...our long national nightmare is over.
I've been waiting for this since 2004, when America re-elected an intellectually incurious, rigid, ideologue who refused to yield to any suggestion of reality. When the GOP used homosexuality as a wedge issue and shit upon a small minority of people for political gain. After seven years of liberals and Democrats being smeared as traitors and soft on the War on Terra. Nothing but bullshits and hullabaloos from the Republican Party for eight long years.
President Barack Obama in a walk. At least 57 Senate seats. Massive gains in the House. Wholesale rejection of conservative principles of governance.
I can dig it.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
My fellow Americans...
12 comments:
Well I'm right there with you buddy. I was supporting Mrs. Clinton early on but I can see a great potential in this guy. It's gonna be weird to look at the President and see eloquence and intelligence after 8 years of looking at a man whose position seemed more of a birthright than any correlation with capacity and ability; intellectual or otherwise . I was driving home from a 14 hour day at work that started with my overseeing of one of my precincts' polling places, but was extended when many in the black community in Brooklyn were celebrating by firing their illegally owned guns into the air, thus mobilizing most of the NYPD until about 3 am. When I finally got to go home, I turned on 1010 WINS at the top of the hour and it was surreal to hear the top story. But now I have more questions than answers. Here are a few... What is going to happen with Guantanamo Bay? Will we really start to pull out of Iraq? How are we going to move forward in Afghanistan? Is the Civil Rights movement officially over? Are we going to sink into an unavoidable depression that will be pinned on this president? Will that just re-open the door for Mitt Romney in 2012? Was Bill Hicks right? Or are there people at Exxon and GE and Colt Arms who are really worried tonight? I guess tonight was a repudiation of the last eight years but lots and lots of damage has been done. Where exactly are we going to go from here?
If you think that the Democrats have been powerless and have had no bearing on the American political system for the last 8 years, that is a seriously skewed view of American politics.
I'm at work and I don't have the mental energy to get in a fight with you at the moment when I'm trying to throw together an article on how this sort of partisanship is extremely divisive and unproductive (which I have said on this blog numerous times). I will just say if this was a repudiation of conservatism, why did the anti-gay marriage amendments pass in three states that Obama carried?
Well being that I've lived in Central Ohio, East Tennessee and now a liberal cesspool in New York, I think I have a pretty well rounded view of American politics. I'm not a member of either party. I don't want to argue or fight with anybody now. Those were just a few questions I was thinking about last night. But I don't put sole blame on the Republican party for how bad I consider things to be. And I didn't call last night's election a repudiation of conservatism. I'm not sure if I even consider what has happened since 2000 conservatism. How does one even put these things into categories? If you are against secret CIA prisons and torture, can't you be for smaller government? If you consider Iraq to be an illegal war for profit can't you still oppose gay marriage? If I believe we are hanging our soldiers out to dry in Afghanistan could I still support the Bush tax cuts? I don't worship Demicans or Republicrats but that was an ass whipping last night on the order of Undertaker/Snuka. It has to mean SOMETHING right?
The amendment passed in California by a slimmer margin than it did there in 2000. In Arizona, the margin was the same as the presidential vote, which is only about 200,000 votes. In Florida it was pretty overwhelming, but, you know, old people. What can you do? (Also, President-Elect Barack Obama only won two of those states.) And Arkansas passed a measure banning gay couples from adopting children, but I can't imagine there are enough gays in Arkansas to make a couple.
What does this tell us? It tells us that homophobia is still very much alive in this country. If you want to carry that flag as a banner for conservativism, then by all means go right ahead. It's just a matter of time before this last little bit of vicious intolerance dies. I'm not as anxious about it as the LGBT community is, but I'm not happy about those amendments passing either.
I'll also note that in California, the parental notification on abortion amendment was defeated; Colorado stuffed the notion of "defining human life from the moment of conception" in a box and buried it deep in the Rocky Mountains; South Dakota voted down what would have been a symbolic stricter ban on abortions; Massachusetts decriminalized marijuana; Michigan legalized medical marijuana; Washington (the state) legalized assisted suicide. Those are issues largely championed by liberals (although those are positions often taken by libertarians and "classical conservatives" as well) and this represents a big loss for social conservatives.
