I’ve been thinking along the same lines as Rick Perlstein lately. It’s not that conservatives are getting crazier; it’s that they’re getting more powerful. But I don’t think Perlstein is all that convincing in his rebuttal. All we have to do is change the terms. The Republican Party has become almost uniformly conservative. Therefore, the GOP has gone completely insane. Whether Perlstein means to reassure us or he wants to give us fair warning, the truth is still the same. One of our two viable political parties has lost its mind and we’re in big trouble as a result. We can’t win elections forever. Sooner or later, the Republicans will win the trifecta of holding the House, the Senate, and the presidency. And when that happens, we are going to be in a world of hurt. The whole world will be in a world of hurt.
Things are bad enough as it is. Look at any state that has the Republican trifecta right now and witness what the Republicans have been doing to unions, to public service employees, to women’s rights, to voter registration laws, and on immigration. Our organizations and constituencies are under sustained and merciless attack. You can see the corpse of ACORN, the congressional condemnation of MoveOn.org, the right-to-work status of Indiana, the disenfranchisement of minorities, the defunding of Planned Parenthood, the loss of collective bargaining rights for public unions…
You can see what this would mean on the national stage. But listen to their foreign policy rhetoric on Israel and Iran and Syria and many other hot spots. Listen to what they say about the United Nations and Europe and international organizations in general. If they were to seize power in this country, world peace and the whole international order would be imperiled.
Conservatism cannot be allowed to become ascendant. The Republican Party needs to heal itself or it must be replaced by another party. I don’t know how to fix the GOP. All I know how to do is to try to keep them at bay. But I know that we can’t keep them at bay forever.
So, what can be done?
You can see the corpse of ACORN, the congressional condemnation of MoveOn.org, the right-to-work status of Indiana, the disenfranchisement of minorities, the defunding of Planned Parenthood, the loss of collective bargaining rights for public unions …
The first two of which came when Democrats controlled the House and Senate, right?
Who is the thirteenth apostle?
Why, Calvin, of course.
Hmmm…You mean the guy that invented the Protestant sect Calvinism? Or the guy writing the post? That’s why I love this place…
Seriously, I took this name from an unreleased(there are many!!) Springsteen song .. whether it was ever recorded isn’t known(since there could be tapes Bruce has that have never seen the light of day outside of the Jersey shore) .. as the name was found in old spiral-bound notebooks of Bruce’s.
Did you research to see what Springsteen was referring to? It seems quite mysterious to me…
It has become a moment where assuming that the GOP is just undergoing an unflatterig turn and will right itself is lazy.
The media is the first place I’m convinced should undergo a restructure. After watching a Santorum speech where signs were thrust up saying, “Don’t believe the liberal mainstream media” it’s obvious real debate based on facts is not welcome.
Have we done our homework (sorry for the Queen’s English)…? I’m going to make a wild guess that states with a Republican trifecta have higher rates of economic growth and job creation…with less debt…just a wild guess… Can someone do the research?
Almost every state has a Constitutional requirement that they not run a budget deficit. That’s why state and local government employees have been getting laid off in droves while the rest of the economy is in slow recovery. Of course, there are ways to push off today’s debt on tomorrow’s governor (see, e.g., Tim Pawlenty), but they still don’t accumulate much in the way of actual debt.
As for economic growth, the 2010 numbers showed the highest quintile growth to be overwhelming in states with Democratic governors like Oregon, Vermont, Massachusetts, North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky, and New York. Exceptions were North Dakota (which is experiencing an oil-boom) and Indiana.
Hmmm…would you like more states to be undergoing an “oil boom”?
Sure…but most states don’t have much oil. And oil doesn’t create that many jobs. And economies dependent on oil (and mineral) extraction tend to be less democratic and to have higher poverty rates.
Only if you don’t have to live in the area of the state that’s having the “boom”. Like I do. In North Dakota. In the Bakken.
It’s a disaster area. Quality of life is gone.
Yep, all the women moved away because it became like the fucking wild west.
Boo…I have got to get your feedback on this…I was doing my cardio the other day, watching, of all things, MSNBC! (no sound, only captions)…and they were interviewing the President of the SEIU (a.k.a. Obama’s Union)…this woman had her talking points down!…she refwrenced the “rich paying their fair share” every other sentence!
Now, my research indicates that the top one percent of income earners realized 18 percent of all income, while paying 38 percent of all income taxes…please give me the Progressive explanation as to why this is not a “fair share”! Now, if your position is that our beloved federal government is an altruistic entity that desperately needs funding, and that the evil rich can afford it…fine! But please be intellectually honest and say that the rich should pay MORE THAN THEIR FAIR SHARE! Just be honest about it.
