The Tiger at Home

To be honest, I’ve been calling for a realignment of parties in the United States for the last couple of years, one not unlike the one Bob Wright pitches here.

But I didn’t think it would be the Republicans losing their business wing, the way he thinks they will.

I was thinking that it would involve moving from today’s alignment of democratic socialists vs. a coalition of classical liberals and cultural conservatives to a straight-up (classical) liberal vs. populist fight.

Which is to say, we’d have the forces of openness, on the one hand — open-borders businessmen, free-traders, sexual libertines, and so on — and the traditionalists and protectionists, on the other — nationalists, economic protectionists, cultural conservatives, and so on. Which would, I suppose, be a 19th century style political alignment — free-trading pot smokers against Buchananites. (This was, perhaps, semi-wishful thinking — it would’ve put me in the same political party as my friends again.)

But I now don’t think it’ll happen.

Why? I just don’t see the Republicans becoming more economically nationalist than the Democrats, and I don’t see the cultural elite left developing a sense of longer-term self-interest and self-preservation and aligning themselves with capitalism and liberalism. (I saw the Republicans as being the future party of classical liberals and the Democrats as being the vehicle for populists — Jim Webb’s people, and so on.) Oh, and I don’t think that social conservatives are irresponsible enough to become isolationist. (Which is where my proposed realignment clashes with Wright’s — he had the populist Republicans being the hawks, and the liberal elite Dems being… whatever the heck he is. Dovish with a twist.)

Maybe the so-called Reagan coalition — economic conservatives, nationalists, and moral traditionalists, still has some wind in its sails.

***

That said, here’s a warning: if the ‘cosmopolitan internationalist elites’ all end up in a single political party against the nationalists — would that party win in a knock-down, drag ‘em out fight? Be careful with your money.