Democrats flipped at least five senate seats to take a stronger majority there, picked up at least 16 house seats to expand that majority significantly, and won the presidency by almost 200 electoral votes and over 7 million popular votes, flipping at least 7 and possibly 9 Bush states in the process. I can't speak to every single senate and house campaign, but President-Elect Barack Obama ran on a fairly liberal platform: ending the war in Iraq, increased spending on education, expanded health care, environmentally-friendly energy technology, and soaking the rich with tax increases to pay for all of this. I was definitely amped up when I posted and "wholesale rejection of conservative principles of governance" is probably a little much, but at the very least last night was a rejection of the Texification of the Republican Party and the ascention of the Retarded Right, Confederate Yokels, and Backwoods Mouthbreathers.
A lot is being made by Republican pundits that President-Elect Barack Obama will need to move to the center to govern effectively, but that's not the case at all. Clearly Democratic presence in the electorate was stronger than Republican presence and the center broke towards President-Elect Barack Obama. President-Elect Barack Obama laid out a platform that is very much center-left with an emphasis on the left part and the American people approved.
The idea that Republicans are now crying for bipartisanship is hilarious, but I'm sure you can point out how someone somewhere said something nasty about Bush once that totally makes up for things like political ads tying crippled war-hero Max Cleland to bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, the Purple Heart band-aids mocking John Kerry's service in Vietnam, slime-filled books by Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin that kept the Republican base motivated for the last eight years, and Rush Limbaugh's race-baiting. (His claim that Colin Powell's endorsement of President-Elect Barack Obama was racially motivated? And repeating the rumor that President-Elect Barack Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate is a forgery? No big deal, right? Because, you know, MoveOn compared Bush to Hitler.)
So my suggestion to the Republican Party is to please move further to the right to appease the social conservatives and for God's sake, keep fighting the social revolution of the 1960s. This is a winning combination.
Also, President-Elect Barack Obama. Fucking glorious.
Congratulations Josh, you have taken this past the point of civility. But that is fine. You represent exactly the kind of Democratic voter that will allow the Republicans to win a Congressional majority in 2010 and the White House in 2012.
The GOP is a party in transition. Your narrow-minded view that the GOP is only backwoods yokels is, as I have said repeatedly, so far from the truth that it is almost a parody. I honestly thought you were smarter than that, really, not to believe the stuff you read on Daily Kos and that ilk. I would argue that it is just as bad, if not worse, then the list of right-wing pundits that you listed there.
The reason we need bipartisanship is that both sides have good ideas and, when one side governs exclusively without any input or any checks, you tick part of the country off. As I have said repeatedly until I am red in the face, one of the two sides has to call a truce. Reach out to the otherside but be prepared to go back into attack mode if someone breaks it.
There are a number of serious issues facing the country and the world, but one that stands out to me above all is the level of divisive partisanship that has increasingly plagued this country since the late 1960s. The war on terror, the economic crisis, the environment, and the energy situation all have more significant ramifications, of course, but the vile and nasty political climate in which we live in, and our officials govern in, prevents us from finding good and equitable solutions.
Obama claims to be a president-elect who wants to bring everyone together. If that is the case, he must reach out to Republicans (and not just liberal Republicans like Chuck Hagel) and include them in his coalition. When he said in his speech last night that he knew the Democrats would have to govern with "humility," that means that they can't go extracting punishment for the last 8 years. This doesn't mean that he needs to pull a Woodrow Wilson and steal the platform of his defeated opponent once in office, but rather a degree of tolerance should be had for the other side. If the conservatives have an idea or a policy that has worked for the last 8 years (and there are a good many of these, despite the conventional wisdom on W), change doesn't have to happen for the sake of change. The Senate and the House do not have to be a partisan bloodbath on a daily basis. If they start making changes to spite the Republicans (which will be the temptation), then we will be right back in the mess we were in in 1976, 1988, and 2000.
