'Helpless and Hopeless Creatures' : The Other McCain

'Helpless and Hopeless Creatures' : The Other McCain

"My point is that social conservatism is more intellectually respectable than most people imagine, but for 20 years, those who are serious about fighting the Culture War have been shunted aside and told to be quiet, lest they cause Republicans to lose elections.

"Oddly, however, the GOP's active suppression of social conservatism has not translated to Republican electoral dominance. The nomination of John McCain -- whose profound contempt for social conservatives is no secret -- did not produce a GOP triumph, nor was the Massachusetts moderate Mitt Romney able to dodge the remarkably counterfactual Democrat propaganda that painted him as an extremist Trojan Horse, an agent of the Republican Taliban.

"The fundamental problem here is probably too large to be reduced to a blog post, and I'm not in a mood to tackle the whole problem today, but let's say this: Systemic incentives encourage conservative writers to devote themselves to the day-to-day political headlines, and to identify as 'important' only those issues which directly and immediately affect the Republican Party.

"Meanwhile, liberals -- who comprise 80%-90% of journalists and academics -- are writing about Everything Else, including sexuality, marriage and parenthood. So it is that, outside of whatever issues bear directly on the daily R-vs.-D political battle, nearly everything you read is written by liberals."