Frank Rich is a gifted writer, and I agree with the general gist of his column on Palinism. But the headline is all wrong. Palin didn’t break the Republican Party. It’s pretty plain that something pathological has dwelt within the Right for a very long time. The difficulty in diagnosing it has been that almost none of us were alive and conscious in the 1920’s, the last time before the Bush Era that the GOP controlled all three branches of government.
The 1930’s brought a deep and abiding minority status for the Republican Party, all of which they spent nursing one form of paranoid grievance or another. In the 1930’s it was red-baiting, foaming about the New Deal, and apologizing for fascism. In the 1940’s, after the war, it was an unhealthy obsession with the Red Menace of Russia and China. In the 1950’s it was all about communist infiltration of the government, Hollywood, and the armed services. From the 1960’s on, it has been about countering the counterculture and fighting the expansion of rights to all our citizens, regardless of race, gender, religion, or sexual preference. Their one decent president in all this time wasn’t even much of a Republican. The Democrats would have happily nominated the Supreme Allied Commander in 1952 if Ike had only agreed to run on their ticket. The rest of the GOP’s lineup has been thoroughly corrupt, if not corrupt and incompetent.
Because science has inconveniently declined to back-up any of their fantasies, science has been completely discounted. According to Pew Research only six percent of scientists consider themselves Republicans. Think about that. Sarah Palin didn’t do that. It took decades of work to reach this point even if it wasn’t until the last eight years that we truly saw the national ignorance weaponized by complete Republican control.
Only three percent of blacks voted for McCain, a number similar to what Bush the Younger received. That didn’t happen overnight. A higher percentage of Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than Democrats. But years of bitching about social programs that benefitted a community just emerging from the yoke of Jim Crow drove blacks away from the Party of Lincoln. In this decade it has been bitching about hispanic immigration that has driven Latinos away in droves. There are 535 elected members of Congress (plus a few delegates), but there is only one Republican Jew, no Republican Muslims, no Republican agnostics, no Latino Republicans (other than the four Cubans from Florida), no gay Republicans, and no women in leadership positions.
Republican strategists know that the country is getting less white, less Christian, and less intolerant of gays, but they are powerless to stop the hatred of the Republican base towards racial and religious minorities and gays. Sarah Palin did her best to whip these aggrieved people into a violent frenzy, but she didn’t create them or drive everyone but them away from the Republican Party.
Sarah Palin may own the GOP, but she didn’t break it. As far as I can tell, it’s been been broken since Teddy Roosevelt quit it to found the Bull Moose Progressive Party. They can never be trusted with power. Never.
And, the sooner the electorate realizes that, the better off we all will be. The Republican Party has become toxic to the values of the general welfare, which as I understand it, is one of the ends of our beloved Constitution.
Blacks, Latinos, women, gays, minorities all see the GOP as a dead end offering no chance to get ahead. Why would any of these opt for a Republican candidate? Come to think of it why would any progressive soul cast his/her ballot for these anachronistic people?
“…national ignorance weaponized by complete Republican control.”
Perfect description.
The distillation of the GOP to its naked essence has sorely tested my belief in freedom of speech. Oh sure, I’m still in favor of it in general terms, but I’ve come to seriously wonder if much of what “conservative” opinion leaders say should be tolerated, or if it should be treated like shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater.
I can play with ideas like this because I don’t have any great enthusiasm for democracy. I just regard it as the least awful form of government we’ve come up with so far. It’s certainly not a sacred cow for me. If someone produced empirical evidence that software could do a better job than politicians, I’d be all for it. (Actually, I’ve been toying with the idea of using software to impartially generate congressional districts using Voronoi diagrams. Anyone interested?)
Of course, I realize that most progressives do consider the Bill of Rights to be well-nigh sacred, but one recurrent theme I have seen in progressive complaints about Republican hate speech as each new incident of violence among the base has arisen is that the violence is an inevitable consequence of the hateful speech of their leadership. I know Booman and Steven D. have touched on this point, and any number of front-pagers and diarists over at dKos and HuffPo have talked about it.
So I’ll just come out and say it: maybe we’ve reached a point in the evolution of our society where it makes sense to outlaw hate speech the way we outlawed more direct forms of violence and oppression, recognizing as we do that hate speech leads inevitably to violence and oppression.
