Attn BobLoblaw: How the GOP destroyed its moderates

[_Droopy]

I don't have time, at the moment, to deconstruct Chait's tendentious faux analysis of the history of the Republican party. There is much to be said. Just branding Richard Nixon as somehow a "conservative" and as somehow helping to make the Republican party "less congenial place for thoughtful, educated people" is a truly brazen piece of ideologically interested revisionist political history, as well as more of the classic, uniquely hermetic leftist intellectual snobbery that conceals, as it always has, the fact that it is the Left as an intellectual and political movement that abandoned the world and ideals of classic, liberal arts education (and have been on a mission to extirpate it with the K-12 classroom and in higher ed for the last several decades) and its ideals of deep and wide ranging critical thought, close reasoning, and the importance of a deep understanding of history and the best thoughts and ideas of the past during the last third of the 20th century, and the Right, primarily through the conservative intellectual movement, that kept it alive.

It conceals as well that anti-intellectualism, blind, ideologically driven irrationality; emotion driven political passions, a continuing, romantic infatuation with the ideas of collectivism, egalitarian social/economic systems, grand ideological visions of social change, susceptibility to cults of personality and celebrity among political elites; and a general philosophy and worldview that is, precisely "less congenial place for thoughtful, educated people," are found almost solely on the Left and, indeed, have come to define it as a political movement and intellectual/political culture.

Chait's piece isn't serious political or social history, but a wish-list of historical what-should-have-beens from a leftist perspective (for the those who are actually historically literate in the political realm: the conservative movement as never been in ascendency within the Republican party during the 20th century save for a couple short periods of time, and have never been in control of its party apparatus and leadership. The two times when it was able to actually field presidential candidates, and see some of its core policy ideals brought into prominence and made law, with various degrees of success, was the Goldwater campaign, which failed, and the Reagan revolution, which was successfully along some dimensions, modestly successful along others, and which fell quite short on others).

The decades since Reagan and the coming into power of George H. W. Bush, who reestablished the managerial elitist, Rockefeller moderate (statist, interventionist, generally "liberal," but not overtly "leftist") form of governance dominant in the Republican party has seen the continuing drift of the nation and the Republican leadership (and RNC) to the left, faster and more dramatically when leftists (Clinton, Obama) are in power, and in a more relaxed, halting, restrained, but still left-leaning trajectory when moderate Republicans (George Bush I and II) are at the helm. Solid Republican majorities in the House have not stopped this drift. Dole and McCain, as well as Romney, come from this "moderate" tradition which is not conservative per se, but also not leftist. It seeks to manage the leftist created welfare state and leviathan interventionist bureaucracy, and to restrain the rate of its growth, but not to return the nation to limited, constitutional government and respect of the Constitution as the supreme law of the land.

Chait is either struggling within a world of fantasy here, or he is engaging in the classic leftist tactic of appearing to take one step backwards while already having crossed the finish line. The reality is that the Left, in essence, runs the world. It now dominates all the major institutions of western and American society; the media, public education, higher education, the foundations, Hollywood and the arts, and government (the "long march through the institutions" is over, and it achieved its goals). The Tea Party is a challenge to the Republican party from a perennial minority within its established institutional ranks, not a movement from within the party power structure. The RNC itself wants nothing to do with the Tea Party, and this is what's really at the base of Chait's piece.

If the Left is on your side, you've already lost.


Oh, and one question needs to be asked here: what is a "moderate?"

[_Droopy]

Uh, Reid is a centrist Democrat. Very much so. Pelosi is center-left.

Uh, Apparently we either define centrist left differently or our perceptions of these two are very different.

Harry Reid is a staunch leftist ideologue who hails from the far left wing of the Democratic party - that, what many would now call the "MoveOn.org wing" which came to dominance during the early seventies and now thoroughly dominates the party.

The only question in my mind is not Reid's political commitments but whether they are primarily ideological in nature or primarily a Machiavellian determination of where his bread is better buttered as a career politician.

[_Droopy]

There was a survey I think he's referring to where a substantial portion of people stated their belief that Bush knew about 9/11 in advance. However, this survey was taken not long after information was pouring out that there was credible evidence that a 9/11 like event was brewing that penetrated the upper tiers of the administration, but did not get adequate attention for whatever reason. The survey question was attempting to get at the level of truther conspiracy thinking - that Bush literally knew 9/11 was going to happen - but may have gotten respondents mistakenly answering in the affirmative because of the "Osama Bin Laden determined to attack..." news of the time. It's not a great example for Bob to point out.

