So my first BR column is up. And of course, there’s a lot more I’d like to add to it.
Like a different photo of me. One where I don’t look like Garrison Keillor’s bastard son.
But more to the point, after doing some additional reading on conservatives and their discontents, I stumbled across this passage in Ryan Sager’s “The Elephant in the Room.” It adds some additional, and not entirely complimentary, light on the various and several pouts of Richard Vigeurie:
In the years before the organization of the Evangelicals, a related group of conservatives, known as the New Right, had been seeking political fortune. Led in part by direct-mail pioneer Richard Vigeurie, this band became extremely dissatisfied with the Republican Party after Nixon’s resignation and Ford’s choice of Nelson Rockefeller as his vice president. They were so mad, in fact, that they agitated openly for a social-conservative alliance with the Democratic Party, or for conservative Democrats to join conservative Republicans in starting a third party.
Their agitation fell apart when Ronald Reagan said “no.”
So the latest Vigeurie, et al, stirring is in many ways just a 30 year old retread. But there are some critical differences this time, the most glaring of which is someone of Reagan’s stature to talk people off the ledge. For all their other attributes, Rudy, John, Mitt and the rest just don’t have the same hold on the conservative imagination. And folks like Sam Brownback, Duncan Hunter, Tom Tancredo and, yes, our own Jim Gilmore may have “it” to a very small degree. But the chances of any of them becoming the GOP nominee — let alone one that galvanizes conservatives nationwide — are on the wrong side of none.
Who could be that shining, Reaganite knight? George Allen was supposed to be the one, but instead of the Gipper, we got Bill Buckner. Fred Thompson? Well, he’s pretty smooth with a teleprompter. But he’s not in (yet). And what of (libertarian) internet darling Ron Paul?
Not going to happen.
Until that magic someone appears who can calm the angry conservative beast, unite its warring factions under a single banner and sound an optimistic message for the future, conservatives will either become more disconnected from the GOP and thus eager to form a long-threatened “third force” or…they may simply back away from politics entirely.
They should pack along a copy of “Waiting for Godot,” just in case.
