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Teabags and the Altamont of the Right
The best way to understand the state of modern conservatism today is to look back at the demise of FDR liberalism in the 1960s. The similarities aren’t perfect, mind you, but they are instructive. American political movements that develop over decades tend to follow a pattern. They rise, drawing from years of pent-up frustration channeled into polished plans and sold by charismatic political leaders; and then, after they run their course, they falter amidst their own contradictions. In the aftermath comes the sad spectacle of denial and, occasionally, rage. This was the story of Populism, Progressivism and FDR liberalism. Often they fail spectacularly, as they did in the Election of 1896, the Red Summer of 1919, and the Altamont Festival in December 1969, which effectively bookended the idealistic 1960s Left. Such is the story of modern conservatism. The tea parties represent the same sort of frustration among the Right over unfulfilled dreams and lost power that the various comical and occasionally violent left wing protest movements did from 1968 to 1972.
Consider the state of American liberalism in early August 1965. LBJ had just won a landslide victory in the Presidential election in November. A coalition of Northern Democrats and Republicans helped to pass landmark Civil Rights legislation a year before and had just passed the Voting Rights Act, finally making the Fifteenth Amendment a reality. Johnson had already launched his Great Society programs that aimed to eradicate poverty and encourage a better quality of life for all Americans. With Medicare and Medicaid, Johnson had fulfilled JFK’s promise to offer health care to the elderly and the poor.
But then came Watts.
And then the escalation of Vietnam.
And it all started unraveling. Crime spun out of control and riots tore cities apart, only furthering the process of suburbanization that left largely black cities behind. The Federal government reneged on all of its “community-based” principles at the heart of the Great Society and turned it into a bureaucratic nightmare. The Vietnam War merely polarized two wings of the Democratic base against one another – the “hard hat” white working class against the young, idealistic Baby Boomers.
And then came Nixon, who expertly exploited the deepening cultural rifts, turning the very rage on the Left against the Democratic Party. The FDR liberals had run out of ideas. Their base was divided. And the leaders of the Democratic Party – especially 1972 nominee George McGovern – epitomized a movement whose best days lay behind it.
From 1968 to 2008, the conservative movement grew to power, established hegemony throughout the American political system, re-shaped the American economy, and reinvigorated American military might. Though it failed to turn back the sexual revolution and the sundry other cultural movements of the 1960s, the conservative wing of the Republican Party managed to reassert a certain cultural conservatism and outline a set of “wedge” issues that would propel it to electoral victory for a long time.
While that 40-year reign produced some notable accomplishments, including the end of Communism and the restructuring of the tax code, it ran out of steam after the 2004 election. What killed it – just as with FDR liberalism in the 1960s – were the internal contradictions. Take the big “tea party” issue of government spending, for example. As Andrew Sullivan points out, the Right wasn’t exactly filled with rage over the Medicare Prescription Drug bill that added $32 trillion to the future debt; sure, there were voices of protest in the blogosphere and among a small minority of Congressmen, but the conservative media establishment and the Republican political leadership supported this radical expansion of entitlements.
There was a reason Karl Rove and co. supported such a “Big Government Conservatism” position – it was the only way the GOP could win. The greatest selling point of small-government conservatism from the late 1970s through the 1990s was welfare reform. Yes, highly educated libertarians and very wealthy people supported small government conservatism as a matter of core principle. But the voting base of the GOP lay with the white lower middle class in the South and Midwest, and the way that Presidents Nixon, Reagan and Bush Sr. sold small-government conservatism was this: big government = your hard-earned tax dollars going to lazy black people on welfare. From busing to welfare queens to affirmative action, the GOP made opposition to big government-based redistribution of wealth to the mostly minority poor a central selling point. But then President Clinton signed Welfare Reform in 1996 and, in a moment, destroyed the Bob Dole campaign in its tracks. No single act altered the course of conservative Republicanism more than Clinton’s signing of welfare reform. From that moment on, the GOP needed a new tack. Racial backlash against perceived “reverse discrimination” could no longer win at the polls. More importantly, “small government conservatism” no longer had the cache among among lower middle class whites.
And so the GOP turned to religion. In 2000 and 2004, the GOP and George W. Bush made his evangelical Christianity his greatest selling point. Much of this Christianity was explicitly politicized, drawing heavily upon anti-1960s sexual revolution backlash. Abortion and, later, gay marriage could rally millions of voters to the polls. And, as Rove saw it, the new religious “wedge” issues could divide core Democratic constituencies like Latinos and even African Americans. As 2004 showed, the strategy worked. But it came with a price.
In order to attract these newer, lower middle class voters – many of them non-white – the GOP had to abandon small-government conservatism in all but rhetoric and push for a Big Government that benefited the religiously conservative. To prove to these folks – traditionally Democratic in economics – that the GOP cared about them, Rove pushed his prescription drug plan and other “compassionate conservatism” policies like education reform. This was triangulation, Republican style. And it started to rankle some of the older core constituencies on the right. Nativists worried about illegal immigration and Bush’s demand for comprehensive immigration reform; these were the old law-and-order types among the white lower middle class that once flocked to Nixon and Reagan and now felt Bush was abandoned them for the Latino vote. A small group of fiscal conservatives started complaining about the deficit. And then, with the Administration’s incompetence on display in Iraq and Katrina, soft Republicans started jumping ship. It was as if those who thought government really was the problem had set out to prove it. Finally there emerged an economic crisis borne of decades of financial deregulation and a government push for “expanded home ownership” that Bush (and Reagan) embraced every bit as enthusiastically as did liberal Democrats.
Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 closed this chapter in American history. The left triumphantly proclaimed a New Progressive era, confirmed in President Obama’s budget. The center moved to the left and embraced “hope” and “change”. The soft right moved to the center, still remembering the utter failure of the Bush years and willing to give Obama a chance. Remaining on the right rump are the teabaggers. The Glenn Becks. The far right ideologues who have not – and cannot – come to grips with the death of American conservatism. When they finally held the full reigns of power in 2002, they proceeded to “govern like liberals.” Why would the self-proclaimed conservative Republicans “sell out” when they got to power? Surely, the only reason Republicans lost in 2006 and 2008 was the party’s “abandonment” of “core conservative principles.” (Forget, for a moment, that absolutely none of the polling among the general electorate shows voter anger at the GOP’s alleged leftward movement.) This, the true believers tell themselves.
And so the right lives on in a state of denial. Paranoid conspiracies about Obama’s “Islam”, or “socialism” substitute for principled political opposition. Even capitalism and Christianity – twin pillars of American conservatism – seem to be on the wane.
The conservative Republican base looks out on an America that is less Christian, less supportive of free market capitalism, less nationalistic, and less white and sees a country in decline. While Obama represents a multicultural future for an America based on a resurgent liberalism, multilateralism and social tolerance, the Right wonders where their country has gone.
That is what this tea party is all about. It represents a profound sense of loss – the true believers’ last act. It isn’t really about bank bailouts or taxes, though those issues are certainly part of the agenda (of course the Left despises the bank bailouts just as much as the Right). It is merely a requiem for a movement that promised, as recently as four years ago, to move the country in a permanent rightward direction.
To understand the rage and frustration of the teabaggers of 2009, then, is to understand the confusion and alienation among the Left in December 1969. That month, what could have been one of the greatest cultural moments of all time – a rock festival including the Rolling Stones, Jefferson Airplane and the Flying Burrito Brothers – turned into a disaster. In the midst of it, a Hells Angel guard stabbed a drug-addled black man with a gun who had planned to kill Mick Jagger. More important than the event itself, Altamont signaled the death of the hippie dream – and even the death of optimism on the Left as a whole.
This is where the Right is at this point. In the wilderness, confused, angry, and occasionally paranoid. Utterly unsure of how to approach the Obama Administration and its ambitious progressive agenda, the Right hopes that America will just “snap out of it” and “wake up.”
If history is any guide, the Right will be waiting for about 30 years.
48 Responses to “Teabags and the Altamont of the Right”
[...] at The Moderate Voice has some ideas, and they make a lot of sense. And so the right lives on in a state of denial. Paranoid [...]
It was as if those who thought government really was the problem had set out to prove it.
Great comment, and sums up how I (and I guess a lot of other former GOP) see the past few years. I do think you underestimate the end of the uneasy alliance between social conservatives and libertarian/fiscal conservatives that existed until around 2004. It was more than just a few people complaining about the deficit, it was also the realization that the social conservatives had “won” at the expense of the more libertarian wing, which became evident in issues like Terri Schiavo and certain elements of the Patriot Act. In my view this was the critical split that led to the GOP losing power.
I haven't paid a lot of attention to the Tea Parties. In the sense that they support fiscal responsibility I am for them. Fiscal responsibility is not a left/right issue, it is economic reality. If we overspend we will eventually suffer for it.
In the sense the Tea Parties are a pep rally for social conservatism I can't support them.
Elrod thanks for a well-done essay.
I support the right in their tea parties. It is my hope that they might evolve into the new moderate wing of a redefined Republican party. Goodness knows the country really needs a moderate Republican party. Unfortunately, the right doesn't seem to be ready to dump the Fox Trots or the Beck fanatics. It will be interesting to see which way the tea parties turn.
Congratulations for the stupidest commentary on the tea parties yet. Which is quite an accomplishment given that Andrew Sullivan has weighed in.
The GOP is a dead party. We are toast and its pointless to continue to kill us off. However i do believe that the democrats are not content with being in power and having a huge majority as well. They cant get enough hate put into words and works. I think they would have us exectued or at least tried along with GWB for war crimes. After all we are hitler loving, gun toting, war mongering rich people who got to where we are off the sweat of slave labor.
Thanks for continuing to point out how irrelevant the GOP is and conservative thought is in a fascist America.
Echo what DaGoat said.
Of course, no one on the left is writing about how short sighted that the Democratic Party is. What is going to happen to a country where most of the population believes that it should receive more in government benefits than it pays in taxes and that 5% of the population can pay enough taxes to support the spending of everyone else.
