Roy’s post on the Wall Street Journal article today on Schwarzenegger and political moderation makes a good point ? but one that is, in fact, compatible with the one the Journal columnist was making. We did see the spectrum shift to the Left since the 1960s. But now, there are at least some glimmers that the spectrum is shifting back.
My thoughts about the article were a bit different. I was thinking that the writer was shying away, for some reason, from using correct language to describe Schwarzenegger’s ideological appeal. He was suggesting that a moderate Republican used to be a big-spending, me-to type like Rockefeller or John Lindsey (or some of the Northeastern GOPers still around today). Now, he suggests, a “moderate” Republican is a conservative on fiscal and business issues but a liberal on social issues.
That’s a libertarian, effectively. I know that Libertarians have a clearly rational philosophy to espouse, while the Schwarzeneggers of the political world are mushier and prone to compromise. But that’s an argument for calling him something like a “moderate libertarian,” a term I think has some meaning, rather than a “new kind of conservative” or “a new kind of Republican moderate” or something similarly evasive.
