Posted on 10/04/2009 7:59:24 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
What premise is that? I’m just curious to see if you even got it. If you got it, and disagree, that’s fine . . . but if you don’t get it, and disagree, he’s writing about you.
I get it. It’s the same flawed premise that sent Arlen Specter to the other side. His argument was that the GOP was moving too far to the right. Now, he’s to the left of Obama. If that’s even possible.
I’m beginning to regret I didn’t follow the Grayson mess very closely. Who was to know that he would find supporters here?
That's simply incorrect. The author observes (and it's just his observation--feel free to disagree) that there are two portions to the conservative movement, identifying them as "intellectual," and "populist." He does not elevate one above the other, nor does he claim that one is less necessary than the other. He merely observes that the "intellectual" side is weaker now than it was in the past.
I don't know where the notion that intellectual=left=moderate=RINO and populist=right=conservative=HERO comes from . . . I suspect it comes from (dare I say it) intellectual bias. What's clear is that people are reading the article and overlaying their conclusions on the author's, and then attributing them to him.
Perhaps the two of you could come down from your Ivory Towers and rub elbows with the rest of us in reality.
So why the "mine's bigger than yours"-type stuff?
Buckley’s magazine provided a forum for the Reagan wing of the GOP to advance their ideas. The magazine wasn’t some sort of ivory tower or a playpen for intellectuals. I was a mix of both practical politics and political philosophy. I remember the conservative intellectual writers of that era, the Russell Kirks, the James Burnhams, the Mel Bradfords, the Jeffery Harts, as being very clear and accessible writers.So was the man often credited with the intellectual nut-and-bolt cobbling of what you alluded to earlier, fusionism: Frank Meyer.
Maybe so, but the rest of the magazine was in no way out of reach. Besides, again, that isn't what's important. What's important is that those ideas made it into the hands of a politician who firmly believed in them and was able to articulate them in a way that changed America.
What I said about policy was that, “I can not remember any policy agenda that was capable of being translated into legislative action
Then you should go back and watch some of the old Firing Line shows. Policy was regularly discussed and Buckley was well qualified and prepared to debate the intricacies of Washington and the policies that would advance his vision of social and fiscal conservatism.
Tell me what LEGISLATIVE agenda Buckley proposed. Is free-market capitalism a better idea than socialism? Of course.
It wasn't always that easy. Johnson and his "Great Society" won in a landslide. Buckley debating the likes of Noam Chomsky was an important battle in the ideas that would shape the Reagan revolution. Even Milton Friedman debating a hard core lib like Phil Donohue on national TV had an impact on winning the battle and introducing the Reagan revolution.
Johnson wouldn't advance the tax increases to pay for his "Great Society" and eschewed the increased regulation his party was demanding. Nixon wasn't so shy and proceeded to intrude on the economy like no president had done since FDR. Buckley and NR were the first to champion supply side economics. I'd suggest reading some of Alan Reynolds' early works with the magazine. That was in 1971 and those very same ideas would be heard again from Reagan several years later. NR was the only publication standing up against Keynesian economics at a time when Keynes dominated the debate (remember Nixon proclaiming tat we're all Keynesians now?). Buckley and NR stood up to the economic illiteracy of Nixon. You want ideas that resulted in policy? What more important policy came from Reagan than the repudiation of Keynes and the adoption of supply side economics? Without the growth that resulted from supply side economics, how would Reagan have ever bankrupted the Soviets?
I realize pulling my random quotes can make it look like I’m saying that Buckley had no impact on politics
But that's exactly what you said, random or not.
I see Buckley placing Reagan in play, but it was Reagan who appealed to people in this country that 25 years of NR could never reach.
Yup. The power of ideas in the hands of a great communicator. We could use another one about now...but what good is a great communicator without any solid ideas? That's how you end up with a POS like Obama.
. In other words, he began to present their ideas in a way Americans could understand them. Buckley couldn’t do that.
So what? Buckley and company offered ideas that Reagan knew were right and would work. Like I said before, intellectuals are not the types to win elections. That's an entirely different set of skills. To the point of the article, you need both sides of the equation to win. Who are our idea people today? It's a good and fair question.
That said, conservatives that deny how we got to where we are today because of the perceived elitism of the very people who did more to help the working and middle classes don't understand history and are engaged in the kind of battle that will only deliver candidates that cannot and will not win.
I hadn’t seen this article until this morning.... it’s excellent. Thanks for posting.
Living in Florida, I'm subjected to the bad craziness that spews from Grayson's backside far too often. That anyone here would support his propaganda is unfortunate. That someone would call him a national treasure is unforgivable. His posts here have been removed but in one he pleads that his words praising Grayson were taken out of context. You can find his post here.
He wasn't taken out of context. His comments were a knee jerk reaction to the economic illiteracy of Grayson. I'll bet he's more careful in the future about heaping hosannahs on the enemies of capitalism and liberty. Otherwise he might get banned...again.
