Not To Worry–Pretty Soon, No Republicans Will Be Influential
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Gallup finds that the GOP is in retreat among almost all demographics. Meanwhile, Robert Stacy McCain does fierce battle against that most dangerous of creatures: the conservative who is taken seriously outside of the confines of the cocoon. The Gallup findings are interesting, because they show that conservatives are among the least likely to have stopped identifying themselves as Republicans, yet they remain convinced that pursuing an agenda geared towards appealing to them (and only to them) is the means to win back all the other people who have drifted away since ‘01.
The Midwest figures are stunning: Republican ID in this region has dropped by nine points. This is not just the heartland, which the GOP is supposed to represent so well, but it has been the historic core of Republican politics at a national level since the founding of the party. Even having lost the Northeast is not quite as bad as being decimated in the Midwest. The GOP has even lost five points among married voters, six points among whites, seven points among men and nine points among middle-income voters, all of which are equal to or greater than the national average. This is the hollowing-out of the Republican coalition as we know it. McCain will be pleased to find that Republican ID among college graduates has dropped by ten points in the last eight years–the danger of more arrogant young punks involving themselves in conservative politics has been substantially reduced.
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80 Responses to “Not To Worry–Pretty Soon, No Republicans Will Be Influential”
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Your core is now in the South, not the Midwest–I note that there were losses there, but they were smaller; I’d love to see a breakout of that region and the losses there–and has been since the middle 90s. Insofar as the South is different from the rest of the country, and specifically from the Midwest, the party is or should be different, and in that regard, RS McCain sort of has a point: the Establishment infrastructure that was built lo those many years ago–including the structures that groom replacement talent–doesn’t well mimic or represent the base and the way it thinks through various public problems.
I don’t think he’s as clearly wrong as you seem to think.
Your core is now in the South, not the Midwest
Who is the you this “your” is referring to?
Considering crackpot McCain’s history, he might have an ulterior motive here. Like secession. And that gets a lot more probable if the republicans are reduced to a regional only party with no chance of winning a presidential election or having any influence in the congress.
[...] will only be five Republicans in Congress, and one of them will be Ron Paul.” Now Daniel, only a bit hyperbolically, proclaims “the hollowing-out of the Republican coalition as we [...]
I agree, the core is the south. This will make for interesting times as even the south is much more representative of the nation as a whole than it was formerly. It is entirely possible that a new south will rise, one much less friendly to Republicans. Gov Goodhair in TX clearly got a wakeup call from someone(s) – you can bet backing off his secession talk was not originally on his agenda.
Jake
The GOP and mainstream conservatives have taken it on the chin for a long time now of course. But I think things are looking better now than at time since 2005.
The reality is, the GOP and mainstream conservatives are the best hope for civilization, prosperity and limited government in America today. It’s just that nobody’s paying attention yet. But they will, oh they will.
So at this point, the various dissident conservatives, moderates, or for that matter anybody who wants to win at life instead of going on some form of government dole, they all need the GOP more than the GOP needs them. Like Janis Joplin sang, freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.
Don’t fret, Daniel.
The RNC is about to rename the Democratic Party the Democrat National Socialist Baby-killing Satan Worshippers Party. That will certainly persuade those who have left the Republican Party to hurry back to the fold.
Who is the you this “your†is referring to?
Fair point. Nonetheless, the larger point, I think, remains: McCain may not be wrong as regards the disconnection between those who represent the Republican party, as a function of its relatively new (and certainly newly empowered) base, in various Establishment outlets. I’m not sure any description of GOP politics that doesn’t account for the South and its differences from the rest of the country will be very convincing.
s/b “McCain may not be wrong as regards the disconnection between those who represent the Republican party in various Establishment outlets and the current, newly empowered Southern base.” Or something like that.
The disconnection between GOP elites and voters has existed for more than forty years. There is nothing new in this. Over the years, I have complained more about this than most, especially concerning working and middle-class folks and social conservatives, but this gap alone does not explain why the GOP’s support is collapsing in almost every demographic. The problem with McCain’s analysis, so called, is that there is no effort to understand why the party is losing ground. The answer is always “RINOism,” when that is the last thing it is. The GOP elites haven’t been “Republicans in name only,” they have been Republicans, pure and simple, and as Republicans they have used the loyalty of reliable supporters for their own purposes for decades. It’s finally coming back to bite them, and all McCain can say is “RINO!” The trouble is that you have conservatives who back the GOP no matter what it does, even now, and who continue to tie themselves to it. Everything the so-called “RINOs” have done, they have done with the enabling support of people like McCain.
I used to find the phrase “The Republican Party didn’t fail, it was [insert preferred individual/group/idea] that failed the party” laugable because of the absurdity of the statement, but it seems to be more of a calling to arms from so many conservatives now-a-days.
There is so little introspection, including in the article by The Other White McCain, on behalf of so many Republicans. Rather than identify the cause of the gap and determining how to best address the obvious shift in popular opinion in order to place themselves in a politically advantageous position 4-8 years from now, many of the party members would rather point fingers, stomp their feet, and promote ridiculous initiatives – such as passing resolutions to rename the Democratic party – as if such actions will constitute even a basic functioning opposition.
RS McCain’s position is the problem. He believes that individuals who don’t maintain the positions and arguments of the last eight years are not making legitimate arguments, but only seeking to ingratiate themselves with the dreaded liberal media(I won’t even address the myriad of straw men in his argument. How many conservative op-eds have you read advocating late term abortions anyway?). None of the positions are deemed to be legitimate or reasonable; it is only a criticism of conservative policy for criticism’s sake. And that is the problem. Rather than addressing the criticism and understanding why such criticism is resonating with the public, it is more improtant to shrug off the opposition as foolish or “selling-out” to better maintain the view that you are and always were right.
RSM’s little hissy fit demonstrates that he, and much of “mainstream” conservatism, have never understood the phrases “be careful when you fight monsters, lest you become one” and “when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back into you” They now tightly embrace virtually every intellectual and emotional weakness they used to condemn in liberalism.
Mike
A commenter on another blog made the comment, “The Communist Party has been consistent in its principles for over 50 years now, and they haven’t grown.” It is really the perfect rejoinder to the argument the Republicans haven’t been conservative enough. There is no silent majority anymore. And it’s not like this incompetence has been limited to the federal level. Sebelius was governor of Kansas after all. There were plenty of signs of the GOP train falling apart.
I’m not sure the GOP actually cares about, or wants, the support of the general population. They seem quite happy to shrink down to a statistically insignificant fanatical core.
In view of their leaders’ statements, notably the one about how the GOP should be like the Taliban – and also considering the rigorous attempts by extreme Christianists to turn the USAF into a fundies-only armed service, I wonder if they actually do envision (and want) a violent overthrow of the government, once their numbers consist of nothing but True Believers.
The reality is, the GOP and mainstream conservatives are the best hope for civilization, prosperity and limited government in America today. It’s just that nobody’s paying attention yet. But they will, oh they will.
Given that the GOP has not accomplished any of these things in living memory, and “mainstream” conservatives appear to be either joining the purification of the GOP or lamenting the fact that the peasants won’t return to their plots, love their hovels and listen to their bishops, how can you expect anyone to take this statement seriously?