Also, as the U.S. becomes less white, will the U.S. be able to generate the economic growth to sustain the massive amount of government spending. As progressives point out, the U.S. will soon be less than half white. However, progressives keeping looking to countries like Sweden or Denmakr as places with good progressive policies. Can a country that will soon have the demographics of the third world really maintain a first world economic base?
This is a superb article. Thank you!
superdestroyer: Shouldn't you be commenting on Stormfront? That second paragraph is totally racist.
As for short-sightedness, we shall see. The Democrats want to be in power a long time, and the way to do that is to run the country well so they'll be voted in again and again. The Republicans wanted to be in power a long time too, but a combination of incompetence and an ideology at odds with good governance did them in.
This is well done, Elrod. Your analysis of Clinton's welfare reform, in particular, strikes me as relevant. Yes, it was the GOP that pressed hard for that reform, but in the end it was a Democratic administration that enacted (and took credit for) it.
DaGoat's observations about the Terry Schiavo travesty, incidentally, are spot on. I don't think one can overstate the effect that had on political (vs. social) conservatism.
The right's spiral into paranoid raving, though, is quite unnerving to me. I'm finding it ever harder to merely observe, when I have so very many friends who are starting to pop off with bizarre comments at dinners and other social gatherings. There's a tendency, I think, for calmer heads to give the benefit of the doubt — to see Glenn Beck as an oddity. Certainly his antics are outlandish and extraordinary, but I'm hearing a LOT of his statements, in various forms, in the most ordinary places. From the most ordinary people.
skylights,
If you can give an example of the most successful city that is majority black, then we can discuss the future of the U.S.
Also, as Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, St Louis, and LA point out, Democrats do not have to be successful to stay in power. Democrats just have to make sure that not too many whites are voting and they will always be in power. The Democratic party knows that in the long run, the demographic changes of the U.S. will ensure that they will stay in power. The real question is what will be the effects of the the Democrats long term strategy of taxing whites to pay off non-whites will be. My guess is that corruption will really take off in the U.S. Cheating on taxes willl become the norm in order to tavoid the very high taxe rates that will be coming the future. Also, more a few areas of the U.S. will become more white as whites have to move out of areas such as Southern California that will be so hostile to whites that they will not be able to live there.
While I may not agree with every point being made, I just wanted to say that this is one of the best written columns you've ever published at TMV, and that's saying a lot because of the steady, high quality of your work. Thoughtful analysis and impressive writing style. Well done!
With apologies to everyone (especially Elrod) for responding to this…. sd, your Sailer-spew is starting to get under my skin. Seriously.
Poliman,
Progressives are suppose to be the reality based community. Yet, if anyone ever points out the differences between majority blacks cities and majority whites cities, instead of countering with facts, citations, or arguments, the race card is immediately played. Do you have any references or arguments that would show that blacks and Hispanics can produce, in the future, the same per capita GDP, that whites are producing today?
As others have pointed out before, political correctness is like a show trial. People are forced to say things that they know are not true. Look at how progressives keep claiming that the pubic schools can edacuate lower class blacks and Hispanics to replace whites in a knowledge based economy while those same progressive would never send their own children to those same schools.
California made a long term bet that poor Mexicans could be as productive and pay taxes at the same rate as whites had in the past. The State of California lost about $40 billion on that politically correct assumption.
SuperDestroyer,
I will repeat myself one more time:
As soon as the free trade idiots are put back in their place, Large Scale Manufacturing will come back to the US and most of the social problems caused by unemployment & under-employment will go away. It' amazing how many problems can be resolved by a population that gets paid decent wages.
I agree this is a well written post, Elrod even though I don't agree with all of your conclusions. Mainly, it's my belief (and hope, I must admit) that the left is so overconfident and overreaching right now that the FDR analogy won't hold up. It should be remembered that we're in the time period of Hoover right now with respect to the economic crisis, and much of the momentum that FDR tapped into was because he came after Hoover. By coming to power just months after the crash, Obama is selling his aggressive policy prescriptions by tapping into the meme that Hoover diddled and prolonged the crisis while FDR acted aggressively and solved it- but historians and economists are not all of one mind in viewing it that way. And even FDR dealt with the banking crisis first and didn't implement other parts of his social contract until later.
At any rate, we'll see.
As for the tea parties, I'm considering attending the Atlanta one next week to experience it first hand. DaGoat- I think you accept far too easily the left's definition of the movement, which is obviously bent to their own goals of squelching it before it gains momentum. Just because Elrod says that there's no principle of opposition to fiscal irresponsibility going on doesn't make it so. Methinks the left protests too much to these demonstrations- first there was widespread ignoring or downplaying of the size of the demonstrations, and now we seem to be moving on in the blogosphere to discrediting the movement. Surely you realize, DaGoat, that the left knows all too well where the fault line is in conservatism (between social and fiscal conservatism) and is willing to exploit it?
DQ – Yes, we will succeed with LSM at significantly higher prices because the American Public has shown its willingness to pay more to Buy American.
Oh, wait, no they haven't. Nor have the overseas markets. Hmm.
Step 1 No domestic customers
Step 2 No international customers
Step 3 ???
Step 4 Profits!
Step 5 Give profits to Government for re-distribution
BRILLIANT!
