How Conservatism Can Come Back

By Charles Krauthammer

IN THE LATE '40S, AMERICAN LIBERALISM MADE A FATEFUL decision: it went into the business of excommunication. Liberalism's leading lights -- figures like Joseph Rauh, Walter Reuther and Hubert Humphrey -- understood that unless they clearly separated themselves from communists and their fellow travelers they risked losing not just their souls but their political viability. Hence Principle 6 of the founding statement of Americans for Democratic Action: "We reject any association with Communists or sympathizers with communism."

In America, political movements need to police their extremes. Conservatism is no exception. It is a matter not just of principle, but of practical politics. Unless conservatism is prepared to divorce itself from its extremists, it will suffer the taint. As it suffered in 1964 when Barry Goldwater declared famously that "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." That welcoming nod to the John Birchers and other right-wing nuts convinced millions of Americans that Goldwater and his party were not fit to govern.

Later that decade, radicals of the New Left adopted the slogan "No enemies on the left," welcoming every loony Maoist and Trotskyite in the common struggle against the "system." Among the New Left's many political mistakes, this refusal to divorce extremists may have been the worst.

In politics it is as important to define what you are not as it is to define what you are. This is especially true in a country as congenitally moderate as the U.S. Take the campaign of 1992. Polling data show that Americans are more attuned to conservative positions on major issues, such as taxes, government intervention, "family values," etc. Bill Clinton understood the nation's mood and ran as a middle-of-the-road "New Democrat." That is why for keynote speaker at the Democratic Convention, he chose not Jesse Jackson but moderates like Bill Bradley and Barbara Jordan.

At their convention the Republicans did precisely the opposite. They showcased their extremes. On opening night they had the chance to present the most popular Republican in 50 years, creator of a whole class of political converts known as Reagan Democrats. What did they do? They had Ronald Reagan speak near midnight, when most of America was fast asleep. Who got the prime 9 o'clock spot? Pat Buchanan with his promise of "religious war." Reagan ended his speech with his "shining city upon a hill" peroration, a vision of the sunny uplands of America's future. Buchanan ended his speech too with a vision of America at its best: a couple of soldiers pointing M-16s at a mob of fellow (presumably black and Hispanic) Americans.

Now, riot control -- Buchanan's image was drawn from the Los Angeles riots -- is a necessary function of government. But for most Americans it is not the apotheosis of the American Dream. It is the apotheosis of the police state.

Admittedly, drawing a bright line of exclusion on the right is not as easy as it once was to draw it on the left. The left had an entrenched political party (Communist) and clear foreign enemy (the Soviet Union), association with which was a prima facie reason for excommunication. But the task of the right is not impossible. In the '50s and '60s, William F. Buckley led a heroic and successful effort to purge conservatism of its anti-Semitic and neofascist elements. More recently, the Republican Party excommunicated David Duke.

But the Duke case is easy. Only a few years ago, the man was selling Mein Kampf from his legislative office. The hard case is Buchanan. An affable and engaging man, a man of proven political courage and loyalty, he has taken to trafficking in nativism, authoritarianism, isolationism and anti-Semitism. The narrow and angry conservatism that Buchanan represents does not just violate the optimistic, expansive spirit of Reaganism. It is the surest ticket back to the intellectual and political marginality in which conservatism languished before Buckley began cleaning up the movement four decades ago.

The Republican Party has no hope of regaining power and attracting conservative Democrats or moderate Republicans unless it draws a bright line. Family values, for example, is a perfectly legitimate issue and by any measure a winning one. Yet in 1992 it was driven into the ground by the aggressive, intolerant way it was presented at the Houston convention.

Americans are desperately concerned about the corrupting effects of the mass culture on their children. They are rightly aroused by grade school curriculums that present homosexuality as just another life-style choice. They know instinctively that single parenthood, for all the heroism it summons from women, is the surest path to childhood poverty. They want to rebuild "family values" -- but they refuse to see the rebuilding as an act of religious war. And when they hear their concerns transmuted into appeals to intolerance, they tune out.

They tuned out in November, and not just because the economy was bad. Reagan Democrats and suburban Republicans found it hard to vote for the party of Houston. The basic challenge for conservatism as it tries to rebuild is recognizing that its weakness is not what it is for -- most Americans are generally for the same things -- but refusing to define what it is against. Traditional values, not a "Christian nation." Racial color blindness, not racial intolerance. A city on a hill, not an armed camp. Conservatism, not reaction.

Until it rejects the far right, conservatism will not regain the center. And without the center, it cannot win.