Elephantitis, Part I

A debate is shaping up between two visions of the way forward for the GOP. You could describe the battle as Nerds vs. Heroes. Unlike the world of comics, where heroes to nerds dominate, there is not much prospect for a synthesis between Republican Nerds and would-be Republican Heroes, although many still sort of hope for it in a nice-dream sort of way. At this rate, that mystical union will have to wait. Cosmic forces are pulling Nerds and Heroes apart.

Reihan hoists the Nerd Banner high:

Rubio, a rare political talent, might actually pull it off, or at least he might leave Crist just bloodied enough to give Democrats the Senate seat in November. Getting there, however, will mean jettisoning much of what is most appealing about Rubio. In the State House, Rubio developed a reputation as a policy wonk interested in overhauling the state’s public sector along the lines that centrist Republicans have pursued in the good-government paradise that is Indiana. This isn’t very sexy, and it isn’t very ideological. But it did suggest that Rubio was more than a Reaganite automaton. The same goes for Rubio’s gutsy and contrarian decision to back the real Republican maverick of 2008, Mike Huckabee. There’s a world in which Rubio should absolutely crush and destroy Crist—a world in which Rubio ran a truly innovative, policy-heavy campaign. Instead, depressingly, we’ll probably see Rubio attack Crist as a Chardonnay-sipping socialist.

The alternative to nerdocracy, it seems, is the muscle-popping rule of American Avengers. What say you, Rubio ?

[ . . . ] we should be the party of term limits. [ . . . ] We should be the party of the balanced-budget amendment. [ . . . ] We should be the party of tax reform. [ . . . ]  I think we can improve our environment and become energy independent without destroying our economy [ . . . ] a majority strict-constructionist court [ . . . ] curriculum reform [ . . . ] we’ve got to secure the borders in our existing system first before we can even begin to have a conversation about the other elements of immigration [ . . . ] the people’s social and moral well-being cannot be separated from their economic well-being [ . . . ].

And then there’s this:

I think that there is some credence, in hindsight, to the notion that the real battlefield was in Afghanistan all along. That perhaps we didn’t fully beat the Taliban. That we were perhaps overconfident in how much support we were getting from the Pakistanis with regards to fighting al-Qaeda. Perhaps we’ve diverted too much attention away from that because of the necessities of Iraq. But understand at the same time, we were being told that Iraq was on the verge of gaining a nuclear capability. A Saddam Hussein with a nuclear capability was someone that we believed, and who Hillary Clinton believed, and who a vast majority of the Democratic leaders believed, would share that technology with terrorists who would then use it against this country. So it’s impossible to sit here and give a fair analysis in hindsight.

Not very heroic! Yet, not very nerdocratic, either. Notice these remarks are directed to the savvy David Freddoso for National Review . Reihan’s implication, which is a clever one, is that despite these kinds of measured remarks — traditional ideological conservatism updated for 2010 — Rubio will be forced into running either as a bigger wonk or a bigger American than Crist. Why? Because the party establishment is foolishly working to entrench a certain bloodless kind of ‘moderate’, the kind of person who pays lip service to policy innovation and lip service to heroic Americanism and winds up offering precious little of either. The insurgent or ‘outside’ candidate, which bizarrely Rubio is, must tack either toward the arrestingly more wonktastic or the authentically more American. And guess which plays better when you’re scrambling to overtake a tanned and rested establishment dino on short notice? You can’t mobilize a base on policy innovation — even policy innovation warmed over. (Remember Dole/Kemp, 15% ?) Nerds don’t start revolutions. They can only seek revenge.

The trouble, then, isn’t that Republicans’ nerdy, heroic future — the GOP version of big brains and big hearts — is inherently or naturally contradictory. These two elements complement one another nicely. The trouble would seem to be that, as Ross has put it, the GOP establishment keeps trying to field ‘the wrong kind of moderates’ — wrong because they force fresh conservatives to run funky, deformed, and ultimately losing campaigns, campaigns which can never really actualize the possibilities that might serve a party in trouble well.

That said, of course, running a nerdocratic campaign makes it hard to also run as an American Hero in the making. A good candidate can hire a great policy shop, but there is no such thing, as John Kerry has discovered, as a great hero shop. There is still no can of spray-on ‘toughness’. One type of moderation that really ought to come to the fore involves moderating the geekfest tendencies of the crowd that believes only policy innovation will save the GOP — while simultaneously moderating the seething quality of the anti-gourmet crowd. The Crists of the world do this on the cheap, by gesturing in as unaccountable and noncommittal a way as possible toward both those wings of the party. In so doing, they undermine the ability of the Rubios of the world to accomplish moderation in a more forthright and real way. In a primary election, getting stuck like this is the beginning of the end for the outside guy and yellow brick road for the inside man. Too many more such victories, and Republicans are undone.