Get Out There and Fight Like a Liberal!
(from gopbloggers.org)
That, at any rate, is the idea behind Brendan Miniter's latest over at Opinion Journal - the idea that we on the right are takings pages out of the left's playbook and using them to advance conservative positions:
on a variety of fronts conservatives are using arguments and tactics heretofore under patent protection by the left, including pushing for activist judges (with four decades of liberal jurisprudence on the books, the left's best hope is judges who respect precedent above all), using federal dollars to build political constituencies, filing lawsuits, launching boycotts, and arguing for free speech and "diversity" in education. The last has drawn a surprising amount of attention lately with a debate over evolution and "intelligent design"--the hypothesis that evolution isn't random but rather the mechanism an intelligent being uses to change the universe.
I'll dissent slightly from any concept that we are actually fighting like liberals - we do, after all, adhere to truth and common-decency in our battle tactics. But, on the other hand, it is rather fun to push for massive increases in the budget of the Department of Education and then use the money to promote accountability and school choice. This is, actually, part of the brilliance of President Bush's political tactics - pour very new conservative wine into very old liberal bottles...it isn't as pretty or as pure as some conservatives would like, but the howls resulting from liberals as they watch it done indicate that its striking home.
It is hoped, of course, that a long period of advocacy and agigtation will eventually lead the American people to embrace pure, unadulterated conservatism - but, meantime, we can get a lot of good done by using liberalism against itself.
[GOP Bloggers]
4:18:57 PM 
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