Since the 1870s, the GOP has been the party of middle America. The Democrats were the party of “Rum , Romanism and Rebellion”. This has been slightly updated to Urban poor, alienated immigrants, and the grievance lobby and cultural Marxism. Not much has really changed. In so far as the GOP is the conservative party. Those people put off with talk of a Judeo-Christian tradition are generally alienated with America. As a UES Reform Jew, I can tell you that the same Jews complaining of Christian religiosity at Republican events are even more put off by Orthodox Jewish religiosity. At the same time, they are hypocrites who fully support progressive attempts to immanentize the eschaton through leftist social programs. And most would not otherwise be Republicans, since they buy into socialism as charity. Of course, there are some secular fiscal conservatives. But if they couldn’t vote for Mitt Romney, who never brought up social issues, and did not make religion and issue, how do we get them? It wasn’t the GOP, which made social issues a factor this year. It was the left.
Selling out religion won’t get us votes. But there are things we can and should change. The hackneyed anti-intellectualism that has become the hallmark of the degraded Jacksonian tradition has to go. 50 years ago, National Review readers made “Don’t immanentize the Eschaton” into a bumper sticker. In the last decade, we used terms like “Freedom Fries” and “Cheese eating surrender monkeys”. That is not improvement. One can oppose leftist social engineering without being anti-intellectual. There is a conservative intellectual tradition in America. There is an older tradition reaching back to Plato. We have 3000 years of history, while the ersatz intellectuals of the left are all but parodying their own failures of the last 250 years.
As for non-Muslim Asian Americans, I think Jonah misses a few key points. The first is that they are educated and aspiring, so anti-intellectualism turns them off. They also assimilate not to American culture but to liberal urban culture, since that this where they live. The same thing is happening with the third generation Cuban Americans. Castro is passé, John Stuart is cool. And to get good jobs in the thoroughly world of information technology and the “knowledge workforce”, outward adherence to PC shibboleths is important. Just like whites, they know that they can lose their jobs for not being PC. They understand that this will hurt their children’s futures. And they understand that perceived oppressed groups are allowed to keep their traditional culture in multicultural America, so long as they vote Democrat.
The GOP and the conservative movement allowed the left to control the commanding heights of culture. It ensures the left’s victory. Walking away from religion won’t fix this, it will make it worse.
One cannot support it without being anti-intellenge though.
“Anti-intellectual”
It is a ridiculous assertion that questioning, debating or criticizing leftist ideas is being “anti-intellectual”, the whole idea that the Ivory Tower idiots are above reproach is the very definition of “anti-intellectual”.
I guess a “peer review” is considered a hate crime too.
Peter Singer thinks children should be aborted years afer birth. This is not intellecualism, this is savagery.
Margaret Sanger, Kinsey, Freud etc etc are not above criticism and disagreeing with their barbaric notions is not in any way “anti-intellectual”. Labeling those who dissent from the lefty orthodox as “anti-intellectual” is a convenient sheild that is the height of hypocrisy.
There is nothing more intellectual than dissenting, challenging, questioning, criticizing orthodoxy! Those that believe critics are “anti-intellectual” are describing themselves.