You might be surprised to hear that message from a fellow who wrote his first book about the policies and practices on Capitol Hill that led to the Jack Abramoff scandal.
But Matthew Continetti found some reason for optimism during his Headliner luncheon address today in Raleigh. The 25-year-old Weekly Standard associate editor has spent recent months writing about Virginia Sen. George Allen’s recent gaffes and Montana Sen. Conrad Burns’ tough re-election fight. Continetti also devoted nearly 250 pages to the topic The K Street Gang: The Rise and Fall of the Republican Machine (Doubleday, 2006).
But his message included some positive notes:
In researching this book, I found that the conservative movement is probably the strongest it’s ever been. Now you can just look at the measures of conservative strength. It’s incredible. Whether it’s the rise of alternative media such as The Weekly Standard, Fox News, and whatnot; whether it’s the very fact I was discussing earlier that we now have an encyclopedia of conservatism; whether it’s the fact that I can actually find a job in journalism — which I think is amazing in and of itself. And it shows you how conservatism is strong because conservatives have developed the institutions in which they can find talent — maybe not in my case — but they can find talent and promote it, and they can nurture it. …
Liberals are now trying to copy the conservatives. So we’ve gone into a situation where in the 1950s Republicans — and conservatives rather — feeling so embattled, had to form their own media outlets, had to start forming their own non-profit organizations. Now we’ve come to a case where the liberals are trying to copy the conservatives. And to me, I think that’s just a testament to both liberal weakness as a movement and conservative strength.
Continetti is under no illusions about conservatives’ strength in the upcoming elections. He says the movement is electorally weak at the moment.