The mess in 2000 was the "stolen election" in Florida, where Democrats and a number in the press undercut Bush and his agenda (this is pre-war on terror, remember) as illegitimate. Some of the most divisive and one-sided arguments and political maneuvers came during the first part of 2001. It wasn't, in my opinion, a fair fight and it essentially gave Bush one-strike against him to where, no matter what he did, he would be viewed as a weak leader. The people had spoklen by electing Bush, but their voice was rejected. 9/11 happens and you have a rare moment of bi-partisan cooperation on things like the Patriot Act which were wartime security measures, not a part of the conservative agenda. Once that settled, even before we invaded Iraq, the divisive partisanship came back. Democrats blocking judicial appointments in committee was a major example.
There is a time to fight and there is a time to govern. The Republicans should not attempt to block every proposal Obama tries to put through just because they want to oppose. They should oppose these policies if they violate their principles. Democrats should not try to make a number of changes just to rub salt in the wounds of the GOP. They should introduce policies based on their principles. There is a time to oppose and a time to negotiate and compromise. Our politics over here are so divisive that there is very, very little negotiation and compromise. Instead it is people like Chuck Schumer thumbing his nose (literally) at the GOP senators when they bring in Ted Kennedy from the hospital to vote on a health insurance bill. It is people like Ted Stevens holding up an appointment because he was angry that an earmark didn't go through. Bills are put through and debated just to score ideological points with a particular base. Obama has to be, as he said last night, not a blue state president, but the president of the United States of America.
Oh, and by the way, just to prove my point, two individuals I have spoken with and who have spoken out publicly about the need for bipartisanship are Bob Graham and Bill Nelson. You might have heard of them....combined 26 years in the Senate and both Democrats. I hope their ideas win out over the ideas you are talking about.
Let me hit this one last time, because I'm so tired. Here are two facebook status messages that are currently on display:
XXX is ashamed to be an American today!!! America is going to regret and reap our decisions!!!
and
Ok Repubs, its time to sack up and start over. Lower taxes, small government, strong military, and traditional values. No more flirting with the left.
See....that type of stuff you can criticize all day long and twice on Sundays. That stuff doesn't help either. That is the flipside of the divisive partisanship that you are showing Josh. Neither your sentiment, nor their sentiment, will help us go forward. If you want to view politics as a zero-sum game where one side wins and one side loses in elections AND governance, then you are going to have very near half of your country pissed off in perpetuity. At some point, and we aren't there yet thank God, but at some point the minority half is going to get so fed up that governance completely breaks down and shit doesn't get done. It almost came to pass during W's term when the Dems threw the kaybash on judicial appointments and John Bolton's appointment to the UN.
I am by no means saying that I want Obama to govern as a conservative. That isn't going to happen and that isn't what the people want. Obama's message was "hope" and "change." We for sure have change, but do we have "change you can believe in?" We won't if he completely slams the door on the conservatives and treats them like red-headed stepchildren. Did Bush do that to Dems? For the most part yes, except for his Sec. of Transportation and some other low level bureaucrats. Did Clinton do that to the GOP? Yes, except for some low level bureaucrats and especially after Newt. Did Reagan and Bush I do that? Not as much. The Reagan Democrats got positions in the government.
That is the sort of thing we need. Both sides need to calm the hell down and actually try to govern. Now, if Obama wasn't out to deliver that type of change (and again, I am not saying you govern like conservatives....I'm saying that you govern with an eye to unity) then we will continue the same bitter fighting over everything. That isn't what the people want...at least the people who actually want progress.
