Democrats and Republicans, a generation from now
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A generation from now, the Democrats will be different but recognizable, the heirs and person of Barack Obama. But the Republicans will be completely different, the heirs of the late Ron Paul, never President despite his Nobel Peace Prize
With the long-ago passage of universal public healthcare, the old Republicans will finally have run out of anything to say, having sold the paleocon pass on trade and war to Obama, and everyone having seen through their con trick on abortion. So the people with things to say will have set about replacing them, especially after Palin lost every state in 2012. It is not unusual for parties to define themselves against their own past Leaders. The Tories over here are currently doing so. If Labour wants to survive, then it will have to do so, too. And in a generation’s time, both American parties will be defined against George Bush, which in the Democrats’ case will also mean against Bill Clinton. The nomination of Barack rather than Hillary was the beginning of that process. This Administration is the definitive break with NAFTA, with GATT, and with the bombing to smithereens of here, there and everywhere.
To the wider world, both parties will be equally unobtrusive. America will not have fought a war since the withdrawal from Afghanistan way back in 2010, and everyone who knows that there still are a few troops in Iraq will be calling for them to be brought home, since the one country with an outstanding threat to launch a nuclear strike against any other, requiring to be shot down by those troops, will by then contain so few secular Ashkenazi nationalists that it will hardly seem worth bothering to deter them, even if that withdrawal would leave the USS Liberty unavenged for ever. The days when Presidential candidates were expected to pay court to a foreign spy network will be as forgotten as the same days when several of those same candidates were on the payrolls of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. That network itself will have been smashed, its name as abominated as those of British and Soviet spies in previous eras. And cross-party shifts in energy policy will have consigned those regimes and their region to irrelevance in American politics, while other cross-party legislation will have dismantled their gigantic stakes in the American economy.
Domestically, the differences will be very real. That said, being the party of Obama rather than Clinton, the Democrats would never dream of repealing the phenomenally successful Pregnant Women Support Act, or introducing federal funding of abortion, or anything like that. The Republicans, meanwhile, would never commit electoral suicide by threatening to repeal healthcare. Indeed, having seen the fate of their predecessors, they will go out of their way to avoid discussing the matter at all. Both parties will be equally tough on illegal immigration, and equally insistent on English as the national language, by then barely an issue due to the success of Obama’s bipartisan second-term paybacks to his black base. On this as on any possible reversion to Clinton-era job exportation, warmongering or enforced social liberalism, Senator Bob Conley of South Carolina will be the conscience of the Democratic Party. Both parties will leave the definition of marriage to the states, with as many Democrats for the traditional marriage always favored by Obama as Republicans for a more libertarian approach. A similar cross-party divide will exist over drugs, although the federal prohibitions will still be in place.
The signs of all of this are already apparent. Just look at the hysterical rage of the remaining Bush supporters. (Or, indeed, Clinton supporters.) Only a year ago, it was treason and terrorism to criticize the President, who was said to be above both the Constitution and the law. Where does that leave them now? What does that make them now? Of the Barack Obama Party and the Ron Paul Party, for which are they going to vote, and why? It would take a heart of stone not to laugh.
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A scummy post, and ignorant too!
Whatever you think about secular Ashenazim, in general they’re by far the most dovish and pro-Arab segment of the Israeli population – the segment most in tune with your own apparent views. The most “nationalist” (whatever that means), hawkish, and anti-Arab Israelis are the Mizrahim, the Jews of Middle Eastern background, many of whom speak Arabic as their mother tongue.
Smearing an ethnic group is fun, and I don’t mean to deny you or your readers that joy. But you’ll find that it can be even more fun if you first take a few minutes to learn something about the targets of your smears.
Our Constitution. We’re not willing to consider people of principle who actually try to preserve, protect and defend it… so may it rest in peace.
If it is the party of Ron Paul, the ardent constitutionalist, then it will be railing to overturn universal public healthcare. If it does not, then it is not the heir of Ron Paul. Get over it David. American conservatives are NEVER going to accept unconstitutional government run health care. If they do, they will cease to be conservatives.
Dan, they’ll admire everything about Ron Paul except his pronounced failure to win Presidential Elections. Many things about him, or about the paleo world generally, will be popular enough to form the basis of one of the two major parties. So ithose things will do so. But railing against healthcare, once it is up and running, will be strictly for the purists, not the politicos. Both have a role in the whole, of course. But only one ever gets into a position where they can actually do anything. Do you ever want to be in that position?
David, I agree that “both have a role,” but in the age old debate between purists and pragmatists, the pragmatists already have PLENTY of spokesmen and outlets. If I want pragmatism I can go to GOP USA or Red State and be served a steady diet of it. Where is a conservative supposed to go for purism? Places like TAC ought to exist to serve up pure unadulterated purism and be the counter balance to the chorus of pragmatism that assails us constantly. Who else is going to do it? Conservatives need outlets of conservative constitutionalism or they risk ceding the entire limited government field to doctrinaire libertarians.
