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July
2, 2003, 8:45 a.m.
Howard
Dean and Us
Conservatives ought not to cheer the Democrats’
leftward lurch.
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 epublicans
are looking forward to next year's elections with a song in their hearts
and a smile on their faces. They were happy when Nancy Pelosi became the
leader of the House Democrats, and they are even happier about Howard
Dean's momentum in the Democratic presidential primaries. They are happy
about every sign that the Democratic party is lurching leftward, since
they think a left turn would create the possibility for a Republican landslide.
It will be 1972 all over again.
I have an article
in the latest
issue of National Review analyzing what's behind the Dean insurgency,
and what may be ahead of it. I write here to suggest that those Republicans
who are conservatives ought not to be so cheery about what's going on. Conservative
and Republican interests converge quite frequently, but not entirely. The
resurgence of the Democratic Left is one of the places where they don't.
It is something that would indeed help the Republican party, but not the
conservative cause.
One of the reasons
that parties benefit when the other party becomes extreme is that it allows
it to hug the center. But if Republicans are moving to the center and
Democrats to the left, that means both parties are moving leftward-that
the center of gravity of American politics is moving leftward. Isn't that,
too, part of the story of 1972?
Looking back 30 years,
is it really clear that the McGovernites would have achieved more of their
agenda by not taking over the Democratic party? If you were a liberal
who wanted to move the country leftward, should you really be backing
someone like Joe Lieberman? Conservatives who want the Democrats to move
left have to believe that.
The other problem
is that every once in a while Democrats, even if they move left, are going
to get elected. It would be better for conservatives if there were a lot
of Democrats who are willing to work with Republicans on tax cuts, judges,
and Social Security — as there were under the Reagan and first Bush
presidencies. Sometimes, Democrats are even going to get elected to the
presidency. And even when a party recovers from ideological benders, there
are after-effects. The Clinton administration's foreign policy was impaired
by the Democrats' post-Vietnam hang-ups.
It is possible, of
course, that the Democrats could suffer so massive a repudiation that
conservatives would come out ahead, even given their left turn and the
Republicans' reaction to it. But it is a lot less obvious to me than people
seem to assume.
And there's another
issue. People ask me sometimes whether I'm happy about the Democrats'
current predicaments. But let's rephrase the question. Should we be happy
that one of our two major parties is going off the deep end? I don't think
so.
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