I’m wondering how the corporate/libertarian wing of the GOP placate social conservatives this time, and what that means in terms of attracting Independents:
Social issues barely rated in this year’s economy-centric midterm elections. More than six in 10 voters who cast ballots on Election Day cited the economic downturn as their top concern, according to exit polls. But major GOP gains in state legislatures across the country – where policy on social issues is often set – left cultural conservatives newly empowered. Opponents of same-sex marriage, for instance, now see an opportunity to block or even reverse recent gains by gay rights advocates in Minnesota and New Hampshire.
If you believe, as I do, that the Tea Party was packaged and sold by corporate interests to serve a very narrow agenda that consists of low tax rates for wealthy people and no regulation, they’re going to have a real problem with the base if they don’t focus on social issues.
“Americans voted overwhelmingly for both social and fiscal conservatives, and it would be unwise to throw social policies to the wayside and snub the voters who sent a strong message to the new Congress that they want both pro-life and fiscally conservative policies. In our post-election poll, when asked to name the biggest issue facing future generations, 62 percent of voters said it is the moral decline of our nation.”
And then there’s this:
Two-thirds of the Republican wins came in districts where the percentage of people classified as rural was greater than average. Democrats saw many of their small-town icons retire or go down in defeat, along with younger members who had been renewing the party’s appeal in the hinterland. The few rural Democrats who remain will face another tough election in 2012. Rural America has long been associated with conservatism. Small towns tend to be older and whiter, and they often have more military veterans. Those are all groups that lean Republican.
NPR missed part of the story. They’re not just older and whiter. Social conservatives came out, and opposing abortion rights and marriage equality are going to be huge for them, as always.
It is absolutely central to the social conservative voter’s self-image that they be fighting to defend something Big and Worthy and Righteous, and tax cuts and the inherent beauty of the corporate form aren’t going to cut it.
They need issues like LIFE or MARRIAGE or FAMILY, or they sit it out. They haven’t miraculously turned into glib, ironic, pot-smoking libertarian-types, despite the Koch propaganda and Grover Norquist’s fantasies. That’s silly. They’re the same voters they always were.
They’re rural, they’re religious, and they’re dead-earnest.
Former President Bush gave the business/libertarian gang tax cuts galore by 2004, along with a war of choice to placate the neoconservatives. He still had to flog virulently anti-gay initiatives at the state level in crucial markets to inspire social conservatives to come out and drag him over the finish line.
Nothing’s changed on that, no matter how many times media coyly ignore the obvious.
Bullsmith
This is normal American politics these days.
Republicans lie to the voters and then blame the Democrats for not actually doing anything important they campaigned on. Democrats do the same thing, but they tend to blame and fear-monger their own voters. The one thing that has been proven beyond a doubt is that anything they say is important while campaigning is, almost by definition, irrelevant to how they will behave in Washington.
How else could massive Republican majorities do squat about legalized abortion while massive Democratic majorities oversee unprecedented wealth transfers to the rich?
Dennis SGMM
They’re not spending much effort on this right now because they don’t need to. The base is so well-trained to respond to dog whistles and coded messages that five minutes’ work will have it whipped back to its usual froth.
`
Young pagan bucks with T-bone steaks!
Linda Featheringill
I wonder how much these voters really expect their newly elected officials to accomplish.
Do they really think they can “get their country back”? Do they expect repeal of health care reform? Do they expect abortion to become illegal? Do they expect the entire LGBT community to be isolated and squashed? Do they think hyper-educated and liberal folks will be publicly shamed and punished?
What is it they really expect?
Brachiator
The mainstream GOP have got a problem. They’ve always had a problem. This may be one of the reasons you see people like Barbara Bush and one of the McCain daughters doing a pushback against Sarah Palin.
The Resentment wing of the Republican Party, including Tea Party People, are more radically conservative than the religious fundamentalists who made up the old conservative base. These people are not hot just for issues like abortion and gay marriage. Many are fervently anti-illegal immigrant, and would push for major changes that would make the US officially a white, hetero Christian English-speaking nativist nation, and would embed this rigid primitivism in the Constitution itself.
Also, people like Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers, are not interested simply in low tax rates for the wealthy. They firmly believe in an American oligarchy. These people have always been around, and strangely enough were subdued somewhat during the technological expansion that happened during the early 20th century, in part because they made money as the middle class prospered.
