Democracy for Utah - Conservatism

Why Obama's win means big trouble for the GOP

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:52:45 -0600

Just go read thereisnospoon at Daily Kos.

In come Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — a black man and a woman vying fiercely for the presidency and making history in the process. Obama triumphs. And looming on the GOP's horizon is its worst nightmare: the possibility that a majority of Americans might vote for an African-American for president. And not just vote for one, but get used to one. Americans might become accustomed to the idea of an African-American family living in the White House and being its public face to the world. That in the process, Americans might actually make leaps and bounds forward on the issue of race and thereby remove the most effective wedge in the Republican toolbox for decades.

And then all Republicans would have left is their deeply unpopular drive to abolish the New Deal. It would, in short, spell utter doom for the Republicans outside of the deep South and certain pockets of the Midwest.

"The Conscience of a Liberal": The Buzzflash interview with Paul Krugman

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:20:55 -0600

I finally got around to reading Paul Krugman's The Conscience of a Liberal, and it's just as excellent as you'd expect. The following excerpts are from an interview Krugman did with Buzzflash about the book:

Paul Krugman: The reason that Bush is so opposed to SCHIP is the same reason he was so determined to privatize Social Security, which is that they're both programs that work. You have to understand, that is the point of view of somebody who really wants to undo the New Deal — and if possible — I quote Grover Norquist in the book — get things back to the way they were before Teddy Roosevelt and the "Socialists" came in. The worst thing is a government program that actually does help people. So the SCHIP is a really bad thing, from Bush's point of view, because it works so well. It might lead people to say, well, if we can do this for lower-income children, why can't we do it for lots of other people who need guaranteed health care? So it's the determination, on his part, to do this veto, even though there's a short-term political cost, because they're deathly afraid that people will look at SCHIP and say, gee, actually the government can do some good. [...]

BuzzFlash: We want to challenge you a little on some language. […] You used the word "conservatism," though you switch and say

A complex society requires effective government

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:39:00 -0600

Glenden Brown at OneUtah uses the current water crisis in Atlanta, Georgia, to examine the failure of conservative ideology:

The bottom line: We live in a complex society that requires intelligent planning, foresight and effective government to mediate between competing private interests and to organize and manage the infrastructure. The basic infrastructure needed to operate a modern city is mind-bogglingly complex — a series of interconnected systems that require constant maintenance, upgrades, changes and improvements. The engineering feats required to simply install an effective sewer system for Salt Lake County's million residents staggers the imagination. When it works smoothly, we don't notice it. When it fails, it does so spectacularly. […]

Hostility to government — part and parcel of the conservative ideology — creates its own problems. Throughout the US, thirty years of conservative anti-government, anti-tax madness has created

Americans 'want government to do things'

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:41:30 -0600

George Packer in The New Yorker explains why conservatism was doomed to fail:

That November [1994], Republicans swept to power in Congress and imagined that they had been deputized by the voters to distill conservatism into its purest essence. Newt Gingrich declared, "On those things which are at the core of our philosophy and on those things where we believe we represent the vast majority of Americans, there will be no compromise." Instead of just limiting government, the Gingrich revolutionaries set out to disable it. Although the legislative reins were in their hands, these Republicans could find no governmental projects to organize their energy around. David Brooks said, "The only thing that held the coalition together was hostility to government." When the Times Magazine asked William Kristol what ideas he was for — in early 1995, high noon of the Gingrich Revolution — Kristol could think to mention only school choice and "shaping the culture."

At the end of that year, when the radical conservatives in the Gingrich Congress shut down the federal government, they learned that the American public was genuinely attached to the modern state. "An anti-government philosophy turned out to be politically unpopular and fundamentally un-American," Brooks said. "People want something melioristic, they want government to do things."

If you find Packer's article interesting, you can download an interview with him on Radio West with Doug Fabrizio (look for the yellow box labeled MP3).

GOP's problem is their message, not just their brand

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 11:37:18 -0600

Via Josh Kahn at The Next Right, a new poll finds that voters like the Democratic messages better on the key issues of the economy, Iraq, trade, and taxes. (Yes, taxes.) The interesting thing about this poll is that some questions asked people whether they agreed with the Democrats' message without attributing it to the Democratic Party.

Let's start with the economy. When voters know what party each message comes from, we [Republicans] lose 37% to 58% and trail among independents by 18%. Ouch. However, when you read both messages without telling voters who they come from, the story gets worse.

Republican voters like the Democrats' message more than their own party's message by a large 14% margin when they don't know which party it comes from. Just as disturbing, numbers among independents drop by another 10%... giving the Democrats a massive 28% advantage. Even our horrifically damaged image is better than our message on the economy. Independents and even Republicans simply like the Democrats' plan more than ours. [...]

When the parties' names are removed [on the tax question],

"How a half-century of conservatism has undermined America's security"

Tue, 27 May 2008 12:21:08 -0600

... is the subtitle of U.S. Versus Them by J. Peter Scoblic, executive editor of The New Republic. He argues that plain old conservatism — as opposed to neo-conservatism — is what landed us in the mess in Iraq and the Middle East. The bad ideas that mark the Bushies' foreign policy are classic conservative policy ideas.