Or have I been spoofed? Everyone here seems such a true believer…
“Given that the GOP has not accomplished any of these things in living memory,…”
What the heck, you have graduated kindergarten, right? In _my_ living memory, the GOP and mainstream conservatives have won the Cold War, lowered taxes, reformed welfare and strengthened the military.
“Everyone here…”
_Here_, reading Daniel’s blog? Surely you jest.
What the heck, you have graduated kindergarten, right? In _my_ living memory, the GOP and mainstream conservatives have won the Cold War, lowered taxes, reformed welfare and strengthened the military.
Uh yeah, kindergarten and more. On your original claims:
In my lifetime, Nixon and Bush II continued or perpetrated war for domestic political purposes, one of them used torture to attempt to justify same, and violated US law and treaties to which the US is party. Conservatives have consistently exploited cultural wedge issues, and fanned divisions among Americans, for political gain. Nice work on the “best hope for civilization” front.
“Prosperity,” eh? You have some interesting definitions–or you’re in the top 5% of wealth and wages, and love the “fuck you, I’ve got mine” approach.
Under St. Reagan and Bushes I and II, national debt and deficits have risen, government has expanded, laws intrude further into personal and religious life, and cronyism was raised to an art form; so much for “limited government.”
As to your revised claims–only a child would believe the end of the Cold War was the work of one man or party, or even so nebulous a grouping as “mainline conservatives;” the notion that borrow and spend is superior to tax and spend is, indeed, kindergartenish–get back to me when you’re precious “lowered taxes” benefit the country and its citizens overall. And how could you forget top hype deregulation and its benefits to all? Welfare reform? Cite? I hope you’re not touting Medicare Drugs; or are you claiming Clinton as one of yours? Finally, perhaps you should check military experts, in and out of service, on how well the Iraq misadventure has “strengthened” the military–or just check your state’s gov on status of the National Guard. You’re getting delusional, son.
And yeah, you apparently are a true believer.
“As to your revised claims–only a child would believe the end of the Cold War was the work of one man or party, or even so nebulous a grouping as “mainline conservatives;—
Look, if you’re going to try to do any kind of analysis on this kind of thing, you’ve got to be able to get past the arc of day-to-day skirmishing and follow the broad trends of political accountability.
As far as the Cold War goes, it is well known that, say from 1968-1988, the Demo’s wanted to downplay the assertion of national interest to avoid any kind of conflict with communist states whereas the GOP had a more adversarial stance toward communism. Everybody paying attention knows this: the domestic political establishment, our allies _and_ adversaries. If this is obscure or opaque for you, maybe you should try Scrabble instead.
In the same way, you can look at the other items and give the GOP credit for all of them: strengthening the military, reforming welfare, and lowering taxes.
This isn’t to say that the GOP has accomplished everything it should: for a variety of reasons it has not won the battle wrt immigration, abortion, the welfare state, and affirmative action. Some of the reasons are excusable, some not.
But for all of this it ought to be clear that one team, who sometimes fails to uphold its principles or execute its agenda is worth our support whereas the other team who has no principles worth upholding, isn’t.
say from 1968-1988,
Ah. My apologies. I understood that we were speaking of the present and future. So you’re saying that if the mummified remains of “mainstream conservatives” from several decades ago, bearing no credible similarity to nor responsibility for today’s GOP, could be magically reanimated in today’s circumstances, somehow disclaim any responsibility for the shambles left by the prior few GOP presidents yet claim responsibility for any good that happened during the interregnum on a ‘broad sweep of history” basis, the nation would awake to the wonders of conservative rule and sweep them into power? My bad. So his students weren’t sufficient–you’re pining for the revived corpse of Nixon?
No wonder you’re fascinated with jabs about kindergarten and Scrabble–you’re doing politics with a Ouija board.
“Given that the GOP has not accomplished any of these things in living memory,….”
“I understood that we were speaking of the present and future.”
Forgive me for taking you too literally.
Just to summarize, my position is simple: that today’s mainstream conservatives have accomplished very important things in our living memory. We also have credibility (wrt abortion, immigration, spending, etc) as being as being the best hope for civilization, prosperity and limited government _today_.
Most importantly, this isn’t a matter of trying to convince you of anything. If you don’t want prosperity, civilization, and limited government by all means stand in line and wait for your bailout like everybody else is doing. My guess is, even if you don’t want those things now, there will be a time when you will. Hopefully, we’ll still be around then.
“today’s mainstream conservatives have accomplished very important things in our living memory”
No, they haven’t. TODAY’S mainstream conservatives are different in many, many ways from the conservatives who helped accomplish most of the things to which you refer.
“If you don’t want prosperity, civilization, and limited government by all means stand in line and wait for your bailout like everybody else is doing.”
You could also equate conservatism with ice cream and puppies if it makes you feel better. Framing the argument in such infantile terms ultimately won’t get you anywhere politically, however.
Mike
“No, they haven’t. TODAY’S mainstream conservatives are different in many, many ways from the conservatives who helped accomplish most of the things to which you refer.”
Really, like how? As I understand it the whole context of this discussion is the argument from various stripes of dissident conservatives that the Reaganite blueprint is old hat and we need to try something else. I think it’s fair to say Daniel (among others) believes this.
So they think we’re Reaganites, we think we’re Reaganites, I think it’s legit to point out that we’ve accomplished some very important things over the last 30 years _as Reaganites_.
This doesn’t mean that we are the political equivalent of an ’80s Greatest Hits cover band. But it does mean that for those consumed by bile like the other commenter who try to say that we never accomplished anything, we say straight-up, “No. Check the tape.”
“As far as the Cold War goes, it is well known that, say from 1968-1988, the Demo’s wanted to downplay the assertion of national interest to avoid any kind of conflict with communist states whereas the GOP had a more adversarial stance toward communism. Everybody paying attention knows this: the domestic political establishment, our allies _and_ adversaries. If this is obscure or opaque for you, maybe you should try Scrabble instead.”
Who initiated conflicts with communist forces in Korea and Vietnam, again? Way to fail high school history.
Just to summarize, my position is simple: that today’s mainstream conservatives have accomplished very important things in our living memory. We also have credibility (wrt abortion, immigration, spending, etc) as being as being the best hope for civilization, prosperity and limited government _today_.
I leave the total illogic of the first sentence as an exercise for the reader. You want to be Reaganites? Since 1980, national debt, national deficits and size of government have increased under Republican administrations; debt and deficits have decreased during Democratic administrations. Turns out most people aren’t that concerned over size of government; they care about competence and service delivery–I doubt you want to get into conservative “accomplishments” on that front. Over the last decade, income and wealth disparities have reached 1920’s levels. We’ve had a jobless expansion, with wealth and power concentrated in the financial sector, whose profligate greed and irresponsibility damn near wrecked us. The federal government has increasingly involved itself in individual decisions, and executive power has burgeoned. You’re welcome to be proud of that record. But your credibility is limited to the 20% of the people who already agreed with you, because they’ve become convinced that someone else’s bedroom antics are more important than their own family’s welfare. Outside of that shrinking minority, you’re really not doin’ so well.
“Who initiated conflicts with communist forces in Korea and Vietnam, again?”
1. When did those things happen?
2. What did they accomplish?
As a Westerner, I was initially attracted to Reagan and the Republicans because of the Sage Brush Rebellion. There really hasn’t been that much to cheer about, no great accomplishments, quite the opposite.