But they always felt that the “right sort of people” should be in charge, and now they are fighting back with a vengeance. The terrible irony is that they are using the malignant populism represented by Sarah Palin and the Tea Party crowd as one of their prime weapons.
The wild card is that the mainline elite, like Barbara Bush, do not particularly care for people like Palin, and would prefer that they simply quietly defer to their betters. So, the dilemma of the oligarchs is that both depend upon, and fear, the rubes that they are using to kick liberals to the curb.
Lev
I agree that the elite right at best see social conservatives as useful idiots, but they do sometimes deliver them some baubles such as this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial-Birth_Abortion_Ban_Act
It’s hardly overturning Roe, but still. In reality, other than a nationwide parental notification law I don’t see what the right could realistically offer to social conservatives in this session, probably not even that with a Democratic Senate.
WyldPirate
@Bullsmith:
These days? It’s been the norm from the Rethugs since at least Reagan.
Toss the religious busybodies some red meat during the campaign to get them to the polls and then ignore them while in office.
TruthOrScare
Dennis SGMM @ 2: This. They don’t need to do anything themselves; all they need to do is find some kernel to blow into a fauxtrage about how the Dems want to force an abortion-on-demand kiosk and a quickie gay marriage chapel in every corner 7-11. Fox will run with it 24/7 for the month before the election. They’ll come out; they have for the last 40 years. And let’s be honest — for all the pious talk, more than a few have had daughters who needed to ‘take care of a problem’ and gay marriage won’t have gotten much farther down the track by 2012. They’ll make sure that gay marriage bans are on the ballot in the swing states.
El Cid
Orrin Hatch explains why now he’s so fiercely opposed to health insurance ‘mandates’ (i.e., taxes) when he was so forcefully supporting them in 1993.
He didn’t oppose it in ‘Hillarycare’, he supported a bill explicitly designed to include the Bob Dole mandates in the plan.
No one gives a shit, his fraudulent position won’t be scoffed at, and he’ll be welcomed on whatever talk show and if that subject is broached he’ll be allowed the spew the same nonsensical shit and move on.
Because our political and media systems are completely broken from the point of view of the great majority of the population.
Brick Oven Bill
George Washington Teaches us:
“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.”
We have witnessed the rise of a new religion, being preached on the television by those of Wealth and Birth. In summary, this religion teaches us that large amounts of electrical power can be stored and that evolution shaped man until 30,000 years ago, and then was promptly stopped, probably by Al Gore’s ancestor. Those who belief that evolution continues to this day are Heretics, or ‘Racists’.
It teaches that the seas are rising and if you do not revere the tenets of the Faith, that Mother Earth will burn you alive. This religion further teaches that a great evil exists, and his name is ‘Mathematics’. The symbol of this new religion is a Windmill.
This is an unhealthy religion as it is designed to insulate Wealth and Birth from Talent and Virtue, and divorces us from morality and the capacity of self-government. It is better to find a different religion. I would recommend considering Deism. Deism celebrates the Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Dennis SGMM
@Lev:
They can offer them resentment and validate that they’re being oppressed by dark forces. If, as is likely, Republican red meat socially conservative bills die in the Senate then the call to arms will be “Get rid of those Senate Democrats!”
Chris
Religious issues are there to ensure that the basis – a certain part of the base, at least – turns out. Religious issues aren’t what wins over independents. Yes, the base voted overwhelmingly for “social and fiscal conservatives.” But they’d have done that anyway.
Kay
@Brachiator:
This is going to sound odd, but if you talk to religious conservatives, they frame their “civic mission” in positive language. I feel as if that is very, very important to them, that they’re not just opposing something, they’re promoting something positive.
I personally think it’s because it’s difficult to square the business/libertarian wing with their humanitarian/charitable impulses. Religious conservatives solve that conflict by working to “protect marriage”, or babies, or families.
I think religious conservatives need what they perceive as a positive mission, and the Tea party and the business/libertarian wing are relentlessly nasty and cynical.
I used to see this bumpersticker combo around here, after the 2004 elections. It was “Love Wins” pasted above “Bush/Cheney”.
There’s no love in the Tea Party. They’re a bitter group of people.
Lev
@Dennis SGMM: I think that’s right, especially since they get their information from Fox, which doesn’t give them the full story.