To actual do this would, of course, require a constitutional convention aimed at overhauling the First Amendment. Nor could the overhaul be limited strictly to speech: it would have to address freedom of religion as well, for otherwise the hate churches would become even more politicized than before. (Personally, I’d go further than that, having definitely lost my belief in freedom of religion as most Americans think of it, but that’s another rant for another day.)
I know that no politician and precious few activists want to touch this question with a ten-foot pole, but if we don’t, some future generation will get to relive the events of the last thirty years. As Booman notes, they came back from exile once before, and there’s no reason to believe that they won’t again. The so-called “conservative” movement is a natural outgrowth of the dark side of human nature, and barring some change in human nature, we can either choose to manage it like we do the other nasty aspects of humanity or we must resign ourselves to yet another outburst — and an outburst with the full technological resources of the late 21st century, which will very likely include instruments of oppression that currently exist only in science fiction.
It’s time that public bigotry went the way of the lynch mob — unless we want to resign ourselves to an eventual return of the lynch mob.
I think it can be partially alleviated if liberals fought back. If they want violence fine, they brought it on themselves.
The peace and love left is about as likely to fight back as the xenophobic right is likely to embrace diversity…
Hey there…OT, but are you going to be around August 4-9, 2009?
🙂
With bells on… 🙂
Well, enjoy! I’ll be around to shake a tail feather since I worked my you-know-what-off last year. 🙂 I think we’re having a party for you since y’all really set it out for us last year–and I know that some of y’all helped us with last minute work, too.
I think my e-mail is on my user page; feel free to e-mail. Don’t hurt nobody next month…!!! ;<)
I don’t know about that. There’s nothing about leftism that requires pacifism, and there were certainly enough armed leftist movements in the 20th century. And given the official count of registered firearms in this country, unless every Republican closet is packed floor to ceiling with guns, most of us are at least as heavily armed as they are. I suspect most of the apparent pacifism of the left is just because every time someone so much as hints about direct action, the resident pacifists start pontificating, and we all know how pointless it is to argue with those people.
If right-wing violence actually generated significant reprisals, it would likely make a dent in their sense of invulnerability. Planting “RACIST, DON’T LET THE SUN SET ON YOU HERE!” signs at the city limits might get some attention from them, too.
While I totally disagree with empowering any government with the power to outlaw speech, we can consider the confines of assault and what speech can be properly defined as assault. I’m reluctant to emulate European hate speech laws, however, as I see them as counterproductive.
What’s more interesting is that the following.
I truly believe that one of the main reasons that America’s Right is so politically dysfunctional is that they spent over 50 years in the minority in Congress. One solution to that would be for them to get a chance at governing and learn the skill sets that go with it.
But we just tried that with totally disastrous results. So, what’s the solution? More time in the minority is unlikely to help.
They had their chance, for most of the second half of the last century and the first eight years of this one. I don’t think governing is going to change them, it just encourages their worst instincts. What the Thugs need is a good dose of talk therapy, to get their demons out in the open.
The issue is not left vs right, it’s top vs bottom. Leave free speech alone and just change the constitution to say a corporation is not a person.
You need a constitutional amendment to say that?????
The court decision to declare the corporation a person has led to the corporate dominance of not only our political system but much of the world as well.
What law could you pass or for that matter challenge that would take this key power away from the corporations. The constitutional amendment would have to be followed by even the Roberts court.
The court will decide in the near future if we can regulate corporate free speech in our political process. Republican hate speech is just a distraction.
There are 535 elected members of Congress (plus a few delegates), but there is only one Republican Jew, no Republican Muslims, no Republican agnostics, no Latino Republicans (other than the four Cubans from Florida), no gay Republicans, and no women in leadership positions.
I think you mean openly gay Republicans.
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“I will go around the country on behalf of candidates who believe in the right things, regardless of their party label or affiliation.”
Palin said over lunch in her downtown office, 40 miles from her now-famous hometown of Wasilla — population 7,000.
(The Hill) – GOP Rep. Lee Terry (Neb.), who squeaked out a victory despite his district’s overwhelming turnout for Obama, said he’d rather have House colleagues campaign for him than Palin.
