She Completes You
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But one sign in Albuquerque may have summed it up for Republican stalwarts: “Sarah — you had us at hello.” ~The Los Angeles Times
That really is the point, isn’t it? All Palin had to do was to show up, and these people were overjoyed regardless of what Palin had or hadn’t done. Much of the enthusiastic response from rank-and-file Republicans seems to be based in a simple desire for validation from the higher-ups, and in satisfying this disturbing hunger for approval it is as if all of McCain’s errors are forgiven and forgotten. This is exactly what Bush thought would happen when he nominated Harriet Miers on the assumption that evangelicals and religious conservatives would see her as one of them, and to some extent that is what happened. When the Bush administration tried to browbeat critics of the Miers nomination (which, I must stress, was a terrible nomination) with accusations of sexism and elitism, the same kinds of people who are now flinging those charges at Palin’s critics were outraged and became even more fiercely opposed to Miers.
For a long time I have railed against the irrationality of mass democracy–this was one of the early themes of this blog–and I fully subscribe to the Kuehnelt-Leddihn view that democracy is inherently identitarian and therefore at odds with an order capable of respecting political diversity and liberty. We have not really seen such an unbounded irrational response (both pro- and anti-) to a political figure, except perhaps to Obama post-Wright or maybe to the Clintons in the ’90s, in recent memory. Certainly there has never been such a sudden, dramatic polarization over a politician as there has been in the last ten days over Palin that I can recall.
It is possible to resist the lures of different nostrisms that try to seduce you into ignoring policy and focusing on markers that show your political tribal allegiance, but most people respond to the cues they are given and the provocations made against their “side” in any given political contest with remarkably little resistance. The same people on the right who happily derided Huckabee as ignorant hick who should have gone back to the backwoods praise Palin to the skies for the very traits that were supposed to be disqualifying for Huckabee. The same people who pushed Romney’s candidacy until its failure was undeniable now preach the importance of Palin’s authenticity! Even those who have warned against conservatives trapping themselves in a cocoon are pulled into it, perhaps on the grounds that butterflies eventually emerge from cocoons.
In fairness, it is certainly easier to resist the urge to rally ’round a party’s candidate when you have numerous, strong objections to the policies defended by the leaders of that party. It is not as tempting to support someone out of an instinct to defend shared values and culture when you assume that the entire exercise is something of a scam. When you take it for granted that the pander is designed to sucker people into endorsing policies that are directly detrimental to the very way of life and culture in question, you feel less inspired to defend this or that politician against attacks from the left. On the other hand, if you are still under the impression that the GOP takes cultural conservative concerns seriously and does not simply use them as election-time bait, you may think it is really important to defend Palin. Sure, you may say, reflexive loyalty, groupthink and a failure of critical thinking may have brought conservatives to their present state, but this example of reflexive loyalty, groupthink and failure of critical thinking is vital for the greater good.
Filed under: politics
” focusing on markers that show your political tribal allegiance”
There is no doubt that this effected me, as well. The large family, the church, the guns led to my visceral reaction as “she is our of ours: back off.” Now this is undeniably stupid of me, and it is always important to make sure your brain has your “gut instincts” firmly in check. A vote for Palin is a vote for McCain, and is simply not in the cards for me. What I (and all dissident conservatives)can root for, however, is for Gov. Palin to strip the bark off of Joe Biden in the debate next month.
You have always accepted spirited disagreement gracefully in these comment columns. This is appreciated, because I would disagree again today.
It is not as tempting to support someone out of an instinct to defend shared values and culture when you assume that the entire exercise is something of a scam.
John McCain is a muddled, somewhat dangerous conviction politician. He is pretty evidently not a man of much guile, however. How can his campaign be described as a scam? To me, this makes about as much sense as describing Eunomia as a scam. Neither makes much sense to me.
I remember how scathingly critical you were of my man Mitt Romney during the primary. You had your reasons and they were good ones even when I disagreed with your conclusions, but does the McCain campaign not have altogether a different feel than the Romney campaign had? Yet the McCain campaign too is to be regarded as just another scam, it seems. I don’t get it.
When you take it for granted that the pander is designed to sucker people into endorsing policies that are directly detrimental to the very way of life and culture in question, you feel less inspired to defend this or that politician against attacks from the left.
