My Problem With Obamacons
Posted on April 22nd, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
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Some Obamacons have an irritating tendency to want to reduce the opposition of other conservatives to their champion to the question of race, as if it it’s otherwise inconceivable that those on the right would tend to prefer, given the choices, the less left-leaning candidate in the Democratic race.
Thus, Sullivan wrote this evening:
Pennsylvania has barely elected a black or a female politician to state-wide office. But you know what tends to count most: race. There’s a reason Pat Buchanan has warmed to Clinton [bold mine-DL].
There is a reason, and it is the same reason why Mr. Buchanan reacted so strongly against the Clintons in ‘92, which is his cultural conservatism. However much he objected and still objects to the Clintons, he objects to the Obamas even more and for the same reasons. There is no mystery here, but some Obamacons seem to have an interest in ignoring the actual reasons that Obama’s conservative critics give and want to impute to them prejudices that they do not have and flatly reject. There are reasons Andrew Sullivan supports Obama, and the reasons are the ones that he has given in public. I would think he would extend this courtesy to those he is criticising, since he had to defend himself repeatedly that his turn against the war in Iraq was not driven by anything other than his changed view on the war.
One of the things that many conservatives have had to realise in the last 15 months is that Clinton and her husband really were from “a different kind of Democrats,” and Obama has been reminding them, us, what the Clintons were moving away from. That doesn’t mean that they have become acceptable or desirable in themselves, because they haven’t. This is the great irony of the entire campaign: Obama increasingly seems to represent a throwback to bygone days of an older liberalism, while it appears as if the Clintons have tried to learn, if only for self-seeking, tactical reasons (about this you’ll get no argument from me), to avoid the pitfalls of that tradition. Because of the war, antiwar conservatives have found themselves gravitating towards Obama because he is supposed to represent something different from the hawkish “centrist” views that dominated the Democratic Party for the last decade or so, but as I have tried to stress again and again this is not so. The one thing that some of the neoliberals got wrong, foreign policy, was the one thing Obama has chosen to imitate for the most part, while ignoring or discounting the neoliberal domestic policy shifts that were, in fact, reasonably successful. This is also why, from an entirely different perspective, neoliberals such as Kaus are frustrated with Obama acting and speaking as if he were in a “time warp.”
Those of us on the right, and I count myself among them, became strongly invested in hostility to the Clintons because they represented the legacy of the cultural left from the ’60s and ’70s (and they really did and do represent this), and cultural conservatives had defined themselves to a great extent by opposition to the social changes wrought during those decades. However, the portrayal of the Clintons as ultra left-wingers obscured how much they did, in fact, differ from the actual ultra left-wingers. In one sense, this has always made them more dangerous, because they offer a more politically viable kind of liberalism, but it has also opened them up to the progressive rebellion that now will almost certainly destroy their machine and their grip on the party. As strange as it sounds, the Clintons represent the kind of liberalism that conservatives can at least live with, even if it still drives them up the wall, while the Obamas represent a liberalism that is much less accommodating to conservative views in its content, regardless of how accommodating its messenger seems to be.
For this and other reasons, I think that Obamacons are making a mistake, and they are compounding it with the attitude some of them are showing towards conservatives, including antiwar conservatives, who have not “come to Obama.” Until recently, it is one that I have been willing to criticise pretty mildly, but there is an unpleasant undercurrent to the phenomenon that suggests that those who do not likewise embrace the new era must be hung up on Obama’s race, as if there were no other reasons to oppose him, when it is fair to say that his supporters seem to be at least as preoccupied with it as, if not more so than, everyone else. So even if the arguments made on behalf of Obama are sometimes strikingly superficial, it is instead his opponents who are deemed racist even though they are the ones advancing arguments against his policy views. This has become a pretty intolerable double standard, and it is one that Obama’s boosters have been applying too often.
Filed under: politics
I can understand your objection to Obama’s foreign policy. I don’t share your views, but your point seems perfectly argued on the basis of your view of what America’s foreign policy should be.
How, though, do you conclude on the basis of domestic policy that Obama is substantially to the left of Clinton? By my reckoning, he is clearly to her right on healthcare reform and slightly to her right on affirmative action, for example.
Remarks by his wife and his pastor don’t count here, in my book. That is to say, they are of interest but not very useful as evidence for an ideological classification of the candidate. I disagree with my fiance on all sorts of political issues. As for Obama’s SF remarks, well, I acknowledge that you and George Packer and whole host of others see the ghost of vulgar Marxism there, but I happen think that you and Packer have misunderstood the parallelism in his utterance. That makes me interested in other evidence. Although the SF remarks are probably enough from your perspective, I’m curious to know whether you have any other concrete domestic policy basis – apart from the SF remarks – for situating Obama as an “old-style” liberal.
Really, who has called paleocons racist more often, Obamacons or neocons?