Don Quijote
Once again, progressvies refuse to face facts. Blacks vote for tax and spend Democrats no matter their education, their career choice, or their income. Being black in the U.S. means that you will always vote Democratic. No matter how bad the public schools are, no matter how high the crime rate is, no matter how man no show jobs the local government has, no matter the level of government corruption, non-whites always vote for the Democratic party. From cities from Los Angeles, to Detroit to Baltimore, non-white will tolerate massive failures from Democrats as ong as those Democrats are elected by non-whites.
As long as non-whites believe they benefit from taxing whites for transfer payments to themsleves, they will support high taxes, massive government, and the nanny state. The voting rights act, 8a contracting, affirmative action, and racial st asides will easily off set the belief that high taxes are bad. Of course it is easy for Asian-Americans to support high taxes when cheating on taxes in part of their business play.
What the U.S. has to look forward to is a one party sstate fighting over who gets the government goodies and who will pay for it. Those political disputes can easily happen inside the Democratic primary.
CStanley,
The Democrats are refusing to play the FDR handbook. FDR permitted almost no immigration and limited government jobs to citizens. However, the Obama Administration is determine to open the borders and allow unlimited immigration in the middle of a severe recession. So much for the FDR comparisons.
SD: That's just one aspect of FDR's policies, although I think you're correct in identifying it as a potential reason for failure of the new policies. FDR changed the social contract that the federal govt has with the citizens, and it's true that he narrowly defined those benefits for those who were already citizens at the time. The potential for immigrants to also flood the system and overwhelm the sustainability of it is real IMO- although I say that as someone who does support a form of amnesty and allowing reasonable influx of immigrations through a reformed legal process. My solution would be to allow the immigrants while keeping the social welfare benefits to minimum, safety net levels, not to restrict immigration.
“Also, as the U.S. becomes less white, will the U.S. be able to generate the economic growth to sustain the massive amount of government spending.”
Would you like to explain, backed up by facts, not bias?
AR,
Step 1: Buy cheap shit from China
Step 2: Borrow Money from China
Step 3: Used Borrowed Money from China to buy more cheap shit from China
Step 4: Sell Assets to pay of Chinese Debt.
Step 5: Default on Debt and become Northern Argentina.
Considering that a sizable portion of the Republican Party is made up of racists such as yourself who would roll back the last 40 to 50 years of racial progress, I can't say that I blame them.
DQ
You just described the Obama economic stimulus plan. Borrow trillions from China in order to give transfer payments to poor people so that they can purchase cheap stuff from China. Of course, another part of the Obama Administration economic program is to keep employing illegal immigration and to pay them with money borrowed from China and then have those same illegal immigratoin to send the money outside of the U.S.
And anyone who thinks that manufacturing can comeback has not been paying attention to the energy, environmental, and labor regulations that the Obama Admnistration is proposing.
Sure, DQ, and the evidence for that rampant racism in the GOP today is what, exactly? The sizable numbers of conservatives who voted for Obama, or the sizable number of them who didn't but praised the milestone in US history when Obama was elected?
CS,
Let me introduce you to SD…
- 0 African-American Republican Senators
- 0 Asian American Republican Senators
- 0 African-American Republican Congress Person
- 2 Asian-American Republican Congress Person
- 1 Hispanic Republican Senators
- 4 Hispanic Republican Congress Person ( 3 from Florida by the way)
- 1 Asian Republican Governor
Obviously a party that has a hard time finding & voting for non-white candidates…
DQ That only proves that there's a perception of racism on the part of voters (which is helped along when people like yourself assert it without evidence.) I don't dispute that the GOP hasn't done an adequate job of selling it's policies to minorities, but what evidence to actually back up your assertion that a 'sizable portion of the GOP wants to roll back the racial progress of the last 50-60 years'? The GOP controlled both branches in DC for 6 years- was there even a single piece of legislation put through during that period that rolled back the civil rights of minorities?
As for the tea parties, I'm considering attending the Atlanta one next week to experience it first hand. DaGoat- I think you accept far too easily the left's definition of the movement, which is obviously bent to their own goals of squelching it before it gains momentum. Just because Elrod says that there's no principle of opposition to fiscal irresponsibility going on doesn't make it so. Methinks the left protests too much to these demonstrations- first there was widespread ignoring or downplaying of the size of the demonstrations, and now we seem to be moving on in the blogosphere to discrediting the movement. Surely you realize, DaGoat, that the left knows all too well where the fault line is in conservatism (between social and fiscal conservatism) and is willing to exploit it?
CStanley as I said I haven't followed the Tea Parties very closely. Like most people I'll be working that day. My impression is that they're kind of a combination of fiscal conservatism combined with Hannity/Limbaugh-style activism. To be honest they seem a little too convenient, ie they are protesting the same irresponsibility they themselves accepted up until recently. I guess I have to question their sincerity. I don't see them as a bridging of the rift in the GOP although I could be wrong.
I don't think the Democrats are trying to exploit the rift between social and fiscal conservatism. They are completely ignoring fiscal responsibility after all. I think most Democrats believe they have arrived in power because of some inherent rightness or goodness of their own policies, and don't care much about fiscal conservatives. I agree with you that the left is overconfident and overreaching, and that will be the most likely cause of their eventual loss of power.
