Matt Steinglass defends the latest from Ponnuru and Lowry by arguing that “Republicans who attack the tone and tactics of tea-party politics, without explicitly disagreeing on policy grounds, are not dissenting in a merely cosmetic fashion”:
The subordination of policy to tactics is a feature of apocalyptic-extremist factional politics. It’s a mistake to think that extremist parties are characterised by ideological rigidity; in fact, on any question on which there can be internal competition in such parties, there tends to be a succession of changes in position. Each shift produces apostates who can be purged on the basis of previously holding positions that have now been revealed as incorrect, and this provides opportunities for advancement to lower-ranking members.
A party caught up in this dynamic can’t take any policy positions on which it might be able to compromise with the opposition, or win new constituencies outside of existing insiders; the compromise would be a death sentence for the members who agree to it, and allegiance to new constituents is suspect in the eyes of existing ones. The GOP has to wrench itself out of this internal political spiral in order to make concrete moves on policy or even on the kind of image it wants to project to non-conservatives, and it makes sense for worried Republicans to take up this problem as an issue in its own right.
I tend to agree with Matt. To turn the current abstract, rhetorical performance art into a civil, even if passionate, conversation within the party is essential. Hence my post yesterday on exactly this element in a civilized conservatism. You begin within the party; with any luck, you can then begin having a conversation with those outside it. Focusing on tone first – and then policy, as Mike Lee has put it – is the right set of priorities. It unwinds the fundamentalist psyche propelling so much of this.
The Dish 