Of course, Fox doesn’t work for the Republican Party. More the other way around. A Romney nomination for them would not be good for ratings, but a Palin nomination would be gold. And if Fox/Rush/Drudge start pushing for Palin (’cause why wouldn’t they?), who on Earth can stop them?
Lev
@Dennis SGMM: In any event, I was talking about substantive policy victories.
Culture of Truth
“they’re going to have a real problem with the base if they don’t focus on social issues.”
So they probably will. The moneyed class doesn’t care one way or the other, except as it affects the vote-counting for more tax cuts.
NR
@Brachiator: Well, Obama’s going to take a bipartisan approach with these people, so I’m sure we have nothing to worry about. Bipartisanship fixes everything.
Kay
@Culture of Truth:
I think it does affect the vote-counting, in 2012. Bush gave the moneyed class everything they wanted up to 2004. He still needed voters.
He did that desperate, cynical, gay-bashing for one reason, and the reason was he needed them to come out.
The business cons and the libertarian cons may be rolling in dough, but they seem to come up short on electoral votes.
Chris
I’d argue a lot of the voters don’t either.
Let’s face it; as much as people talk about white, rural, small-towners being the base of the GOP, the only way either party can win an election these days is by winning the suburbs, where (unlike rural and urban areas) there isn’t a clear commitment to either side of the aisle.
The fact is, a lot of the middle class suburbanites they need to win over just don’t care very much about social issues. Low taxes and deregulation yes (but keep my trains running on time!), keeping the scary immigrants and poor people away from us yes… abortion and gay marriage? Not so much.
Ash Can
@Linda Featheringill: I think that’s a good question. I’m sure there are cretins and wackos out there who sincerely believe that their newly-elected freshman representative is going to lead the charge in rebuilding the U.S. into a right-wing paradise within three months. But I suspect that, in far more cases, the electorate’s attitude is “OK, pal, the last guy/gal couldn’t fix our town’s Main Street, let’s see if you can.” And when, inevitably, Freshman Representative Idiot/Crook doesn’t fix Main Street, the short-attention-span electorate is going to get antsy.
(Note, however, that this antsiness won’t matter if those electorates don’t have any decent alternatives to their GOP idiots. And you’d better believe that, like in any election, the lion’s share of the responsibility of communicating with the electorate in 2012 will be upon the Democratic challengers in these districts. Obama could show up in person at the front doors of everyone in the district and draw pictures so simple and clear that even the family goldfish would understand them, and it wouldn’t make any damned difference. If the folks in the district think the Dem challenger isn’t a decent candidate, they won’t vote for him.)
gizmo
I hope the Democrats will remind the newly elected social conservatives that keeping big gummint off our back and out of our personal lives is supposed to be one of the bedrock principles of conservatism.
dhd
Anybody catch this doozy in the last paragraph of that last link?
Yes, of course. There’s nothing wrong with serving in the military of a foreign country. But no Real American doubts the existence of God or has roots in our #1 trading partner.
Kay
@gizmo:
I hope the Democrats will insist the Republican incumbents in blue/swing states and districts state a position on social issues.
Like Olympia Snowe, and Senator Brown. Where are they on this?
Moderate Republicans joined Bush lock-step in demonizing whole chunks of the country in 2004, and none of them paid for that.
Dennis SGMM
@Lev:
I suspect that the GOP doesn’t really want big victories on socially conservative issues. If Roe v Wade was overturned tomorrow, gay marriage was banned, the 14th Amendment repealed and every undocumented immigrant in the country was magically deported then the GOPers would have nothing with which to fire up the 28 percenters.
Brick Oven Bill
In many ways, the Windmill religion’s closest cousin in the Catholic Church of the 1500s. Consider these similarities:
1. Both seek to maintain political power.
2. Both silence ‘Heretics’, or the modern equivilent, ‘Racists’.
3. Both deny Mathematics.
4. Disbelievers are to pay or burn.
5. Both accumulate money.
6. There are three crosses. There are three blades on a typical Windmill.
The Enlightenment took down the Catholic Church’s power structure by teaching men to think for themselves. This was achieved by utilizing humanity’s Five Senses and the Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences. When confronted by these powerful forces, observe the Windmill religion practitioner’s response:
Calculator Abuse!, he cried.
It has gotten worse. The Federal Reserve is claiming that the recent $600 billion QE2 will create 700,000 jobs. Let us ignore the fact that these jobs will be largely created outside of the jurisdiction of the US government. Now, perform Mathematics:
$600 billion divided by 700,000 equals $857,000 per job.