15,600 super-rich households pocketed 37 percent of the entire national gain.
You are not answering the question…how much did the “Super Rich” (evil mother f—ers) pay in taxes. Right now, we’re not discussing income inequality per se, but the claim that the “rich do not pay their fair share” of the federal tax burden…How much tax did these evil super-rich households pay? Why do you hate them? They pretty much fund your precious welfare state!
Whatever is necessary. I’m also not a capitalist, so maybe you should ask the capitalists around here.
What is you’re definition of Capitalist? Do you believe in private property? Do you own anything? How about your physical body? If you are not a Capitalist, then you advocate slavery…slaves work to produce wealth, only to have their masters dispose of that wealth as they see fit…in your world, Government Is Master…frightening…
a.) Capitalism all but ensures the enrichment of the rich and the impoverishment of everyone else. Whether that means here at home, or the exploitation abroad, it’s all the same. As Carl Sagan said when he was asked if he was a socialist by Ted Turner, “I’m not sure what a socialist is, but I believe that the government has a responsibility to care for people. And I’m not talking about dole, I’m talking about making people self-reliant.” So when you ask, “what is your definition of capitalism,” it’s just too broad of a question.
b.) Do I believe in private property? Not as an ethos, no.
c.) I don’t view my body as “property.” That’s a big problem with libertarians and conservatives, not only are precious resources commercialized, but they see their own bodies through the eyes of capitalism as well. Gross.
“Government has a responsibility to take care of people”…where does Government get the money to “take care of people “…sorry, but Government is a protection racket where those who have less use their superior numbers to essentially steal from those who have more…
Regarding your claim that Capitalism “impoverishes” people…what a fuc-ing joke! Capitalism is the single greatest factor in improving the standard of living of every single human being on this planet…the problem with your analysis is that your definition of “poor” is subjective (i.e. compared to others…i.e. based on envy), and not objective. Objectively, Capitalism does lead to income inequality, but makes everyone wealthier…how many “impoverished” are watch American Idol on their plasma televisions, while becoming overweight while eating lots of food. Impoverished?
If you give away all your property and move to Bangladesh to harvest toxic metals from electronic waste, or Indonesia where you can work yourself to an early grave salvaging ocean vessels for the enrichment of a handful of faceless individuals, maybe then you’ll have a truly “objective” appreciation for how capitalism is raising the quality of life for all the little peoples of the world.
Bangladesh? Let’s talk about Bangladesh..you Progresaivea paint a bleak picture about how evil Capitalist companies, like Apple, “exploit” poor laborers…but you somehow fail to mention, how, despite their evil intention to pay workers as little as rhey can…the “exploited” workers do it willingly, because it’s the best job they have ever had…Progressives..Wake Up To Reality!
Apple products are made in large part by Foxconn, a Taiwanese company with its major factory base in China. I used to work in a Taiwanese factory, and I’ve been in a Chinese factory where bearing housings for industrial machinery are made, seen where the workers live, breathed the air on the factory floor that leaves a metallic taste in your nose, throat and lungs, watched them work, ate lunch with them, slept in one of the dorms. I’ve been to the Chinese countryside and several of the major cities and seen how the poor live there. I’ve seen some of the flooded sections of the Yangtse River and talked with displaced locals who used to live and fish on the banks of the river before their homes and livelihoods were taken away. I have not, thank god, been to the “cancer villages” along the Yellow River and elsewhere in China, nor have I witnessed firsthand the privations endured by workers in Bangladesh, much of Indonesia, or Africa. I’m not an expert on human suffering, or all the myriad ways that global capitalism consumes the poor and spits out the husks.
But I’ve seen a few things. And I’m pretty sure that you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.
Let me ask this – are you saying that the current tax structure is fair?
I don’t know…is it unfair?
Here in Wisconsin economic growth fell off a cliff after the trifecta passed it’s budget. Only state in the nation to have six consecutive months of negative job growth. Also the slowest growing state in our region after years of growing at common pace with surrounding states. Turns out if you fire a bunch of teachers and cut all public employees’ pay, there’s a lot less disposable income available to grow the economy with. One of the biggest reasons the recalls are going through is that the promised economic benefits have not only not materialized the opposite is happening.
They have always been crazy, but quieter about it.
I don’t borrow trouble from the future.
The November election will be interesting. Goldwater did scare people and so LBJ won. I think that is the case with the Republicans now.
