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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Parochialism and Conservatives

The race for NY-23 seems to have developed in a positive direction for conservatives. The liberal Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, has withdrawn from the campaign, citing money and “electability” concerns. On balance, the Conservative Party challenger, Doug Hoffmann, a largely by-the-book man of the right, appears preferable to Scozzafava, who supports abortion rights, same-sex marriage, […]

The race for NY-23 seems to have developed in a positive direction for conservatives. The liberal Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, has withdrawn from the campaign, citing money and “electability” concerns. On balance, the Conservative Party challenger, Doug Hoffmann, a largely by-the-book man of the right, appears preferable to Scozzafava, who supports abortion rights, same-sex marriage, and the Obama stimulus. Her departure gives the voters in NY-23, a relatively conservative district, something more than the previous choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

At the same time, while this story has unfolded almost as a conservative fairy tale, some observers have noticed unsettling aspects. Hoffmann, Rod Dreher notes, is long on ideology and short on knowledge regarding the policies relevant to his own district. Dreher’s local source has Dick Armey poo-pooing familiarity with local issues as “parochial.” The image of nationally known conservatives such as Armey–Sarah Palin has also endorsed Hoffmann–coming into upstate New York demanding that its voters consider ideology rather than practical local concerns is a poignant one. In fact, it illustrates the flaws of the conservative movement’s ideological fixation.

The mindset that produces a comment like Armey’s is that every election be nationalized, with an across-the-board consideration of national issues. Beyond the strategy’s intrinsic weakness in attracting independents–who could not care less if Scozzafava is “conservative” or not–it deprecates the actual art of political prudence. Arguably, one contributing factor to the Republican Party’s problems in the last few years is a tendency to prize ideological clarity at the expense of experience or a basic grasp of the issues. Sarah Palin, while apparently out of her depth on policy during the last presidential campaign, was nonetheless lauded for contrasting her populist conservatism with the elitism of “Beltway liberals.” Her continuing political relevance will be judged in the future, but for now her style has paid off handsomely with her quite decent book advance.

This is not to suggest that evaluating a candidate’s adherence to conservative principle is somehow irrelevant. Clearly, putting forth people solely on the basis of “electability” is political pragmatism at its worst. Nevertheless, being wholly unpragmatic yet ideologically pure is a recipe not only for electoral failure but also for recruiting very flawed candidates. Until the broader conservative movement embraces serious engagement with non-ideological issues, we will continue to witness movement elites denigrating legitimate voter concerns as “parochial.”

It is particularly ironic that Armey used the term “parochial” to disparage those questioning the political credentials of a conservative. The term itself is derived from the concerns of a parish. What could be more conservative than that dealing with local religious practice? “Parochial” is a term preferred by partisans of abstract universal rationality, i.e. Marxist internationalists and Jacobins.

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