I don't mean to be explicitly uncivil, but I'm pretty fired up about this and I'm enjoying it to no end, so take that for what its worth. I find it cute that you pull out the "I thought you were smarter than that" line considering the repeated shrugging off you've done of some terrible policies of the last eight years, carrying water for Bush and McCain/Palin at a point when conservatives who are essentially political professionals have jumped ship at the possible risk of income and professional relationships, and referencing Stanley Kurtz' batshit-crazy crusade to uncover the secret hidden anti-American Marxist whatever-the-fuck agenda of President-elect Barack Obama. I don't read Kos or his ilk, whatever that means; I checked Kos' site regularly in the lead up to the election because they do a good job of summarizing the various electoral races around the country, but I don't have any interest in the punditry there, so I don't know what they say specifically that has you riled. I know they're fairly partisan, but that isn't in and of itself a bad thing. I'm looking at the list of currently recommended diaries and I see a post titled "Like we overthrew a dictator" and that's a bit hyperbolic but the post itself is a tame description of the post-election celebration. Another titled "Screw you California Homophobes," but I agree with that; homophobia is bigotry and I don't care who thinks what about my position on that. I guess if you dig deep enough into DKos you can find something that rises to the level of filth of Malkin, Coulter, Limbaugh, etc...
Haha, no you won't. Look, you can keep trying to find something equally incendiary that some random liberal said that matches up to the vile garbage that comes from high-profile, right-wing pundits and I'll keep laughing at the asininity of your comparisons, both in the content and the visibility of the punditry.
The reality is that politics are partisan and we both know that. The idea of a "big tent" party, either Republican or Democratic, is a myth. Sure, any party will accept anyone's vote, but the platforms are what they are. People have positions and beliefs; they want what they want, they vote for what they want, and they expect politicians to fight like hell in getting it. And there has been a divide in this country for the last half century. But the idea that the nasty, divisive and at times hateful cultural aspects of that divide - from the segregationist Democrat defection when LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act, to Nixon's "Southern Strategy," to Reagan's support from the "Moral Majority," to Newt Gingrich and the witchhunts against President Clinton which were far and away more ruthless than anything the current administration ever came close to dealing with (and remember, Gingrich actually shut the government down), to the jingoism and patriotic demagoguery of the last seven years - haven't been fueled by and/or beneficial to the GOP in ways that far outstrip any Democratic partisanship is ridiculous. It shows a deep disconnect from reality suggesting that your party is unable or unwilling to negotiate, compromise or change directions in a way that will help heal that divide. People on both sides say things that aren't very well thought out, but one side has benefited far more than the other. Limbaugh and others are already celebrating the loss of moderate Republicans like Christopher Shays and pushing for further cleansing of centrists. Gloating about anti-gay marriage victories that reflect an old ideology that doesn't appeal to the coming generation while ignoring massive culture war losses on abortion and drug war issues.
I've never maintained that the GOP is entirely the Retarded Right, Confederate Yokels, and Backwoods Mouthbreathers, but the fact is they are a large and significant portion of the GOP and they are far more divisive than any part of the Democratic coalition. (Also, it amuses me to no end to call them that. I'm pretty proud of "Confederate Yokels and Backwoods Mouthbreathers." That's fuckin' funny.) They insist on continually fighting reproductive rights, demonizing homosexuals and attempting to criminalize homosexuality, requiring creationism to be taught alongside evolution in Biology classes, demanding worthless abstinence-only sexual education instead of effective comprehensive sexual education, bitching about school prayer (which isn't prohibited at the personal level), pushing for a closed-border policy, and a general movement towards Dominionism in this country. They are ignorant, bigoted, mean-spirited people who are doing far more to hold back progress in this country than the farthest left card-carrying socialist currently on the fringes of the Democratic Party. They get a seat at your table because your party needs their votes. They get a voice because they have to be fed or they don't show up on election day. Every moment we spend fighting them on petty culture war issues is a moment we don't spend discussing real issues.
