In my post on William F. Buckley, I suggested that genuine conservatism is at odds not only with liberalism, but also with those who dominate the upper ranks of the Republican Party. Whenever the Party holds a party, it seems that the conservatives are relegated to serving hors d'oeuvres. The prime-time speaker list at the 1996 national convention read like a Who's Who of the GOP left, and it now appears that they're getting ready to do it again.
Terence Jeffrey notes that only one conservative is included in this convention's prime-time line up... a Democrat, Zell Miller. Rounding out the list are Education Secretary Rod Paige, Arizona Sen. John McCain, New York Gov. George Pataki, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
These folks are all on the A list for strategic or protocol reasons, which isn't necessarily bad in and of itself. Pataki and Bloomberg are there because you don't "dis" the convention hosts. Giuliani and Schwarzenegger are there because of their star power. Paige is a two-fer: a minority cabinet member championing policies that seek to neutralize a core issue of the Democrats. McCain is there because party officials are afraid of what he'll do if he's not on the list. Not one of them is there as an embodiment of the principles the party claims to espouse.
Even Miller is on the list not because of his conservatism, but because his presence there is an embarassment to the Democrats.
The bottom line, according to Jeffrey: "Beyond the president, the vice president and Democrat Miller, most of the voices there will be officials from deep in the blue states or who share blue-state values." Apart from Miller, every prime-time speaker supports -- or even champions -- policies that are abhorrent to cultural, economic and constitutionalist conservatives.
That being said, the deeply-flawed GOP remains the only vehicle by which anything of value to conservatives has any chance of being implemented. As attractive as it sounds to talk of expressing ourselves through 'third' parties (many of my friends know that I thought long and hard about that in the 90s), the fact is that our more radical foes on the left stand poised to take power as soon as a significant number of conservatives withdraw their support from the GOP. Much better to remain in the party if only to keep those radicals out of power, and work methodically -- over years and decades if need be -- to reform the party from the grassroots up. Some state-level party organizations are already quite conservative, and to me that is a sign of hope that genuine conservatism will once again find its voice in the national organization.
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