The Democrats' dilemma - National Review's conference on role of conservatives in Democratic Party

National Review, Dec 17, 1990 by Richard Brookhiser

The most conservative of the Democrats was William Bulger, who told us what life as the leader of the Massachusetts State Senate, when Michael Dukakis was governor, was like. It was as grim as you might think. Sadly, the TV cameras which had flocked to record Governor Wilder had dispersed by the time Bulger spoke. His thoughtful manner and his local field of action might not have registered with producers in any case.

I left the conference, as I had expected to, on a dying fall. Conservative Democrats exist, and so do issues which mobilize them. (By no means only those discussed at the conference.) But the party has been so thoroughly liberalized that few of its leaders seem willing or able to employ the latter to recruit the former, in any way more serious than uttering half-understood catch-phrases.

Bulger had spoken of the difficulty conservative Democrats face in sustaining political effort over the long haul: the attachment to Burke's "little platoon" which makes civic action seem unimportant, or unattractive. So long as that remains the case, Reagan Democrats will be swing voters, and the best hope conservatives have of dealing with the Bush White House will be repentance, or rebellion.