The people currently in control of the Republican party hate paelocons much more than they hate liberals. I don’t see how you can see fit to to anything but oppose their hand selected candidate.
The Obama support from intellectuals of the conservative persuasion is both nuanced and confusing. Sullivan is an excellent example. He professes the doubt-infused conservative philosophy (specifically as a key component in his support for Obama) but, as is quoted in this analysis, he forgets to implement it when attempting to explain the mindset of Buchannan on Obama.
Is it not possible for conservatives, independents, and libertarians of all demographics to fundamentally oppose and Obama presidency on philosophical grounds? The man is an orthodox progressive. How could Paulites or paleocons support his candidacy in a substantive manner?
The Bush-backlash argument is not acceptable in my view (though from an anti-war perspective it does hold more weight). Obviously Obama’s elogquence, age, and lofty rhetoric are refreshing after 2 decades of Clinton-Bush politics. At the very least, he would be a new name and face (literally and figuratively) for our executive office. However I think its foolhardy for individuals who proclaim the desire for civil, substantive debates on governing philosohpies to then throw those same ideals under the proverbial bus when professing their support for Obama. An Obama candidacy WILL NOT be about substantive debate as long as the Sullivans of the world reduce real political disagreements to nothing more then racial animosity.
To answer the second comment first, there are two things I would add. First, Obamacons ought to know better, since they have had their views unfairly characterised or had ulterior motives imputed to them on many occasions. Second, this is part of a larger pattern of Obama’s boosters crying racism a little too often; being lectured to by Obama is bad enough, but being berated and seeing others berated by them is getting really old.
Meanwhile, I have no intention of doing anything other than opposing the GOP candidate, but if I really decided my vote based on which party leadership likely hated people like me more I would have even less difficulty opposing Obama. It’s clear to me that a lot of liberals (though by no means all) hate paleocons more than they hate neocons, when you get right down to it, and since they hate neocons a lot that’s pretty bad. But this shouldn’t be a question of which party leadership loathes people like me. The Democrats will always lose my support in that particular competition.
Instead, there ought to be a positive case why I should want to see unified Democratic government in the wake of one of the most disastrous periods of unified government in my lifetime. There is no case for this that I have seen in which the benefits outweigh the costs. I can let my hostility to the GOP drive me to make a decision against my interests, or I can back a candidate, probably Barr, who represents me and not fall into the trap of backing a candidate who agrees with me on almost nothing.
On the first comment: his Philadelphia speech is a good place to start. His meager nods towards welfare reform and possibly changing affirmative action have never been very strong, and I don’t know that I see class- or income-based preferences as being demonstrably to “the right” of race-based preferences. I am much less of an absolutist on the death penalty than I used to be, but has Obama not opposed the death penalty throughout his career? That may be a defensible view, but it’s definitely an “old-style” liberal one as these things are usually defined. His views on taxation, which he frames as a matter of “fairness,” seem almost as they could have come from the ’80s. I should have qualified my original claim–he also seems to embrace neoliberal views on trade, from which he occasionally departs for electoral purposes. So, from my perspective, the *two* things neoliberals have been most wrong about he has tended to support for the most part. He does talk about entitlement reform, but it’s not clear how he pays for that or for any of what he’s proposing, which suggests more fiscal irresponsibility. Estimates of his proposals’ costs show him increasing the size of the budget by more than $200 billion, which seems like a classic “throw more at the problem” response. Of course, his views on abortion and immigration are as far to the left as any major presidential candidate’s views have ever been, and I base that on his debate statements and his voting record.
Well, I agree any Obamacons who say such a thing are just being bizzare, really.
I have not heard it so much, but I don’t seem to have the superhuman reading and writing capability that you have,
(Seriously, I just don’t consume the volume of information that you do, so you probably have seen this where I have not.)
It isn’t that widespread among pro-Obama conservatives. There are probably just a few instances of it, really, but the shot at Buchanan struck me as the same kind of thing I was hearing during this debate.
So I take it that you are supporting Barr? I have been floundering around trying to figure out who to vote for in the general election. I voted for Paul in the FL primary, but am at a loss at this point. I am registered Republican (FL has closed primaries), but can’t go for McCain, I’m afraid. I always swore I would support the Devil before I voted for Hill, so my natural preference as of late has been Obama, what I thought was the lesser of the 3 evils. Please elaborate about your support for Barr. I’ve read about him a little in the American Conservative, and I know he may run as a Libertarian.
If Barr wins the nomination, absolutely yes. He is (now) against the PATRIOT Act and the war, and he is entirely reliable on many issues important to social and cultural conservatives that many Libertarians (and libertarians) do not usually take seriously. There are arguments for supporting the CP, and now that Baldwin is their nominee that is a respectable option, but I think the dissident right is too small to start splitting whatever limited protest vote we have. Backing Barr, if he gets the nomination, seems to me to be the best alternative. Otherwise, I will vote Baldwin.