All right, fair enough, but—you must admit—the vice presidency is a pretty plum of a prize for our old foe John McCain to offer. If we will deride such generous compromise on Mr. McCain’s part as “pander,” then are we not irreconcilable, even implacable?
On the other hand, if you are still under the impression that the GOP takes cultural conservative concerns seriously and does not simply use them as election-time bait, …
I am under the impression that the GOP is a diffuse party which its national committee, to the committee’s occasional frustration, cannot really control, for the party’s real power resides in its thousands of local county committees. It is not a matter of the GOP’s taking cultural conservative concerns seriously; it is a matter of the GOP’s actually being composed of cultural conservatives.
In other words, I am under the impression that there exists no strongly centralized GOP capable of effectively baiting anyone.
… you may think it is really important to defend Palin.
Yep.
Sure, you may say, reflexive loyalty, groupthink and a failure of critical thinking may have brought conservatives to their present state, but this example of reflexive loyalty, groupthink and failure of critical thinking is vital for the greater good.
Come, Daniel. Some of us who seem so enthusiastic about Sarah Palin’s marvellous national debut are not people known for reflexive loyalty to party. Regarding groupthink, well, Republicans do believe in working politically as a team, and there is a certain justifiable feeling among us of that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” but is it not possible that we simply feel the Palin choice to be magnificent?
Actually, I do not want to argue against you, because yours is a clear voice for reason and you are a persistent, effective apologist for our side. But I do not understand the stridency against Mrs. Palin, nor your seeming willingness to let the proverbial best be the enemy even of the very, very good. What am I misunderstanding?
Howard
It’s true that McCain is not very beguiling. His attempt to pull in social conservatives and evangelicals is pretty transparent. Let me try to explain why I have been going after Palin as much as I have. First of all, she is McCain’s running mate, and so I regard uncritical or overly optimistic assessments of Palin to be unnecessary and undesirable assistance to McCain, whom I think we will agree does not deserve such assistance. Second, the more I learn about her record the less reason I have to be impressed with her time in office and the less reason I think conservatives have to be falling all over themselves on account of her nomination. A “fiscal conservative” who leaves her city deep in debt, a supposed anti-pork crusader who lobbies for and accepts earmark spending and a governor who signs into law a hike in the surcharge on oil profits does not strike me as someone likely to influence the GOP in the right ways when it comes to taxes and spending. In this I think I am being no more hostile or critical of her than I was of Huckabee, Romney or any of the other contenders in the primary whose record or views I thought needed to be challenged or questioned.
Another concern–and this comes back to the scam remark–is that social conservatives are being duped into endorsing another GOP ticket that will yield no action on a social conservative agenda, but meanwhile social conservatives will bear the stigma for empowering McCain and whatever misguided policies he implements and will bear the blame for propelling him to power more than any other group because they will be identified with Palin. So I don’t see her inclusion on the ticket as a grand gesture or a magnanimous act, but as another stunt designed to lure us in and then ignore our concerns for the next four years. For that matter, I have come to the view over the last few years that pursuing a principally party political agenda is not really the right priority for conservatives, and to the extent that Palin’s selection has typified the privileging of party political activism over preserving and creating the culture we want to have it is a reinforcement of the wrong habits and ensures conservatives’ increasing reliance on the political process to try to address unwanted cultural change, which will ultimately prove unsuccessful.
Maybe that makes me implacable, but on the major areas of policy where I think McCain is most in the wrong (e.g., foreign policy, trade, immigration) and where his policies are most detrimental to the national interest Palin not only does not provide any counterbalance but seems ready to embrace and perpetuate the sorts of policies Bush and McCain have backed. I don’t know how I can look at the prospect of those policies continuing to dominate the GOP and win the support of most conservatives without making my objections known right away.
The reflexive loyalty I see is not to a party, but to a person primarily on the basis of her small-town, middle-class Christian background, and it troubles me the same way that the uncritical embrace of Bush by movement conservatives troubled me in years past. We have seen how this instinct to endow a politician with virtues blinds people to the pol’s flaws, and I fear it is happening all over again with Palin. I see that people feel the choice to be magnificent, and I don’t doubt that this is a sincere feeling, but I would suggest that we need to do less feeling and more thinking. Maybe I am too inclined to make the perfect the enemy of the good, and I’ll leave it to you all to determine whether I am being unreasonable, but I confess to not understanding the importance of embracing pragmatism when the things being done by the pragmatists are misguided.
