The Future of Conservatism?

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Submitted by FreedomDemocrats on Sun, 2008-04-06 21:25.

Over at The American Conservative blog, Daniel McCarthy argues that John McCain may have won the battle, but Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul will win the long term war for the heart and soul of the Republican Party. There is a lot of sense in what McCarthy says, even just from a historical standpoint. Republicans have a history of supporting people who they have already encountered before in a Presidential primary. That bodes well for Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and yes maybe even Ron Paul.

But consider, realistically, the challenges facing a Mike Huckabee or a Ron Paul. As noted in the comments at Rod Dreher's Crunchy Cons blog, there are demographic trends going against both candidates and their ideologies. Immigration, the retirement of the Baby Boomers, and secularization are all going to undercut the appeal of both social conservatism and limited government. So what does that say about the conservatism of the future?

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The Problem with that Thesis

#6241 On Mon, 2008 04 07 01:51 ka1igu1a said,

is that a "replay" of the libertarian-evangelical axis that aligned in the 70s isn't going to happen. Originally, the modern Evangelical movement was largely inspired by the ideas of those like Francis Schaeffer, who argued that Christian involvement in politics was necessary to restore classical liberal ideas, that "secular humanism" resulted in tyranny. He specifically argued, however, against theocracy. The post-modern evangelical movement is all about theocracy, and is tied into Christian Dominionism. And, recall from a previous post a few months ago, Huck has a strategy for dealing with the libertarians...send them packing.

The demographics do work against a purely social brand of conservatism, that's why i imagine Huck was thinking about creating that "entrepreneural class" to unite with it, to generate a working majority.

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