CWEEKEND 9/5
Officially, it's Labor Day weekend, - the last free days of summer - but for a few hundred political addicts of a conservative bent, it is merely ''The Weekend,'' an annual festival of ideas organized by the Center for the Study of Popular Culture in Los Angeles.
Whimsically called ''The Dark Ages'' when it began several years ago, as a sly dig at the pretentious Renaissance Weekend beloved of the left wing, the Weekend migrated in time and space this year, from Phoenix over New Year's to the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs over Labor Day.
Handy for me, and as you're reading this Saturday or Sunday, that's where I'll be. I love these things, no matter what side they're on.
Though the substantive part of the program is just getting underway as I write - former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich was to give the keynote address Friday morning - Center President David Horowitz set the tone at the opening reception Thursday evening. And the conference will wrap up Monday morning with a discussion of his most recent manifesto, The Art of Political War: How the Republicans can Fight to Win.
Horowitz doesn't shy away from hyperbole, in part because one of his principles of political warfare is that the aggressor usually prevails. Republicans, he writes, ''need to accept that Democrats are going to practice the politics of personal destruction and project onto Republicans the sins they themselves have committed. They do it because they're Democrats, and because that's the way they win.''
Well, now. Republicans are not all inept at political battles, and Democrats are not all unprincipled.
He's probably right that it is a tactical error to conduct a political campaign 'as though winning depends on rational arguments and carefully articulated principles.''
And he adds, ''you have only 30 seconds to make your point.''
It certainly looks as though most campaign managers believe that.
What's worse, Horowitz says, is that ''while you've been making your argument, the other side has already painted you as a mean-spirited, borderline racist controlled by religious zealots, securely in the pockets of the rich.''
Such a description could as readily fit a Democrat as a Republican, but even a casual follower of political commentary would recognize it as a Republican stereotype, however undeserved.
Horowitz knows firsthand the power of such personal attacks. He wrote a column for the online magazine Salon, pegged on the NAACP's support for a lawsuit against firearms manufacturers but addressing in general terms some of the unpalatable facts about, for instance, black-on-black crime and racial gaps in educational achievement.
In response, he was attacked as ''a real, live bigot'' by a columnist for Time magazine named Jack E. White, who said the column proved that ''blatant bigotry'' is alive and well. ''So many racists, so little time!'' White said.
Given Horowitz's long history of political activism in favor of black causes, that's a reprehensible charge. But that doesn't make it any less wounding to him or to his family.
You could say he saw it coming. ''If you are a white male in a culture whose symbols have been defined by liberals,'' he wrote in The Art of Political Warfare, ''be careful when you go on the offensive.''
''Careful'' is not an adjective anyone is likely to apply to him. Both columns, and his reply to White, are available through the Web page frontpagemag.com, the Center's online magazine.
As an example of how to design a winning campaign strategy, Horowitz cites the successful California initiative that sharply curtailed the practice of segregating Spanish-speaking children in classes taught in Spanish.
''(The sponsors) defined themselves as friends of Hispanic children who were trying to lean English and better their lives. They thereby won the sympathy and support not only of Hispanics who wanted their children to have a chance in life, but all those people who saw immigrant children as society's underdogs deserving a fair shake.''
Whether Horowitz's take-no-prisoners political style would really work better for Republicans is hardly certain. But the debate over it is bound to be fascinating.