“There’s others that I would have come in and campaign and most of them would be my colleagues in the House,” Terry said.
Rep. Frank Wolf, a Republican from Northern Virginia, which is increasingly becoming Democratic territory, offered caution when asked whether he’d welcome a Palin fundraiser.
“I don’t generally need people from outside my district to do a fundraiser,” Wolf said.
Several other lawmakers indicated a wariness about accepting help from Palin, but did not want to criticize the GOP’s vice presidential candidate from last year. They said Palin could hurt them by firing up Democrats.
An unnamed GOP lawmaker representing a district that Obama carried in 2008 told The Hill that if Palin came into his district, his opponent would “probably be doing a dance of joy.”
Centrist Republican Rep. Mike Castle (Del.) said that Palin’s polarizing views, coupled with her surprise decision to resign with 18 months left in her term, would make it difficult to ask for her help.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."And congrats getting to the recommended list at The Great Orange Satan!!
Awhile back I did a little research on psychological studies of Republicans–fascinating stuff, and certainly worth re-examining. In theneral, these folks can’t stand uncertainty, like their politics in memes and bumper-sticker long doses, and like a world of dominionism and certainty. I’m not exaggerating here. I’ll blockquote just a little bit of a diary I wrote at the time. I’ve seen very similar analyses of the psychology of Creationists (see Ken Miller). This psychology may be genetic–and is certainly nurtured by the “back to basics” education to which we’ve limited our students since Reagan. We aren’t going to get them to change until we change the educational system.
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The castration anxiety shown in his choice of language extends to his drawings. Although Reagan is an excellent graphic artist, he has difficulty in drawing hands, legs and horse’s hooves in his sketches and doodles. Most of his drawings show his preoccupation with castration in some way, and his self-portraits usually come out looking like graphic illustrations for the “Where’s the rest of me?” scene, with his hands and legs often missing.
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Reagan had become so depressed, he felt he wanted to “exchange trenchcoats with Bogart”-that is, exchange places with his dead father (trenchcoat = shroud). His guilt at outliving his father, his conviction that his wishes had actually killed him, had grown to such a point that only the ultimate punishment, his own death, would suffice.
What Reagan changed was his life goal itself. After his pneumonia episode, he suddenly decided to become an anti-communist. As for many Americans, anti-communism was for Reagan a perfect solution for his parricidal wishes. It solved the problem of his guilt for his father’s death by putting his disturbing wishes into the communists. Without being consciously aware of why, he found that his new anti-communist activities made him feel better, saying to himself, in effect, “It’s not me who wants to kill daddy. It’s the commies who want to destroy all authority. And if I fight them, I’ll be able to control my own wishes in them.”
Bizarre elements of authoritarianism, loss of self-esteem, punishment, guns, sexuality and introduction of fear.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Reagan had two choices. Become a serial killer or get into right wing politics.
I have long had a theory that because America missed out on the European experience of extreme fascism, they don’t have the same fear and appreciation of its consequences. Thus while modern Europe goes to extreme lengths to avoid authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and politicised religion, no such inhibitions aseem to apply in the US. I hope the US doesn’t have to go through a world war fought on its own territory to learn the lessons that Fascism doesn’t work very well and generally turns out very badly….
Because they’ve had the experience of undue interference of Church in state for thousands of years, their current humanistic separation is quite compatible with private faith.
In retrospect Abraham Lincoln is almost as much an anomaly for the Republican Party as Eisenhower.
But relative to the party base, FDR and JFK (indeed the entire Kennedy family until Maria Shriver) were anomalies for the Democratic Party.
In recent history the Republican Party has been broken since 1965 when Jacob Javits Republicans dwindled and Strom Thurmond joined the Republican Party after being punished by LBJ for disloyalty. Or 1968 and Tricky Dicky Redux. Was it the trauma of 1960 or the trauma of 1964 that deranged them?
One of your best, Booman!
I was a little pissed that Rich threw in the Rev. Sharpton reference. It felt gratuitous. It was almost as if he felt he had to throw the name of someone that a lot of white folks don’t trust/can’t stand/hate in order to make his otherwise excellent points.
