 |
|||||
|
Please take a moment to visit and log in at the subscriber area, and
submit your city & country location. We will use this information in
future to invite you to any events that we organize in your area.
Dear Reader:
I appeared on "Press TV" a few days ago, the
Iranian-government's international television channel, and discussed
Israeli-Palestinian issues. The 26-minute show can be viewed here.The anchor and other two guests were hostile to Israel, as is the channel itself (note the title given this panel, "Right wing hardliners gaining ground in Israel"). While defending Israel is not central to the Middle East Forum's mission or my own work (for why, see here), I go on Press TV and its ilk to take advantage of the opportunity to reach a fresh audience. When appearing on such shows, to win a hearing, I present my ideas in an especially modulated fashion. Also, Al-Watan, an Egyptian newspaper in Arabic, published an interview with me yesterday titled "Prominent American historian to Al-Watan: The Obama Administration sees the Muslim Brotherhood as the 'salvation' of Egypt." Making an alternative viewpoint on the Islamist movement available to Middle Easterners is an important part of the Middle East Forum's mission. Yours sincerely, Daniel Pipes
What
Is the Future of Conservatism in the Wake of the 2012 Election?
|
|
Share:
   |
Be the first of your
friends to like this.
To see the replies of 52 other writers to
this same question, click here.
Like so many other
conservatives, I had come to assume that the Tea Party, the 2010 election
results, Solyndra, 8 percent unemployment, Benghazi, and an aroused
opposition (said one Romney
adviser: on election day, "you just don't want to get in the way of
a Republican heading into the polls") assured defeat for Barack Obama's
bid for a second term. His victory was therefore particularly bitter. Was I
alone in sleeping badly and avoiding the news for days?So many analyses have been proffered for what went wrong: Romney was too conservative or not conservative enough, he ran on his biography, he shied away from winning issues, he could not connect with the masses. So many conclusions have also been drawn: conservatives need to modernize (hello, gay partnerships), they must reach out to non-whites (welcome, illegal immigrants), they should nominate true conservatives.
Myself, I subscribe to the "politics is downstream from culture" argument. While conservatives sometimes prevail in policy debates, they consistently lose in the classroom, on the best-seller list, on television, at the movies, and in the world of arts. These liberal bastions, which provide the feeders for Democratic party politics, did not develop spontaneously but result from decades of hard work traceable back to the ideas of Antonio Gramsci.
Ed Gillespie, former
chairman of the Republican National Committee.
|
Happily, American conservatives have a counter-establishment already in place: the Wall Street Journal and Fox News Channel may be best known, but the Bradley Foundation, Pepperdine University, the Liberty Film Festival, and Commentary matter no less. Yes, conservative institutions rarely enjoy the history, resources, and prestige of their liberal counterparts – but they do exist, they are growing, and they possess a convincing and optimistic message.
It will be a long, hard road to traverse, but there is no short cut and it can succeed.
Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2012 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.
Related
Topics: Conservatives
& Liberals, US
politics This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is
presented as an integral whole with complete AND ACCURATE information
provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.
To subscribe to this list, go to http://www.danielpipes.org/list_subscribe.php
(Daniel Pipes sends out a mailing of his writings 1-2 times a week.)
Sign up for related (but non-duplicating)
e-mail services:
Middle East Forum (media alerts, event reports, MEQ articles)
Campus Watch (research, news items, press releases)
at http://www.danielpipes.org/list_subscribe.php
Middle East Forum (media alerts, event reports, MEQ articles)
Campus Watch (research, news items, press releases)
at http://www.danielpipes.org/list_subscribe.php
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment