conservative realism

Kori Schake is an experienced national security professional with strong conservative views. I've worked with her and have the highest respect for her. As a regular contributor to the Shadow Government blog at Foreign Policy magazine, she has offered telling critique's of the Obama Administration's foreign policy.

Now she has written a post-election warning to conservatives to listen to the voters.

Conservatives need to face it squarely: We lost the argument. Voters gave us a hearing, gave us the opportunity to make our case, then decided they didn't trust us to solve their problems any more than they did a president who passed legislation they didn't like, by means they didn't approve of, behaved recklessly with the nation's finances, and seemed uninterested in working with the opposition. We need to take ownership of losing the argument rather than taking refuge in excuses or despairing for the future.

On the deficit/defense dilemma, she says:

But we were implausible in our policies. We insisted defense must increase and emphasized growing dangers that will demand more wars. We railed about the Obama administration's defense cuts when our alternative in the House included the same reductions. We criticized the president for not embracing Bowles-Simpson but didn't vote for it ourselves. After arguing debt's centrality, we flatly rejected deals that would have a ten to one cuts to spending ratio. 

Schake also makes a plea to limit the use of policy by executive orders and use the legislative process to build national consensus on security policies. I agree.