Conservative Triumphalism

If you are a conservative please read the following paragraph and then skip the rest of the article.

As you know, President Bush won a slim victory over Senator Kerry in the recent presidential election. This means that America has completely accepted whatever conservative programs you think are important now. Conservatism is in the ascendancy forever! Liberals will soon be gone, so there is no need to even soften your beliefs. Also all the Republicans who disagree with your particular point of view are filthy dogs who you should denounce loudly.

OK, now that that's taken care of, I want to talk about conservative triumphalism. Many conservatives think they have won for the long term and that the Democrats are gone, possibly forever. I'm happy with them thinking that. The truth is that there are a number of societal trends that are favoring Democrats.

The other truth is that it seems clear that President Bush won this election on Gay Marriage and Abortion. Were it not for those issues a number of people who voted for President Bush might very well have stayed home or voted for Senator Kerry. This says something about the popularity of Conservative Economics, Neo-Conservative Foreign Policy and so on. Some Republicans have twigged to the negative implications of having won on so narrow a basis, and are loudly denying it, claiming with little evidence that President Bush won on a wide variety of issues. Others like the opportunity to tell the Blue States and Democrats that they are depraved monsters and that the American people are really very religious, and so support this interpretation.

I would have assumed Rich Lowry to be in the former category, but apparently he's in the second, at least in regards to Black Americans. His article this week is about how Black America is becoming Conservative (a whopping 11% voted for President Bush, up from 9% in 2000, so you can see that Blacks are now as Red as can be). The point of his article is that, after years of championing blacks, liberals will now attack them as bigots.

If a significant number of blacks now join their fellow moral traditionalists in Red America in voting for the GOP, they will experience the sort of elite scorn heaped on all other opponents of social liberalism. Blacks will be the new "bigots." Their consolation will be having a seat at the table of the nation's new majority party.

One wonders exactly what kind of seat they will get. I don't think they will get the sort of seat that lets them suggest that more taxpayer money might help out black communities. I'm guessing they will have the kind of seat that lets them agree with conservatives on Gay Marriage and Abortion, and lets them keep their mouth shut the rest of the time.