Unfortunately for you, though, I'm not actually the type of Democratic voter that is going to help you win Congress back in 2010 and the White House in 2012. There aren't a lot of people like myself who have a burning, furious hatred for social conservatives that are going to be looking for payback and retribution. Also, technically I'm not a Democrat. But if the coalition that turned out this year is any indication, the Democrats are making huge gains amongst younger voters that are at the very least unimpressed with the social conservatives' pet cultural issues as well as pickups among hispanics that somehow aren't receptive to the immigration policies of Tom Tancredo and Pat Buchanan. So I wouldn't hang my hat on a Republican revolution in 2010 and 2012 unless President-elect Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress is uninspiring and totally incompetent. You can keep dismissing these criticisms as "close to parody" if it makes you feel better, but if you and Republicans like yourself can't or won't accept that social conservatives have wide, potentially damaging influence in your party and that your base has likely become unhinged and bloodthirsty in the wake of this election, then you're going on a long, painful trip through the politcal wilderness. As a partisan I'm thrilled at that prospect. Like I've said before, if the GOP wants to carry the anti-gay flag like a glorious banner and keep fighting the social revolution of the 1960s, then go right ahead. But as a pragmatist I'm disappointed. I can handle an intellectually rigorous, pro-business Republican Party that isn't embracing the worst aspects of the American psyche. And again, you can try to draw parallels between the far right I deride as yokels and whatnot with the wildly liberal, socialists of the far left that seem to terrify you, but that dog ain't hunting these days and it may be a while before it does.
Now, I don't have a problem with honest bipartisanship. I understand the need for a loyal opposition providing checks and balances. And of course a politician with any interest in broad appeal is going to call for people coming together. It sounds great and makes them look very statesmanlike (or stateswomanlike). What I have a problem with is the suggestion that the overwhelming Democratic victory isn't, to some degree, a movement towards a center-left political standard and that the Democrats are going to have to bend over backwards to appease Republicans for bipartisan support in order to legitimize their policies. I have a problem with the idea that President-elect Barack Obama has to reach across the aisle to people that just spent the last three months calling him some variation on Marxist/socialist/communist and questioning his loyalty to this country in order to avoiding "ticking off" a bunch of people that just took an electoral bath.
I find it absolutely absurd that you pretend like there wasn't at least an understandable reason for people to be upset after Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 and the Supreme Court handed down a decision ending the Florida recount that was so bizarre that the opinion actually included the instruction not to use it as a precedent in future opinions. I find it completely ridiculous that you try to equate typical partisan politics like blocking judicial appointments, which was escalated under Clinton by the Republican-controlled Senate, with the division created by the Bush Adminstration's ill-advised invasion of Iraq that we now know was a result of ideologically driven lies or incompetence, possibly both. I know you try to polish it up as "good intentions gone amok," but that's what it's called when an eight-year old tries to fix their mother breakfast for her birthday and scorches the wall behind the stove. The War in Iraq is an inexcusable clusterfuck and that you and your Party refuse to take any sort of responsibility or be held accountable or even be more honest about it than to say "oh, well, it's not going as well as we'd like" is partisan politics at its finest.
In fact, your entire argument is nonsense. You list four issues that this country is "too divided" to address: the war on terror, the economic crisis, the environment, and the energy situation. Let's see, your party used the war on terror as a political cudgel for the last seven years to justify an illegal, unjust, and senseless war, torture, indefinite detention of innocent people without trial, and spying on American citizens among other things; your party's deregulation policies are responsible for the economic crisis (and no, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not the root, cause, or bulk of the problem and I'll eviscerate the argument if you want to try it); your party has long resisted even admitting that there are even environmental problems, doesn't want to "argue" about the cause of climate change, and wants to open up oil extraction that will provide a fraction of the oil we use and won't actually provide any useable product for at least five years at a time when we need to start moving away from petroleum energy sources; Bush and Cheney created an Energy Task Force that met in secret, refused to disclose to Congress or the public the specifics or what was discussed or who discussed, and largely used the advice of the energy industries for their energy plan.
