Gerald Warner: Angry Republicans know the ‘end of history’ is bunk

Published on Sunday 19 February 2012 00:00

AS FORECAST in this column six weeks ago, Rick Santorum is giving Mitt Romney, until recently perceived as the unassailable front-runner in the US Republican primaries, a run for his money. More than that, he is in danger of proving Romney’s nemesis, to the extent of depriving him of the GOP nomination.

On the face of it, Republican voters have displayed an unprecedented volatility, transferring their affections capriciously, sometimes by huge percentage points over a few days, from one candidate to another. Almost every runner, including some now eliminated, has had his 15 minutes of favour as the apparently anointed one, only to be dumped by the fickle electorate in the next state contested. Yet that electoral switchback is itself a rational statement: conservative voters, having surveyed the candidates, are saying “None of the above.” The GOP establishment has lost the confidence of its nominal supporters.

Machine politics, in America as in Britain and Europe, has become about power, or at any rate about holding office. One might ask: is that not the raison d’être of any political party? Up to a point, Lord Copper. Until recent times ideological principles were an important consideration too. In the post-war years the conflicting philosophies of conservatism and radicalism have dissolved; they have been succeeded by a culture of power-brokering in which consensual managers, rather than ideological contenders, distribute the fruits of office among a political elite that has discarded such baggage as philosophical beliefs.

This transformation is more evident and further advanced in Europe than in America. The European Union is the classic template for this new order. This is Fukuyama’s End Of History. In the consensual analysis, Marxism has been defeated, “democracy” is now and for all time the enlightened system that will progressively govern all of humanity. In reality, so far from being defeated, Marxism is increasingly victorious – in its cultural rather than economic manifestation. As early as the 1930s Marxists of the Frankfurt School were rightly sceptical about the long-term prospects for the Soviet model.

They were right: dialectical materialism that could not deliver the material was doomed to eventual collapse. Marxist economics were an infantile delusion. The real key to social control was culture. Modern cultural Marxists are perfectly happy to allow large corporations to generate wealth, a disproportionate amount of which the state confiscates in taxation and devotes to ever more intrusive projects of social engineering. The Democrat Party is the standard-bearer of this alien concept in the United States; never has it been more aggressively promoted than by Barack Obama.

Across the developed world a neo-Marxism called Political Correctness is relentlessly eroding the position and values of religion, the family (the major obstacle to state dominance of human affairs), national identity and demography. Audaciously it represents itself as a modern ethic that all civilised people must embrace. It has successfully colonised formerly conservative parties that might have resisted its onward march: Dave’s “modernised” Tories are a textbook example.

A conventional wisdom sprang up that claimed a party’s core vote could be taken for granted, even alienated: what mattered was to convert those on the supposed “centre” ground. So, deluded conservative leaderships moved on to their opponents’ turf and became ideologically neutered. Cameron was punished by the defection of his core vote, reducing him to coalition government. The US Republican leadership has been usurped by the Tea Party, caricatured in Britain as eccentric, in fact an articulation of public revolt against high-tax big government.

Santorum is, at least momentarily, the beneficiary of conservative disillusionment. Romney is the Cameron of America – an unprincipled chameleon. Santorum won the first primary, in Iowa, and three states in one day – Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado. Now, in Romney’s home state of Michigan, Santorum is ahead in the polls; in several national polls he has ousted Romney; and in the crucial “electability” perception he is running neck and neck with the former favourite.

Barack Obama has chosen this moment to pick an unnecessary fight with the Catholic Church (he got 54 per cent of the Catholic vote last time) by compelling Catholic institutions to pay for contraception, including abortifacients, in staff insurance provision. The backlash has been ferocious, even from non-Catholics, not on theological grounds but because this totalitarian measure breaches the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Santorum, a Catholic, will benefit from this. Yet he could still tumble into obscurity on “Super Tuesday”, 6 March – the Becher’s Brook of the primaries, when 10 states vote. Even if he does, others will take up the cause of reclaiming conservatism from the office-hungry appeasers who have neutered their parties, both in America and Britain.

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Leisure_suit_Larry

Sunday, February 19, 2012 at 03:47 PM

Once again the Scotsman's regular clown (@1) is off topic. For the record thicko, read the article Gingrich is not in contention. ****************Santorum - a true conservative - will get the nomination , as Gerald say's the other are unprincipled careerists which the American public are seeing through.

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samcoldstream

Sunday, February 19, 2012 at 03:44 PM

Try and keep up to speed? Read tomorrows National Enquirer.

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Marshal Soult

Sunday, February 19, 2012 at 01:14 PM

1. On the other hand, fair play to someone who can even one-time while owning a coupon like a melted welly and with the names "Newt" and "Gingrich" - sounds like a character from Tolkien, and not a nice one.

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radge

Sunday, February 19, 2012 at 01:08 PM

It may have escaped your notice Lackey but the piece here appears to concern itself with those Republican contenders that have a realistic chance of their party's nomination. Newt Gingrich is no longer a serious option. No doubt in no small measure for the extra marital shenanigans you mention. Romney 29% Gingrich 13% Paul 11% Santorum 35% Do keep up.

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samcoldstream

Sunday, February 19, 2012 at 12:14 PM

What" No mention of Newt Gingrich campaigning in Georgia? Headline in today's edition of The New York Times: "In Georgia, Gingrich Campaigns On Guns & Gas." referring to two safe subjects: right to bear arms and price of gasoline. Headline in January, 19th, 2012, edition of The New York Times: "Marianne Gingrich: Newt's Ex-Wife Says He Wanted Open Marriage." In 1999, on the eve of a major speech on family values, Presidential hypocrite, I mean candidate, Newt phoned his wife and asked her for a divorce? Newt is never photographed with his third wife with whom he had a 21 year affair whilst married to first wife Kathy, and second wife Marianne, both of whom he was two timing. Nowadays, Newt never mentions family values, if he can possibly avoid it, but dozens of hecklers in Georgia took great delight in reminding him of his "honourable" past. God Bless America! (Source: The New York Times)

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