Ed Kilgore went on a bit of a rant this morning after reading Timothy Carney’s piece in the Washington Examiner. Specifically, Kilgore was very impatient with the idea that conservatives are trying to sue for peace in the Culture War and should therefore be treated more honorably.
All this weepy talk of being attacked while trying to surrender also misses the even more obvious point that conservatives are hardly impotent politically; they do sorta control Congress and a majority of states.
So no, there’s no real “surrender” going on here, and Lord knows conservatives aren’t withdrawing from political combat; otherwise Carney would have punctuated his long whine by quitting his job. What they are doing is better understood as a strategic retreat: unable to outlaw or (increasingly) even to stigmatize gay behavior as a matter of law, they’re working to protect private discrimination. It’s what a big part of their constituency expects of them, and it’s the obvious next front—not some sort of Appomattox—in the culture wars.
Carney’s piece is just latest in an emerging genre which can basically be described as a plea not to be defined as bigots and relegated to the same ash heap of history where segregationists currently reside. They are not bad people; they are just following their religious teaching and consciences. We ought to be able to respect them even if we ultimately defeat them on the political battlefield.
What they say they want is no longer victory, which they reluctantly acknowledge is no longer possible. They say that they are willing to accept their defeat with a degree of dignity, but they ought to at least be able to continue to follow their own sense of right or wrong without being insulted, marginalized or, especially, dragged into court to explain themselves.
It’s this sense that they’re being defined out of respectable society and classified as thought criminals that leads them to complain that they are now the ones being discriminated against. So, when we compare the Indiana religious freedom bill to the Jim Crow laws, we’re really playing right into their worst anxieties.
So, we have to listen to them whine and plead to be treated with a modicum of respect. And that’s precisely what Kilgore is in no mood to grant them.
In fact, Kilgore goes right for the most sensitive spot, retelling the history of the Jim Crows wars and ensuing battles over desegregation. But there’s a reason that Kilgore does this, and it’s because the battle is so far from over.
So why all the phony claims that cultural conservatism is folding its tent as a political force? There are a lot of reasons, but the most basic is probably this: if and when the Cultural Right fully gains power via a Republican Party that still is entirely in its thrall, the idea that it has come back from the brink of extinction gives its leaders greater flexibility about how and where to execute the counter-revolution, and its followers the satisfaction of a divinely ordained vindication—and then sweet vengeance.
It’s been noted in a variety of places over the last few days that there is a mighty disconnect between the way Indiana Governor Mike Pence has been compelled to back down and the support he’s received from all the Republican candidates for the presidency. If a battle has been lost in Indiana, it is still being waged with full vigor among those who hope to win the hearts, minds, and financial contributions of the Republican Party’s base.
What this ought to mean is that the Republican Party is headed for a magnificent reckoning with the voters in November 2016.
But that is not assured.