Where exactly is the irrationality?
If you assume that foreign policy isn’t going to change, that no one’s going to “clean up the mess in Washington” for once and for all or “roll back the size of government”, and that each party is going to be about as good or about as bad for the economy as the other, what else do you have to vote on but those moral, emotional, social, or cultural issues: abortion, guns, gays?
If both parties move to the center, before or after the election, what is it but a few wedge issues that separate them? Democrats would like to say “health care,” but if it looks like any system will be imperfect and merely replace one set of deficiencies with another, where does that leave us?
When you look at the various campaign appeals — this move on the part of each campaign from “experience” to “change” from “maverick” to “moderate” and back again — voting one’s gut looks as rational as anything else.
You do raise some good points in your last comment. But if you are a social conservative and figure that no president is ever going to be as conservative on the social issues as Bush was, but that McCain couldn’t be as bad as Obama would be, where’s the irrationality in supporting him? It’s “half a loaf is better than none” politics, but there’s a long tradition of that here.
Using your faculties for critical thought and logical analysis is a conscious choice. There are no Vulcans among us. The difference between the thoughtful and not-so-thoughtful is the intellectual standard one sets for oneself. No doubt, the viscera is more powerful than the intellect in general. But as much as people suppress visceral impulses in everyday life (they choose not to have an affair, or sock their boss in the face, or shoplift etc. or buy that TV they can’t afford), they seem to channel them into politics and sports.
Both thrive on vicarious identification and clannishness—basic survival instincts that precede and sometimes conflict with enlightenment values and the prudence necessitated by personal responsibility. Politics has actual consequences, and sports do not (save European Futbol, given its traditional association with nationalism), but this all important difference doesn’t seem to compel a difference in approach, maybe because the costs of politics are socialized, causality often obscured, and responsibility for outcomes arbitrarily diffuse—acting as a subsidy to the viscera, and an incentive to be reckless and impulsive, without personal penalty.
JBraunstein:
I’m not assuming that those “moral, emotional, social, or cultural issues” are more emotional or visceral than they are moral or social or cultural, so the idea that it’s solely about the gut really doesn’t apply here. I wouldn’t necessarily say that it was “all about” God, guns, and gays, either. Surely there are economic reasons why voters who’ve identified themselves with one party or the other don’t stray.
What I’m getting at is the idea that there is one clear rational alternative available to conservative or Republican voters now — one choice that would be more rational or better than simply staying with the devil you know. If there is, what would that choice be? If there isn’t, can you really blame voters for sticking with what they think they know?
Those who are enthusiastic for Palin now probably wouldn’t vote for Obama under any circumstances. Third parties aren’t much of an option either. Voters may like the candidate who pokes at free trade or NAFTA or foreign wars or porkbarrel spending, but they aren’t going to go whole hog for protectionism or isolationism or libertarianism.
When push comes to shove most voters don’t want to face the risks involved in overturning the status quo in a major way. Who’s to say they’re wrong in that hesitation? And what or where is that rational alternative preferable to staying with the party you’ve voted for in previous elections?
And what or where is that rational alternative preferable to staying with the party you’ve voted for in previous elections?
The rational alternative is the realization that the party you’ve voted for in previous elections in fact bears much of the culpabilitly for the current state of affairs, and simply may be incapable of solving the problems that it at least helped to create.
Which is to say that if your primary concerns remain abortion or homosexuality or other social concerns, you will most certainly continue to vote for those who at least pay those issues lip service, even if/when you know that they aren’t actually going to do anything about them. For at least the issues remain on the corner of the table, with the prospect, however dim, of moving foursquare into the middle of it if only you can get the “right” people in office.
But if those aren’t your primary issues, I simply do understand how continuity is somehow preferable to change. Sure things are bad now and likely to get worse; but we don’t want to roll the dice because there’s a chance we could lose. History is generally made, and change only occurs, when you do roll the dice.
[...] The hits keep coming from the Palin trainwreck, and I think the thing that amazes me the most is the way that the right-wing has simply circled wagons around her. There really is no one on any of the right-wing blogs (other, of course, than Daniel Larison and the folks at Amconmag, who you should be reading every day anyway) trying to put the brakes on this mess. It is all spin, all nonsense, all sheer babble- they really are serious about promoting this wingnut to the #2 spot. They simply are not serious people. At any rate, more awesome from our female Bush: [...]