'Right-Leaning Bloggers Are Out of Touch With a Large Portion--If Not the Majority--of Conservatives in America.'

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

SOMETHING LIGHTER

I appreciate the invitation from Joe Carter to speak to the Family Research Council’s summit, and his thoughts on the panel, on bloggers, on conservatism, etc., are thought-provoking.

But I can’t help but wonder if he’s drawing some overly-broad conclusions from it. Starting with these conclusions…

“Right-leaning bloggers are out of touch with a large portion—if not the majority—of conservatives in America…
The stark contrast between the heartland conservatives and the DC-centric bloggers became apparent in the panel discussion I moderated on Political Blogging. Although most of the panel members could be classified as moderately social conservative, few of them focus primarily on social conservative issues.”

The panel included Jon Henke of the Thompson campaign and QandO, Soren Dayton of Eyeon08, Erick Erickson of RedState, Justin Hart of MyManMitt, Matthew Eppinette who blogs for Americans United for Life, N.Z. Bear and myself. A good bunch of guys, but perhaps not necessarily the most representative sample of the conservative blogosphere, or the biggest names. No Michelle Malkin, Ace of Spades, Hugh Hewitt, LittleGreenFootballs, PowerLine, Captain Ed.

And I won't deny it, as a social conservative fire-breather, I'm weak tea as a representative of NRO. There are many voices at NRO who would make that panel look much more socially conservative if they had sat there instead of me: Ramesh Ponnuru, Kathryn Lopez, Kate O’Beirne, Stanley Kurtz, or a bunch of others who will probably now e-mail asking why they weren’t among the first names that came to my mind.

So I think the comments of this sample of these seven bloggers accurately represent… the comments of these seven bloggers.

The other thing is, I cover the campaign, more or less period. I don’t want to speak for any of the other guys, but their blogs will focus on whatever their passion is, or whatever the hottest news of the day is. Some days that will include a lot of focus on social conservative issues, some days it won’t.

Moving along…

Rob Neppell (aka N.Z. Bear) made an astute point that the concerns of the largest blog on the Right—Instapundit—tends to drive our conversation. He pointed out for the audience that Reynolds was not a conservative but a self-professed libertarian who was once quoted as saying he'd be delighted to live in a country where happily married gay couples had closets full of assault weapons."
The panelists chuckled; the audience didn’t seem as amused. The reaction speaks volumes. The fact that many center-right bloggers care more about getting linked by a radical libertarian than they do in discussing the concerns of their fellow conservatives is one of the primary reasons the Right blogosphere is a failing to have the same impact as the Left.

That’s reading a lot into whether or not you find the thought of married gay couples with closetfuls of assault weapons funny. And I think Carter jumps a bit to the accusation that folks “care more” about a link from Glenn to discussing concerns of fellow conservatives.

At one point, one audience member asked how you make money to be able to blog. The answer is, it’s challenging. Unless you can find a sponsor, blogging for most folks is going to remain a passion, not a vocation. And thus, bloggers will tend to focus on what stirs their passions. That may or may not include social conservative issues.

Also, I’m reminded of this point by Patrick Ruffini, finding that liberal bloggers were disproportionately likely to live alone, and the conclusion, “Conservatives are twice as likely to have 3 kids, and 3 times as likely to have 4 kids or more.” If you’ve got three or four kids running around, you’re probably less likely to have time to start up a blog or spend a lot of time participating in online communities. (Lord knows I find one child a handful so far.) My guess is social conservatives spend less time reading and writing blogs because they're actually raising kids in those offline communities.

Then Carter writes, “Anyone who thinks tax reduction is essential while abortion and marriage are secondary or unimportant cannot rightly be considered to be "conservative", at least not by the standards of the American conservative tradition.”

Here’s where I really have a bone to pick: I think ‘secondary’ and ‘unimportant’ are miles apart. The two terms are not synonymous. I can care about abortion, and prefer pro-life candidates, but still think that al-Qaeda trying to kill Americans is the primary issue and challenge for the next president.

Secondly, if conservatism is trying to figure out what its top priorities are heading into the post-Bush era, I think the conversation is not helped by declaration, ‘if you don’t rank abortion as high as I do on my list of priorities, you’re not a conservative.’ You can say, ‘you’re a bad conservative, or not my kind of conservative’ – but there’s a big difference between saying that we must agree on views (“conservatives must cast a skeptical eye on the argument that abortion has no moral consequence, and that life begins sometime after partial-birth”) and we must agree on the exact order of priorities (“abortion must be our top issue, cycle after cycle, no matter what issues arise”).

Carter also has a clear opinion on Giuliani's performance at the FRC summit:

Bloggers talk incessantly about "media bias" but tend to overlook their own. Case in point: Despite the reporting of some bloggers, Rudy was not warmly received and did not win over anyone. He was treated politely because he had the courage (audacity?) to show up at the event. But the fact that he received fewer votes in the onsite straw poll than Tom Tancredo shows that he is as unpopular as ever. The idea that Rudy is a palatable general election candidate for so-cons is wishful thinking.

(Really? The straw poll asked respondents for their first choice. Did anybody think Giuliani would convince attendees to make him their first choice? I think his real aim was to make himself acceptable, a much lower bar to clear. Or even better than Hillary by enough of a margin to reject third party talk, an even lower bar to clear. I'm open to the argument that he didn't do that, but I don't think the straw poll finish is ipsp facto evidence of that.)

By the way, before you e-mail Joe or myself to declare right-leaning bloggers are too in touch with the majority of conservatives in America, recognize that if you're reading these words, you obviously can't be one of the folks we're out of touch with.

10/24 02:01 PM Share