The excluded middle

A week ago I posted a link to this article, written by David Frum, to my Facebook profile. There are parts of his analysis that I disagree with, of course, but on balance I found the article to be a thoughtful, constructive, and pragmatic take on heathcare reform from a conservative perspective. Most appealingly, Frum didn't engage in the petty histrionics of the tin-foil crowd: his article delightfully misses the entire {'Marxist','bloodless coup','facist','government takeover','armageddon'} set. I was impressed enough to check out his blog, where I found a collection of interesting, articulate political pieces written from a more-or-less conservative perspective. I also found a relatively intelligent commentariat who, in spite of ideological differences, manage impressively civil disagreement. I thought to myself that, in an age of Limbaugh, Beck, and Palin, Frum is exactly the sort of thing the political right ought to promote: reasonable, self-critical, even academic arguments for conservative ideas without anti-intellectualism and scorched-earth demagoguery.

Alas, it was too good to be true. On Tuesday, two days after the publication of the linked piece above, Frum was fired from his position at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

I won't lie: I was really angry when I found out about it. Of course I can't say whether or not Frum was fired over his politics (if you like you can read his take as well as that of one of his AEI colleagues), but in any case it's disheartening when a political group rejects its moderate elements. People like to complain about the hulking inagility of the two-party system, but one of its chief benefits is that it discourages extremism. Radical ideas are first taken up by third parties, and if they become sufficiently mainstream they are picked up by one of the major parties. This forces the ideas through an incubation period, moderating them before they have any chance at becoming policy. This system works relatively well because the major parties have incentive to appeal to as large a base as possible. Empty political slogans or not, Reagan's big tent, Clinton's third way, and even Bush's compassionate conservatism sought common ground among an ideologically diverse electorate, thereby forcing moderation on the relevant party.

But this system doesn't work if a party caters to its extreme elements. If it continues to pander to the tea party bloc and push out moderates like Frum, the Republican party will give its stupidest and most reactionary elements control over its agenda, which is bad for everybody involved. Energizing a narrow, vocal portion of the base may garner short-term political capital, but it's a losing strategy in the long-term—one that poisons the political atmosphere in the meantime. White-hot partisan noise deepens divides while alienating moderate voters, and it takes more than angry paranoiacs to win elections.

My own politics are a hodgepodge of left- and right-leaning ambivalences, but my loyalties are beside the point: regardless of the party in power, we need a strong, moderating opposition. But when the opposition chooses downtown Glennbeckistan as its ideological epicenter, it relinquishes its claims to credibility and does real damage to democracy.