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David Frum isn’t done – and neither am I

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He’s baaaaack, with his ‘college education’ fetish (why does he care so darn much how the degreed vote? do people with university education count more than those without?) and his gosh, no, we can’t possibly even think of pretending we hold anything resembling conservative-esque values. I mean, ick.

I am annoyed. Perhaps it’s me who has no business anywhere close to his tent. Or perhaps he needs to go someplace else to pitch his. I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure we can’t agree to disagree on stuff like this:

We need to modulate our social and cultural message. Not jettison. Not reverse. Modulate. For example: We are a pro-life party, but every Republican platform since 1980 has gone much further, calling for a federal constitutional amendment to ban all abortions in all states under almost all circumstances. We don’t mean it. We don’t act on it. Yet we keep saying it.

That’s just one way in which we’re confusing voters. We don’t intend to police every single one of the millions of deathbeds in America, either. So why did we obsess over Terri Schiavo?

So if you’re pro-life you can’t, for instance, call for an end to abortion? You’re not allowed to ‘obsess’ over end-of-life issues? What, pray tell, are pro-lifers allowed to do? Pretend they’re not so they can look more with-it at fashionable cocktail parties?

Change, yes, but for what?

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Further to yesterday’s post (we ain’t done with that topic, just you wait). Brian Lilley surveys the state of affairs and asks whether the GOP ought to drop social conservatives to woo voters. Well.

While it’s true that change is sometimes good and that it’s always a smart idea, and not just in politics, to ponder what might have gone wrong in order to improve our lot in the future, there are certain things that ought not to be changed because they are right. Being unpopular is one thing, and if you care about being more popular, then yes, you’d probably be out there (along with David Frum) saying the GOP ought to lose its embarrassing so-cons and move bravely forward to where all the cool kids hang out.

But the larger question is twofold: 1) is it right? and 2) will it work? And my answer is no and no. If you believe, say, that abortion is wrong and you care about it enough to get involved in public affairs, then the idea that you should shut up about it in order to win power so that you can get into a position of power where you’ll be able to do precisely nothing about the issue because you ran away from it during the campaign is horrifying. And for a good reason. Plus it’s unlikely to work anyway; look at Stephen Harper. Ya think supporting him because he’s marginally less pro-abortion (we hope) than the other guys does anything?

So. The answer to Brian’s question is: It depends. If your main concern is to be more popular and win power, then maybe you ought to move away from the uncool kids with their sexual hangups (ugh, people who think having kids is neat – how perverse is that?). But if you care more about the issue than about how personally awesome you are deemed to be, don’t listen to those who are trying to convince you that you should do the wrong thing for the wrong reason. If that means yet another split on the right, so be it.

Like they say, change is sometimes necessary.

The quiet success of the pro-life movement

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David Frum tries again, this time with a much better tone…

Whoever imagined that we would see a Republican convention rapturously applaud an unwed teen mother?

Yet that is just what happened on Wednesday night in St. Paul. At the conclusion of Sarah Palin’s triumphant speech, the Alaskan Governor welcomed her family onto the stage: her husband, her five children and the fiancé of Bristol, her visibly pregnant 17-year-old daughter.

That moment confirmed a dramatic evolution in American politics: the transformation of the pro-life movement from an unambiguously conservative force into something more complex.

Well, maybe not. It’s quite possible it was something more complex for a lot longer – in fact, from the very beginning of the culture wars. I am happy to say I’m too young to know for sure… My guess is that the sudden emergence of Sarah Palin has emboldened many a quiet pro-life person; it is now OK to declare oneself in favour of life (or against abortion), and many are relieved finally to say so.

Us downscale white people

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David Frum writes:

But even based on what we know already, opinion about Palin’s life story will divide sharply. I wrote a column for The Week’s online edition suggesting how that opinion will divide. Briefly, the Palin choice will intensify GOP support among downscale white voters – while adding to the GOP’s difficulties among more educated white voters. 

I have a university degree what has got three letters in it, yet I find myself enthusiastically cheering for Gov. Palin. I am also white. I would be surprised to hear I am the only person in this situation. Is there such a thing as more educated downscale white voters? As Mark Steyn says, ease up on the snobbery, dude. “You’d be surprised how crowded it is down at the ‘downscale’ end.”

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Andrea adds: Downscale, upscale, whatever. I don’t think she’s courting the Lawrence Park vote.

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Rebecca adds: That’s tone deaf, even for Frum. He’s written some great books, my favourite of which is How We Got Here, which takes some of the focus on the culture wars off the 1960s and takes a closer look at the importance of the 1970s. His latest, Comeback, was just … off, in many ways. From his position on life (he wants pro-lifers to stop worrying about abortion and pay more attention to embryo-destructive research, as if it were a zero-sum contest between them, and as if a culture that won’t protect a third trimester baby could be bothered to protect a zygote) to his inattention to the role of culture in creating and perpetuating poverty, the book struck me as somehow misguided, as if he had carefully taken aim at his subject and then sneezed as he loosed his arrow.

At the time, I thought that this was a function of his preoccupation with foreign policy in recent years. He’s done some important work in that field, so fair enough if he’s not as au courant with social policy as he used to be. Now, though, it looks as if perhaps he just doesn’t get small-c conservative America.

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Andrea adds: “pay more attention to embryo-destructive research”–is that what he wants? Because that redeems his other off positions at least a little for me. I firmly believe that it won’t be too long before women won’t choose abortion for themselves. I’m less hopeful about those scientists who have control over many more lives, doing research on embryonic children. A mother knows what her unborn child is, intuitively. Does a scientist?

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