"Yes, we can" still be conservative

By Wayne H. Bowen

First, a confession: I like Barack Obama and wish him well as president. I heard him speak in person in Columbia, S.C., just days before that state's Democratic primary, and was moved by his words about the unfinished business of the American Dream. Among the Democratic presidential candidates, Obama had the most hopeful and uniting vision for the country.

For the United States, the emblematic election of the first African-American as president can also signal a move away from the poisonous racial politics of the past few decades. On election night, Senator Obama gave a generous and expansive victory speech, signaling that he might indeed govern from the center. His career gives me some hope in this regard. Since beginning as a community organizer, at every step in his political career Obama has moved a little more to the right, from state senator, to U.S. senator, to candidate in the Democratic primaries, to Democratic presidential nominee.

I must also confess, however, to disappointment about the results of Nov. 4. As an alternate delegate to the Republican National Convention this summer, I was full of enthusiasm for McCain/Palin. This fall, I walked door to door, attended rallies and hoped for a last-minute victory by our nominees. I took some consolation in Republican victories in Missouri's legislative elections, as well as the re-election of congresswoman Jo Ann Emerson, but it was a grim night otherwise. Now that candidate Obama is president-elect, conservatives are faced with challenges but also with opportunities.

With the triumph of Barack Obama over John McCain in the 2008 presidential election, some commentators have declared the end of the modern conservative movement. According to this argument, center-right America, which voted for Democrats only when they sufficiently camouflaged themselves as moderates, has been supplanted by an ascendant center-left coalition, with president-elect Obama at the apex. Republicans should accept many years wandering in the political wilderness as their fate after eight years of President George W. Bush, and the scandals and corruption of a Republican-led Congress. As a minority in Congress, Republicans should let the Democrats run the show and be content with representing a shrinking number of Red States.

The alternative to isolation, according to the ascendant Left, is collaboration with the agenda of the Democratic Party: strengthening the state at the expense of markets, accelerating our withdrawal from Iraq, rubber-stamping the coming wave of liberal judicial appointments and providing applause to the looming cascade of executive orders from the Obama White House on abortion, the environment and the war on terror. As a conservative, Iraq war veteran and Republican Party volunteer since the 1980s in California, Illinois, Arkansas and now Missouri, I find this approach unacceptable.

There is, however, a third path, with apologies to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle: find a Golden Mean between these two extremes. The Republican Party and the conservative movement can benefit from a season of meditation. While returning to our roots as the party of fiscal discipline, traditional moral values and a strong defense, we must also expand our agenda to engage in the issues of the day and the decade: developing an energy policy, greening America, expanding access to health insurance and generating education reform. Without an obvious leader, or presumptive nominee for the next election cycle, we can help party leaders from outside Washington such as Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, Mitt Romney and perhaps Sarah Palin argue, tussle and develop new platforms on their way to the caucuses and primaries of 2012. Quite frankly, it will be good for the party to be liberated of President Bush. While I respect much of what he accomplished and as a historian believe he will be looked on more fondly by future generations, there is no disputing that Bush, personally as well as in his policies, was a major factor in contributing to Barack Obama's victory.

Now free from having to defend the most unpopular president since Nixon, the Republican Party can serve in Washington, D.C., as something the Democratic Party has rarely taken seriously, the role of being a genuine loyal opposition. If President Obama really does move to the center on key issues, as he has signaled he would over the last months of the campaign, he will find reliable allies in the Grand Old Party. His recent cautious statements indicate he may be open to consider new free-trade agreements, nuclear power, expanded offshore drilling, eavesdropping on terrorists and even continuing some of Bush's expiring tax cuts if the sputtering economy does not revive soon.

Senate and House Republicans should embrace any of these opportunities with enthusiasm, offsetting likely defections within Obama's own party. On foreign policy, there may be room to support redoubling our efforts in Afghanistan, preventing nuclear proliferation by Iran, and improving our relations with Latin America.

Republicans must, however, vote in near unanimity against any new expansions of the federal government as well as to fight President Obama on issues close to the nation's moral center. Republicans in the Senate must employ the filibuster against radical judicial appointments, and members of the House must make common cause with the few dozen moderate Blue Dog Democrats whenever possible on spending, taxes and national security.

Ironically, Republican losses over the past few years will make party unity easier, as the majority of defeats have been of liberal or moderate Republicans. While these will be necessary seats to reclaim on our way back to governing, in the meantime their absence will make it easier to keep the party together on the path to revival.

When we lose, as we will do more often than we win over the next two years, the Republican Party must not be timid about illustrating signs of liberalism of Obama and his congressional allies. When the Democrats pass "card-check" -- thus ending the secret ballot in union organizing -- when they impose higher taxes, when they fumble international incidents, conservatives everywhere must point out these mistakes at full throat. This may be the winter of our discontent as conservatives, but 2010 and 2012 will come faster than any of us expect.

Wayne H. Bowen, Ph.D., is a professor and chair of the Department of History at Southeast Missouri State University.