by Richard Ivory

The Washington Post has an interesting article out by conservative writer Steven F. Hayward F.K. Weyerhaeuser, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution, 1980-1989.” In his latest article for The Post, Hayward questions the overall direction Conservatism is taking. He bemoans the seeming trade-off between intellectual conservatism for that of a more populist type often devoid of argument or substance. 

The article is a bit surprising because of the author’s defense of Glenn Beck, often seen by many as the face of “in your face conservatism”. Nevertheless, Hayward dutifully distinguishes between Glenn Becks ideological framework from say an Ann Coulter or a Michelle Malkin.  

Below is a partial synopsis from overall article.

Stephen Hayward |The Washington Post

 The left is enraged with Beck’s scandal-mongering over Van Jones and ACORN, but they have no idea that he poses a much bigger threat than that. If more conservative talkers took up the theme of challenging liberalism’s bedrock assumptions the way Beck does from time to time, liberals would have to defend their problematic premises more often.

Beck and other conservatives can start by engaging the central argument of the most serious indictment of conservatism on the scene, Sam Tanenhaus’s new book, “The Death of Conservatism.” Tanenhaus’s argument is mischievously defective; he thinks the problem with conservatism today is that it is not properly deferential to liberalism’s relentless engine of change. In other words, it is an elegant restatement of G.K. Chesterton’s quip that is it is the business of progressives to go on making mistakes, while it is the business of conservatives to prevent the mistakes from being corrected. That won’t do. A conservative movement that accepted Tanenhaus’s prescription would be consigning itself to be the actuary of liberalism.

But Tanenhaus is right to direct our attention to the imbalance between the right’s thinkers and doers. The single largest defect of modern conservatism, in my mind, is its insufficient ability to challenge liberalism at the intellectual level, in particular over the meaning and nature of progress. In response to the left’s belief in political solutions for everything, the right must do better than merely invoking “markets” and “liberty.” Beck, for one, is revealing that despite the demands of filling hours of airtime every day, it is possible to engage in some real thought. He just might be helping restore the equilibrium between the elite and populist sides of conservatism. 

Whatever one thinks regarding the future of Conservatism this article is an interesting glimpse into the internal debates going on between its intellectual wing and its more strident populist wing. As to the winners and losers its anyone’s guess. However, the inevitable fallout will determine the overall ideological direction of the Party of Lincoln in the 21st Century.

Richard Ivory is a political consultant and writer for New Majority.com and is the founder of HipHopRepublican.com, he has worked for the Republican National Committee and was the college outreach director for the Republican Youth Majority.