In foreign policy, "conservative" describes a distinct attitude in which the world is conceived in terms of "us vs. them" or "good vs. evil," with the United States assuming the role of a righteous protagonist facing a monolithic enemy. It is often an explicitly religious vision, with frequent allusions...to God, Satan and Armageddon. Characterizing the Soviet Union as an earthly manifestation of evil, rather than...

Rev. Wright vs. the pro-Republican 'prosperity gospel'

Wed, 07 May 2008 12:58:51 -0600

Sara Robinson, who also writes about the FLDS, has a new article explaining the historical context of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's theology and why conservatives are so eager to take him down. First, you have to understand the evangelical concept of the "prosperity gospel," also called the "Word of Faith." The following explanation is from Sarah Posner:

Krugman: All the GOP offers is deregulation and tax cuts

Tue, 06 May 2008 09:54:10 -0600

Paul Krugman:

Rather than admit that pollution is a problem the government has to solve — even as the consequences of acid rain became ever more alarming, not to mention as America's failure to act provoked a near-crisis in relations with Canada, which was suffering the effects of U.S.-generated sulfur dioxide — the Reaganites insisted that there was no problem at all. They denied the evidence, questioned the science, called for more research and did nothing. Sound familiar?

And that, surely, is the line the Democrats should be pushing in this election: Republicans have become the party of denial. If a problem can't be solved with deregulation and tax cuts, they pretend it doesn't exist. [...]

The health care situation, in case you haven't noticed, is going from bad to worse. [...]

The Democrats have been offering real plans in response; they're not perfect, but they are serious.

The GOP, by contrast — and this goes as much for McCain as for the Bush administration — hasn't even tried to address concerns about coverage. Instead, it has all been about costs, which Republicans insist (wrongly) can be dramatically reduced by a policy of, you guessed it, deregulation and tax cuts.

Your summer reading list of anti-conservative books

Fri, 02 May 2008 11:34:03 -0600

Back in 2006, I remarked "it's about time liberals start taking aim at conservatism itself" and not just individual conservatives like George Bush, Bill O'Reilly, and Ann Coulter. It looks like others had similar thoughts, because there's a bumper crop of anti-conservative books available now.

The Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing, Greg Anrig
Conservatives Without Conscience, John Dean
Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics, Glenn Greenwald
Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy, Jeffrey Feldman
God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters, Sarah Posner
The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics, Jonathan Chait

Tough guise: An excerpt from Glenn Greenwald's new book

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 11:07:03 -0600

Here's an excerpt from Glenn Greenwald's new book Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics in which Glenn explains how conservative boasting about "toughness" and "self-reliance" is a way for them to avoid looking at their own inadequacies (antiwar.org):

[Rush] Limbaugh is a physically weak individual, wallowing in a life of depraved hedonism, who has never displayed a single act of physical courage. He avoided combat in Vietnam by claiming that an anal boil rendered him unfit for service (and, once he became famous as an über-warrior, said nothing when a Limbaugh biographer falsely claimed it was due to a football injury). Thus, he takes pleasure in observing acts of American cruelty and barbarism. He finds "levity" in it and cheers it on. It makes him feel powerful and strong, feelings he — understandably — is unable to obtain from his own life and actions.

While the civilized world has recoiled in horror at the excesses and war-hungriness of the United States over the last six years, the only real complaint from our right-wing war cheerleaders about the commander in chief is that he has not given them enough torture, secret prisons, wars of aggression, barbaric slaughter, and liberty infringement. Their hunger for those things is literally insatiable, because they need fresh pretexts for feeling strong. And nothing provides those feelings of strength better than revering a tough-guy male leader and mocking liberal males as weaklings and losers. [...]

It's rather ironic (and almost certainly not coincidental)

Glenn Greenwald: Today's Republicans are as phony as John Wayne

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:57:20 -0600

Glenn Greenwald's new book Great American Hypocrites: Toppling The Big Myths of Republican Politics looks like a doozy. This excerpt is from a recent interview about the book (AltWeeklies.com):

RLN: You begin your analysis with the example of John Wayne as a prototype of the hypocritical would-be hero of the right. What specifically drew you to him, and why does he stand out?

GG: To this day, John Wayne is the prototype of the uber-patriotic, uber-masculine, uber-courageous Moral Republican Warrior. His imagery is the template that pioneered the brand and that the Right uses to this day to build up their political leaders. [...]

Yet John Wayne was one of America's biggest and most repugnant frauds — in exactly the way that modern Right-wing leaders are. At a time when virtually nobody avoided combat, Wayne did exactly that, using the most dishonorable means imaginable, throughout all of World War II. Because the most successful male actors, including older ones, went to fight, he was able to stay in Hollywood and become extremely rich playing war heroes. He spent the rest of his life glorifying every American war and accusing war opponents of being cowards, Communists and traitors. He crusaded for traditional American morality, attacking others whom he perceived to deviate, while he engaged in compulsive womanizing and adultery, repeatedly breaking up his own family, and wallowing in pill addictions.

