Neal Gabler has a nice column in yesterday’s LA Times where he ponders the notion of the Republican intellectual center. He’s following avidly, as we all are, the infighting among the GOPers as they fight to remake themselves. Will the GOP follow the extremist social conservatives, or will they hearken back to a philosophy from an earlier time, to Reagan, or Goldwater? Gabler’s thesis is that there is not intellectual center for the Republican Party, that all they’ve got left are angry and ugly talking heads like Hannity and Limbaugh, and that, as such, what plays for an “intellectual enter” for the Republicans is more like the McCarthy of the HUAC era. Here’s a bit from that LA Times article:

McCarthyism, on the other hand, which could be deployed by anyone, thrived. McCarthyism was how Republicans won. George H.W. Bush used it to get himself elected, terrifying voters with Willie Horton. And his son, under the tutelage of strategist Karl Rove, not only got himself reelected by convincing voters that John Kerry was a coward and a liar and would hand the nation over to terrorists, which was pure McCarthyism, he governed by rousing McCarthyite resentments among his base.

Republicans continue to push the idea that this is a center-right country and that Americans have swooned for GOP anti-government posturing all these years, but the real electoral bait has been anger, recrimination and scapegoating. That’s why John McCain kept describing Barack Obama as some sort of alien and why Palin, taking a page right out of the McCarthy playbook, kept pushing Obama’s relationship with onetime radical William Ayers.

And that is also why the Republican Party, despite the recent failure of McCarthyism, is likely to keep moving rightward, appeasing its more extreme elements and stoking their grievances for some time to come. There may be assorted intellectuals and ideologues in the party, maybe even a few centrists, but there is no longer an intellectual or even ideological wing. The party belongs to McCarthy and his heirs – Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Palin. It’s in the genes.

I’m not here to say Neal Gabler is wrong, as there seem to be many McCarthyite tendencies among the Republicans nowadays, but it seems to me that he doesn’t fully describe this intellectual vacuum of the Republicans. Changing a vision of Republican lineage from Goldwater to Joe McCarthy seems too obvious to me. Surely such a move might have rigor, but it seems almost a Godwin-like move. Or maybe I should say that he adequately doesn’t cover the contradictory elements of Republican strategies. Isn’t Elmer Gantry a more apt metaphor, bringing together as it does the notions of deceit, religion, and collective anger? Of course, Elmer Gantry is a bit of an allegory about Mr. McCarthy, is it not?

It’s a nice little intellectual exercise. What best represents the Republican intellectual center? It’s just too easy to imagine that center to be My Pet Goat, or The Very Hungry Caterpillar, or even the Bible. I suppose Paradise Lost, with the Devil as the tragic hero, might be a nice work by which to describe the Republican intellectual center. Even then, though, such a highly moral text doesn’t seem to me to have the kind of irony necessary to describing Republicans in their present state of sin. But one look at a guy who supposedly represents the intellectual wing of the GOP, William Kristol, nails this question, I think. Here’s Kristol giving Bush advice, from next week’s Weekly Standard:

In addition, Bush can explain to Americans just how his administration’s detention, interrogation, surveillance, and other counterterrorism policies have helped keep us safe. If he lays out the case for them publicly–as his appointees are surely doing to their transition counterparts privately–he’ll make it easier for the incoming Obama administration to back off rash promises and continue most of the policies. This would be a real service to the country. It would also force a rethinking, by those capable of rethinking, of the cheap and easy demagoguing on issues like Guant–namo and eavesdropping. Over time, Bush might even get deserved credit for effective conduct of the war on terror.

As it happens, a Rasmussen Reports survey last week found about half of U.S. voters say the United States should not close the terrorist detention facility at Guant–namo, while less than a third think it should. So, on this and other war-on-terror-related issues, Bush’s positions are reasonably popular–even though the Bush administration has done very little to make its case. Attorney General Michael Mukasey did a good job of laying out the argument for the administration’s conduct of the war on terror in remarks to the Federalist Society a little over a week ago. Bush should take up this cause.

One last thing: Bush should consider pardoning–and should at least be vociferously praising–everyone who served in good faith in the war on terror, but whose deeds may now be susceptible to demagogic or politically inspired prosecution by some seeking to score political points. The lawyers can work out if such general or specific preemptive pardons are possible; it may be that the best Bush can or should do is to warn publicly against any such harassment or prosecution. But the idea is this: The CIA agents who waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and the NSA officials who listened in on phone calls from Pakistan, should not have to worry about legal bills or public defamation. In fact, Bush might want to give some of these public servants the Medal of Freedom at the same time he bestows the honor on Generals Petraeus and Odierno. They deserve it.

OK, maybe this extended quote represents just what Gabler meant with the McCarthy metaphor. Kristol is talking the straight Bush line on terror, cherry picking polls when they support him, and calling for a hard line backed by the kind of jingoistic rhetoric that might make McCarthy proud. Kristol goes so much further, though. The man wants to give the Medal of Freedom to people who tortured prisoners, who kept some innocent prisoners at Gitmo for years? No, this is far more Orwell than McCarthy. This is just bizarre, and more bizarre still is that someone like William Kristol has a job writing this drivel.