“As far as the Cold War goes, it is well known that, say from 1968-1988, the Demo’s wanted to downplay the assertion of national interest to avoid any kind of conflict with communist states whereas the GOP had a more adversarial stance toward communism. Everybody paying attention knows this: the domestic political establishment, our allies _and_ adversaries. If this is obscure or opaque for you, maybe you should try Scrabble instead.â€
Wow. This manages to be both false, as ScottS points out, and totally irrelevant to the initial point, which was that the GOP “won” the Cold War. Talking a meaner talk does not force empires to fall. The Soviets didn’t hear Reagan call them an “evil empire” and then suddenly decide that they couldn’t exist anymore.
(This is something which always kind of baffles me. People love to make the claim that communism “works great on paper” but doesn’t actually do good things in reality and is bound to collapse. Okay, the USSR did collapse. But if that’s the case, why does it require America opposing communism fto happen?)
Likewise, “strengthening the military” means what exactly? What makes a military stronger? The ability to fight and win wars? Which wars has the GOP fought and won? Granada? Or perhaps preventing invasions of the US. Which the Democrats have been pretty effective at as well.
Welfare reform went through a Democratic president, so it was hardly a pure GOP victory.
“Lowered taxes.” Well, yeah, okay. They’re a one-trick pony for that one. And if lower taxes for anyone anywhere is inherently a good thing, then we can celebrate this whole-heartedly. Lowering taxes consistently on the super-rich more than anyone else, on the other hand, isn’t so great, though I guess you could still be generally supportive of that.
“Since 1980, national debt, national deficits and size of government have increased under Republican administrations; debt and deficits have decreased during Democratic administrations. Turns out most people aren’t that concerned over size of government; they care about competence and service delivery–I doubt you want to get into conservative “accomplishments†on that front.”
Absolutely I do. It is true that Reagan (and Republicans since) accomplished very little in terms of reforming the welfare state. Otoh, Reagan made government work again, to the point where things like Medicare Part D and NCLB became plausible.
About the size of government, maybe you (and the voters) don’t care very much about it now. But the size of government that Obama is planning will not lead to a strong economy, and you might care about it later. Then again, you might be hoping that your fellow Americans will indefinitely subsidize your lifestyle, in which case we just have to hope you get outvoted.
“Wow. This manages to be both false, as ScottS points out, and totally irrelevant to the initial point, which was that the GOP “won†the Cold War. Talking a meaner talk does not force empires to fall. The Soviets didn’t hear Reagan call them an “evil empire†and then suddenly decide that they couldn’t exist anymore.”
That’s true as far as it goes. But the historical record of the consequences of Reagan policy toward the end of Communism is so strong, it has to be regarded as presumptive at this point. Though, you can dispute it as an academic exercise if you’d like.
“1. When did those things happen?
2. What did they accomplish?”
And now, rather than conceeding the error, you change the subject.
“And now, rather than conceeding the error, you change the subject.”
It’s not an error, try to keep up. I’m 39, those things aren’t in my living memory. And in the case of VietNam at least, it didn’t work anyway.
“So they think we’re Reaganites, we think we’re Reaganites, I think it’s legit to point out that we’ve accomplished some very important things over the last 30 years _as Reaganites_.”
Ronald Reagan accomplished some important things when there were no “Reaganites” or their numbers were too small to play any meaningful role in policy-making. Some other folks who might claim to be Reaganites accomplished some things when working in tandem with Bill Clinton, but what exactly did so-called Reaganites accomplish under Bush I or Bush II?
Mike
Reagan made government work again, to the point where things like Medicare Part D and NCLB became plausible.
I assume by plausible, you’re specifically excluding things like effective, economical, or “small government.” I’m 61; even with a much longer baseline, your appeal to conservative accomplishments of the past rings hollow. I suppose part of your disenchantment with Obama is his return to Reagan’s tax rates?
“As far as the Cold War goes, it is well known that, say from 1968-1988, the Demo’s wanted to downplay the assertion of national interest to avoid any kind of conflict with communist states whereas the GOP had a more adversarial stance toward communism. Everybody paying attention knows this: the domestic political establishment, our allies _and_ adversaries. If this is obscure or opaque for you, maybe you should try Scrabble instead.”
Oh come on. 68 Nixon becomes president, era of detente, loss of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, Gerald Ford says Poland isn’t a satellite of the USSR. Jimmy Carter, the most badass President of the late twentieth century comes in, grain embargo, Olympics boycott, defense buildup, human rights, aid to the contras and the Afghans. Reagan continued Carter’s policies, but that’s about all you can say about him.
A nice illustration of the arc of mainstream conservatism, 1968 to today: Dick Cheney–acolyte of Nixon, member of the inner circle, puppeteer to the boy president; now, defeated vice-president spouting lies, vitriol and self-justification to criticize a sitting president. An act, needless to say, he has loudly proclaimed as treason when it was his ox being gored. Good luck, Koz.
The Republicans are in total denial about the fix they are in. Either from obtuseness or unwillingness to face reality they just don’t want to talk about the huge generational, ethnic and geographical shifts which are basically leaving their party behind. Instead they focus on personalities, faux controversies and looking back to the golden Reagan era. These folks are moribund.
“A nice illustration of the arc of mainstream conservatism, 1968 to today: Dick Cheney–acolyte of Nixon, member of the inner circle, puppeteer to the boy president; now, defeated vice-president spouting lies, vitriol and self-justification to criticize a sitting president. An act, needless to say, he has loudly proclaimed as treason when it was his ox being gored.”
I’d ask you to back this up, but I doubt you would actually take the trouble to show what exactly is lies, vitriol or self-justification. I know you won’t find anything where Cheney says that criticizing the sitting President is treasonous. In any case, the most important thing to know about Dick Cheney is that he is _gone_ and whatever sins he has committed are in the past. Whereas the economic (and other) incompetence of the present Administration is very much with us.
“Jimmy Carter, the most badass President of the late twentieth century….”
Is this supposed to be a joke?
Koz, on May 21st, 2009 at 3:17 pm Said:
“the most important thing to know about Dick Cheney is that he is _gone_ and whatever sins he has committed are in the past.”
……So who was I watching on tv this evening, a Dick Cheney impersonator……Koz is the living proof of just how big a hole the Republicans are in and the extent of their denial….I’ve no objection to his stance but it’s totally destructive of Republican hopes for return to electoral viability…….I’m afraid Dilbert had it right.
Well, mostly the reference to Jimmy Carter as the most badass president was meant as a joke. However, one thing that particularly annoys me is people who don’t see the continuity between the late Carter administration and the Reagan administration on anticommunism. People unaccountably forget that in the seventies, the Republicans were the party of detente.
Whatever one wants to say about Cheney, and I could say a great deal, he is clearly not gone. He has been *the* topic of conversation today, and has made a point of becoming a de facto leader of the opposition to the President. Over at AmSpec, Quin Hillyer is over the moon about his performance, which I suspect would not be the case if Cheney were an irrelevant figure from the past. Even Reihan, God bless him, was (I hope as a joke) floating the suggestion that Cheney might be in the mix in 2012.
Not only is he not gone, but quite a few people on the right seem to be very happy that he is not gone. I don’t think he intends to go anywhere, and will keep hitting the administration on these issues for the next several years. It is his prerogative to speak his mind, but he must be entirely indifferent to the effect he is going to have on Republican prospects. The man has Nixon-like popularity, and not as much personality, and he is becoming the leading spokesman of the GOP for lack of any credible alternatives. I know Koz thinks that the GOP is still a vehicle for all of the things that he values. Let me ask this, then: do people who want to see the GOP flourish really want Cheney leading the charge? Does this make any sense?