Believe what you want but it was Reagan himself who said on several occasions that he never could have been elected without NR and the WSJ. I'll take Reagan at his word but agree that it was Reagan's charisma and communication skills that sent Cater packing. As I recall, the election was close, or in favor of Carter, until the last debate when Reagan said There you go again. Game, set, match.
“Buckley and company offered ideas that Reagan knew were right and would work. Like I said before, intellectuals are not the types to win elections. That’s an entirely different set of skills. To the point of the article, you need both sides of the equation to win.”
I have absolutely no argument with this and, in fact, was pretty much what I’ve been saying. When I hear, however, that Buckley elected Reagan, it sounds just as crazy to me as some of my statements seem to sound to you.
His magazine had a circulation of maybe 100,000 back then. Did it influence politicians? Yes! Policy wonks? Some. The rich and powerful? Sure. A majority of Americans? No. How could he?
“Buckley and NR were the first to champion supply side economics.”
Regan, the Secretary of the Treasury, said they had no idea what Reagan wanted them to do, and that in meetings RWR couldn’t (or didn’t) actually articulate it. So they decided to go back to listen to RWR’s speeches to try to develop the policies that would later be derisively called “Reagonomics”. Had these ideas and policies been spread far and wide as you seem to be suggesting, Regan would have heard of them, no?
“Who are our idea people today? It’s a good and fair question.”
Our idea people today are who they were then. Buckley, Friedman, etc. But ideas are not policy. If they are not articulated clearly, they have no impact on voters. And if they have no set of legislative directives attached to them, they you have what we have today in the Republican Party.
“As I recall, the election was close, or in favor of Carter, until the last debate when Reagan said, ‘There you go again.’ Game, set, match. “
Thank you. You are making my point more succinctly than even I have.
Again, and for the last time, Reagan said on several occasions that he could not have been elected without NR and the WSJ. I'll take him at his word even if you choose to argue otherwise.
The ideas of Buckley and his "team" may not have been known by the majority of Americans prior to Reagan. Again, so what? They were well known after Reagan's election and still drive the conservative movement today.
Finally, and again for the last time, ideas do become policy. Policy, at least effective policy, is not created from thin air. If our idea people today are still Friedman and Buckley then we need an infusion of new intellectuals to ensure we have both sides of the equation to win. Unless I'm crazy, that was the point of the article.
“Again, and for the last time, Reagan said on several occasions that he could not have been elected without NR and the WSJ. I’ll take him at his word even if you choose to argue otherwise.”
Where is the actual quote? It’s one thing to say, “I was so heavily influenced by WFB and NR that I never would have moved in the direction that I have and subsequently won the Presidency of the United States.” It is quite another to say that Buckley influenced majorities to vote for Reagan.
Reagan influenced majorities to vote for Reagan.
And you seem to want to gloss over the fact that the Secretary of the Treasury and his staff had no idea what supply-side economics was and how to turn the idea into policy initiatives.
You meant 1980, but I agree with your point.
What Leonard210 neglects in my view is to account for why Reagan was poised to win the Republican nomination in 1980.
Reagan wasn’t the choice of the GOP mainstream. And National Review wasn’t the GOP house organ that it has morphed into. Both were part of the conservative insurgency that challenged President Ford for the 1976 nomination, Reagan being their candidate. Without those conservative activists working inside the GOP to gain the nomination for Reagan, the GOP would have offered up George HW Bush, Bob Dole, or Howard Baker, all men of the bland, Democrat-lite center.
Goldwater certainly knew that many of his supporters were also JBS members, and so he stopped short of denouncing the Society as a whole. But he certainly did emphatically and unequivocally denounce Robert Welch as a raving nutter, and seconded Buckley's demand that he resign his leadership of the JBS.
The JBS was indeed powerful in it's day. It had chapters nationwide, a huge mailing list, and could "boots on the ground" in furtherance of political iniatives. It was much like MoveOn.org today in those respects. But like MoveOn, it was an extremist, lunatic, nutty conspiracy mongering org. Goldwater was certainly happy to see it's decline. That decline was an essential factor in the eventual emergence of the modern conservative movement.
Buckley talked like a conservative, but his neocon philsophy was much closer to Rockefeller's than to Goldwater's.
Say what?!? For one thing there was (relatively) far less difference between Goldwater and Rockefeller on the foreign policy and national security issues defining the "neocon" stance. Rockefeller, though decidely liberal on domestic issues, was markedly anticommunist and advocated massively building the U.S. military in response to the Soviet threat. However, where there were difference, Rockefeller was hardly on the "neocon" side wrt to Goldwater. For instance Rockefeller had a close, career long, relationship to Henry Kissinger; he strongly advocated the United Nations; and generally opposed assertive policies based in the precept of "American Exceptionalism".
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