The calculator abuse! cry came about following a calculation of $160,000 per job for the first stimulus.
El Cid
@Brick Oven Bill: $600 billion is not being spent. It’s being used to buy long-term Treasury instruments. It’s not going away.
Lev
@Dennis SGMM: I think you are correct, but given my cynicism of most political organizations, I suspect that most of them try to make merely incremental progress so that they won’t succeed themselves out of a job. HRC is a good example of this from the other side. I don’t oppose hate crimes legislation or antidiscrimination legislation–their big priorities–but they seem a far cry from being a pro-equality version of Maggie Gallagher’s shop. Maybe I have a distorted idea of what HRC does (I’ll admit that Andrew Sullivan’s rants against them have stuck with me), but what I’ve read otherwise suggests that I don’t.
Woodrowfan
And, let’s be honest, they’re often quite racist and they fear things that are different, or that threaten to change what they know.
Dennis SGMM
@Woodrowfan:
Nothing new here. From Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis, pub 1922:
“There’s a lot of smart college professors and tea-guzzling slobs in this burg that say I’m a roughneck and a never-wuzzer and my knowledge of history is not-yet. Oh, there’s a gang of woolly-whiskered book-lice that think they know more than Almighty God, and prefer a lot of Hun science and smutty German criticism to the straight and simple Word of God…”
James E. Powell
@Dennis SGMM:
Exactly. Republicans don’t have to do too much to whip up their base when the Democratic president is a black, socialist, Muslim, America hater.
The Republicans know what they are doing. They have tremendous control over their people. When McConnell announces that their only goal is to make Obama a one term president, every single member of the Republican base hears “get that n—-r out of our White House” and they love it.
TooManyJens
I think so too, but they’re probably not referring the fact that we now think torture is A-OK.
Brick Oven Bill
The Federal Reserve ‘buys’ government bonds with printed money. The Federal government then spends this money. The end result is a $600 billion tax on the American people, in the form of a weakened currency. This value is dissipated by distributing the money to banks and largely worthless government programs.
$600 billion divided by 300 million Americans equals $2,000 per head or ~$8,000 per family to ‘create’ $857,000 per job jobs mostly outside the country.
maus
All they have to say is “we cut taxes and the dems raise taxes”
It doesn’t matter who the taxes are for, really. If we raise taxes on the top 2% of earners, OBVIOUSLY we want to slippery slope it to 90%, independent of how much the Republicans screw the middle class. When did reality have anything to do with their approach?
Dennis SGMM
@Brick Oven Bill:
Would it be better for you if the money was, say, crocheted?
DRickard
Sadly, Tea Party theocrats won’t cost the establishment Republicans anything. The GOP has been campaigning on forced pregnancy and stoning gays fro at least 30 years… and then governing on tax cuts and corporate welfare. And the wingnut sheeple just keep voting for them. Wingnuts have an astounding capacity for reality-denial and handling cognitive dissonance: people who still insist that tax cuts increase revenue, and who have erased the entire W. administration from their memory (all economic and budget woes began with Obama’s election, doncha know), will have no problem convincing themselves that the GOP is imposing Biblical law regardless of what Congress actually does.
Brachiator
@Kay:
Actually, this makes a lot of sense. You have nailed something that is very important. I think that some religious conservatives are wrong, even misguided, but I recognize that they are not all simplistically motivated by negative agendas. I also think you’re right that “the Tea party and the business/libertarian wing are relentlessly nasty and cynical.”
Much of what the Tea Party represents is fueled by resentment and fear.
@NR:
Here, Obama is trying to reach out not just to Republican politicians, but also to Republican citizens, as well. Yeah, I supposed he could try to govern just like Bush/Cheney, and demand that the Republicans just give him whatever he wants, but it’s not his style and it wouldn’t work anyway.
James E. Powell
@Woodrowfan:
And, let’s be honest, they’re often quite racist and they fear things that are different, or that threaten to change what they know.
No one wants to be honest about the racism that permeates American politics. The only thing more common than examples of racism are people denying that there is racism.
For a lot of white Americans, it isn’t the blatant racism like Rush Limbaugh, it’s just that a white, male, fundamentalist Christian is the default description of the ‘right kind of person’ to run for office. I do not think this can be overcome in rural America. There aren’t enough non-whites living in those areas.
ornery curmudgeon
@Brachiator: “These people have always been around, and strangely enough were subdued somewhat during the technological expansion that happened during the early 20th century, in part because they made money as the middle class prospered.’