His continuing relevance and prominence confirm my view that national security conservatives not only have not had to pay any price inside the party for what they have done to it, but significant parts of the party want to praise and embrace the last administration’s policies in this area.
“People unaccountably forget that in the seventies, the Republicans were the party of detente.”
Well, this is because they were the party in the White House for six out of ten years in that decade, and detente was by and large a smarter policy than more hard-line approaches. Detente became a curse word for Scoop Jackson Democrats and hard-liners in the GOP, but it was not that bad of an idea. I don’t think people forget that the GOP took a leading role in this under Nixon and Ford, but they allow their perceptions of Carter to be colored by the predominance of McGovernites in the Democratic Party, and they associate McGovern, unfairly in my view, with insufficient anticommunism. Also, with Carter many people tend to remember the rise of the Sandinistas more than they remember arming the mujahideen. On the whole, though, I think Carter is remembered solely through his mishandling of the hostage crisis, which was one the main things that destroyed his Presidency, and this is then anachronistically or inaccurately read into every other part of his foreign policy.
“Even Reihan, God bless him, was (I hope as a joke) floating the suggestion that Cheney might be in the mix in 2012.”
I will go on record as predicting that, unless he has another heart attack during the next three years, Cheney will be the Republican nominee. I wouldn’t actually bet money on it, but it strikes me as increasingly plausible, and I agree with Ross Douthat that he would have been a more logical (not better or more admirable, but more logical) nominee in 2008. (It is strange that he was ruled out from 2001 onward for health and age reasons, but an older man with his own history of health problems was nominated.) Cheney will carry ten to twelve states.
Ok let’s stipulate that Cheney is the special on today’s menu. Of course he was the de facto leader of the free world for 8 years if you believe the more conspiracy-minded people on the other team, so that’s kind of a step down in any case. I don’t see Cheney as a combination eminence-grise and hate figure but not so much the figurehead for the GOP. He disdained that role when he could have had it, so I don’t see how it changes now that he’s essentially a private citizen.
I agree with Quin Hillyer most of the time, but I disagree with most of what he’s written about Cheney recently, maybe for different reasons than you respect. Cheney did horrific damage to lower-case republican governance and political accountability. I understand the part about being loyal and being able to give uncensored advice to the President, but Cheney took that way past what was justifiable. So no, I personally don’t want Cheney as a GOP figurehead.
Maybe it’s not an important point, but the only way I can see Cheney’s constant open criticism of the administration which succeeded his is if he intends on running for the Republican nomination himself in 2012. Personally, as a partisan Democrat I’d love that to happen, Cheney/Palin all the way, though of course no Republican who wanted a chance of winning would contemplate such a possibility for a moment. And yet, it would give some rationalization for Cheney’s prominence. Normally a former Vice-President would fade away, but if he’s planning a run at the Presidency, it would make sense to become the most prominent critic of the current administration as a lead-in to a run. Cheney might have health problems, but his ego is beyond all human proportions, and his sense of judgment has never been geared towards the wholy rational, only the whatever he can rationalize, so why not?
conradg, I partially agree on the first sentence; there is a significant chance that he is just doing it for pure ego. At this point, his only other choice is a quiet retirement (not even the corporate world really wants him, I’d guess).
RS McCain’s column was not just routine RINO bashing. It was a humorous attempt to explain the phenomenon of people like Frum, Parker, Noonan, etc. And he hit the nail on the head in a humorous, exaggerated sort of way.
These “conservatives” who are “taken seriously outside the confines of the cocoon” are almost without exceptions moderates. (Is this not clear?) Those who are critical of the GOP from the perspective of being farther right (Gottfried for example) or representing a different kind of conservatism (Dreher for example) are not given the same platform so it is not just a matter of taking potshots at the GOP.
If Frum and Parker are who are getting taken seriously then they can have them.
Instead of wallowing in the demographic trends against the GOP, they need to try to reverse them. They can do that by pandering (acquiescing to big spending) or by attempting to change people’s minds and convert them.
To the degree that the mainstream GOP message needs changing from a more authentic conservative perspective (non-intervention on foreign policy, less shills for big business, etc.) then those matters need to be addressed and preferably identifiably from the right.
What is to be gained by seeming to identify with Parker vs. RSM in the grand hardcore vs. RINO battle royal is absolutely beyond me.
For someone who’s being not taken seriously Newt Gingrich seems to get a lot of airtime. And Dreher’s collaborator Ross Douthat just got a column in the New York Times, for heaven’s sake!
Well, what about the firestoning that Jerry Taylor endured over at NRO? Everything he said came from a right-of-center perspective….”non-intervention on foreign policy, less shills for big business, etc.”, he’s all over that stuff….and it didn’t help him a bit. He damn near got exiled like Frum and Parker.
As Dr. Larison points out, Cheney is like Nixon minus the warm, personal touch. More importantly, his attacks on Obama are helping the President hold his base together in the face of his stark betrayal on the “preventive detention” front. Obama, like Clinton, is blessed by the low quality of his adversaries.
But wait, there’s more. Larison takes the position that the so-called “national greatness” types have the whip hand in the party. Frum thinks the theocrats are in the driver’s seat The sad truth is at the moment is that one doesn’t have to choose….any departure from either line will get you kicked to the curb.
And, taken together, that’s a helluva narrow spectrum to try to market. Grahame Greene once wrote a cute novel called Loser Take All….that appears to be the current republican strategy.
I wish there had been a little coherent conservative pushback against the credit card bill the other day….In my opinion it will lead to the usual Democratic rule of unintended consequences as credit dries up for those who need it most….but it passed the Senate by what, 90 – 5? How courageous on the part of our gallant lads in grey. So much for conservative principles.
“What is to be gained by seeming to identify with Parker vs. RSM in the grand hardcore vs. RINO battle royal is absolutely beyond me.”
The problem is that the so-called RINOs in McCain’s treatment often aren’t RINOs, or even when they are their “RINOism” is not what is wrong with them. For example, just as I do, you object to Frum’s agenda on social issues, not his lack of fidelity to the GOP. In fact, Frum has been reliably pro-Republican (and indeed crafts his policy arguments explicitly and almost solely around what he thinks will aid electoral chances of the GOP), but unreliably conservative as we and others see it. McCain chooses to lambaste such people as RINOs, and in so doing gets things as wrong as he can. You don’t have to like or agree with any of his targets to see that McCain is off base here, and you don’t have to approve of attention-seeking opportunists to recognize that the GOP’s real problem is not a few talking heads who get sinecures and friendly treatment by the other side. Self-criticism has become so rare inside the movement/cocoon that the few who are willing to be critical of their own “side” get an inordinate amount of attention. If McCain wanted to spite Frum et al., he would demand more reflection and thoughtfulness from the rest of the movement and waste less time berating the few people who, for whatever reason, are willing to recognize that the miserable state of the GOP is not just some accident or fluke. McCain might spend more time addressing what the real causes of GOP collapse are, and then propose remedies to them. However, that would require something other than bile, and so he doesn’t do it.
