Aspirational Conservatism: Thoughts on Wisconsin

The launching pad for this post is some of the coverage of the recent recall elections in Wisconsin.  This opinion piece on CNN by Alan Borsuk talks about how evenly split the electorate is in our neighbor to the east.  The Wisconsin State Journal has an editorial calling the results "a victory for moderation."

Says Borsuk,

"As a pretty impartial person, my reading of the dominant message is: We live in polarizing, sharply split, inflamed times when it comes to politics.  And that's only getting more intense...The outcomes certainly didn't leave things in a more middle-of-the-road place where compromise is on politicians' minds."

We get a very different view from the Wisconsin State Journal,

"Tuesday's results were far from a backlash, yet not a ringing endorsement, either.  And that means thoughtful senators in the middle of the political divide should have an easier time advocating for consensus legislation on jobs, the economy and education reform."

They can't both be correct about Tuesday's election outcome.  Either the direction will be more intense division or more moderate behavior.  I'm betting on the former.

In this post and others I have argued that there is no middle ground between the sides, because the debate centers on differences of kind and not degree.  In finding the middle ground between 3 and 7 the answer can never be "Q".  The old Yogi Berra quote, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it" doesn't actually work in practice.  You can go west, you can go east, but you can't keep going north, which is what folks are asking for when the calls go up to "compromise" or "do the deal."  As we saw with Minnesota's budget and the federal debt ceiling, the "deal" when done, doesn't work.

As I will explore in later posts, the visions behind each side are mutually exclusive:  you can't follow a bit of both.  One path leads to "managed decline", at best a gentile, shabby chic as we slide from exceptionalism to leading from behind.  The other calls for the painful sacrifice required in renewal and rebirth.  You can't be reborn while you are still declining.  Politics has become so bitter because we have reached the point where split the difference is no longer possible:  it has (or must) become winner take all.