald Reagan has carried Pennsylvania one more time. This time, just as in 1980 when Reagan and Arlen Specter were on the ballot simultaneously, it is Reagan’s conservative views that received the most votes, with Specter’s old-fashioned GOP moderation coming in second.

There’s more to all of this that is perhaps not obvious to those outside Pennsylvania.

Here’s a Reagan-Specter story never told before.

It’s 1986. Arlen Specter has won re-nomination by the Pennsylvania Republican Party for a second term in the U.S. Senate. But there’s a problem. An unhappy conservative with some name recognition in one area of the state is toying publicly with running as a third candidate in the fall election between Specter and then Democratic Congressman Bob Edgar, a liberal minister from suburban Philadelphia who later became president of the left-wing National Council of Churches.

A call came into the Reagan White House. Senator Specter wanted President Reagan’s help in convincing this potential third candidate not to run. President Reagan, wanting to re-elect the Republican Senate that had shockingly come in on his coattails in 1980, promised to help. Well out of the state political spotlight a White House political aide was sent to Harrisburg to meet with the prospective third party candidate. The secret meeting took place with the then-Republican State chairman in the offices of the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee. Just the state chairman, the potential third candidate, and the Reagan guy.

A conversation was held. The usual reasons for supporting a party nominee were given by both the state chairman and the president’s aide: the nominee (Specter) has been chosen, the President needs a Republican Senate, Senator Specter has raised a lot of money. This went nowhere. No sale. The third potential candidate, incensed at Arlen Specter’s record, was still determined to do this. Finally, the White House aide pulled out a videotape and the state chairman hastily slipped it into a pre-arranged VCR. There, on screen in living color was an exclusive look at a tape that would not hit the airwaves in Pennsylvania for weeks: Arlen Specter and Ronald Reagan walking alone together along the West Wing colonnade outside the Oval Office, the Rose Garden in view. Reagan’s inimitable velvety voice filled the room. In typical Reagan style, you would have thought that with the possible exception of Nancy he looked alone to Arlen Specter to ease his burdens as they bore down in those awesome precincts.

Watching this, potential candidate number three paled. There was a request for the Reagan guy to come home with him and show this to the man’s wife. It was done. The man withdrew.

I know this because I was that White House aide.

In other words, the moderate Republican who came in second in Pennsylvania to the conservative Ronald Reagan in 1980 felt forced to turn to Reagan personally to save his seat in 1986. It may not have been necessary, but the point was that Specter felt that it was. Reagan, happily, agreed to help.

What does this mean in the light of Specter’s decision to bolt the Republican Party and run as a Democrat for re-election in the 2010 election for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania?

Several things.

First. For decades Pennsylvania was viewed as one of the key inner rings of the Eastern Republican Establishment. It should be noted that in the tumultuous1964 election in which Barry Goldwater and the conservative movement wrenched control of the national GOP from Eastern moderates, the last-minute “Stop-Goldwater” candidate was Pennsylvania GOP liberal governor William W. Scranton. Today, Scranton’s son and namesake, a popular ex-Lieutenant Governor, is in fact one of the movers in the Pennsylvania conservative movement. Not exactly Khrushchev’s son becoming an American citizen, but for Pennsylvania Republicans it has been duly noted.

Beginning in 1976 and the fight for the party between Reagan and the moderate Gerald Ford, there have been nine presidential elections. Of those nine, Republican nominees running as moderates have headed the ballot six times — and lost six out of six. That would include Gerald Ford, who defeated a challenge from Reagan himself in 1976; George H.W. Bush, who successfully ran as Reagan’s heir in 1988 and carried Pennsylvania — but ran as a moderate in 1992 and lost to Bill Clinton;  the moderate Senate leader and Ford running-mate Bob Dole, who lost in 1996. Next was George W. Bush running on the much ballyhooed platform of “compassionate conservatism” — who then lost the state in both 2000 and 2004. Last was Senator John McCain, who spent a career in the Senate as the Republican repeatedly acclaimed for his moderation by Democrats but lost Pennsylvania to Obama in 2008. Of the remaining three elections, the openly conservative Reagan won twice, in 1980 and 1984, with  Bush 41, running fervently (if, as events proved, inaccurately) as Reagan’s heir in 1988.

In other words, for all the rhetoric in the air about how the GOP in Pennsylvania is pushing out moderates, the hard fact is that moderate Republicans have failed miserably in recent history to carry the state in presidential elections. When push came to shove Specter needed Reagan himself to get him over the hump in 1980 and specifically asked for his help in 1986.

All of this is another way of saying that the Pennsylvania Republican Party, after decades of losing presidential elections with moderates and depending on Reagan to get Specter the push he needed to win two state-wide elections in row, is effectively acknowledging its titular leader is a former president from California who passed away in 2004. Twenty-four years after he beat Arlen Specter when their names were on the same ballot together, 18 years after Specter felt compelled to turn to that same president for help in keeping his seat, Ronald Reagan — through the stand-in candidacy of former Congressman Pat Toomey — has triumphed once again.

