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October 26, 2008
The long election process in the US is drawing to a close, and even though, as the media says, it ain't over til it's over, Republicans and conservatives are preparing themselves for defeat. The economic upheaval with its rising unemployment and disappearing manufacturing jobs has queered the Republican's pitch of xenophobia and anti-cosmopolitanism, hatred of intellectuals, disdain for cities and the people who inhabit them, and the other forms of divisive populism and "anti-elitism".
Paul Harris in The Guardian argues that a potentially devastating Republican loss (on current polling trends) means that the party may be reduced to its core support in the solid red heartland that runs through Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia and other southern and western states. He says that:
following a possible November defeat, the Republican party itself could still remain firmly in the hands of its conservative evangelical wing. Even as America drifts away from causes that right-wing evangelicals care about, the Republican base remains fixated on them .... In a process reminiscent of the Labour party in the 1980s and the Conservatives in the late 1990s, the Republicans could end up as an extremist rump, reduced to a few stronghold states and obsessed with causes [eg.,gay marriage, the teaching of evolution in schools and abortion] that seem not to matter to the general public.
If the polls turn out to be true, then Republicans would probably survive only in their heartland, thus thrusting the party further right at a time when the country has shifted left. That would, he says, mark a profound change similar to Ronald Reagan's win in 1980 which seemed to usher in a conservative-dominated era.
Palin's rhetoric appears to appeal to her followers desire to recapture something they have lost in America. Most of Palin's support come from rural Americans--- the "anti-intellectual" brand of Republican--- who see their way of life (as represented by a Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post cover) slipping away. Their paranoid style of politics, with its envy and resentment, is projected as contempt, hostility, and fear of the other onto (Muslims). This style of politics blames the "liberals, by which they roughly mean the "evil people with no moral values who hate and want to destroy America", for the loss.
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Would the Republicans be doing so badly if the Democrats didn't have such a strong candidate, and if Bush wasn't so unpopular?
Evangelical style issues politics is only a small part of what's going on. It doesn't seem to be decider stuff this time around.