I don't think the Democrats are trying to exploit the rift between social and fiscal conservatism. They are completely ignoring fiscal responsibility after all.
Then I will have to continue to work to convince you.
Seriously though, I thoroughly believe this and I think that you are part of the target group of this effort. You seem, like most people who are fiscally conservative but not socially, to feel embarrassed over the socons and you feel the need to apologize or distance yourself from them. I get that (even as a socially conservative person myself, since I consider myself a rational one who knows better than to think that government should enshrine religious principles in law, I cringe at a lot of things from the religious right.) But I do think you should carefully consider whether you're being used by the left in it's attempts to kick the GOP while it's down.
I'm not endorsing the tea party movement per se- I'm thinking of attending mainly because I feel the need to experience it first hand and know whether or not any of the criticism coming from the left is accurate or if, as I suspect, it's overblown. And I regret that the movement is tied to Hannity and folks like that, but I don't know how else you mobilize the right. We're certainly lacking good leadership right now (and let's face it, we're not known for grass roots activism) but that doesn't mean the people who are responding are disingenuous. Even your criticism of hypocrisy isn't valid for that very reason- I think that a lot of the people who are now angry are mad about the current administration AND the last one, the current Congress AND the previous ones. But now, they're finally getting an opportunity to voice their discontent.
DQ,
The Democratic Party has supported programs like those that will be in front of the Supreme Court this month where New Haven decide that test where not fair because whites had all of the top grades. As long as the Democratic Party supports separate and unequal programs that benefit non-whites, then non-white will be Democrats. It does not matter if a black professional couple is pay 50% in taxes and they live in high crime, poor school, Prince Georges County Maryland. They will always vote for Democrats.
There is no way for the more conservative party to ever appeal to groups outside of the dominate group because the minority groups have defined ethnic politics as liberal politics.
Oh, one more thing on this:
They are completely ignoring fiscal responsibility after all.
That's exactly the point. The Dems (the ones at the helm, not the Blue Dogs) want to keep it that way as long as possible. So by focusing the attention of the fiscally conservative Republicans on the internal fights within our party and movement, they keep the opposition from being able to mount a serious dissent.
“I'm thinking of attending mainly because I feel the need to experience it first hand and know whether or not any of the criticism coming from the left is accurate or if, as I suspect, it's overblown.”
CStanley, I've been looking for a tea party in my own area for exactly the same reasons. So far, I've had no luck tracking anything down (and I have no desire to go to one in the enormous city nearby). I'll keep looking right up until the date is past, because I don't believe everything I'm hearing and reading about them from the left, and I don't WANT to believe my neighbors are as insane as some of the raving coming from the right.
*smiling*
But I have to agree with DaGroat. I don't think the left is making a deliberate effort to exploit the rift between socons and fiscons.
I think the rift is widening on its own.
I don't think the left is making a deliberate effort to exploit the rift between socons and fiscons.
I think the rift is widening on its own.
False dichotomy. Why not note that it's both a natural rift and one that's being exploited by the opposing party?
And the reason it really sticks in my craw is that I think the rift itself is largely a scapegoating effort by the fiscal cons in the GOP. I'm someone who straddles both camps, and I've always felt that the fiscal cons mainly used the socons, and then they neglected to hold their elected officials responsible to uphold fiscal conservative.
I mean, come on, why do we have to keep harping on Terri Schiavo? I guess I have a weird perspective on that because I agreed with the prolife stance in that instance but also agreed with folks like you, DaGoat, and most of the left that it was completely wrong to involve the federal government. But you can't seriously believe that the reason that the GOP was unable to be fiscally responsible was due to a preoccupation, which lasted at most a couple of weeks? You don't see that this is being used as an excuse by fiscal conservatives who just weren't objecting strongly at all when the party was voting for big budgets, Medicare prescription drug expansion, etc?
I'm sorry, but I resent like hell the objections of fiscal cons to the socons (even though, as I stated, I'm really a member of both groups) because the socons have been used to win elections but other than symbolic crap like Schiavo they've gotten little else to show for it. The fiscal cons, meanwhile, kept quiet about irresponsible spending sprees as long as they got their tax cuts. Yet now you guys want to say the demise of the problem was because of socons?
The Left will overreach. The question is: at what point does it become no longer tenable for the American public as a whole (a public that is changing too)? That point has not been reached yet. It may not be reached for several years. But it will happen. It always does.
CStanley,
What could the Republicans have really done for the socons? I've always seen the socon message of the GOP as channeling a cultural sense of dislocation after the 1960s – without any real promise of rolling back the clock to the 1950s. A politics of resentment that Nixon first mastered in 1968. The GOP has always represented the wealthier elites.
To me, the question has always been: which socons are we talking about? There are racial socons and religious socons. Racial socons are obsessed with affirmative action and, in prior years, busing and other civil rights measures that they deem to be unfair to white people. I term this “socon” because it isn't purely about economics; it's really about a sense of order and dignity that many lower middle class whites felt had been threatened by the civil rights movement. The anti-immigration backlash is a more modern variant of this.