I then flipped to Barbara Ehrenreich’s excellent op-ed, “A Homespun Safety Net.” And again, I was struck by the fact that the couple in her piece seemed White–or was explicitly not identified as African American or Latino. She likely knew that if they were identified as such then they wouldn’t seem as “sympathetic.” It’s not a criticism–I’d counsel doing the same if I was editing and not only because it really isn’t relevant–but it’s a damned shame that you’d have to do so because that’s the world in which we live.
I was and remain struck how we still nibble around race. And it was at least twice in the same Sunday opinion pages.
Frankly, I think both parties have been broken for decades.
While, yes, I recognize the occasionally ameliorative effects of democratic party power (the New Deal policies extending from FDR to LBJ), the democratic party was complicit in much of what you ascribe to republicans.
Particularly, Vietnam, the Cold War, Latin American policy, and the present, continued militaristic policies in the Middle East. And, let’s not forget, the consolidation of absolute executive power to detain individuals without due process running from Bush to Obama.
Hmmmm…I guess it depends on your definitions of the word “broken” and of the real-world function of a political party.
If a political party’s real function is to promote some sort of objective morality in a given society, then yes indeed (dependent of course on your own definition of morality) the Republican Party…and to some lesser degree the Democratic Party as well…have been broken for well over 100 years.
But…if a party’s function is to win elections and to promote the domestic and worldwide interests of its citizens, then the “American Century” was a comparative success as it related to the fate of every other country in the world right up until the end of the Clinton era/beginning of the BushCo reign. And except for FDR’s administration, JFK’s short period in power and the (declining) Clinton years, the rest of that century was essentially Republican-dominated. Truman was set up to fail by the right wing from the get-go, and the little Carter electoral mistake was neutralized…stymied might be the better word…for the duration of his term by the right. JBJ? I’m sorry. He was an agent of the right-wing. I firmly believe that he was in some way complicit in JFK’s murder, and his refusal to run in ’69 was scripted to allow Nixon to win. Bad morality, great politics in the Machiavellian, Great Game sense.
Now the Republican Party is “broken”, In all ways. Only the completely ineffecual CheneyBush years turned the trick, and it took Americans six years to wake up to that fact.
As the right collapses, the center will move rightward to fill that gap. Political nature abhors a vacuum just as does physical nature. All the king’s horse and all of Obama’s men (or mentality) will not prevail against the centrist nature of society, and the DemRats will fill the gap left by the RatPubs at least until the Rats either experience a resurgence of some sort or a new, really scary right wing party appears. If for no other reason, I firmly hope that the Dems indict Cheney as soon as possible so that at least he cannot be involved in whatever happens next.
Watch.
As above, so below.
Nature abhors all vacuums.
Watch.
And…let us pray.
We gonna need it.
Later…
AG
In Rich’s article this link from 1998. I’m shocked at McCain’s joke considering how upset his former running mate was about Letterman. Both jokes are tasteless but Letterman is a comedian and McCain is a senator. George Allen showed us the inside of a Republican senatorial campaign when he called a young man a “Macaca” during a campaign rally. No Palin didn’t break it. The Republicans have been morally bankrupt as long as I can remember.
How the Republican Party has been able to survive in a nation which is supposed to be preternaturally disposed to optimism mystifies me. The Republican Party has been the “Party of ‘NO”” ever since their founding. First, they opposed slavery (rightly or wrongly), then they opposed labor unions, then they shifted to Communists (that was a good run, lasting almost a century), and finally they’ve moved on to fundamentalist Islam. Since Nixon’s time, they’ve mixed in the toxic aspects of theocracy and racism, which at least didn’t dominate their thinking for the first 100 years of the party’s history. Where does the “party of ‘NO'” go now besides into the dustbin of history? They’ve never stood for anything or even given a positive vision of the future to the nation, except immediately after their founding.
It’s not so hard the understand. The Republicans are the corporatist party. Everything you mentioned is directly related to corporate profit. They are not the party of NO if the right questions is asked such as mandatory purchase of their brand of monopoly health insurance.
The corporatist have had a little PR problem lately, but they’ll be back. During the last meltdown of the world economy Germany went one direction and the US under FDR went another. Which side do you think was the corporatist? We’ll see.
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American Corporations and Hitler
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."