Last week over at First Things writer Pete Spiliakos makes my point — too many Americans never hear the conservative message:
This absence of articulate, intelligent conservative arguments from the daily lives of millions of Americans is a civic disaster. As time goes on, it allows liberal politicians to move farther left, and do so with confidence that an ever-larger percentage of the population will support them because they do not see the right as a viable alternative. Millennials who are mostly pro-life will vote for pro-abortion extremists because they will know nothing of their extremism. Who will tell them?
A “civic disaster.” Preach it, brother!
Spiliakos continues:
Right-leaning Super PACS are collecting tens of millions of dollars that will be spent next year on ads in which Republican presidential candidates who agree (or pretend to agree) on most public issues will tear each other down. These ads will be aimed at the declining fraction of the population that is already favorable to political conservatism.
Amen! As I keep saying, we need to reach the uninformed and misinformed, and currently, we are not to any serious degree.
So what’s the solution? Again, Spiliakos agrees with me:
How much better if more of that money was spent on media consumed by voters who were not already on the right, but who might harbor doubts about abortion and who don’t want higher taxes? Conservatives face a choice. We can work together and build institutions so that Americans hear our best ideas from our best spokesmen (and these will often not be candidates for public office), or we can accept that our coalition will be a comfortable place to die within an increasingly unfriendly country.
Most important of all, we need political “institutions” aimed at fighting the information war. The members of the Republican and conservative industrial complex need to get off their micro stage and enter the big battle. Political show business — and that’s what it amounts to — might be lucrative for the players, but if those in it are not winning crowds of converts to the right course of action, than their political showmanship is a pathetic waste of everyone’s time and money.
You can read Pete Spiliakos’ entire post at First Things here.
Image credit: thejaggedword.com.