Check out our website for some constitutionalist purism on the health care debate, which we created because so few others were speaking for this perspective.
I have to agree that once people think they’re getting things for nothing, they will fight to keep it. This method of transforming citizens into serfs is well understood on the left. It works. Why you’re are for it is the real question.
I love and support Ron Paul, but the man’s conscience is not conservative. His spirit lies primarily in the liberal tradition.
It would be absolutely silly to make opposition to universal healthcare the litmus test for conservatism.
It is still sillier to pretend we are going to get nationalised, universal healthcare anytime soon. What we are getting is a bill where the Democrats, backed financially by the insurance companies and Wall Street (as they have been for a while), will force us to buy private insurance at a high cost, while the State absorbs many of the legal liabilities of the private companies, allowing them to remain inefficient, and yet profitable.
To oppose the Democratic plan because it is a scam and a ripoff is wonderful. To oppose it on libertarian grounds because you don’t want to be forced to buy insurance is fine. To oppose it because you think it is too hard on our great private insurance companies that people are really too hard on is insane. The latter is, alas, the Republican strategy. Just like their line on TARP … basically silence but yelling at Obama “HEY you can’t tell banks (which take billions of govt money) how much to dole out in bonuses!!”
Good grief.
Thomas O. Meehan,
Why did Bismarck provide a comprehensive social welfare programme for German workers?
Perhaps there were legitimate demands for social welfare because the market cannot and does not provide all services efficiently and in the common interest? Perhaps people who have actual troubles getting decent health care coverage are not stupid losers? Perhaps it is not normal or sustainable that health care be 16% of GDP and always growing with way above average inflation?
Thomas, Bismark’s insurance scheme of 1881 covered loss of income from sickness and accident. It was not a “comprehensive social welfare program for German workers.” It was enacted by Bismark with the help of the Free Conservatives and other parties, to head off any independent organizing among Germany’s lower orders and was also a concession to the rise of industry over agriculture. German workers had to wait for Hitler to get something “Comprehensive.”
A compulsory insurance scheme existed at latest from 1911, 22 yrs before Hitler (even if the latter first granted paid holidays).
The point is why would you analyse the granting of welfare provisions as a concession to a grand collective group like “industry” if there were no legitimate demand for it because the market was so damned efficient at providing the given service? Why would the Free Conservatives go along? Were they just trying to make serfs out of the proletariat?
To get back to the point of the post, though, I think it continues to reveal a bit of naiveté concerning American politics.
Paulistas might even come to be the majority of Republican activists in the next few years (or at least a plurality of many factions), but they cannot constitute a majority of Republican voters for many years, at least unless and until a majority of people stop getting their news from Fox, NBC, ABC, etc.
The reality, David, is that most Republican voters appear to support sustained or increased American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. It will be another year or two before the Republican base becomes more dovish than the Democratic base…after all, Bush was in power 8 long years.
The American people may be moving slowly towards peace, but don’t you think it won’t take much to pull them back to war. The concurrent polls on Iran, where Americans don’t want war but would be glad to see Israel do it and could agree to it themselves in a variety of (frankly, unfair and easily provocable) circumstances, are a good example of this.
I just got back from the US where I was for my sister’s wedding. Both my grandparents and my parents-in-law used to get the American Conservative, and my GPs were big Buchananites. They were puzzled why the War in Iraq occurred and they were sceptical of Bush’s provocations against Russia. But now that Obama is in power, and they watch Fox News all day, they all think Obama sold out the Czechs and Poles, and that Romney and Gingrich are very articulate on foreign policy. They are suddenly convinced Putin is a communist waiting to recapture lost territory and that Iran should be punished because it (IT!) is so aggressive. Anything to show those damned Democrats!
This is our reality. :>(
Thomas, you asked, “Why would the Free Conservatives go along? Were they just trying to make serfs out of the proletariat?” You placed your finger on it. Bismark created this benefit as a way of forestalling organization among the growing German industrial worker class. He wanted to draw the workers into a paternalistic pact, in which the workers would look to the aristocratic regime for direction, rather than organize themselves. Remember Germany had anti-socialist laws at that time.
My point was to reassert the old Conservative observation that government handouts are a moral hazard.
Way to go, Aaron! It’s nice to see you turning truth on it’s head. And a little “anti-semite” martyr posturing/whining thrown in to boot.
Hate to break it to you, but we’re not such “gullible goyim “here!
This isn’t a neo con site and doesn’t cater to the Israel first crowd. So why are you here?