The Five Fatal Mistakes of American Conservatism

Rush Limbaugh by Ian Marsden

Is this the end of American Conservatism?

At a time when American conservatives should be regrouping and re-recruiting, they've circled their wagons; embracing a siege mentality that suggests their period of political relevancy is at an end.

What contributed to the collapse of this once-powerful political movement?

The Five Fatal Mistakes of American Conservatism:

Country Club Conservatism: During the movement's birth, in the lead up to the 1980 Presidential Election, conservatism triumphed because of its accessibility. Evangelical leaders like Robert Grant and Jerry Falwell gave America's disenfranchised conservatives a unity of purpose - allowing conservatives the opportunity to overlook their differences and work together to achieve a common goal.

Today, the opposite situation exists. The title of 'conservative' is no longer one that voters can adopt for themselves - instead of a unity of purpose, there's a doctrine of dogma; and failure to live up to the standards set by so-called 'leaders' like Rush Limbaugh leave many more moderate conservatives out in the cold.

As long as conservatives pick and choose their supporters, like members of a country club committee, their ranks will dwindle.

Failure to Evolve: Many conservatives don't believe in Evolution, which explains why their movement is still stuck in the seventies.

The success of the 'moral majority' during the election of Ronald Reagan came down to conservative Christians uniting together to support timely, relevant and effective political positions. Times have changed dramatically since then - but, in most cases, those political positions haven't.

Unless the conservative movement is willing to address the issues of our time - environmentalism, war and economic uncertainty - they will continue to represent an era and an outlook whose time has passed.

A Dying Breed: It's a documented fact that each new generation is progressively more liberal than the last. Nowhere is this more apparent than America, where the grandchildren of segregationists just elected the nation's first African American president.

However, in its failure to address the changing beliefs and values of young Americans, the conservative movement excludes those who could offer conservatism its future.

The Democrats have successfully courted the under-30 vote in every presidential election for the past fifteen years. This trend shows no sign of changing. Until the aging core demographic of the conservative movement grows up and accepts that young Americans aren't so militant about issues like homosexuality and explicit sex education, they will always be marketing an agenda that alienates the very people it's essential they win over.

The Lowest Common Denominator: Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin may have bemoaned the 'liberal elite media,' but in the arena of Talk Radio, conservatism is king. Political pundits like Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin rule the airwaves with their angry rants about the state of the country.

But it's that anger which is so damaging to the conservative movement. While it does resonate strongly with the conservative core, it was proven in the last election that America is looking for a message of hope and change, not anger and frustration.

As long as the public face of conservatism continues to be bitter, angry little men like Levin and Limbaugh, that's going to be the only demographic it appeals to.

Eating Themselves Alive: The final mistake of the conservative movement is the one that will hasten their ignominious demise - a self-destructive urge to tear their party asunder from the inside out.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the public arena - where the GOP leader, Michael Steele, was recently eviscerated by Rush Limbaugh for 'daring' to imply that abortion is a woman's choice, not merely cold-blood fetal murder. When we see the de jure head of the Republican party skewered by the de facto head of the conservative movement, we witness a party and a movement that's in no position to govern itself - let alone the country.

Steele on Life

The Republican party is currently in free-fall.

Conservatives have all but elected bloated political pundit Rush Limbaugh as their leader - a pill-popping blowhard who has successfully alienated most moderate Republicans.

Meanwhile, in an effort to counter the popularity of President Obama, the GOP billeted their token African-American, Micheal Steele, as leader of the Republican Party.

This is a decision they automatically regretted. Steele quickly revealed a sharp mind and an unwillingness to do as he was told.

Coming from a family of old-school Roosevelt Democrats, it was inevitable that Steele would have different opinions than the stuffy, white party elite. After all, he was the one who promised to bring a little 'hip-hop' to the GOP.

But in a recent GQ interview, those opinions raised more than eyebrows. Steele argued that topics like abortion and gay marriage should be dealt with by individual states, rather than by constitutional amendments - a sharp deviation from the pro-life, anti-gay party's policies.

When asked if homosexuality was a choice (which many Republicans believe) Steele replied: "No. I've never subscribed to that view. You just can’t simply say, “Tomorrow morning I’m gonna stop being gay.” It’s like saying, “Tomorrow morning I’m gonna stop being black.”

When asked if women should have the right to choose abortion, he declared: "Yeah. I think that’s an individual choice, absolutely."

It's a tug of war at the moment, between right-wing conservatives and Republican moderates. This dispute threatens to tear the GOP right down the middle - giving even more impunity to President Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress and the Senate.

It's unfortunate, too. Michael Steele's progressive attitudes offer a glimmer of hope for the Republican party. In the interview with GQ, he called the Republican party a 'Big Tent' party - one that can embrace people with fundamentally different views and opinions.

The party can go one of two ways now. It can retreat further to the right, embracing Rush Limbaugh and their core supporters in defence of guns and bibles. That way, they'll never again offer an adequete opposition to the Democrats.

Alternatively, they could embrace Michael Steele and become a more moderate party. It would infuriate the right-wing, but open the GOP up to millions of moderates who believe in 'small c' conservatism.

In reality, that's the only direction the party can afford to go in. A shift to center-ground will gain more voters than it loses. After all, even if the far-right are infuriated by compromise on issues like same-sex marriage and abortion, who the hell else are they going to vote for?