It’s not just this, Booman. It’s that the R’s do not care about winning re-election except for a select few. As you say, we can’t hold them back forever, and they know it. The R’s are simply doubling down and hoping for a “throw the bums out” moment, and then they’re going to burn the house down. All they need occupying the halls are bodies, not legislators.
Not only is this scary in itself, it leaves the citizenry with no real say in getting them to stop it. I mean, sure, stop electing Republicans. But it’s inevitable that they’ll be elected. So when Paul Ryan revs up his engines, or Arizona defunds PP, or Texas and Virginia torture women with descriptions of fetuses they didn’t want to lose, or when Pennsylvania disenfranchises minorities and young people…you might say, “We only have ourselves to blame.” Maybe that’s true. But in a two party system, is it really the citizens’ fault?
Yes.
Vote, you dumbshit motherfuckers. Just vote. Democratic, every time. All of once every two fucking years, that’s the bare minimum effort required. It’s not an unreasonable burden.
And knock off the false equivalence crap. It’s harming the nation. Both sides are not the same.
Erm, where do you see false equivalence? I never said they were the same; they’re not even close to the same. I vote, every time, including local and state elections (and in Virginia, our elections are on odd number years…next one in 2013).
seabe, it’s there in the very first comment on this thread. It’s there in every conversation about Democratic policy and elected officials online and in real life. Democrats are routinely undercut and degraded in our political discourse by “friendly” fire, and yet they’re the only choice we’ve got.
Joe Lieberman is a piece of shit coward. Joe Lieberman is also a hero. Because he’s still, in the end, basically a Democrat. And Democrats are heroes. Up against the Republican menace, they’re our only hope.
Democrats are heroes. They’re the only ones we’ve got. Internalize it. Respect it. Appreciate it.
Real heroes…increasingly convince citizens that they need our good, wholesome, altruistic Federal Government to provide for their every need…wonderful…Have you studied history? Who has done more evil–private citizens (i.e. evil super-rich, Ku Klux Klan, evil corporations, robber barons, serial killers, etc.)…or…GOVERNMENTS! Given the history of the human race, why do you prefer government? They do evil on a much bigger scale.
I would argue that religion has been a greater evil on mankind. of course no one here as I can tell suggests that the role of government is to provide all things to its citizens but by all means troll away!
As someone who loves God…Religion is a close second, but only when Church can use State to accomplish It’s ends…Church cannot commit evil without the support of State…Thank You Founding Fathers!
HolyJoe is a hero? For what? Repeal of DADT? Is he a hero for sending god-knows-how-many men to die for no good reason in Iraq? And they aren’t the same. If you think there really is a difference between driving towards the cliff at 100mph, as compared to only driving towards that cliff at 55mph.
Look, idiot, I don’t know what to tell you. You’re beyond a lost cause.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1
The NSA is archiving every scrap of digital information zipping in and out of this country until they can build a supercomputer fast enough to decrypt it all. This is the like the most ridiculous far-right wing fascist plot against privacy ever conceived in real life. It’s what Orwell and Huxley and every other dystopian master writer ever wrote about. And it’s been progressing forward silently under the most liberal President we’ve ever seen.
You don’t get a cookie for pointing out how fucked up things are. No plaudits, no charity points or congratulations are in order. This isn’t about you.
Think about what you know about Republicans. About their cruelty and wanton disregard for the safety and welfare of others. Do you want them to control the levers of state power or not?
If not, you take each and every electable Democrat you can get your hands on and praise jeebus that they exist. Even Joe Lieberman.
please use less abusive language. thanks.
Right On! Government needs to be less powerful! That way, it is not important who controls Government…that’s why, as a radical right-winger, I can’t stand Romney…he doesn’t believe in a smaller, less powerful government…that arrogant mfer just believes he can “manage” it better. Santorum is a f-ing theocrat…I’m going to go hang myself now…farewell, Progressives!
I’d argue when you’re a minarchist/libertarian (indistinguishable these days other than Julian Sanchez or Will Wilkinson), or a conservative, your arguing for small government except the enforcement of contracts or defense is more of a danger.
When you have the government more spread out doing other things, those interests will compete for that money rather than leaving it only to the military/police (which currently take up half of our budget, essentially).
Your ways lead to tyranny.
There is no wiping the slate clean. No redemptive revolution.
The state has existed for over 200 years. It has accrued over 200 years of deeds and actions and wounds and consequences upon its people. Those consequences matter. They endure, even if the state should somehow not.
And the state is the only thing that can ameliorate its own mistakes of the past. It’s the only game in town.
I find this all to be far too apocalyptic, Booman.
It’s hard to keep it in perspective, but this is still basically a period of unparalleled global peace and prosperity. Heaven knows what will happen once the last few great autocracies of our time finally collapse. China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, maybe Russia.
