Back to the Future for Conservatives. David Brooks says we should look across the pond to British Conservatives for the next direction of the conservative movement...
Right. Marriage, families, kids, and the moral climate...American conservatives never talk about that stuff. I realize receiving a six-figure salary to write 1500 words a week is a lot of pressure, but where has Brooks been the past 20 years?Today, British conservatives are on the way up, while American conservatives are on the way down. British conservatives have moved beyond Thatcherism, while American conservatives pine for another Reagan. The British Conservative Party enjoyed a series of stunning victories in local elections last week, while polls show American voters thoroughly rejecting the Republican brand.
...
The British conservative renovation begins with this insight: The central political debate of the 20th century was over the role of government. The right stood for individual freedom while the left stood for extending the role of the state. But the central debate of the 21st century is over quality of life. In this new debate, it is necessary but insufficient to talk about individual freedom. Political leaders have to also talk about, as one Tory politician put it, “the whole way we live our lives.”
...
This focus means that Conservatives talk not only about war and G.D.P., but also the softer stuff. There’s been more emphasis on environmental issues, civility, assimilation and the moral climate. Cameron has spent an enormous amount of time talking about marriage, families and children.
The Tories do have one idea worth paying attention to:
They want the country to see the Tories as the party of decentralized organic
networks and the Laborites as the party of top-down mechanistic control.
It used to be that American conservatives would talk about decentralization, federalism, and local control. Then they got their hands on the national government and they started talking about "Big Government Conservatism"---a concept that Brooks himself might have mentioned approvingly now and then.
Meanwhile on the pages of the National Review, Michael G. Franc has noticed some things about who has been given to which political party:
Through May 1, the Democratic presidential field has suctioned up a cool $5.7 million from the more than 4,000 donors who list their occupation as “CEO.” The Republicans’ take was only $2.3 million. Chief financial officers, general counsels, directors, and chief information officers also break the Democrats’ way by more than two-to-one margins. The Democrats’ advantage among “presidents” is a less dramatic but still significant $7.2 million to $6.1 million.
...
Wall Street firms, long a symbol of American elite accomplishment, also tilt decisively toward the Democrats. Employees in storied Wall Street institutions such as Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley have all favored the Democratic field by a large margin. Even both sides of the recent Bear Stearns/JP Morgan Chase deal choose Democratic candidates over Republicans by two-to-one margins.
Democrats also enjoy enormous fundraising advantages among well-educated
professionals — lawyers, teachers, accountants, journalists and writers. They
carry practitioners of the hard sciences, winning solidly among physicians ($8
million to $4 million), biologists, chemists, physicists, and plain old scientists. Republicans must settle for a slender advantage among rocket scientists.
The white-shirt/red-tie brigade of Republican presidential aspirants holds
a nearly three-to-one edge among janitors, custodians, cleaners, sanitation
workers, factory workers, truckers, bus drivers, barbers, security guards, and
secretaries. While Democrats command the financial loyalty of architects,
Republicans successfully woo contributions from the skilled craftsmen who turn
their blueprints into reality — specifically, contractors, hardhats, plumbers,
stonemasons, electricians, carpenters mechanics, and roofers. This trend extends
to the saloons, where the Democrats carry the bartenders and the Republicans the
waitresses. The GOP field even secures more financial support from teamsters,
steelworkers, bricklayers, and autoworkers....
Washington Democrats have already adapted their Big Government instincts to this new reality. They have designed government guarantees, subsidies or handouts to address the insecurities of middle- and upper-income American families. Think of the new subsidies proposed on Capitol Hill for higher education, more generous flood insurance for vacation homes, bailouts for homeowners with mortgages as high as $730,000 and welfare-style health coverage for kids in middle-income families, and you get the idea.
And so reducing the AMT becomes urgent tax reform for the Middle Class.
The good news, as Franc points out, is that with such a constituency, the Democratic establishment isn't going to push for Naderite progressive regulation of the economy. The danger is, as a survey of any Latin American nation shows, is that being pro-business is not the same as being pro-free market. Business elites would be able to perfectly adapt to an environment of rent-seeking from government, screwing the middle and lower classes in the process.