Then there are the religious socons. Their anger is at the sexual revolution and the concurrent secularization of America. To them, religion has always equated itself with sexual prudence. What I and most liberals term sexual mores, socons call Christian (occasionally “Judeo-Christian” to ward off charges of anti-semitism even though the sexual ethics of most American Jews is and has always been far more permissive than traditional Christians) morals. Abortion and gay marriage are just touchstones representing a far deeper anxiety over changing sexual norms. Even I oppose abortion; I think it really is murder. But my answer is more birth control and comprehensive sex education, not abstinence. That's why, even though I agree with pro-lifers on the immorality of abortion, I will never consider myself a socon; my problem is not with the sex.
There are obviously other issues of concern to religious socons – school prayer, evolution, violence, drugs, end-of-life issues, etc. But it's hard to deny the prominence of sex-related issues (or “family” issues as they would have it) in the socon platform.
CStanley, first I'll say that if most socons were willing to talk things over like you do the split may well have never occurred.
I wasn't embarrassed by socons, I don't know why you keeping using that term. It's more that I realized the GOP as a party became much closer to the socons than they were the fiscal cons. This was a change from the “Contract with America” days when the emphasis was on controlling government. I always felt the party moved away from me, not the other way around. Maybe this is happening now to some extent in the Democratic Party which is also ignoring it's fiscally conservative members.
On Schiavo I can only speak for myself, but that was my “Aha!” moment when it became clear that the GOP was just as happy to use big government towards it own ends as the Democrats were. The issue of whether it was appropriate for the federal government to step in was not seriously considered by GOP politicians. My perception was strengthened by some aspects of the Patriot Act, specifically the NSLs, which I thought were very clearly unconstitutional. One last thing on Schiavo – the venom coming from socons towards libertarians really hit it's apex and it was obvious there was a large socon faction that didn't want small government types in the GOP. In fact movements sprang up trying to get rid of the more moderate members (something now happening in the Democratic party that I have to chuckle over. I don't agree with Limbaugh on much but he is right that liberals will always eventually find a way to screw up).
Did I speak out against Bush's excessive spending – sure but the guys I voted for didn't give a crap. The focus of the party had shifted and seemed to be shifting more towards the socons, not less. Maybe these Tea Parties really reflect a change in the GOP but I'll believe it when I see it.
SD, ok fine. We progressives refuse to face facts and play race cards. You, however, seem to have a hard time citing facts and backing up your massive generalizations. Do so and maybe you can make me a believer.
elrod,
Considering the rates of out-of-wedlock births, it is very hard to separate sex and family. Considering that every study has shown the problems caused by single motherhood, the left works really hard to ignore those studies and the consequences of out of wedlock birth.
Considering the changes in demographics, it will soon be impossible for the left to overreach. Soon, more than 50% of the votges will vote for the Democrats no matter what. Look what happens in places like Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, or Philly when that happens.
Look at the voting patterns of Prince Georges County Maryland. It has the highest concentration of white collar blacks in the U.S. It also is the most overwhelmingly Democratic county in Maryland. Of course, it has a very high crime rate with a murder rate about 10 times the rate of neighboring Montgomery County Maryland. It has a problem attracting retail establishes because it has such a business unfriendly environment. It has a horrible school system that changes superintendents each year. Prince Georges County shows that wealth has no affect on voting patterns for non-whites. It also shows that bad performance will not cause minority Democratic politicians to lose their jobs.
Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote about the cycles in American history, and he said that America is a different country every generation. Most people live in three lives, half the life of the parents, their own life and half the life of their children. Change is always with us, but until we reach an old enough age, our perspective is limited. I first voted in 1968, because I was 19 in 1964. I was always political, and remain so today. My wife and I grew up with political interests and were history/American studies majors in eastern liberal art colleges. We were very active in 1968 and stayed active until today. Liberalism did not die with Vietnam or even the riots in Watts, Newark or Detroit. It died because the Southern Democracy, which was eroding since the end of the 2/3's Rule at the 1936 Democratic Convention abandoned the national party. Hubert Humphrey's civil right's speech and plank in the 1948 Democratic Convention, and the bolting of the Dixiecrats with Strom Thurmond started the swift decline of the solid Democratic South. FDR brought the two sectional parties together, by uniting the Jacksonian and disliked Jeffersonian Democrats. He resurrected Jefferson on the nickle, with his construction of the Jefferson Memorial monument in DC, and in the eyes of both the Northern big-city immigrant and Western Democrats. The New Deal kept the the South from starving. Their section of the country had been hurt the worse. The Depression had started on the farms in the 1920's, when Europe was able to feed themselves after the devastation of WWI. Some counties in Georgia voted 100% for FDR in 1936. The country was never particularly liberal, but the market places needed reform, and very quickly after the end of the Depression, which really lasted 43 months until the late of 1933 when the economic indicators started to bottom and move slowly upward. With recovery, the right wing Liberty Lobby and many other reactionary and