They were ‘subdued’ because the Right wing metastasized into fascism and died in a fiery glow we call WWII … “these people” needed to wait for memories to fade.
Probably you were assuming people know that and ‘strangely enough’ was snark; me, I don’t assume much anymore.
ornery curmudgeon
@Brachiator: “These people have always been around, and strangely enough were subdued somewhat during the technological expansion that happened during the early 20th century …”
They were ‘subdued’ because the Right wing metastasized into fascism and died in a fiery glow we call WWII … “these people” needed to wait for memories to fade.
(Maybe you were assuming people know basic history and ‘strangely enough’ was meant as snark; me, I don’t assume much anymore.)
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Brick Oven Bill:
It is so cute when you send us postcards from 18thCenturyAbstractNounWorld, but does each and every one of them have to have the same message:The Weather Is Here, Wish You Were Beautiful ?
Because as Thomas Jefferson once said: A Man who has no Variety in his Soul is a Painful Thorn in the Softly Padded Foot of the Lion of Liberty, whereby we are apt to give Pleasure to the Good Humors of Mankind when we Seek to Pluck It Out!
geg6
OT (and I’ve flogged this in another thread, but…), if you haven’t been reading Salon’s Hack 30 list, you are missing some of the most fun I’ve had on the intertrons today.
http://www.salon.com/news/war_room_hack_thirty/index.html
MAJeff
@Linda Featheringill:
Yes, that’s what they seek.
MAJeff
@Linda Featheringill:
Yes, that’s what they seek.
jacy
@geg6:
If they’ve already dispensed with Brooks and Carlson and Milbank, the lower 21must be truly, truly awful.
beltane
@geg6: I’m loving the Hack list too. Not only is it the Wanker Hall of Fame, but there is a genuine element of suspense to it as well. Will Tom Friedman be in the top 5? Who will be #1?
Earl Butz
@Linda Featheringill: Google and read a free copy of “The Turner Diaries”. That should give you a pretty good idea of what they expect.
mds
@Dennis SGMM:
Actually, there would still be mandatory fundamentalist Protestant prayer in every household to push for, and the unable-to-marry gays wouldn’t yet have been exterminated. Also, there are an awful lot of books in this country to round up and burn. Of course they would come up with something to fire up the 28 percenters. The 28 percenters would shriek persecution if their desired fascist religious dictatorship still allowed right turns on red.
TXG1112
The corporate interests that run the GOP (and the Tea Party for that matter) mostly live in blue states. They really don’t care what happens to conservaflyover country. In any case, the elite don’t have to worry about whether social issues have any impact as they can simply travel to a blue state to get whatever they need.
Southern Beale
Umm .. not entirely. The Supreme Court also works for them. That was the point of all of those Justice Sunday events, don’t forget.
The thing is, LIFE and MARRIAGE and FAMILY are only concerns of the older, white evangelical crowd. Young evangelicals care about POVERTY and CLIMATE CHANGE and SOCIAL JUSTICE and RACISM. This is what I’ve seen living on the buckle of the Bible belt. Young people didn’t vote in the last midterm but they will vote in 2012 (I hope I hope I hope) and the same crap that works on their parents won’t necessarily work on them.
Much as the Gary Bauers and Ralph Reeds of the world have tried their damnedest to make tax cuts a social justice issue with the church crowd, that just hasn’t worked. No one buys that bullshit and you just look like a Pharisee for preaching it.
James E. Powell
@Linda Featheringill:
What is it they really expect?
I have asked this question of the right-wingers in my extended family, many times, over the last thirty years. I have never received a useful answer. When I suggest that they are being played by the Republicans, they sputter that however bad things are now (and they believe that everything is bad), things would be much, much worse if they didn’t vote Republican. Hard to argue with that.
I suppose they fear that if the Democrats ran things, tax-payer funded abortions would be offered to all the teenage girls at the Islamic retraining camps.
I believe that their fervor and loyalty to the Republicans is fueled by the fact that they either have lost or will inevitably lose most of the big battles of the culture wars. They feel like they are fighting a rear-guard, save the world battle.
So they don’t vote Republican with any concrete expectations. They do it to express their rage at a world that has not conformed to the expectations they were given by their upbringing.
