Ronald Reagan’s grand coalition – the three-legged stool of social conservatives, fiscal conservatives and national defense hawks – has been shattered by a creeping secularism that carries with it an attitude of enervating moral relativism, the fiscal excesses of “compassionate” conservatism and the continuing cost of overseas adventurism. So many “isms”. Too many.
With the possible exception of a lethargic Fred Thompson, no candidate running for the GOP nomination is acceptable to all three wings of the electorate and the party orthodoxy. Mitt Romney may have come too late to his pro-life and pro-marriage convictions, while southern evangelicals narrow their eyes at his appreciation for Joeseph Smith, Jr.’s doctrinal innovations. Mike Huckabee is an economic populist, which makes him an uncomfortable party candidate, and former Baptist minister, which would make him an uncomfortable nominee. Rudy Giuliani has all those marriages, as well as a regrettable penchant for being photographed in drag at New York parties -those will not travel well. John McCain’s status as a maverick makes him popular in New Hampshire, but anathematizes him to party insiders while his genial stance on amnesty for illegal aliens grates on many. Too many.
It all makes for a fascinating and unpredictable primary struggle and has led to speculation of – quelle horreur! – a brokered convention. It’s early yet of course, and someone may fatally stumble to clear the field but in the interim we political junkies are popping corn and enjoying the drama.
Across the aisle, the Democratic Party has problems of its own. Unlike the more ideologically heterodox conservative candidates, they mostly all believe the same thing, varying in policy degree more often than kind. They do differ however in one significant thing: Each of them passionately believes that the best candidate to lead the country to “change” stares back at them from within the mirror. And what they see in that mirror defines what they see in the world.
For a generation at least, progressives in the Democratic party have been wedded to identity-based politics, the collaboration to power of self-selected and soi-disant victim groups identified by gender, economic stratum, sexual orientation and race, just to name a few. Their internal formations are inherently separatist, perpetuate marginalization in order to raise class consciousness and implicitly reject the idea of an overlying or unifying national identity. They are openly contemptuous of the notion of a common culture.
And now, as David Brooks points out in the NYT, two of their major constituencies stand on the brink of open, identity-based war:
Both Clinton and Obama have eagerly donned the mantle of identity politics. A Clinton victory wouldn’t just be a victory for one woman, it would be a victory for little girls everywhere. An Obama victory would be about completing the dream, keeping the dream alive, and so on.
Fair enough. The problem is that both the feminist movement Clinton rides and the civil rights rhetoric Obama uses were constructed at a time when the enemy was the reactionary white male establishment. Today, they are not facing the white male establishment. They are facing each other…
What we have here is worthy of a Tom Wolfe novel: the bonfire of the multicultural vanities. The Clintons are hitting Obama with everything they’ve got. The Obama subordinates are twisting every critique into a racial outrage in an effort to make all criticism morally off-limits.
It’s hard to look at all of this and not be stirred to contemplations about creative destruction. It’s also hard not to hear the ghost of Malcolm X speaking about chickens coming home to roost.
Interesting times.
Although I do not enjoy the destruction this democrat debate does to our national psyche, I do enjoy watching those that have long since pilloried the opposition party on this very subject bleed their own.
It might be fun to point and laugh at years of identity warfare simmering under the tight lid of political correctness coming to a roiling boil but – if this pot decides to blow its top who gets burned?
If this turns into a small scale disaster that finally ends this sort of victim theater with few casualties then good.
I just hope it remains small scale.
“Their internal formations are inherently separatist, perpetuate marginalization in order to raise class consciousness and implicitly reject the idea of an overlying or unifying national identity. They are openly contemptuous of the notion of a common culture.”
Sadly true. Somebody once said a Leftist firing squad is circular –they’re always aiming at each other. The Dems’ contempt for our national identity blinds them to the need to uphold that identity against our sworn enemies.
The enemy always has a vote, and will cast it to his advantage. Whether the Dems are paying attention or not.
Traditional liberalism was strongly related to Enlightenment universalism..the idea that human have a lot in common, regardless of race, gender, etc. This has long since been abandoned by the “progressive” wing of the Democratic party. The America they see is one based on a Hobbesian struggle of group against group.
Some blogger observed that Republicans tend to say “I’ll work for you,” while Democrats tend to say “I’ll fight for you”…with the intended fighting alway being against other Americans.
Actually I look at this all in a positive light. When I was a kid true racism and sexism was clear and identifiable. These days, the vast majority of Americans are neither. The democrats are running on an obsolete version of political software, and it’s showing.
Would anyone say that Clinton’s supporters are racist by not voting for Obama? Similarly, are Obama’s supporters sexist? No reasonable person would think that, but the candidates are acting like that. Maybe they’ll do it long enough, to the point of being ridiulous, until they finally realize how odious this kind of thing actually is.
