Prompting our conversation was the
apparent decision by the Star Tribune
to discontinue the weekly Sunday Opinion page “Contributing Columnist” feature,
in which non-liberal voices rotated through about once a month. The feature included columns from
conservative author Katherine Kersten, conservative radio talk show host Jason
Lewis, and centrist politicians Tim Penny and Tom Horner.
That space is to be filled by a weekly
column from current Star Tribune staffer
D.J. Tice. I’ve met Mr. Tice on a number of occasions and
have read his work for years. Not to
damn him with faint praise, but he strikes me as a reasonable sort, very
middle-of-the-road. To my taste, he
comes across as more Joe Lieberman than George Bush. Perhaps, though, I will be pleasantly
surprised by his work in this new role.Some on the political left in Minnesota will cheer the purging of the last conservative voices in the state’s largest daily newspaper. Perhaps some within the Star Tribune offices will be cheering along with them.
Make no mistake: I understand the Star Tribune is private property—owned by a private corporation—and
they may do whatever they wish. But also
concede that the Star Tribune offers
a left-of-center editorial viewpoint and its news pages feature a
left-of-center sensibility.
Mr. Brauer was among those cheering the
move, telling us that the current conservative lineup was not “worthy” and did
not “best showcase” our side of the aisle.
What makes a conservative “worthy”? It is a willingness to support the larger
progressive cause? In Part
1 of this series, I quote National Review’s Jonah Goldberg on the
liberal view of what the proper role of conservatives should be in the national
discourse,
"Good conservatives... should know their place and gladly
serve as Sherpas to the great mountaineers of liberalism, pointing out
occasional missteps, perhaps suggesting a slight course correction from time to
time, but never losing sight of the need for upward 'progress' and happily
carrying the extra baggage for progressives in their zealous but heroic quest
for the summit."
[Update: Mr. Tice's first effort in his new role turns out to be exactly that, a call for a new era of Sherpa Conservatism. Tice writes,"Republican politicians still bring forward constructive conservative reforms, of course (often now at the risk of becoming a Tea Party target). But more are needed. Repealing Obamacare, for example, is probably fantasy, but the program desperately needs improvement. Conservatives would be best equipped for the job—not only because it’s true that conservatives originated the whole idea of using insurance subsidies to reform the health care marketplace, but also because, unlike progressives, conservatives actually believe in the marketplace."]
For another view of a worthy role for conservatives, in Part 2 of this series, I quote the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto as he reviews a piece by Time magazine’s Joe Klein on the subject of ObamaCare,
What Klein wishes for is a
division of labor in which the two parties would cooperate to make government
bigger. He'd like the Republicans to
reinvent themselves as a non-ideological party devoted to effective management,
which would allow the Democrats to focus on expanding government. In such a world, Democrats would face no
serious resistance to their legislative efforts, and there would be less risk
of ObamaCare-style failures because the elephants' job would be to clean up
after the donkeys.
With conservative voices in the Star Tribune limited to the occasional commentary
or the—rarer still—Op-Ed submission that slips through the net, what are we
losing with the absence of diversity on the opinion pages of the state’s “newspaper
of record”?
For the reader, the absence of dissenting
views—or when rebuttals are allowed only to hand-picked issues at certain times—reinforces
the impression that no credible opposition exists to the progressive worldview
or that there exists no viable alternatives to liberal policies. As a result, conservative election triumphs
(like Scott Walker’s) or the failure of progressive initiatives (like MNsure)
catch the reader by complete surprise:
from faithfully reading the Star
Tribune, they would not be aware such outcomes were possible.
In an ideal world, a newspaper’s Opinion page
would serve as a modern-day Roman Forum, a clearinghouse for the marketplace of
ideas. Intelligent, articulate voices
for every viewpoint would get their chance to be heard and the best ideas would
prevail.
But the reality of today’s media market is
that consumers tend to self-segregate into enclaves where only their own
viewpoint is on offer: both the left and
the right have their own cable TV outlets, radio stations, magazines, and
websites.
A general circulation newspaper is one of the
dwindling number of spaces where consumers of diverse viewpoints still gather.
Perhaps the Star Tribune has decided the MSNBC model will work for them: become the media champion of the progressive
left and you will have a small, but extremely loyal following.
I still believe that even a liberal
newspaper and its readers would benefit from a regular conservative presence on
its pages. Thoughtful conservative commentary
that describes, week-in-and-week-out, a workable alternative set of policies
based on a competing worldview would force liberals to sharpen their arguments
and readers to expand their horizons.
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