The US still basically has its shit together. There’s no prospect for half of its wealth and GDP to be wiped out in a week, for the country to be set back twenty years in an instant. It’s a bit of a weakling, objectively, no question, but we’re better off than the decrepit former empires in Europe or Japan.
Which means that curbing the fascism and bigotry of the right wing is still fully within the domain of participatory democracy. And the ever-browner Obama coalition is basically unstoppable as a permanent national presence as long as its members fucking vote.
No Democratic national congress or President is gonna be able to keep all fifty states afloat equally, or fight every state-level injustice. Some states are quite simply gonna have to be left behind. Does that mean another “great migration?” is in the offing? No idea. But keeping Washington Democratic-leaning means that inevitably, the Supreme Court will change hands again. And that will be the sword that keeps the rogue states at bay.
This shouldn’t come as any comfort to anybody. It’s pretty fucking bleak, I’ll admit. But it’s a fact of American history that things eventually work themselves out. Grieve for the victims, work your fingers to the bone to keep their numbers low, but know that victory will ultimately be at hand in the end.
I think you’re wrong there on both counts:
The danger in my mind is how the GOP might use demagoguery when we experience the Limits to Growth to jam home both their message and their crazy policies.
I can say with absolute certainty that I’m still living in an age of American prosperity.
I guess on #1 all I’m saying is that I think you’re inferring a “Genghis Khan” / “apocalyptic” message that isn’t there and on #2 it’s prosperity for some small (and shrinking) fraction of the population, and even that prosperity is coming to and end globally as we hit unavoidable limits.
if you are a woman…they are your enemy
if you are not WHITE…they are your enemy
if you work for a living…they are your enemy.
I don’t see what’s hard here. it’s very clear to me that they are my enemy, and folks need to get their virtual 2 by 4 and get ready to smack the shyt out of them.
period.
Really? Before I became an evil rich white male, my White, hard-working female wife despised your Progressive values…she must have been brainwashed…Pathetic…
Rich white women need not apply. Their rich spouses — or they themselves — can just bring in a private doctor, or fly out to states that care about freedom.
Absolutely correct. We need to remind people who are
They are going to end Social Security, Medicare, medicaid, and every other program. It is back to Dickensian England.
I’d say long term war to win back the terms of debate, but you think framing is nearly useless so I guess nothing.
Other options are unable to be posted here.
Framing and a quarter will get you a ride on the subway, and by then they’ll have shut the subway — it’s public transportation.
The terms of debate where?
Sunday morning bobbleheads are not where opinions are shaped.
Where must these framed messages occur? How are you going to know when they are effective? How are personal networks and the repetition of messages going to occur? Where will straightforward political conversations occur? How will they get people to follow through on their political commitments and do something (the minimal action being voting)?
Answering the order asked.
Terms of the debate in American society at the most general.
The messages occur wherever anyone can deliver them from Obama down to the newest Dem in Idaho.
We know they are effective when people trust government again.
The same way personal networks are usually formed. Repetition occurs when you have the chance to reinforce it.
Straightforward political conversations with the typical American are useless.
The same way get out the vote efforts usually proceed.
I have more money than God — not that I’m knocking God, mind you, it’s because God loves me so much I have all that money — and I hate the same people you do.
Why wouldn’t you want me, why wouldn’t you let me, run the country?
Of course, every human being with a net worth of one cent or more “has more money than God”…I’m fairly sure that God doesn’t have a piggy bank.
Can we stop pretending that the current Republican Party is in any way conservative? Or that the Democratic Party is in any way liberal? Sane people are moving to identifying as independents.
Eisenhower and William Buckley were conservative. Romney before this century was conservative (which gets called “moderate” in the media). Democratic Blue Dogs aren’t moderate, they are conservative and campaign as such.
This year and 2014 are going to be political crisis years. The question is whether the Democratic Party is going to grab the conservative mantle most of its politicians long for and let the GOP disappear into oblivion.
That is going to require by 2014 an independent left-liberal coalition that has been built from the grassroots up. ACORN might be gone. MoveOn might have been stereotyped and delegitimized. But there are little organizations springing up or getting stronger as a result of the presence and persistence of the Occupy Wall Street movement. There will be a backlash in all of the 2010 GOP trifecta states. And it won’t be high-profile or single-headed as to provide a target. Nor will there be professional careerist staff or any staff at all, money being a critical vulnerability to groups seeking change.
