"Conservatism is the failure of tradition."

Saturday, cigarette #1

Traditionalism is unreflective and an immediate experience of a way of life. It has no need for intellectual formulation. It just is. Conservatism is the representation of the gap between the traditional and the political; for conservatism as an ideology is self-conscious. It is a reflection of the fact that the meaning of tradition is no longer self-evident. The Conservative Political Tradition in Britain and the United States

Mild-mannered reporter Michael Brendan Dougherty drew the CPAC beat for AmCon, and the article is an ace. After pointing out this year's entrants in the ridiculous t-shirt stakes — "I only sleep with Republicans" and "I'd rather be waterboarded than vote for McCain," the latter of which he models here — he turns out some very sage thoughts on the Movement:

The bullying bumper stickers, the man in the dolphin outfit, and the best-sellers by radio personalities are all the result of conservatives turning toward movement politics. It is tempting to sniff at the CPAC crowd — many of whom claim to be conservatives but cannot tell the difference between Russell Kirk and Captain Kirk. But that would be wrong.

Moving from ideas to policy advocacy and finally to governance requires building an electoral coalition that will, by its very nature, simplify subtle reflections into campaign slogans. When William F. Buckley tied himself, and by extension National Review, to the cause of Joe McCarthy, the conservative intellectual movement was married to a populist base. In his 1992 Republican convention speech, Pat Buchanan spoke of a great class of voters: "They don't read Adam Smith or Edmund Burke, but they came from the same schoolyards and playgrounds and towns as we did. They share our beliefs and convictions, our hopes and our dreams. They are the conservatives of the heart." Many of them are now at CPAC — and that's part of the problem.

At this point, Dougherty could easily be gearing up for “We’re going to be the Stupid Party again if those of us who know Russell Kirk from Captain Kirk don’t hop to it,” but he isn't. It isn't what mingling with the salt of the earth has done to the elites, but what mingling with the elites has done to the salt of the earth. The next paragraph:

The conference flattens the political passions of these conservatives, channeling their energy into national politics and away from local concerns. Thus the range of activism narrows to immigration, foreign policy, and the solipsistic goal of sustaining the conservative movement intself. This is good for keeping Beltway institutions well funded but bad for the actual work of conservatism.

The problem isn’t that “conservatives of the heart” were only ever good for electoral muscle. The problem is that getting involved in the national movement has distracted them from the role they should be playing, which looks more like the localism I keep hearing about.

But allowing CPAC to be dominated by "conservatives of the heart" doesn't just muddle the division of labor and leave the outposts of localism untended. It also makes DC conservatives vulnerable to the fallacy that "conservatives of the heart" have an enviable, unquestioning attitude towards tradition that intellectual conservatism can only try to approximate. (See the paragraph from The Conservative Political Tradition above.)

The crunchy cons of the Ivy League, if Yale is any indication, generally mean what they say when they talk about localism, but they all end up in DC anyway. This is as it should be. Conservatism needs an intellectual wing to do its legwork, not just policy wonks but also philosophers. (Dear Conservative Movement: Postmodernism happened. Wanted to let you know — something you might have to deal with. Best wishes, the Party of the Right at Yale.) That's why I'm not sure I want to endorse Daniel Larison's suggestion that the conservative movement vacate DC altogether. I don't know what the project of the next conservatism is going to be, but it can't look like an attempt to recapture our innocence, or the innocence of the "conservatives of the heart."

On the other hand, Larison's suggestion that the movement distance itself from the Republican Party sounds like an excellent idea. As pointed as "We prefer Ike" was in 1956, imagine it in 2008...