If I “seem to identify” with Kathleen Parker et al., it is only to the extent that I have little patience for the demands for lock-step conformity on genuinely non-essential questions. Kathleen Parker is not, in fact, a moderate or anything like it; mere months before she became classed with undesirable “RINOs” of various sorts, she was saying all sorts of far-out things about “blood equity” in connection with Obama. She was indistinguishable from the cacophonous voices that now call for her head. Indeed, I very much suspect that the reason people have turned against her is not what she said, but that she broke ranks, pure and simple. She had been a conventional, rising conservative columnist syndicated all over the place; she was very popular. Kathleen Parker then had the temerity to criticize Sarah Palin, for which she was branded a traitor. She did then relish the warm glow of media approval that followed partly out of a natural reaction against the hatred focused on her. The reflexive groupthink that insisted that Parker ought to be an outcast for her views on Palin was and remains far more dangerous than anything Parker did.
If we want to get down to cases, let’s consider McCain’s embarrassing obsession with Ross Douthat. Obviously, he hates Ross because Ross received a degree from a more prestigious school and has succeeded in the world in a short period of time; to justify unseemly envy, McCain has comforted himself with the idea that Ross, a serious Roman Catholic pro-lifer, is somehow insufficiently conservative to pass muster with him, the ex-Clinton Democrat. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that he has built up an entire theory of center-right politics to make his sad grudge against Ross seem like something more than sour grapes. Ross is not a RINO. He is more reliably Republican than I will ever be, and a lot more reliably Republican than McCain has been in his life. I don’t care about partisan loyalty, so I don’t consider a lack of it to be a failing, but McCain has a lot of nerve lecturing other people about their supposed disloyalty to party.
I have made more arguments defending Obama, for example, against unreasonable criticism from the GOP than most of the so-called “RINOs” will ever do, and I have done so because the criticism has been misguided or basically wrong, and I have shown sympathy to Obama when his policy views seem to coincide more with my own than any of the so-called “RINOs.” A remarkable number of paleo and alt-right folks gave Obama a lot more benefit of the doubt than I did, and a few were much more willing to see what they wanted to see in his candidacy. On the whole, they did this because they were motivated by principles, rather than concern for partisan victories. They were not becoming “moderates,” but were instead insisting on radical adherence to principle over and against partisan attachments.
Rod has a prominent place at one of the largest sites on religion on the Web. If that doesn’t count as having some kind of significant platform, I don’t know what does. Let’s do remember that the abuse hurled at “crunchy” cons and their friends was absolutely indistinguishable from the abuse heaped on these so-called “RINOs.” One might say that the difference is that the latter deserve more of it and we didn’t, but in the end the same unthinking response using the same tropes tells me that there is no constructive criticism that can be made against movement and party that will not be condemned in virtually identical ways. That is not the critics’ problem. It is the problem of the movement and the party, and it is a key part of why both are losing ground.
We should have the discernment to see the difference between defending individuals in specific cases against a mob mentality and endorsing whatever it is those individuals may have said to rile up the mob. In this scenario, McCain has chosen to play the role mostly of a demagogue playing to the passions of the crowd, and I guess he is winning admirers in the process. It is more of the same pseudo-populist rubbish that informs his unfortunate pro-Palin zeal, and which anyone interested in a successful populist conservatism ought to deplore. As I said about Palin at the time, the best thing for elite conservatives and GOP leaders is to have representatives of conservative populism who make it seem idiotic. McCain seems to be working overtime to make sure that there is no other way to think about it. In an ironic twist, McCain helps make Frum et al. more viable and more influential by making the apparent alternative seem so unattractive.
“Kathleen Parker then had the temerity to criticize Sarah Palin, for which she was branded a traitor.”
If we want to talk about something that historians centuries from now really will find trivial, it’s the Sarah Palin phenomenon. Both the intense love and the intense hatred were (and are, since they seem to still exist in some quarters) absurdly disproportionate to anything this very run-of-the-mill politician had ever done.
“Well, what about the firestoning that Jerry Taylor endured over at NRO? Everything he said came from a right-of-center perspective…”
That was frankly horrendous. I think most dissident conservatives like to overstate the perceived ideological hostility from the mainstream, but that one is a legit beef. I can forgive Mark Steyn, but Kathryn Lopez is irredeemably banal, even when I agree with her. K-Lo is to National Review what George W Bush was to the GOP.
“The problem is that the so-called RINOs in McCain’s treatment often aren’t RINOs, or even when they are their “RINOism†is not what is wrong with them.”
That is an excellent point. One thing that hasn’t been dwelled on very much is that the taxonomy of the Right in America has been greatly clarified since say, December. There are three or four more or less distinct stripes kinds of dissident conservatism in play at the moment. Even though the worldview and policy choices vary wildly between them, they are all unified in their desire to repudiate what I call the Hannity-Palin axis, and in fact that’s where their energy is at the moment.
So even if Stacy is correct to defend mainstream conservatives, and I think he is, he should do a better job writing his bill of particulars.
I don’t think Frum was purged from NR in a fit of mutual bitterness. I think he needed a little more editorial space to develop his own ideas which he’s done, and good for him. Essentially his current stance is to flip on the environment and social conservative issues to put the more upscale, coastal voters back in play again. Frankly I don’t think this will work, politically or otherwise. But the motivation is understandable.
They had a good piece up the other day about health care reform to emphasize cost control, using the “enforcement first” immigration strategy as as an analog.
“Obviously, he hates Ross because Ross received a degree from a more prestigious school and has succeeded in the world in a short period of time; to justify unseemly envy, McCain has comforted himself with the idea that Ross, a serious Roman Catholic pro-lifer, is somehow insufficiently conservative to pass muster with him, the ex-Clinton Democrat. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that he has built up an entire theory of center-right politics to make his sad grudge against Ross seem like something more than sour grapes.”
I don’t think Stacy is envious of Ross (or God forbid hates him), he’s angry, to some extent at Ross but mostly at the establishmentarian mentality of the GOP establishment. The thing to understand is, the complaint is legit but the target isn’t. Other people “like” Ross in some ways fit Stacy’s complain a lot better. I think Ross gets some abuse because he wrote a book justifying nepotism.
“You want to be Reaganites?”
Well, yes and no. The most important thing to emphasize is that, as hard as it is for many otherwise smart people to get their heads around, mainstream conservatives and the GOP have the winning message _right now_. That is, the winning message for America (given where we are right now, that will actually be easier than winning for the GOP).
The problem is bandwidth. Lots of people have lots of emotional issues of one kind or another. I’m guessing Les is more or less a garden variety liberal, so his bogeymen go back to Reagan. By contrast, most people who “should” vote Republican are stuck on Bush. Fine. Let’s figure out where the mental blocks are, and unpack them. Only then, unfortunately, can we talk apples to apples.
Daniel, do you really think RSM’s beef is that these people are insufficiently faithful to the Republican Party as an institution? I don’t know for sure, but it wouldn’t surprise me if RSM voted third party in ‘08. We have a terminology problem here. RINO does not really mean RINO. No one questions the fidelity to the party per se of John McCain, Snowe, Frum, etc. No one really even questioned it of Specter until he jumped ship. The issue is a lack of fidelity to the principles the party supposedly stands for. (Now whether it has ever actually stood for those things is debatable.) So RINO doesn’t really mean RINO, it means CINO. Or for those such as Specter who didn’t claim to be conservatives it meant something like sell-out or moderate or insufficiently conservative. But I really don’t think this is all that cryptic. RINO has a well understood meaning even if technically it is not entirely accurate. If a liberal Democrat called Bob Conley or Zell Miller a DINO would we be scratching our heads wondering whatever could they mean? It clearly would mean insufficiently liberal just as RINO means insufficiently conservative. (Now whether we are best served by such close hitching of the concept of conservatism to Republican is certainly debatable, but for now it is what it is.)