The rest of the world is popping the corn and enjoying it, too. I mean, you gave us Coca-Cola, Jazz music, Hollywood movies, pin-up girls, McDonnell-Douglas jet-fighters, freedom and democracy … and first class political entertainment in the best Vaudeville tradition. Last time it was
The Great Veteran Boy Doll Mud-Slinging Contest of ‘04
Honestly, this time I am waiting for the MARVELlous drama
Lady Dynamite vs. the Bat out of Hell
(the Hellrazor you know who I mean)
The names are only half appropriate. I’d never use “dynamite” to describe Edwards.
secret asian man … How about ’squib?’ Dictionary.com has some very appropriate definitions, including the Ozzie meaning ‘coward.’ In firecracker lingo, it means something that fizzles instead of explodes.
Marianne
I sincerely hope that they rip each others’ guts out. They deserve each other.
I love watching the left eat their own. In regards to Huckabee, it’s not just his economic populism and his all too familiar compassionate conservatism that bothers me. It’s his cluelessness on foreign policy. To me it seems that he is this century’s Jimmah Carter… With the enemiesw we face today, we cannot afford another clueless CINC.
Jim C
guy:
As one who watched (very up close and personal) a substantial part of the near north side of Omaha burn to the ground during a series of riots – who well remembers Watts, Detroit and yes, Washington DC and more flames….who remembers Chicago and Days of Rage – Abbie Hoffman, Bobbie Seals, and the rest of the Chicago Seven, who remembers, painfully, the double body blows of April 4th and June 6th lo these 40 years; I dare say that as acidic as the debate has become, we don’t stand on the edge of that precipice that we stood upon going into the “summer of love” when talking about pots and lids…
- SJS
Brokered Convention? Hell, yeah! I do think we were governed better by the “smoke-filled room” system!
That’s what gave us Truman, instead of that bolshevik Wallace, in 1944, for Veep.
Oh, a very personally depressing thing, for me:
Last Friday, I went over to the courthouse, to update my address with the Clerk of Elections, and switch my Party registration from Libertarian, to Republican, so that I might vote for Fred in the primary election.
I found out that I was too late, and that I should have switched my party affiliation before midnight of December 31st of 2007, if I wanted to pretend to be a Republican in the Florida Primary Election
Three-legged stool, eh? I caught that. Of course, Hooker never meant that; he wrote of a chain of dependencies, never intending that the three components of ecclestiastical polity would ever be considered equal.
Now the question is, are the 3 components of Republican polity to be considered equal? Or is one supreme, for the others to be dependent on?
Steeljaw, are you referring to the Omaha riots of 1919 or the ones of 1966? Because you don’t come across as old enough to remember 1919.
I’ve relatives in Omaha, an aunt and uncle I visit every now and again. Have an office near the Westroads Mall too. Used to live there myself, about ten years ago. It’s gotten worse. About a year ago I was on the motorcycle, stopped at a light on North 16th street about a mile north of Dodge Street, roughly 8pm or so. Dusk. Police cruiser pulled up alongside, window came down, Officer Friendly told me “White boy on a motorcycle north of Dodge? Don’t stop at the lights unless there’s traffic coming — I’d rather you blow a light than somebody blow your brains for your ride.”
I dunno, maybe he was trying to scare me. It worked.
– Max
Max, that kind of thing just messes with the mind of a borderline-autistic guy. Does he obey the law, or does he preserve his life? I do wish that obeying the law also tended to preserve one’s life. Dammit.
A brokered convention would be the best thing that could happen to both parties-particulary the Republicans.
I don’t think it will happen, because on the first Tuesday in February Mcain will advance and Romney will be done.
Malcolm X?
When you mentioned Reagan in your first breath, the only Malcolm I could think of was bronc-bustin’ Malcolm Baldridge.
SECURE the borders.
KILL the terrorists.
PUNCH the hippies.
GO FRED!!
Someone has to say it. But before you click through and dismiss this, just stick this in your brain somewhere, in spite of what your leftist college perfessers taught you. What Lex politely calls ‘identity based politics’ was all spelled out by Antonio Gramsci.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramsci
Like the N word, we dare not say the C word. I know, my Berkeley indoctrinated daughter has taught me that reality.
Divide and conquer. It worked for the British in India – imagine conquering that now up – and – coming superpower with a mere 10,000 Redcoats today.
So if you’re a Democrat and truly upset by the divisiveness in your party and across the nation generally, you might look to the philosophical underpinnings of your party.
And Bingo! david foster. very nice comment.
Max:
‘66 — we lived up by Miller Park off N30th… Remember Dad hauling in an armload of fire extinguishers from work one night “just in case” Moved out by Boys Town in ‘72…
- SJS