Before there was Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, George Bush, Bill Kristol, David Vitter and even John McCain — there was John Wayne. One finds key parts of Wayne in each of them. To this day, he's the role model for how the Right conducts itself and the methods they use to swindle the American public.

The muddle that is conservatism

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:18:42 -0700

E.J. Dionne explains how William F. Buckley tried to fuse the two different strains of conservatism:

Buckley dumped isolationism, not so hard since many former isolationists were happy with an aggressive American foreign policy as long as the enemy was Soviet communism. More difficult was resolving the contradiction between anti-government libertarians — their primary love was individual freedom — and the traditionalists who believed in government's role as a promoter of virtue and community.

One of National Review's primary tasks was dealing with this doctrinal conundrum. Frank Meyer, Buckley's friend and magazine colleague, came up with what is known as "fusionism." It was an attempt to fuse the two forms of conservatism into one.

Libertarians needed to learn that the freedom they revered was insecure absent the cultivation of personal virtue and a moral order hospitable to liberty. Traditionalists were not to confuse the legitimate authority of tradition with the illegitimate power of big government. The United States was fundamentally a conservative society, the theory went, so our country was a place in which liberty was conducive to a reverence for tradition.

Fusionism, brilliant though it was, never fully cohered. Contemporary conservatism always threatens to fly apart, as it seems to be doing now. Conservatism's goals are a combustible mix: an expansive and expensive foreign policy, low taxes, support for government intervention in the personal sphere (to promote a conservative vision of virtue) but not in the economic sphere. For some of us, the mix makes little sense.

'Pro-government conservatives' reject the GOP's anti-government jihad

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 11:54:50 -0700

I never thought I'd link approvingly to an article by right-wing clown Jonah Goldberg, but I guess there's a first time for everything (Washington Post):

Conservatism, quite simply, is a mess these days. Conservative attitudes are changing. Or, more accurately, the attitudes of people who call themselves conservatives are changing.

The most cited data to prove this point come from the Pew Political Typology survey. By 2005, it had found that so many self-described conservatives were in favor of government activism that they had to come up with a name for them. "Running-dog liberals" apparently seemed too pejorative, so the survey went with "pro-government conservatives," a term that might have caused Ronald Reagan to spontaneously combust. This group makes up just under 10 percent of registered voters and something like a third of the Republican coalition. Ninety-four percent of pro-government conservatives favored raising the minimum wage, as did 79 percent of self-described social conservatives. Eight out of 10 pro-government conservatives believe that the government should do more to help the poor and slightly more than that distrust big corporations.

Regarding Mike Huckabee, Goldberg adds:

He would even use his power as president to push for a national ban on public smoking. "I'm one of the few Republicans," Huckabee insists, "who talk very clearly about the environment, health care, infrastructure, energy independence. I don't cede any of those to the Democrats."

So about a third of Republicans think we shouldn't drown government in the bathtub. It's past time for national Dems to start unapologetically making the case that our government can be a force for good.

Politics and the human moral sense

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 15:17:50 -0700

From one of my favorite authors, Steven Pinker, writing in the New York Times Magazine:

When anthropologists like Richard Shweder and Alan Fiske survey moral concerns across the globe, they find that a few themes keep popping up from amid the diversity. People everywhere, at least in some circumstances and with certain other folks in mind, think it's bad to harm others and good to help them. They have a sense of fairness: that one should reciprocate favors, reward benefactors and punish cheaters. They value loyalty to a group, sharing and solidarity among its members and conformity to its norms. They believe that it is right to defer to legitimate authorities and to respect people with high status. And they exalt purity, cleanliness and sanctity while loathing defilement, contamination and carnality.

The exact number of themes depends on whether you're a lumper or a splitter, but Haidt counts five — harm, fairness, community (or group loyalty), authority and purity — and suggests that they are the primary colors of our moral sense. Not only do they keep reappearing in cross-cultural surveys, but each one tugs on the moral intuitions of people in our own culture. [...]

All this brings us to a theory of how the moral sense can be universal and variable at the same time.

The conservative agenda: Undermine the very process of governing

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 10:03:12 -0700

Glenden Brown at OneUtah:

Conservative politics – look no further than the Bush administration – are about creating a sort of free-floating chaos, deliberately undermining the mechanisms of society, deliberately attacking not only the actual consensus but the mechanisms by which consensus can be reached. Rush Limbaugh and his legion of imitators from Bill O'Reilly on down the food chain to the lowest of local columnists, trade in anger – and endless free-flowing sludge of resentment, anger and divisiveness. David Brock calls it the plen-t-plaint – there's always something to complain about, some new misdeed to upset the masses. These complaints serve to keep the masses angry, stirred up, on the lookout for traitors in their midst, to divide them from their neighbors. While that is happening in one area of conservative politics, conservative politicians are actively working to undermine the political processes by which consensus is reached.

Consider that the current crop of Republican Senators has more filibusters going right now than any other group of senators in history by an order of magnitude – on issues that have popular support. George W. Bush and his unitary executive theory is all about undermining historical checks and balances in power. The net effect of all these activities is an undermining of the processes of governing. Solutions become almost impossible to reach since a portion of the population is foaming-at-the-mouth angry.