These are ideologically rigid positions that your party has staked out, so how are we supposed to find common ground with those positions? Democrats want more diplomacy in the War on Terror and we want the basic principles of freedom and the rule of law followed in pursuit of security. Both parties were complicit in shitting things up in the War on Terror, but the Democrats have made it clear to the party leadership that we didn't like their weak-willed compliance, we want it fixed and we're not looking for compromise on that; it's unfortunate if you don't like our partisanship in that issue, but you had seven years and you blew it. You got two things right: invading Afghanistan and the surge in Iraq, but everybody agreed on Afghanistan anyway and celebrating the success of the surge is like celebrating getting your car out of the ditch after you drove into it. And to be honest, you haven't actually gotten the car out of the ditch. You threw away all the goodwill and sympathy we had in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 and there's no getting around that.
The Democratic Party just ran pretty strongly on common-sense financial regulations, environmental and energy policy, and a progressive restructuring of the tax code; we expect some negotiation to have to be done there and we'll be happy to work with reasonable fiscal conservatives on that. But the Democrats shouldn't be expected to go out of their way to appeal to unbending conservatives and they definitely should not concern themselves with opposition that is more spiteful than principled.
As far as appointments go, I don't think President-elect Barack Obama (I'm not going to be tired of saying that until January 20th), or any President for that matter, has any obligation to pick anyone aside from those people that he feels are the most capable of and qualified for helping him execute his policy agendas. If we find President-elect Barack Obama appointing, for example, a former horse show commissioner to something as important as, say, head of FEMA, then maybe something should be said about naked partisanship.
I'll close this out by reiterating what I said previously: I can't speak to every single senate and house campaign, but President-Elect Barack Obama, the de facto leader of the Democratic Party, ran on a fairly liberal platform. Democrats gained at least five senate seats to take a solid Senate majority, picked up at least eighteen house seats to expand their House majority significantly, and won the presidency by almost 200 electoral votes and over 7 million popular votes, flipping eight Bush states in the process. Certainly dissatisfaction with the Bush Administration and the Republican Party played a part, but the sweeping victory last night represents more than just disdain for the incumbency in terms of the direction the country should take. And when middle ground has to be reached, the Republican Party might consider the results of this election when they decide if they're going to be a loyal and honest opposition or a contrarian and obstructionist resistance.
I have to grade a stack of papers in the next hour, so a quick drive-by. I will respond to your points more completely this afternoon (or evening, depending on how grading goes).
First, let me apologize to Buck for my first post in this thread. I didn't think you were fighting me, I was speaking more to the good Reverend and didn't make that abundantly clear.
Second, I don't think my argument is nonsense. I'm looking at this longer term than you are Josh, and I think that is the root of our disagreement. We are entrenched in a cycle of partisanship that is completely too destructive. It hasn't always been that way and I wish we could get rid of it. And you know, at the root I agree with you. It is silly to say that someone is unpatriotic because they don't support the war. It is also silly to say that Obama has made people love America again. If you can only love America or only be patriotic when the president is from your party....that doesn't bode well for the future of the Republic.
Cheap plug here...my book, should it ever come out, deals with what I believe is the start of ideological politics in the modern sense. It is cons versus moderate/libs in one of the two parties fighting for control. That concept, using a short statement of policies and tying them to an ideology that is "true American" started with the Cold War and it has gotten worse and worse. People don't make informed decisions anymore, people make ideological decisions. That isn't a sound way to run a nation of this size. Obama says he is going to be a pragmatic president and bring us all together. Well, here is his chance. People are sick of the last 8 years on both sides of the aisle. If you want to repudiate one party for it then you will not get very far. If you want to reach out to that party and try to build a big tent party, I'm all for it.
I would much rather that the Democratic Party take the entire center and ostracize the extreme ends of the Right and Left than go through 8 more years of a divided nation where "about half" of the country is upset at the other "about half."
I'll hit your contention about the center-left vs. center-right later.
I understand what you're trying to say and I'm not dismissing your concern about nasty partisanship, but I'm not finding the meat of your argument for equally partisan divisiveness persuasive. A lot of it comes from the false equivalences that you make between statements and positions that simply do not match up.