John - A Motley Moose
I’ve finally figured BOB out. He must be a researcher for Glenn Beck. It’s the only thing that makes sense, since he certainly doesn’t make any.
geg6
@beltane:
I’m hoping for Broder for #1, personally.
Linda Featheringill
@Earl Butz:
The Turner Diaries:
I went to Wiki and read a plot summary. I probably missed the literary subtlety but got an idea of what it was about.
Yes. I could see that happening the US. But not today.
On the other hand, I can see some people dreaming about that scenario.
Chat Noir
@geg6: Yes, thanks for the link (bookmarked it, too, for reference). Took a gander at #s 26-30 and it looks like good reading.
mds
@James E. Powell:
In many cases, while simultaneously rooting for the world’s imminent destruction (once they are all safely teleported away).
geg6
@jacy:
Think Kristol, Broder, Krauthammer, Friedman…well, damn. It should be a list with about 100 slots.
TooManyJens
@James E. Powell: I think there’s a lot of truth to this. Also, the religious right people I have known have believed that they are called by God to fight on these issues, whether they can win or not. It’s one of the things that makes it so hard to work with them. Take sex education and birth control. The people I’ve known are genuinely saddened by STDs and unintended pregnancies, and may even help people who are affected by them as individuals. But their worldview doesn’t allow them to take a practical approach — it has to be abstinence outside of marriage, period, because anything else would be betraying what they believe to be the one true way that’s best for everybody. It’s not that they think they can stop people from having sex; whether they can succeed or not is simply irrelevant.
jurassicpork
What I can’t understand is #1 why the average American doesn’t seem to remember that Obama gave tax breaks to the poor and middle class and why they forgot that on Election Day and #2 why we’re letting the GOP masquerade the proposed end of the Bush tax cuts as a “tax increase”? Why can’t we seem to wrap our minds and hands around this debate?
Anyway, while I’m here I have an announcement, so attention all you Kindle owners and lend me your ears: My liberal/progressive rock-n-roll novel, American Zen, just went up for sale on Amazon Kindle a few minutes ago. So if you own any of the 10 varieties of Kindle, please give my novel some consideration. If you like what you read on my blog, you’ll love American Zen and its take on love, life, politics, etc. TIA.
Chris
@Southern Beale:
Certainly hope you’re right. I don’t expect we’ll flip the evangelicals overall, but just making them a competitive demographic again would be nice.
Ironically, I’ve often had more productive conversations talking to devout evangelicals and even fundamentalists than with most other conservatives. I don’t know why, but my guess is because religion is more likely to be a value system for them, not just a label. The really devout ones I know are much more likely to stay awake at night wondering “what would Jesus do?” than the more “mainstream” conservatives, who simply think Jesus is already on their side because they’re Real Americans/Republicans/patriots/whatever.
Jewish Steel
Hee hee!
Only know BoB by way of reputation. Never before read any of his comments. Deliciously barmy!
But he does make a kind of sense…haha! No, of course not.
Suffern Ace
@Chris: Yes, too, but wasn’t Rick Warren supposed to be one of those who was leading the Evangelicals a bit toward the wider social issues that concern the younger Evangelicals, but it turned out that he was really just broadening the number of issues that dominate the scene. That too, and it turned out the a lot of democrats of a certain political persuasion just hated the idea of any outreach in that area period full stop end of story. They probably won’t be in play…if they are told they aren’t welcome.
Alwhite
good pasta! I don’t know which is more depressing, that Brick Head Bill is posting again or that people are wasting time and talent responding to his shit.
sherifffruitfly
“They need issues like LIFE or MARRIAGE or FAMILY, or they sit it out.”
Just plain false. All they need is Scary Brown People, and they’re good to go. Latinos, Muslims, and Obama are more than enough for them.
Abortion and teh gheys are just icing on the racist cake. And not the yummy cream cheese kind, either.
Judas Escargot
@Suffern Ace:
[W]asn’t Rick Warren supposed to be one of those who was leading the Evangelicals a bit toward the wider social issues that concern the younger Evangelicals, but it turned out that he was really just broadening the number of issues that dominate the scene.
I remember hearing that, too. I’d had his “Purpose Driven Life” recommended to me a few times, when that book was in vogue. “Oh, this guy’s a moderate, the new style of preacher”.
Then I watched the first Obama/McCain “debate” (not really a debate as they just talked with Warren back-to-back) in 2008. I don’t think I was the only casual observer of Warren who changed his opinion of him, after that (as you noted).
