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October 29, 2008
Over at Salon.com Gary Kamiya says that we can expect more smears, concealed race-baiting, overwrought accusations of "radicalism" and crude ad hominem attacks from the Republican Party. Nor should we be surprised by this tactic, since the modern US conservative movement came to power by playing on white racial fears. He adds that:
The founding success of the modern conservative movement was that it convinced large numbers of Americans to reject "liberalism" and "big government," even if they themselves benefited from both, because they were associated with social programs aimed at helping poor blacks. In one of the climactic political showdowns in American history, McCain and Palin are now using the GOP's time-tested tactics -- against a black man. The tactics always worked before, and one might think they would be foolproof now, with a black target.
He adds that the Republican Party under Nixon and Reagan succeeded because it was able to convince enough white Democrats and swing voters that it was the party of the "average American," oppressed by federal bureaucrats and do-gooder programs like busing and affirmative action. It was able to conceal the fact that it was the party of the rich---wealthy, elite interests---beneath a populist, race-tinged appeal to white resentment. No longer under Palin and McCain.
In a latter article in Salon.com Kamiya argues that the Republican Party has gone from arrogant triumphalism to its death throes, that the modern conservative movement is dying in front of our eyes, and its death throes aren't pretty. He says of the GOP that:
the luxury liner hit an iceberg known as reality. The biggest damage was done by the Wall Street crisis, which happened just in time to tilt a close race toward Obama. But the economic meltdown was only one of the disasters for which the GOP is largely responsible. The war that was going to establish American hegemony forever turned out to be one of the worst foreign-policy blunders in our nation's history. The GOP's free-market idolatry led to the gravest financial crisis since the Depression. Its ideological insistence on cutting taxes for the richest Americans ran up a record deficit. Its embrace of torture and denial of due process assaulted the Constitution and eroded America's moral standing. Its doctrine of the "unitary executive" concentrated unprecedented power in the hands of the executive branch. Its anti-scientific denial of global warming endangered the entire planet.
It's a historic shipwreck, and the American people are diving off the foundering GOP hulk in droves.The hulk is in the hands of the "movement conservatives" who have dominated the GOP for decades: the demagogues of reaction and resentment, the Christian rightists, the "values" voters, the anti-tax, anti-government zealots, the nativists, anti-rationalists and anti-secularists.
What these movement conservative's refuse to do is move the GOP to the center, accept that progressive taxation is not just necessary to run a country but that it is a legitimate part of the social contract, accept that markets need some regulation, and try to reach out to all Americans, not just their base. As a result the 'straight talk express' is rapidly becoming the mealy-mouthed train wreck.
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And so they should cos the Palin-style populism (and that of Joe the Plumber to which she appeals) is one based on ignorance not knowledge and emotion not reason. The interpretation of the Country First slogan by Palin-style conservatism is debased and intellectually bankrupt. All it is able to do is chant the mantra that an Obama victory would mean the death of "freedom," the triumph of socialistic "big government" and abject surrender to America's enemies.
It's not working so well this time around.