Although there has been a lot of exuberance on the left with the victory this year that has re-energized liberals and has given them hope that we can lead the way in solving the problems facing this country, I don't know any major, notable Democratic or liberal figure that has stated or suggested that they "love this country again" as a result of electing Barack Obama the 44th President of the United States. I could, however, publish a whole library of books worth of material on major, notable Republican and conservative figures that have claimed Democrats and liberals who oppose the Iraq War are unpatriotic and we can start with John McCain's "rather lose an election than lose a war" comment and pretty much half of anything that Sarah Palin said during this campaign. In fact, some of the books in that library would be reprints of books that were entirely devoted to the jingoist, patriotic demagoguery that is very strong in the current conservative movement.
You point to examples like Democrats almost causing a government shutdown under President Bush over legitimate disagreement about John Bolton, who didn't even have full Republican support and was likely allowed by the Republican majority to be filibustered so that they didn't have to approve him, but avoid examples like Republicans actually shutting the government down under President Clinton because Newt Gingrich and the Republican Congress wanted to make massive budget cuts that would partially privatize Medicare, refused to budge an the unpopular issue, and wouldn't pass a clean continuing resolution to keep the government running. Neither of these comparisions are, under any circumstance, equitable examples of divisive partisan politics.
I'll be happy to read your book when it comes out, but if what we've went back and forth on is any indication, then I think your long-term view is probably obscured by your need to find a corollary partisanship for every political action in order to drive the narrative that both sides are equally to blame in the divide. To be fair, though, I'll reserve judgment on that and stick with what we have in front of us.
We all understand that since FDR's New Deal the two parties have had two distinct, opposing philosophies of governance at the federal level that are almost completely incompatible, but do provide for a small amount of give and take in implementing those philosophies. Liberals seek to use the mechanisms of government to address social and economic inequalities. Conservatives oppose, to some degree, the intrusion of government into such matters. These are valid differences of opinion and deserve an honest airing and they largely have been given much consideration over the last seventy years and I imagine they will continue to be debated. While I have staked my position on the Liberal side of the debate, I can understand the Conservative position and I even appreciate, much as most current Liberals do, the need for avoiding confiscatory tax rates and to promote fiscal responsibility, lessons we learned under Presidents Reagan and Clinton.
In order to implement their policies, Liberals have appealed to the middle and lower classes in a way that Conservatives often deride as "class warfare" while Conservative opposition to Liberal agendas has been painted as "disdain for the poor and minorities." Now these are standard partisan politics that are part and parcel of governance and while it would benefit everyone if the populace was better educated to make more informed decisions, it still wouldn't change the differences in the philosophies of governance and the core beliefs that drive them.
The Democrats' social and economic populism lends itself to a broad support that finds the occasional fringe dweller with radical ideas like strict Marxism, reparations for slavery and even goofy, almost satirical shit like de-population through enforced abortion. I'm sure there are other unpalatable "movements" that have given tacit support to the Democratic Party that I've missed, but the Democrats have never, as a matter of policy or agenda, placed these radical economic and social ideas in the party platform or tried to bolster their electorate with hidden, coded appeals to these sentiments.
We will, however, fight like hell for any social progress that needs to be made and ground that has already been gained on matters of civil rights, reproductive rights, gay rights, broad religious inclusion, and an expansive, diplomatic view of our role in the world around us. That's not to say that numerous Republicans haven't helped greatly in some of those areas, because they have, but if necessary the modern Liberal will grab those flags with both hands, protect those issues strongly, and be proud and happy to do it without apology.
To counter the social position of liberals that has always appealed to the younger demographic, the Republican Party has gone above and beyond partisan politics is in their to appeal to the politics of racial resentment, religious division, and xenophobic nationalism; the segregationists and Nixon's "Southern Strategy", the culture warriors of Falwell's "Moral Majority" under Reagan and the current Dominionists of James Dobson, the closed-border, isolationist xenophobia of the Buchananites, and the jingoism of the last seven years where you can pick a name and there they are, waving the torch and pitchfork, hunting for un-American traitors. These have, at times in the recent past and again in the present, been unquestionably high-profile figures, unavoidable sentiments, and visible movements within the Republican Party. It is undoutedly the Texification of the Republican Party.