That’s also when I learned that offshore oil-drilling had become an Evangelical concern (standing ovation from the crowd– a few weeks later, the chants of “Drill Baby Drill” got started). Not sure which chapter and verse of the Bible supports that position.
wengler
I expect at least 10 more states will pass the Arizona “harass the brown people with local law enforcement” law. According to news reports it has worked like a charm in pushing brown people out of the state, a victory for both anti-immigration activists and white nationalists(two not so mutually exclusive groups).
Rich white corporate Republicans will probably continue to rule the roost at the federal level, but rightwing populism IS the promotion of racial conflict and white nationalism, and represents and insurrectionist force in Republican politics.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Chris:
In some ways left wing economic populists have more in common with these folks (and visa-versa) than either side commonly appreciates. Both sides are fighting a losing rearguard action against the effects of capitalism and post-modernism. These tend to rip apart traditional communities and break down social mores, while also serving as a handy conduit for plutocrats to loot the commons.
One side focuses on the social havoc, and the other side focuses on the economic havoc which is the ugly result of a sort of cultural and socio-economic strip-mining imposed from above by distant elites. Both sides seek to regain some sort of control over their lives in an area where they feel most acutely threatened and where they perceive that they have some small chance of fighting back. Both sides look back to a golden era of the 1950s when a local community (the small town, the labor union) had more power with respect to the forces of globalization than at present. Also, both sides view the govt. as a crucial instrument in fighting their battles if they could only get a sufficiently determined hold on power, but this is not a realistic outcome so long as our mass media are deferential to the opinions and needs of non-local elites and both sides continue to see the other populists as their worst enemies.
Divide et impera is a very old game which nevers gets old.
Mike G
@Linda Featheringill:
Most of the goobers will be happy as long as its a proudly-ignorant dumbass with a corny accent who looks like them, who is screwing them over from the Oval Office or the corporate boardroom. Especially if out-groups they hate are visibly getting screwed more severely than they are. Parochial narcissism combined with Stockholm Syndrome.
kay
@sherifffruitfly:
I was feeling faint, so I had to go eat, but I want to respond to this :)
I absolutely think that’s part of it. I just don’t think that’s the whole of it. I think people are more complicated than that.
I’ll turn it around from Republicans and use Democrats, if you don’t mind. Many of our local (rural) Democrats are racists. In my experience, this is true. However, they got over that one identification (race), some of the older white Democrats here, and backed Obama (eventually) because they had another strong identification that trumped race, Party (life-long Democrat).
There were other factors too, he’s talented and appealing and not frightening, and they knew he was gonna win and they really, really wanted to win, but still. They got past it.
I don’t know if that’s good or bad or heartening or anything, but there it is. In my experience, here, that happened.
So I think it’s more complicated than just race.
Woodrowfan
@James E. Powell:
I think you’re right, but I also think under the surface of the average RWer lurks some really ugly old-fashioned “n****r baiting.”
Midnight Marauder
@Kay:
@Brachiator:
Essentially, it seems like you’re discussing the brief yet intensely powerful “compassionate conservatism” that Bush II and Karl Rove dreamed up.
James E. Powell
@kay:
It is more complicated than just race. Everything we see in American politics is more complicated than just race. But race is the one big thing that will move a large number of people in one direction, and do so predictably. The Republicans have been working this crowd for a very long time. They have applied all that is known about psychology, sociology, and communications, they have applied an enormous amount of money, and they have been consistent and relentless in their messaging.
It comes down to the arithmetic: if the Republicans do not keep these white working class voters opposed to the Democrats (the party of black and brown people), they cannot hope to compete in national elections. If they cannot turn these people out, they will have to live with a congress that looks like the one we had after the 2008 election. That was not an anomaly, that is what congress would look like if race were not an issue.
Evolved Deep Southerner
Heh. She said “come out.”
Barb (formerly Gex)
The phrase “small town values” first appeared in print after a majority of Americans lived in cities. We are dealing with people who are afraid of change, have an inferiority complex (why do they hate educated urban elites?), and want to take their pain out on whomever they decided is at fault. Usually minorities, women, gays, and immigrants.
I doubt this is the actual reason the GOP doesn’t push to get their wishlist fulfilled, but giving them every policy they ask for won’t fix the actual problem of them being scared, hatefilled people.