business-oriented groups started to drift away from supporting FDR to opposing him. Of course their opposition was rejected by the voters in 1934, and 1936, and even today their revisionists are still bleating the same old silliness. In truth, though we never recovered to the inflated numbers of 1928, the economy grew at over 10% every year until late 1937 when the Federal Reserve tightened interest rates, and FDR gave in to the Southern Dixiecrat conservative wing and cut back spending. A sharp recession ensued and FDR basically said, “I told you so,” primed the pump, and the Fed eased rates significantly. The recovery was launched again and would surge throughout WWII. FDR with his electoral majorities unleashed needed reform which was characterized as liberal. This need had always been there starting with the populism of Bryan, the progressive movement pushed by the muckrakers and TR, and then re-invigorated by Woodrow Wilson. The failure of Wilson's health, the blocking of the League by the GOP, and the refusal of Wilson to compromise caused stalemate and opened the door to the know-nothing Warren G. Harding. In retrospect the GOP never really controlled Congress in the post-war Eisenhower , Nixon or even Reagan periods, but the Dixiecrats held the leverage. When it came to civil rights they vetoed or fillibustered every effort. In fact, Nixon was quite moderate, but appealed to the Teamsters the south and other Euro-centric ethnic whites, who were formerly Democrats. to hold the barriers against the woman's movement, (which included choice, birth control and equality in the workplace) the civil rights movement and then the gay rights efforts. Today the GOP is in trouble for a number of reasons. Basically most of what the New Deal Democrats wanted was achieved, and they had run out of new ideas except healthcare reform, which is inevitable. Therefore the GOP/rightwing has run out of buz word, social issues to sway the voters so they could pick up the economic “goodies.” Immigration has run amuck because the right-wing nativists didn't have the “guts” to roll back immigration quotas to the pre-1960's standards, and needed the cheap labor to counter the unions. Lastly they have been rightly perceived as social hypocrites. Social values have changed under their feet and they have been left with the legacy of Wall Street greed, and evangelical flat-earth thinkers. The numbers are against them. In truth, the country is suffering more over the disappearance of the two-party system in too many locales. We do not have a multi-party or parliamentary system. One solution is the open primary and a run-off. This could re-invigorate choice, enfranchise the independents and allow the minority party (Democrats or Republicans) to still have a vote in deciding who will be the ultimate nominee. Again this is not a liberal or conservative cycle, it is a cycle of demographics, new alliances and a result from failure. All long and unpopular wars have a tendency to cause seismic political shifts. After WWI the GOP won, after Korean and Vietnam the GOP won, after the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan the Democrats won. No one likes long, unsuccessful wars of attrition. With the opening that allows the new party to come into power, ideological reform gets swept in on the coat tails of change. Reagan brought deregulation, Clinton brought inclusiveness and jobs, FDR brought needed market reform and regulation, and the same happened with Wilson and others. The real failure that we have experienced was not one of conservatism per say, but leadership. George W. Bush was one of our most inept presidents and his failures will be exposed for years. He will be the next Hoover “poster child” for a whole generation of Democrats. In the same way FDR, Truman, Kennedy and Democratic Congresses ran against Harding-Coolidge and Hoover administrations and won for decades (remember Eisenhower was a moderate and his three recessions set the stage for the biggest Democratic landslide in 1958 since the early 1930's) and if Obama is moderately successful a whole new generation of Democrats will be created. The Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress from 1930 through 1980 except for 1946 and 1952 when they lost both Houses for two years. That was a long stretch, and I assume another will be in the making. Its all in the demographics, and when the evangelicals give up on fighting abortion for demographic reasons, the GOP will have to re-structure or disappear.
RJ Garfunkel
Host of radio show The Advocates
heard on http://www.wvox.com or 1450 AM radio in NY
archived at http://advocates-wvox.com
PG County still operates under TRIM, an anti-property tax law passed in the 1970s by the last generation of whites. It prevents the county from spending on schools to the level necessary. Montgomery County never passed such a short-sighted measure.
As for the crime rate, PG County is really two different counties: one inside the Beltway (Oxon Hill, Suitland, Cheverly, District Heights, etc) and one outside the Beltway (Mitchellville, Upper Marlboro, Bowie, Laurel, Fort Washington). The outer sections have low crime. The inner areas have crimes rivaling the District of Columbia. Montgomery County borders the wealthy NW quadrant of DC. It is far wealthier than PG County as a whole.
As for retail, those problems are largely in the past. In many ways, the cheap land made retail for chains like Ikea more appealing. Same for the Largo area. PG might not have the retail of Mongtomery, but it's hardly Anacostia.
And re: voting patterns, didn't a certain black Chairman of the RNC come from PG County? Didn't Ehrlich-Steele win the 2002 Governorship based on inroads among white collar black community in PG County? What changed this time is Obama, who dominated among all but the most hardcore conservative Republican African Americans.
elrod,
You should see the article about the retail at the capital center development. Between the business failures and the shootings, most of the businesses are not doing very well. In addition, Prince Georges County spends over $12K per student http://www.sungazette.net/articles/2007/12/01/a… which is slightly lower than Montgomery County but much higher than other counties in Maryland. IN 2002, Townsend got 150K votes in PG whereas Ehrlich got 45K. I wonder who they were?