There is nothing about the Democratic Party or mainstream Liberalism that compares in a fair and honest assessment with the aspects and figures of the Republican Party and modern Conservatism that have appealed to divisive partisanship in very measurable and beneficial terms. We don't have the time to track down and excoriate every dimwit that says something stupid on the Internet, so I don't care about anything said at Daily Kos or Democratic Underground any more than I do about anything said at Red State or Free Republic. Both parties and pretty much anyone with any interest in politics in any part of the world at any time in history is going to be guilty of some amount of partisanship and both houses could use some cleaning from time to time, but there is no evidence that suggests an equitable share of blame for both sides.
The idea that the ill-advised and tasteless attacks on President Bush and General Petraeus by MoveOn, the somewhat more measured but often pointed criticisms by Michael Moore, and the absolute myth of a concerted effort to promote the Democratic agenda by a compliant liberal media comes within a mile of the constant character attacks on liberals that started with the Red Scare of the 1940s, developed a potent right-wing noise machine on talk radio in the 1980s, reached a fever pitch during the Clinton Administration, exploded into a veritable cottage industry in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq and continues unabated to this day is laughably absurd. To continue trying to argue such is part of the reason why, barring a complete and total failure to deliver any measurable amount of working policy by President-elect Barack Obama and the incoming Democratic majority with or without the support of the Republican minority, your party is about to take a long trip through the political wilderness. I'm not looking to proclaim a permanent Democratic majority, but looking at the demographics represented in this election and the results of the last two elections, the current Republican coalition is beginning to see diminishing returns.
Let me quote some of an op-ed by David Frum, a Republican neocon commentator I'm sure you're familiar with, from yesterday's British Telegraph discussing the Democratic victory:
Democrats last night won the grandest political victory since the Reagan Revolution of 1980, not only electing a president but also scoring gains in both houses of Congress. When the final tally is counted, we will likely see that Obama owed his victory to two shifts: a large increase in turnout by ethnic minorities and a big increase in Democratic preference by college-educated whites.
...
A generation ago, Republicans were dominant among college graduates. Those days are long gone. Since 1988, Democrats have become more conservative on economics - and Republicans more conservative on social issues. College-educated Americans have come to believe that their money is safe with Democrats - but that their values are under threat from Republicans. There are more and more college-educated voters.
So the question for the GOP is: Will it pursue them? This will involve painful change, on issues ranging from the environment to abortion. It will involve even more painful changes of style and tone: toward a future that is less overtly religious, less negligent with policy, and less polarising on social issues.
That's a future that leaves little room for Sarah Palin - but the only hope for a Republican recovery.
This is what I'm getting at. The GOP has to get away from the radical religious minority that I call the Retarded Right. The GOP has to get away from the jingoistic, nationalistic, racially motivated Confederate Yokels. The GOP has to get away from the pig-ignorant Backwoods Mouthbreathers. We will be willing to work with reasonable, moderate Republicans on economic issues, but we will not take any more shit off of bigots and the willfully ignorant hiding behind the cross and wrapping themselves in the flag, complaining because they think we're too smart and elitist. If you can talk them down off the ledge and bring them along to the center on social issues, we'll work with them, too, but we're not going out of our way to reach them. You can complain it's too divisive, but that's the stand that we're taking and it leaves GOP two choices: move to the center on social issues and risk a revolt against the reward of gaining back independents or move further to the right and hope that this election isn't a harbinger of things to come.
Another drive by - still more grading.
The book just deals with one party (being purposely vague) and isn't supposed to match up point for point between the sides. I don't think that every actions has generated an equal and opposite reaction, but there is no denying the overall climate.
More later.
P.S. I learned today that World War II strategy, specifically the military draft, was conducted with the lessons that the Army learned from the Vietnam conflict in mind. Chew on that one for a while.
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