One of the things I like to keep in mind is Ross Douthat’s observation that “There are multiple rights and lefts, and multiple middles as well.” One thing sort of irked about the observations that Romney had gone to the center in his debate with Obama. There was some truth to that (I don’t remember him emphasizing that his tax cut plan would be revenue neutral in the primaries), but Romney performance was actually quite conservative and post-partisan. Imagine if Romney had chomped down on an Alka-Seltzer tablet, pronounced Obama a socialist community organizer who wanted to bring down America, damned every government economic policy since Calvin Coolidge left office, and then offered nothing but a return to the pre-Obama status quo. The story would have been how Romney had gone off the ideological and partisan deep end. But would he have? On policy proposals, that hostile, imaginary Romney would have been to the left of the Romney we saw last night. The real Romney managed a mostly articulate defense of premium support Medicare, which would be the most “conservative” policy reform since… well I don’t know when. I think a lot of what we think off as ideological politics is actually drawing lines between politically engaged teams. Mocking Obama, threatening to torture Obamacare to death on your first day in office and constantly complaining about socialism are all forms of showing what team you are on. They are also partisan in the sense that the “teams” tend to think of themselves as ideological first and party members second. So when Romney (or Ryan) explains how a policy will benefit the general public, it doesn’t seem especially ideological or partisan – even if the policy proposal is a much bigger change than merely undoing the works of the Obama administration.
Sunday, October 7, 2012, 7:30 PM
October 7th, 2012 | 8:10 pm
Actually, a ‘pre’ Bush status quo, would be better!
October 7th, 2012 | 9:40 pm
I think this is a worthwhile topic now that the prospect of a President Romney has abruptly entered the realm of the plausible among us pomocons.
Two observations, the second of which I’ve mentioned in a previous thread.
1. Ideology really has two aspects, the primary one is that it is an attempt to account for the way things are, and how that should inform policy. The secondary aspect is the more trivial but prominent in today’s political atmosphere, and that is as a banner for one team in the team sport known as partisan politics. Romney’s achievement was to make his arguments in the spirit of the former while resisting the pitfalls of the latter. Good on him!
2. However, I cannot envision how a post-partisan President Romney would succeed when the DC he is walking into is occupied by standard bearers more problem solvers. Lest we forget this was exactly the road a candidate Bush promised and we got a squishy compassionate conservatism and Bush Derangement Syndrome. It seems to me Romney is going to have to be willing to make enemies before he makes friends in the beltway. And I have a hard time envisioning that.
October 7th, 2012 | 10:27 pm
Pseudoplotinus, Im not betting against romney but if I HAD to bet, it would be against. You are right about point 1. You are probably right about point 2, but over the medium-term, it depends on how public opinion (interacting with events of course) reacts to clashing proposals. There is little chance of post-partisanship as Romney describes it, but it is a convenient pose for a challanger and I don’t hold that against him
October 8th, 2012 | 6:56 am
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