Modern Conservative Republicanism has failed so miserably that is has effectively become an "anti-philosophy." It has, effectively, become a war on thinking. Any serious thought, qualification or education has become a disqualification in conservative Republican circles. Obama's simple message of "Change" has been so successful because Republicans have become so incoherent. However, if you have any faith in the American people , then you must accept that the dominating political philosophy of the last 40 years (conservatism) must have had some validity at some point. Moreover, if conservatism as it exists today is distintegrating, what are we going to replace it with?
Let's go back to the beginning. The Republican Party has held the Presidency for 28 of the last 40 years. This followed a period of 36 years in which the Democratic Party controlled the Presidency for 28. The Republicans turned the tide with an innovative electoral strategy and then held office with two original governing strategies.
Nixon's famous "Southern Strategy" ignited the culture wars. It was driven by the brilliant insight that many white working people felt disenfranchised and wanted their way of life protected from the dangerous eggheads in academia. They wanted to be respected for their common sense and traditional values. Although the execution of the strategy was vile and offended the sensibility of any ethical observer, the original point was valid. Many policy makers had an arrogant disdain for "common" people and that's no way to govern a country full of "common" people.
The problem with this strategy now is that it is no longer demographically viable. As America evolves into the world's largest multicultural nation, the middle has become a mosaic rather than a monolith. White anglo-saxons are in decline and at this point a culture war alienates more than it reassures. Sarah Palin doesn't resonate widely because not enough people share her background or her values anymore (being a complete whack-job of questionable intelligence doesn't help either).
However, it wasn't just smart electoral politics that kept the Republicans in power. The Reagan Revolution had some serious ideas generated by serious people. The two central ideas were neo-conservativism and the Chicago School of Economics. Both were revolutionary philosophies with strong merits and both have become useless under modern conservative Republican stewardship. What happened?
Let's start with Neo-conservatism, which has been widely reviled with ample justification. Although it has become a accepted as the predominant right wing ideology in America, it actually has its roots on the Left. The most central theme proposed by the neoconservatives was that we should take internal regimes into account in foreign policy and not solely our strategic interests. Essentially, it rejected the Realist agenda propagated by Kissinger, that consorting with dictators was good if it furthered our interests - a valid point on which reasonable people can disagree. How that morphed into the notion that we have some sort of mandate to promote democracy at gunpoint is not clear, but it does show how intellectually bankrupt the modern Republican Party has become that this is accepted by them as a better way forward than the previous conservative consensus of the Market driving Democracy.
The second philosphy came from the so-called Chicago School of Economics, led by Milton Friedman. Again, these were serious people with strong arguments. The government can't be the solution to every problem, they believed, and excessive government intervention does more harm than good. Taxes were too high, the Friedmanites conteded, government was too big and had too many useless programs that were crowding out the private sector. Milton Firedman predicted that stagflation would be the result of excessive government intervention and was proven right in the mid-70's.
But somehow the idea that government can't do everything morphed into the idea that govenment shouldn't ever do anything, which is a curious governing philosphy to say the least. The results, which should have been clear years ago are certainly clear now, have left the world with the worst economic disaster in half a century. Hoover has returned.
So the Republican Party has been intellectually bankrupted from within, and now looks like it will soon be electorally bankrupt from without (barring electoral shennanigans). The real question now is whether the failed Republican philosophies which have devoured and divided the Party can ever recover the full faith and support of the "common" people they sought to represent in the beginning of their movement. Can the fiscally conservative Realists in the Republican party separate themselves from the neo-conservative and religious fundamentalist sects that have brought them to this tragic end? Here are three themes that sane Republicans should adopt as their core if they ever hope to be free of the nutjobs that have taken over.
Modernity: Traditional values have their charms but don't adapt very well to large multi-cultural populations. It should be clear to everyone that America's competitive advantage has eroded and we have serious problems to solve. New developments in network theory, biology, communications and computer technology give us powerful tools to solve our problems. But we can't solve today's problems with yesterday's ideas and we can't be competitive without a well educated workforce. Rather than an assualt on traditional values we need an embrace of new ideas with clear applications to real world problems. We can't cure cancer and deny Darwin at the same time.
Multicuturalism: While the 21st century doesn't have to be the decline of America, it will be marked by what Fareed Zakaria calls "the rise of the rest." The successful countries in centuries past were almost exclusively European. That's over now. The varied backgrounds of americans are an asset and promoting our own multicultural society will help us lead a multicutural world.
Schumpeterism: Long before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Joseph Schumpeter successfully discredited Marx's central theme. Marx had made the astute observation that under the Capitalist model, profits fall to zero at equilibrium so if capitalists wanted to preserve their profits, they had to do bad things. Schumpeter pointed out that although this was accurate, it wasn't true. He coined the term "creative destruction" and pointed out that as long as there is innovation profits never have to fall to zero. Republican pro-business policies have really been catering to the special interests of exisiting business rather than promoting entrepreneurship or innovation. Fixing health care, infrastucture and green technologies actually promote risk taking and innovation and should be driven forward by classic Republicanism, rather than the incoherent and sometimes "looney" Left (which is a misnomer, but that is a discussion for another day).
The Republican's problem is that all three of these themes fit well with Obamas policies and are viable electorally. If Obama is going to be as successful in governing he needs to go beyond "Change" and explain what the change will mean for how we view America and how we want the world to view us.