This won’t work. You can’t create a new left-leaning party and hope the Democratic Party will compensate and devour the Republicans instead. You’ll just kill the Democratic Party, obliterate any sense of commonality and teamwork on the political left, create generations worth of bad blood, and leave the right wing more empowered than ever.
You. Can’t. Get. Rid. Of. Democrats. You can’t replace them. You can’t supplant them. They are the substrate through which all progress is achievable under the current socioeconomic framework.
And once again, though I’ve gotten tired of explaining it to the starry-eyed revolutionaries in the last year, you cannot attempt to create a movement based on government illegitimacy during the time of Barack Obama. You will gain no currency with it with your most critical footsoldiers and allies. Only mistrust, or worse, contempt. He’s a symbol. He’s the “most legitimate” president in our nation’s history. He’s immovable and irreplaceable. Save the Big Revolutionary Ideas for 2017 and beyond…
The only thing that can be done is radical destruction of the party system and the infrastructure that gives it life. Electoral College, campaign finance (pretty much any campaign finance), and state control of election rules come immediately to mind, but our political system has passed its sell-by date. Until we face up to that unpalatable reality, the best we’ll do is paste small and ultimately irrelevant extensions on the status quo (ei, McCain-Feingold). This is a case where nothing less than starting with the big picture will do.
My first reaction is that we’re in the hole we’re in due to ceding the grassroots political infrastructure to the right wing, and that’s why we’re getting stomped at the state level even while continuing to win elections at the federal level–sort of.
But when you boil it down to bare essentials, it comes down to funding. Even running for school board is prohibitively expensive–into the millions of dollars in Texas, for example. And that was before Citizens United came along.
What do we have on the left–or in the center–to effectively combat this? We have a handful of sympathetic wealthy individuals like Rob Reiner, George Soros…Larry Flynt even, but nothing to compete with the resources that the right can bring to bear.
It’s not just a matter of lock-step right wing voters: they have buses, direct mailings, entire media markets, funding out the wazoo for every office in the land, legal challenges for everything, on and on…all a matter of funding and organizational infrastructure that we simply do not have the resources to match. Small-money donors, even millions of them, can’t compete with the machine that is consistently delivering victories to the fanatics.
From what I can tell, at a bare minimum we need the following:
The trouble is, I don’t know how we get there from here. We don’t have the organization, and we don’t have the money that builds organizations. And we don’t have anything approaching the consensus we’d need among ourselves to accomplish any of this.
I don’t want to say we’re screwed. So, I won’t say that.
3)
What do you think of this view currently expressed on the front page of DK:
“In the end, Palin’s legacy will fade away as quickly as it came about. Her party is an aging, shrinking, dying demographic of rural White men. Many of the Republican party’s luminaries understand this. Likely sooner than later, the GOP establishment will come to grips with the idea that if they are to survive as a political institution they will have to jettison the nutcase fringe. The reckoning will come, as the American political system tends to correct anomalies over time. But first, they’ll have to blow an election that should have been easy as apple pie. For that, Mitt Romney can thank Sarah Palin.”
Accurate? Overly optimistic? I remember hearing something similar after Bush won re-election in 2004.
.
IMO just a lot of nonsense, wishful thinking at best. Demographics from Pew Research in 2008 and 2011. Democrats losing the religious vote.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."“It’s not that conservatives are getting crazier; it’s that they’re getting more powerful.”
Stop! You’re both wrong.
Perlstein’s right in a way. “Teh crazy” has always been there. But the whole Russell Kirk/William Buckley thing in the 50s was to make conservatism “respectable” again, a new, genteel conservatism with intellectual foundations. Meanwhile “teh crazy” persisted in the margins but didn’t get much press except when it emerged during desegregation, Wallace campaign, JFK assassination, etc., etc.
What’s happening now is not that it’s changed in a qualitative way, but that it’s come into control of a major political party.
But now that they are in control of the entire GOP, have they become more powerful? Yes, far more powerful than when they were on the fringe. Except for the fact that precisely because the GOP is now them, they are on a trajectory straight back to the fringe, which means they are becoming less powerful.
Republican power reached its apogee under Bush43. What we’re seeing now is not real power, but craziness, viciousness and noise. It cannot be sustained. Signs of its rejection are popping up everywhere.
The GOP primaries epitomizes this. The whole melodrama is taking place within the 27% nut house of American politics. The other 73% is watching this and meanwhile there is absolutely no countervailing primary drama on the Democratic side. Obama is our candidate. So there is an illusion, as if all American politics has checked into the nuthouse. What does it all mean? It means they are going to come up with a roster of shitty candidates and a widespread rejection by the majority. I don’t mean to sound complacent, I am far from that, but this is what I think is happening.