Political events are often Rorschach Tests. So it is with the upset loss of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in his primary election.
In reality, his loss was probably as due to idiosyncratic factors as it was to broader political trends. Poor constituent services. Cantor's own complacency. An opponent with an impressive resume (and who is, apparently, "total eye candy"). (Cantor's Jewishness, as the Times has suggested, entirely without evidence? Give me a break.)
But I think it does mean something for a movement I've been involved with to make the Republican Party's agenda smarter, more conservative, and more responsive to the 21st century needs of America's working and middle class, known as "reform conservatism". As fellow #reformocon Ross Douthat put it on
Many responses to the reform conservative agenda have applauded the impulse to bring more policy innovation to the conservative arsenal, but have almost all done so from a perspective where to "reform" the Republican Party is to make it "more moderate", and more "moderate" in the specific sense of (although those critics would never phrase it that way, perhaps even to themselves) more responsive to the interests and aspirations of America's elite.
In particular, most calls to "reform" the GOP (as opposed to #reformocon calls) focus largely on the issues of immigration reform and social issues. Regardless of the merits of those issues (I support comprehensive immigration reform while I am a social conservative), these are issues where the GOP would align itself more with the views (and interests) of America's economic and intellectual elite, and its upper-middle class more generally.
Most #reformocons I know, and myself certainly, believe that this is a terrible error in political judgement. The GOP, if it can be America's majority party, must ally itself with the aspirations and interests of America's broad middle generally, and its working families in particular. These people do not have the same views or interests as inside-the-Beltway and Park Slope types, to say the least.
The reform conservative agenda is an agenda that is populist, that is to say, it is clearly, unabashedly, and thoroughly, on the side of the broad swaths of Americans who have been victimized by long-standing trends in American life, both social and economic. But it does so in an intelligent way--not through sure-to-fail big government programs and handouts. Not through sure-to-fail big government programs and handouts with a GOP veneer. Not through sure-to-fail utopian attempts to blowtorch all of the Great Society and the New Deal and the
This is still the path for victory and majority for the Republican Party, and the greater general welfare of the American people.
"Eric Cantor" by Gage Skidmore - http://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/6236363692/in/photostream/. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