Frum is a particularly interesting case. A decade ago he wrote a book, Dead Right, claiming that the GOP was not conservative enough on spending. Of course he took shots at paleos in the book, but the major theme was something you, I and RSM could all agree on. That so-called conservatives don’t follow their small government rhetoric.
Now 10 years later he writes a book, runs a website, and hopes to lead a movement that says the exact opposite. That the GOP and conservatives need to drop the small government rhetoric and get with the big government program. Now how does one explain this radical transformation? While no one can read Frum’s mind, it is hardly outrageous to speculate that he changed partially because his conservative beliefs became increasingly hard for him to hold (and the GOP became increasingly uncomfortable to be identified with) among his social circle. And that this represents a cosmo vs provo divide as our friend Sean calls it (or elitist vs. populist, or anti-yahoo or whatever). His anti-Huck, anti-Palin, and anti-Meirs hysteria all reflects this same pattern.
There were good right-wing reasons to be against all three, but responsible rightist critics have to be clear that their criticism is in fact from the right or it all just sounds like more criticism from the cacophonous moderate middle.
More on Parker and Palin later.
I think that Koz actually falls into an error in the post above. For instance, the Republican indifference to crazy deficits actually began under Reagan and the Kemp/Roth tax cut. Now, they never meant for it to go this far, but at some point a lot of the base interpreted all of this to mean that lower taxes were always fine and would, generally, lead to expansive tax revenues. This is not, and never was, true. Even Milton Friedman would not make this claim ( I was amused, the other day, by Prof. Bainbridge’s argument that Richard Posner had never been a conservative…..liberals should be made of sterner stuff). I’m all for low – but progressive – taxation, but let us not pretend that reducing tax rates is gonna fill govt. coffers….it’s a gimmick line more suited to loan sharks than to statesmen….and yes I can apply that to Keynes and JFK as well as to the Gipper
I pick on tax and fiscal policy because these have become part and parcel of GOP ideology in a way that they were not when I was young. Back then – long ago and far away – the Republican Party was fiercely anti-communist but otherwise quite realpolitik. They were sort of casually pro-wealthy and low-tax, but….they had survived FDR, after all. They were anti-statist, but only in the same way that Jim Morrison once made the distinction between “suicide and slow capitulation”. Gay marriage, abortion and euthanasia were not on the horizon.
In short, things were quite different. This is not a message problem. Getting back to Reagan is no more helpful than getting back to FDR….it’s a pretty thought, and a seductive one, but it is not relevant to the current situation.
If a Democrat called Zell Miller or Joe Lieberman a DINO, she would not be referring to their lack of liberalism (Lieberman is quite liberal on most issues), but the fact that they have spoken at the Republican convention and endorsed Republican candidates.
William, there is no sense playing word games. What is commonly meant by the term RINO is clear, and it does not mean insufficiently faithful to the GOP per se. It means not conservative enough.
RedPhillips,
Saying the word “Republican” in “Republican in name only” doesn’t mean “Republican” is playing a word game. Partisan solidarity is different from ideological solidarity, and the inability of some conservative republicans to distinguish between the two is part of the problem.
“the inability of some conservative republicans to distinguish between the two is part of the problem.”
We absolutely agree on that. But what RINO means to those who use it and hear it in this real world we actually live in today is insufficiently conservative. This may be unfortunate. This may be less than linguistically accurate. This warrants being addressed separately. But it is. So Daniel saying that Frum is actually a good Republican because he votes for the Party’s nominees (as far as we known) is not really addressing the point. Is Pat Buchanan a RINO because he once ran as the Reform Party candidate? Am I a RINO because I encouraged conservatives to vote for Baldwin instead of McCain and Frum not a RINO because he voted for McCain? Frum is a RINO because he endorsed Rudy Giuliani among many other reasons. This terminology, unfortunate or not, is clear to all who inhabit this universe.
There’s obviously no point in continuing this conversation, so I will bow out by saying that I find the fact that someone who actively discouraged people from voting for the Republican presidential candidate is calling other people “Republicans in Name Only” to be pretty hilarious.
You can have the last word if you want it.
Whatever. This is just silly. Up is down. Down is up. The grass is blue, and the sky is green.
I have NEVER claimed to be a loyal Republican. I have always claimed to be a conservative, and I self identify as a paleoconservative. I have always counseled conservatives to be free agents. Work in the Republican primary system AND third parties (particularly if they have ballot status in your State). Vote for the most conservative GOP primary candidate and if the GOP nominee is insuffciently conservative vote for the third party nominee in the general.
I seldom use the RINO term myself. But that is not the point. The point is that when RSM or any other partisan movement conservative uses it, they DO NOT and never have meant disloyal to the Republican Party per se. They mean not conservative enough in the way the movement defines conservatism (which is often wrong). This is a fact. Any contention otherwise is semantic game playing and nothing more.
Here is how Wikipedia defines RINO.
“Republican In Name Only, or RINO, is a neologism created by Los Angeles conservative activist Celeste Greig. It is considered a disparaging term for a member of the Republican Party of the United States (the GOP) whose political views or actions are perceived as insufficiently conservative or otherwise outside the party mainstream.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_In_Name_Only
But what does Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia of the people, know about what a term is popularly understood to mean? Better to have Jacques Derrida up there deconstruct the language for us and tell us peons what it really means.
Here is how the Urban Dictionary defines RINO with example sentences included.
“Republican in name only; typically means a member of the GOP who’s more liberal than a Republican should be
Schwarzegger’s one big RINO!”
and
“Republican who acts and votes like a liberal and ignores the wishes of other Republicans.
Specter and McCain are RINOs.”
Now I hope we can be done with this ridiculous conversation.
Okay, I think the dispute over the RINO label is taking the conversation nowhere. Let’s focus on one of the specific points McCain makes in the linked post from AmSpec. I should acknowledge that my earlier comment was responding as much to this as I was to the “Republicans who really matter” item. The two are closely related, since his reference to “RINOism” was a direct response to the poll data in question, but let’s leave the other post aside for a moment.
What does McCain say in this other post? Here is one claim:
“You’re not going to get favorable treatment from, say, “60 Minutes” by being a dependable voice for the grassroots GOP.”
It is unlikely that anyone on the right is going to get favorable treatment from 60 Minutes under any circumstances, but who determines what counts as being a “dependable voice for the grassroots GOP”? (Note once again that McCain is putting things in explicitly party-political terms.) Is it the person who cheers the grassroots on as are they are duped with crude pseudo-populist identitarian appeals to rally them in support of a GOP agenda that harms their actual interests? McCain has a line about “GOP quislings,” but who was a bigger booster than anyone of Palin than R.S. McCain? Palin’s nomination was the ultimate exercise in co-opting the grassroots to serve the cause of a national party that McCain himself attacks as being disconnected from and hostile to the grassroots, yet the relative few on the right who criticized Palin were presumed to be cocktail-sipping quislings. Maybe it is the Palinite cheerleaders who are the enabling quislings of the party leadership. How about that?