No matter how much money, or what level of affluence or what level of education, blacks never vote against big spending, high tax politicians. If anything, blacks respond by just not paying their taxes (See Marion Barry) instead of voting big spenders out of office.
Unfortunately, I do not think that the “tea-baggers” is a one-party issue. I think that it is a grass roots effort of concerned citizens, who think that the country is going in a direction they did not sign up for. Obama campaigned as a moderate who would reach across the aisle, but he is coming off as a far-left Democrat and people are starting to “buyers remorse” because of the issues.
More like an Astro-Turf campaign.
- 0 African-American Republican Senators
- 0 Asian American Republican Senators
- 0 African-American Republican Congress Person
- 2 Asian-American Republican Congress Person
- 1 Hispanic Republican Senators
- 4 Hispanic Republican Congress Person ( 3 from Florida by the way)
- 1 Asian Republican Governor
Someone said about the above statistics:
“That only proves that there's a perception of racism on the part of voters”
No sir, these are called facts, not perceptions
Considering Obama's approval numbers hover around 60 percent – after receiving 53 percent of the vote – I'd say the “buyer's remorse” crowd is quite small.
Obama is not going any further to the left than he campaigned. It's just that we haven't seen a genuine liberal in the White House in a very long time.
Losing the aura of conservative invincibility really stings the Right at this point. So they proclaim the absurd “taxation without representation” when A) Obama was duly elected by a majority of American voters, B) Obama is governing exactly as he campaigned, and C) Obama has not raised taxes on anybody except those making $250,000 a year.
Elrod, while I understand your feelings toward Christians who attempt to promote their sexual mores through the legal system, I think much of your distaste for them comes from misplaced based assumptions about their motivations. I'm sure there are still some sects which center their sexual morality beliefs on puritanical prurience, the vast majority of Christian conservatives that I know have a much different viewpoint- we don't believe that sex is dirty or immoral, but we do believe that it's a beautiful act between two adults who honor and respect each other rather than using another person's body for gratification. You may well agree with that but still not think the government has anything to say about it as long as there's consent between the two individuals, and I respect that viewpoint. However, the reason that there is SOME grounds for SOME legal construct around the act is that sex does in fact have consequences for society. Even birth control can fail, so really abstinence is the only failproof method. Now, in the secular sense I happen to believe that birth control should be permissible and completely available, and that teens should be educated on its use, etc. However, in the absence of an abstinence message, that too will lead to unplanned pregnancies- and thus the best approach IMO is not either-or, but both. And I do feel that there's something of a contractual agreement when two parties have sexual intercourse- that each must accept that a pregnancy might result and each must accept the consequences.
DaGoat: I agree that better discourse is needed, and yet I know hundreds of people who feel as I do (generally) about these things and the reason you don't see them here on the internets is because of the kind of reactions we usually get. I wonder, how often have you tried to engage people who are religious conservatives in these kinds of discussions? Might the problem be not just with them for not talking calmly and rationally with you, but with people from your group who treat them dismissively or even at times contemptuously? I think that a large number of religious conservatives do need to be educated about the issues of separation of church and state, and learn how to argue their positions from a secular standpoint; and from the perspective of conservatism, they need to better understand concepts like federalism.
HOWEVER…my point about Schiavo is that fiscal conservatives time and time again allowed their elected reps to vote for budgets and other policies which weren't in accordance with conservative principles. The Schiavo case is the only example I can think of where this happened in regard to a social conservative issue- and you say that this was when it first came to your attention. Don't you see my point- that it's a little disingenuous to blame them for coapting your guys when you helped elect those guys too and you didn't speak up when they weren't voting the way you expected them to?
I realize, of course, that it's hard to send a message even when you are dissatisfied. But we all can, and should have, sent letters, emails, and called whenever these guys were rubber stamping the Bush policies that were anti-conservative. We should have said, Sure, tax cuts when they make sense, but spending cuts as well. We should have said, Bush was right when he campaigned on no nation building and that's why the neocon idea of Iraq won't work.
All I'm saying is that if we don't stand on our own principles, we can't make someone else the scapegoat when the principles evaporate. For the reasons I explained to Elrod above, social conservatism isn't incongruous with fiscal conservativism. It's just that both have to be done in a particular way to uphold all of the principles, and if fiscal conservatives don't feel that the socons in the party understand that they'll need to engage them in discussions rather than trying to purge them from the party.
I get what you're saying about the purging that's already gone on , but I see that just as much on the fiscon side (Club for Growth routinely mounts challengers to any candidate who isn't for tax cuts 100% of the time.)
I think everyone in the party needs to revisit the key principles, realign ourselves with them, and then remember Reagan's 80% rule.
Speaking of numbers: the Pew Research Center has said that Obama has the most polarized early job approval of any president since surveys began tracking this 40 years ago.
People did not sign up for bailouts of insurance companies, banks or do not want their president guaranteeing automobile mufflers.
Obama received 52.9%, that is not an “overwhelming majority.” McCain was leading in most of the polls, right up until the banking crises hit weeks before the election.
He has not raised taxes on anyone, yet. But with this kind of expansion of government, whom do you think is going to pay for it?