Second. A word here about Toomey. Toomey’s service in Congress comes from being elected from Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. For those not familiar with the state, this is not exactly the beating heart of far right-wing extremism. There are some spots in Pennsylvania where that term might be applied. Toomey’s district, which included Allentown and Bethlehem, is not one of them. As Specter himself has noted in his memoirs Passion for Truth, the Lehigh Valley is a very diverse high-tech section of the state, much more representative of the state as a whole than some other districts. A political base in this area is every bit as strong as Scranton in the Northeast (the home of Democratic U.S. Senator Bob Casey) and Erie in the Northwest (home of moderate ex-GOP Governor Tom Ridge). Toomey, running as a Reaganite, is nothing if not mainstream in a state that elected Reagan twice.

Third. Arlen Specter has two very important longtime friends in the Democratic Party. The first is his former deputy in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office who was also a neighbor — Governor Ed Rendell. The other is the man with whom he spent years sharing train rides home from Washington — Vice President Joe Biden of neighboring Delaware. Between the two, they have been working on Specter to switch parties for years. Now that he has, this means money, money, and more money for Specter’s race. Rendell yesterday pledged to contribute $2,300 personally to Specter, saying with a laugh that Specter corrected him and said the maximum was $2,400. And just as he put the arm on Ronald Reagan in 1986, the Obama White House says a conversation between Obama and Specter took place within hours of Specter’s decision to switch. Obama has eagerly agreed to step up to the plate with a promise of presidential help.

Fourth. Arlen Specter is in good health. Having spent some time with him a week ago, I can say his mental acuity is sharp, his energy level good. He believes in what he likes to call “centrism” and certainly has a vivid record of upsetting just about everyone on all sides to prove it. There is an elephant in the room here, however, and it was certainly mentioned often, if quietly enough, even before Specter’s party switch or Toomey’s entrance into the race. The elephant? This is a man who will celebrate his 80th birthday next February, turning 81 a month after he would be sworn into what would be his sixth term. Whatever one wants to say about the politics of Pennsylvania, it is a big, diverse, industrial state. It is not the smaller West Virginia, home to the just-re-elected 91-year-old Democrat Robert Byrd, or South Carolina, represented in the Senate until he died at 101 by the late Republican Strom Thurmond. Senators in their 80s are not, historically, Pennsylvania’s thing, regardless of party. Even the very vigorous Specter will have to endure the spoken — and perhaps more consequentially the unspoken — comparisons to a younger opponent, whether it is Toomey or anyone else. Quite aside from ideology, this may or may not be fair. But surely it is a rather simple confirmation that this election will be “hard, hardball” indeed, just as Specter predicted.

These last two points are important. Both the 64-year-old Rendell, who is term limited and thus will not be on the ballot for anything in 2010, and his friend Arlen Specter have been running for office in this state in one election or another since 1965, when Specter was first elected District Attorney of Philadelphia. In addition to each man serving multiple terms as district attorney, both have run at different times for mayor of Philadelphia (Specter lost, Rendell won) governor (Rendell won, Specter lost) and, of course, Specter has run six times for U.S. Senator, winning five of six elections to make him the longest serving Senator in Pennsylvania history. They have perhaps inevitably morphed into the Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon of Pennsylvania Politics: Grumpy Old Men, the Political Sequel. Starring a seat in the U.S. Senate as Ann-Margret.

Does Toomey have a lock on the GOP nomination? No. The news of Specter’s switch to the Democrats has set off a wild scramble within the state GOP among several potential candidates who only hours earlier had not the slightest intention of running for senator in 2010. Lieutenant Governor Joe Scarnati is one name being mentioned. Scarnati is lieutenant governor only because a quirk in the state constitution allows the state senate president — which he still is — to become the state’s number two upon a vacancy in the lieutenant governor’s office. This vacancy occurred with the unexpected death of Democrat Lieutenant Governor Catherine Baker Knoll, Rendell’s running mate. This has lifted a once-obscure but youthful and respected legislator to a position of hard-to-get statewide prominence. Also being discussed is moderate GOP Congressman Jim Gerlach from Bucks County (suburban Philadelphia). And a list of others.  Perhaps a bit miffed is Democratic Congressman Joe Sestak, also from suburban Philadelphia, who was much discussed as a Democrat with the ability to beat Specter or Toomey. Two other Democrats, an ex-Rendell aide and a state legislator, have quickly been swept aside by Specter’s sudden arrival with the blessing of Rendell.

There is one irony in all of this. At his press conference in Washington today, Specter jumped repeatedly on the idea that as a moderate he was being pushed out of the party by the right wing. This seems at first take not to be a saleable point. The truth is that it is not a vote on any social issue that proved to be Specter’s undoing with Republicans. Only weeks ago Toomey was prepping for a governor’s race and Specter’s path seemed clear in both the primary and general. It was instead Specter’s decision to be one of only three Republicans in the entire Congress — both Senate and House — to vote for the Obama stimulus package. A vote the fiscally conservative Pennsylvania Republican rank-and-file overwhelmingly perceives as a stupendously irresponsible fiscal spending measure. Decidedly, in other words, not a Reagan thing to do. The resulting firestorm suddenly had Toomey switching races and Specter, the presumed sure thing for renomination, abruptly exiting the party simply to stand a chance of survival. The battle of ideas on economics, with Specter taking the pro-big government side and Toomey the small business and taxpayer side, is now spectacularly on.

In his press conference Specter also snapped that there should be a “rebellion” within the Pennsylvania Republican Party at the supposed pushing of moderates out of the party. What he seemed not ready to admit is that rebellion is exactly what is happening in Pennsylvania politics.

Unfortunately for Arlen Specter, he’s being cast as King George the Third.