One point I would make here is that complaining about the talking heads who receive favorable media attention is at best a distraction from addressing what is really wrong, and at worst it is an attempt to deflect attention away from those who are actually responsible. Moaning about how this or that columnist is not a team player–which is the core of the issue–is all very well as a movement and/or party solidarity-building exercise, but can anyone honestly say that the movement and party have lately suffered from an excess of internal dissent? Would we not say, as long-time critics of the movement and party, that this constant demand to be a team player and not to speak against “the family” is the source of many current political woes? Does this demand make any more sense when it is being imposed on people we disagree with?
I think most of us here can agree that conservatives were entirely too deferential to the former President and his officials. There is a misguided attachment to the Presidency among conservatives for reasons we can discuss later, but it creates an atmosphere in which there is great reluctance to make strong principled critiques of a Republican President until it is far too late. This same excessive attachment to prominent figures, such as Limbaugh, and the resulting pile-ons against the Jerry Taylors of the world make it clear that the path to advancement in institutional conservatism is to keep one’s mouth shut or to engage in apologetics on behalf of the approved figureheads. It’s not as if the defenders of Limbaugh are wearing hairshirts and living in the wilderness–they’re doing all right for themselves, too.
Why not be a little harder on the people who flatter and ingratitate themselves with a radio personality–they are abasing themselves no less, and perhaps more, than the ones who are getting temporary favorable coverage as a critic of the radio personality. The latter may occasionally get some attention from the media, but the former are the people leading and running the conservative movement, which makes them a more significant obstacle to recovery. It is the same refusal to accept constructive criticism of leaders happening all over again. Typically, paleo and alt-right people see how deeply foolish this resistance to criticism is when applied to politicians, but I submit respectfully that the same wariness is not always on display when the discussion turns to figures such as Limbaugh and other movement favorites.
Regarding the 5/18 post on “RINOism,” I would just add that McCain’s interpretation of GOP collapse across demographic groups is like something from a Politburo officer. He describes the collapse as a result of “the Republican elite’s anti-grassroots strategy.” He says this not even eight months since Palin, his grassroots-mobilizing heroine, was on the presidential ticket. What “anti-grassroots” strategy is he talking about? Base mobilization has been the political strategy of the GOP leadership for almost a decade. Of course it has always been cynical and exploitative, as I have been saying for years, but who was cheering on the biggest example of that cynical exploitation all of last year and into the new year? It was RSM. Now he wants to put all of the blame on some “anti-grassroots strategy” that never existed.
If anyone wants to know why the meliorists and “reformers” frequently get the upper hand in setting the agenda when it comes to actual policy, he needs only to look at what is being offered by some of their most vocal, vehement opponents (an inchoate “return to principles,” which is never related to contemporary conditions or political reality) and then look at the often-wrong but frequently practicable proposals provided by the meliorists. It is because I disagree with so many of those meliorist proposals that I cannot stand RSM’s sort of opposition. We aren’t going to beat something with nothing, and for the most part nothing is what McCain and those like him are offering at the moment. That he compounds this mistake with other misreadings and sloppy language (e.g., “RINOism”) just makes it even more clear that his analysis is unreliable.
Then, of course, there is this charming item that Rod has pointed out. Does anyone still admire RSM’s spirit? Does anyone believe for a minute that criticizing Mark Levin’s angry disrespect for a woman caller (gentility and respect for women no doubt also being the marks of geeks and young punks) implies an elitist contempt for radio hosting as such? Does anyone take seriously that Levin was engaged in mere “blunt expression” rather than angrily shouting at a woman for no reason and declaring that her husband would be better off with a bullet in his brain? I suppose you could call it “boyish audacity,” if by that one meant the temper tantrum of a spoiled child.
“For instance, the Republican indifference to crazy deficits actually began under Reagan and the Kemp/Roth tax cut. Now, they never meant for it to go this far, but at some point a lot of the base interpreted all of this to mean that lower taxes were always fine and would, generally, lead to expansive tax revenues.”
I’m not quite getting everything jetan wants to conclude from his post, but I wanted to touch on this because it’s important for teasing out the relationship between the “thirty year talking points” and where we are today.
It’s a little unfair to say that the early Reagan years were indifferent to crazy deficits because the problems that we had then were different, just as I wouldn’t necessarily characterize someone as an inflation dove based today’s problems. The point being was that Congressional spending demand was irreformable and in any case we had bigger fish to fry. The key data point was the 1983 tax increase where Bob Dole engineered a deal where the Congress would supposedly agree to $3 in spending cuts for every dollar in increased taxes. As it turned out, we got the tax increases but no spending cuts at all, in fact spending increased moderately. On the other hand lower taxes did (and does) lead to increased growth so that was the genesis of what became the Norquist strategy.
The theory was that we could “grow our way out” of the deficits. The problem with that theory wasn’t that it didn’t work, but rather that it did. We did this under Reagan and under Clinton so the political establishment in both parties internalized this and lowered their already subterranean levels of spending restraint.
So at this point we have to leave the thirty year talking points. The Norquist strategy is past its usefulness. It’s something of a cliche to say that the principles are constant, but the circumstances to apply them change. But cliche or not, it’s true nonetheless. The interesting part, the hard part is to show exactly what this means in concrete terms instead of abstract ones. We can no longer afford to view Congressional spending as irreformable. There’s a chart circulating around the blogosphere showing the Bush fiscal policy vs. Obama’s projections. The economy can’t survive Obama’s projections. That’s the point of the Tea Parties. That’s why, for all their faults, mainstream conservatives and the GOP are still _today_ the best hope for prosperity, civilization and limited government.
“There’s obviously no point in continuing this conversation, so I will bow out by saying that I find the fact that someone who actively discouraged people from voting for the Republican presidential candidate is calling other people “Republicans in Name Only†to be pretty hilarious.”
There wouldn’t be any point in belaboring this, except that there’s more than one thing in play here and it’s worth some effort to keep them straight. RINO’s came about as “moderate” members of the GOP establishment turned selling out conservative principle into an art form. That was the point of the Specter defection: it’s not that you have to compromise something to achieve a higher good. It’s that you can’t keep them on the reservation no matter what you promise. (By contrast, I think the Maine sisters are actually pretty reasonable. They have differences with mainstream conservatism, but as I read it they’re not out to stick a needle in our eye just for spite.)
It’s also somewhat blameworthy, imo, for people of more or less conservative inclinations to vote for Chuck Baldwin or write in Ron Paul or whatever. But whatever can be said for this, it’s not RINOism.
IIRC, the stuff Stacy is complaining about isn’t either one, so in particular isn’t RINOism. So he probably ought to be a little more careful about using that word. What he’s really complaining about is the establismentarian mentality of the GOP. But the thing to bear in mind is, that’s a 100% legit beef. The party establishment is too caught up in the sausage-making part of governance to really care about limited government. But, the Tea Party-ish base still does care. And anybody else who cares needs to find a way to help them out.
“Moaning about how this or that columnist is not a team player–which is the core of the issue–is all very well as a movement and/or party solidarity-building exercise, but can anyone honestly say that the movement and party have lately suffered from an excess of internal dissent?”
Yes, actually we can. The important thing is to figure out what exactly the dissent is _dissent from_.
