Three years ago, things looked bleak for Democrats in general and liberals in particular. George W. Bush had not only been re-elected, but was smugly saying things about having earned political capital with his re-election, which he was now going to spend by gutting Social Security. Iraq had not yet turned truly horrendous, and Democrats were being lectured by all sides - by David Brooks of the New York Times, by Christopher Hitchens of Slate and the "sane" leftists of the Euston Manifesto - on what they needed to do to win elections again.
Most condescending was a bit of rhetoric circulated on many right-leaning "independent" blogs, in which conservatives insisted that they wanted to consider voting for the Democrats. They said that they really, truly did; but they couldn't do so in good faith unless the Democrats pushed the "nuts" out of the party and adopted more "sensible" ideas (Republican ideas, in essence).
Of course, things have changed. Nothing is for certain, but right now Barack Obama is riding high, with a real shot at capturing the presidency, while John McCain is desperately trying to bridge a gap between Republican moderates and conservatives - a gap that could send the GOP into disarray and keep it out of the White House for decades.
Turnabout is fair play, but rather than lecture Republicans on how they could win if they only kick the nuts out of their party and adopt sensible Democratic ideas, I'd like to suggest that Republicans could win votes - my traditionally liberal, Democratic vote in particular - if they'd just sell their ideas straight.
Don't rely on dogma. Don't act as if the contemplation of liberal alternatives signifies mental deficiency or moral failure. Instead, recognize that liberal ideas (some of them, at least) have some validity to them, but make the case that your conservative ideas are still better, all things considered.
Case in point: Social Security. We've all heard the standard conservative talking points against Social Security, that it's essentially an intergenerational Ponzi scheme, that it beggars young, working class people when they most need money in their pockets and enriches old, retired people (many of whom have substantial nest eggs), and that individual investors could realize far greater returns by managing their own investments in stocks and bonds.
This is all true, but overlooks some highly pertinent facts: that intergenerational Ponzi schemes are all over the place (see also: parenthood, the national debt, global warming), that while some people on Social Security are already wealthy, many others rely on it and that, while stocks and bonds offer a higher rate of return, they also offer substantially more risk than simple transfer payments.
So, conservatives, deal with that. Make the argument that the greater average return on investment we'd get if we abolished Social Security would more than balance out the hard luck cases of those who inevitably didn't save enough, or bet all on the wrong companies.
Tell us how tens of millions of people retiring as millionaires balances out hundreds of thousands of old people living in destitution. Even if we don't agree with you, it'll still be a far more honest argument than what Bush has been selling.
This holds for other issues as well. When urging for the elimination of abortion rights, conservatives need to make the argument that shackling tens of millions of women to unwanted pregnancies for nine months - if not far longer - is a worthy trade-off for saving tens of millions of unborn lives. When making the argument for strict Constitutional interpretation, conservatives need to explain how, even though the United States is now a massively interconnected hyper-technical superpower, the correct way to view the Constitution is through the eyes of 18th-century gentleman farmers who viewed the printing press as cutting-edge technology.
It's not the case that there are no conservatives trying to make these arguments: Young Turks like Ross Douthat of The Atlantic Monthly and Reihan Salam of The American Scene blog have begun to think through a post-Reagan Era conservatism. But before they can reshape the Republican party into a political machine capable of treating liberal ideas as legitimate opponents rather than curse words, they'll have to address a political culture in which orthodoxy and strength of belief matter more than reasoned argument - which means that, before conservatives can make these arguments to liberals and moderates, they may have to make these arguments to themselves.
Jones is a computer and electrical engineering graduate student.
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