Now, let's be intellectually and historically serious. The idea that 9/11 was an inside job settled into the mainstream thinking of the American Left soon after 9/11, and became mainstreamed through the efforts of people like Micheal Moore, an icon of the modern Left and especially its youth culture.

There is nothing unusual about the connection between the contemporary Left and the ideas of the 9/11 truthers. The Left has existed on a steady diet of tin foil for the last 50 years. The Kennedy assassination theories; concepts of the origins of the Vietnam war (U.S. corporations using the federal government and the military to open up foreign markets for their goods), the entire mythology surrounding Joseph McCarthy and the alleged "witch hunts" of the 50s; conspiracy theories surrounding alleged suppression of "green" technology (which can be seen, if one is willing, in at least one of Steven Seagal's old films); that all the bad, horrible things we knew about the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, North Vietnam, Cambodia, and other outposts of the socialist world were fabrications by the corporate controlled CIA and U.S. government; the eco-hysteria and corporate-conspiricy-to-rape-the-planet mentality of the environmental movement, and much of what one's finds in ethnic studies, post-colonial studies, black studies, Afrocentrism, "bronze supremacist" ideology, and other equally exotic outposts of modern academe.

The only other place I'm aware of in which this kind of thing predominates does emanate from what one might term the "Right," but not the mainstream conservative Right, and not (obviously, to anyone familiar with it) the conservative intellectual movement, but within two mutant offshoots of grassroots conservatism, Pat Buchanan populism, and Ron Paul's extreme, purist libertarianism.

Outside of this, if you have an apatite for tin foil, the Left is your foundry.

[_MeDotOrg]

The only question in my mind is not Reid's political commitments but whether they are primarily ideological in nature or primarily a Machiavellian determination of where his bread is better buttered as a career politician.

That's what I like about Romney. He has never changed a position in order to get elected. Ideological consistency has been the hallmark of Romney's 'severly conservative', pro gun control, pro choice, and pro individual mandate political career.

Excuse me, but I've got to go. Honey boo-boo is getting her first tattoo and I want to watch.

[_Bob Loblaw]

That's what I like about Romney. He has never changed a position in order to get elected. Ideological consistency has been the hallmark of Romney's 'severly conservative', pro gun control, pro choice, and pro individual mandate political career.

Excuse me, but I've got to go. Honey boo-boo is getting her first tattoo and I want to watch.

Romney has changed positions? Say it isn't so!

[_Droopy]

That's what I like about Romney. He has never changed a position in order to get elected. Ideological consistency has been the hallmark of Romney's 'severly conservative', pro gun control, pro choice, and pro individual mandate political career.

I'm not at all sure what this has to do with anything I said above.

Excuse me, but I've got to go. Honey boo-boo is getting her first tattoo and I want to watch.

Let me guess:

[_Bob Loblaw]

Note to Kevin: According to Droopy, I'm a leftist, so you may have to rethink your disagreements with me over policy and ideology.

[_EAllusion]

For what it is worth, truthers split fairly evenly between conservatives and liberals in a sort of weird marriage of the anti-government, conspiratorial wings of both sides.

[_Droopy]

For what it is worth, truthers split fairly evenly between conservatives and liberals in a sort of weird marriage of the anti-government, conspiratorial wings of both sides.

Hokum. Very few, if any, within the mainstream conservative intellectual movement or among the conservative grassroots support the inside job theory. Delusion is full of it, as usual, and as usual, he probably knows very well that he is (note: the Buchanan populists and the Ron Paul purist libertarians are not conservatives, in any normative sense).

[_EAllusion]

Hokum.

My position is backed by polling on the subject. Truther belief has died down and concentrated in the the wings of the ideological spectrum that is most distrustful of the US government. Interestingly, contrary to the stereotype that might first spring to mind, truthers are heavily concentrated on the Democrat/liberal side in the black population. That sort of plays into the stereotype of blacks as more conspiratorial towards the government on average than the general population. Of course, we live in a world where things like the Tuskagee syphillis experiment happened, so that's not just out of the blue.

(note: the Buchanan populists and the Ron Paul purist libertarians are not conservatives, in any normative sense).

Oh, you plan on no true scotsmaning the joint. Kinda weird that we've gotten to the point that a classic paleoconservative like Buchanan is no longer considered conservative by Droopy types, though.