To some extent, John McCain, Stacy McCain, the GOP, and Mark Levin are all side issues. At bottom, the real target of the dissent is Greater Red State America, its aspirations and capabilities. For the all the Palins out there, who want to build their own families, earn their own keep, and mind their own business, if freedom in America has any future, this is _their_ country. This is the crucial point that (Stacy) McCain is getting at, though sometimes he should state it better than he does.
The problem is bandwidth. Lots of people have lots of emotional issues of one kind or another. I’m guessing Les is more or less a garden variety liberal, so his bogeymen go back to Reagan. By contrast, most people who “should†vote Republican are stuck on Bush.
Koz, your understanding of disagreement is as nebulous as your explication of the super mojo you believe you (meaning, I guess, some version of conservatism) the nation will turn to for its salvation. I doubt that by your terms I’m a garden variety liberal; you would probably find me reprehensible, some kind of screaming wild eyed radical; in world terms maybe some kind of social democrat. My “bogeymen”–more accurately, my disdain/disgust for the Republican party–goes at least to Nixon, the prior overtly criminal administration that trained the Cheney/Rumsfeld cabal, the heart of our most recent overtly criminal administration. I don’t have a good definition of “conservative,” and most of Daniel’s posts indicate to me that self-described conservatives don’t either. Your claim about all the good done under the Republicans over the last few decades is laughable to me. I don’t think there’s an actual progressive on the national scene, but at least Democrats seem to have some interest in governance for the good of the country and most of its citizens. Republicans appear to me to be a collection of radical imperialists, corporate cronies and really stupid economic theorists, interested on ruling at all costs, not in governing. The actual result of Republican rule over the last 40 years has been increasing deficits, erosion of middle and lower class economic position, deepening social divides, foreign adventurism and erosion of US standing and influence abroad, and concentration and abuse of executive power. I don’t think I’m the only one who noticed.
“At bottom, the real target of the dissent is Greater Red State America, its aspirations and capabilities. For the all the Palins out there, who want to build their own families, earn their own keep, and mind their own business, if freedom in America has any future, this is _their_ country. This is the crucial point that (Stacy) McCain is getting at, though sometimes he should state it better than he does.”
I think the problem with this statment is that modern movement conservatism – and Palin is not just part and parcel of this, but is really the apothesis of this – does a horrible, horrible job of representing what you call “Greater Red State America.” And I DON’T mean that in a “What’s the Matter with Kansas” sort of “they are voting against their economic interests” kind of way. Modern movement conservatism is an uholy alliance of the neocons and Corporate amerca – and doesn’t give a damn about the base, and in fact laughs at it in private. And to believe that Palin is some sort of genuinely populist alternative to that reality is delusional in the extreme. It may be a delusion born of desperation and lack of reasonable alternatives, but it is deperation none the less.
“The economy can’t survive Obama’s projections. That’s the point of the Tea Parties. That’s why, for all their faults, mainstream conservatives and the GOP are still _today_ the best hope for prosperity, civilization and limited government.”
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the first two sentences are true. Why you think that the second sentence follows from that is a mystery to me. I mean, if the situation was significantly less dire than you think it is, I could see a sort of lesser of two evils argument. But if things are as bad as you say, how is current movement conservatism – with all of it’s yes, manifest faults – possibly going to save the day. Limited government? Are we talking about same GOP and “mainstream conservatives?” Or are you, perhaps, referencing a GOP and conservative movement from some sort of alternate reality?
Okay, that last sentence came out too snarky. But really, it’s hard for me to understand supporters of limited government supporting EITHER party in the United States today.
And to just focus on Palin for a minute, I can certainly understand how a populist conservative could have initially seen her as possible savior for the party (though even from the start there aspects of her performance as governor that should have been concerning for small government conservatives).
But, even setting aside all of the factors that turned off moderates and even many center right conservatives, one would think that populist conservitives would have realized very early on, with her enthusiastic embrace of neoconservatism (in apparent contrast to some earlier paleo-friendly positions/statements), that Palin is, like so many other politicians of every political stripe, perfectly willing to accomodate herself the power structure as a means to gain political power.
“Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the first two sentences are true. Why you think that the second sentence follows from that is a mystery to me. I mean, if the situation was significantly less dire than you think it is, I could see a sort of lesser of two evils argument.”
Actually, the fact that the situation is as dire as it is is what makes the whole thing work. Otherwise the tendency to play the game between the 40-yard lines would be too much.
Remember how Mitt Romney campaigned on the “three-legged stool”. Well, instead of that let’s think of a three-link chain. Theres Greater Red State America, linked to the movement conservative intelligentsia, linked to the GOP political establishment. All three links have adapted to the welfare state in various ways but none of them really like it.
The crooked timber of humanity has many flaws but adaptability is one of its singular virtues. In the next 3-5 years, the foundations of the entitlement state in America are going to be in play unlike they’ve been at any time since LBJ. The other team is going to be spending all their energy adding to the already heavy dead weight on the economy. But mainstream conservatives, and the three link chain that it’s a part of, has the talent _and the instinct_ to get us out of this jam.
“I think the problem with this statment is that modern movement conservatism – and Palin is not just part and parcel of this, but is really the apothesis of this – does a horrible, horrible job of representing what you call “Greater Red State America.—
Yes and no. There’s been a lot of mistakes over the last decade or so, but the loyalty is real. To see that, just take a look at this Mark Levin business and see who’s on which side. Levin is perceived, correctly, as having skin in the game defending the interest of Greater Red State America. That’s the only reason he’s being defended, and in ought to be pretty clear that Stacy is defending him on exactly these grounds.
With a few exceptions that’s more or less the problem with the various dissident conservatives. They have either consciously or otherwise repudiated the sovereignty of Greater Red State America. And it’s a particular issue with the paleos, whose aesthetic sense is commendable in some ways but as a practical matter is the driving force behind their mindless factionalism.
“And to just focus on Palin for a minute, I can certainly understand how a populist conservative could have initially seen her as possible savior for the party (though even from the start there aspects of her performance as governor that should have been concerning for small government conservatives).”
I don’t know what exactly this is referring to. I have hope for Palin as a politician, but more important than Palin the politician is who she represents. In lots of important ways she is the personification of Greater Red State America.
This might not be such a big deal in other circumstances, but right now the lack of lower-case Republican legitimacy in America is staggering, and it’s focus was the wholesale trahison des clercs against the (John) McCain campaign. The reestablisment of the sovereignty of Greater Red State America is not necessarily sufficient for anything but a necessary part of any kind of recovery for America, economically, culturally or otherwise.
Koz,
It’s clear to me that you’re saying all of that in good faith. But from where I sit, that represents such a massively flawed view of reality – not a logical flaw, not a flaw in terms of political philosophy (we differ there, but not in a way that precludes discussion – but rather rather a massive failure to accurately appreciate the real facts on the ground, so to speak, that any kind of discussion is impossible – certainly in the context of a blog comments section.
Umm–Greater Red State America? Personified by Sarah Palin?
Your hope for America is a nation against taxation, against competence, against education and expertise, in which every state receives more in federal payments than it pays in federal taxes? Personified by a selfish, divisive, vindictive demagogue fundamentally ignorant of and disinterested in national and international issues beyond their immediate impact on her, personally? What tops the list of attractions? Her concern over witchcraft and right religion, her openness to secession or her impeccable family values?
Thank the lord of your choice that you’re among the shrinking 20%.