Thursday, November 06, 2008
What Next for the Right? [Andrew Stuttaford]
Peter is, of course, absolutely correct to make the point that he does about the 'fairness' doctrine, a shabby, misnamed idea. In an age where no one medium has anything approaching a monopoly, it is purely about restricting debate, reducing diversity, and narrowing choice. That some leading Democrats can even be considering it is both disgraceful and revealing.
That said, the coming controversy over this doctrine also underlines another basic reality. For all the looming conclaves, furrowed brows, attempts at deep thinking and, God help us, efforts to find some sort of overarching, all-answering philosophy (who needs it?), the right's agenda will, to no small extent, be formed by what the Democrats set out to do. Thus, if the Democrats push an agenda that can be characterized as an assault on freedom, the GOP pushback will be focused on issues of liberty. If on the other hand the economy sinks deeper and deeper into trouble (the best bet), it will as a writer for the Financial Times recently noted, be transformed from Obama's friend into his enemy and, at the same time, the GOP's key focus.
None of this is to say that the Republicans do not need to come up with some new ideas (Jim Manzi's arguments on Slate were, I reckon, one excellent starting point). As, for example, the response of many of the party's prominenti to the financial crisis (a truly grotesque spectacle, where irrelevant blathering about the need for capital gains tax cuts — such tax cuts would be great, but so what? — competed for airspace with hysterical accusations of 'bolshevism' and incanted mantras of deregulation) clearly demonstrated, a bit of fresh thinking wouldn't come amiss. At the same time, we shouldn't fool ourselves (and, for that matter, the Democrats shouldn't fool themselves): the agenda will be set, as it always has been, primarily by 'events'. 11/06 01:11 PM
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