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Oct. 12th, 2008 10:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
malsperanzaIn my previous post, Black Dog noted the GOP's starry eyed plans for Sarah Palin's glorious future. She is, we think, being groomed and tested in a failed election so that she can come back in 4 years as a seasoned campaigner. Because 6 weeks (OK, 8) on the electoral circuit now counts as experience, at least among gops.
Rumor has it that McCain wanted Lieberman for his running mate, but was overridden by the party. (For many obvious reasons, though in fact Lieberman might have made the ticket more competitive in the general election.)
I gather that 2012 was always the idea behind the choice of Palin. Some GOP strategists gave up on 2008 long before the economy evaporated--I mean a year or two ago. With Huckabee, Romney, and McCain to choose from--3 weak candidates--they were in the position of the dems in 2004. Plus, most of the party leadership is ooooold. So Palin, Bobby Jindal, and Eric Cantor are three of the small handful of young next-generation glamor kids whose star is being artificially launched now. (A list from last August is here.)
Jindal is Catholic and dark-skinned, so he doesn't have the right components to appeal to the GOP's base. Also, he's even more of a novice than Palin. Cantor is Jewish, which evangelicals like, and he recently got some headlines when he spoke for the rebellious Rep.s who opposed the bailout. In fact, he might have been a smarter choice for McCain since he's popular in Virginia. But the GOP strategists apparently thought Palin would bring in some of the supposed pool of "disaffected" Hillary supporters in states like PA, where she outpolled Obama by double digits. It is a particular pleasure to me to see how utterly wrong they were. When I talk to couples who are splitting their votes, the
women
are going for Obama every time.
The belief that Palin has a big future in national politics is indicative of just how radical the GOP base has become: The party has been sold, lock, stock, and two smokin barrels, to the extremist right. We saw this at the RNC, where the delegates were overwhelmingly evangelicals, even though that group represents at most 40% of the party. Palin's base is not merely evangelical, though; it's at the extreme end of that: about 6 inches from Timothy McVeigh (witness her husband and--we now learn--co-governor, a longtime member of the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party).
Given how radical Palin is, and her utter failure to interest anyone outside the evangelical constituency, this does not bode well for the GOP in 2012. Indeed, I can see one scenario in which the Dems hold the government for the next 12 years--enough time to repair quite a lot of the Reagan-Bush damage. My own guess is that Palin is not going to have the big future she and her supporters imagine. She's too extreme and too clumsy. In her short career she has already done an awful lot of lying and some pretty sleazy and visible lawbreaking. This past week, she has behaved so badly and stirred up so much hatred that her own running mate is revolted, as are the pundits. Her folksy demagoguery is in the grand populist tradition of Father Coughlin and Joe McCarthy, but she comes at a moment when the public is, on the whole, kinda sick of folksy nothings and crackerbarrel slogans. (I do sometimes dream of the day when James Carville interviews her though.)
I imagine that right now those loyal American patriots Rove &co. are hoping veryverymuch that the economy goes utterly down the toilet in the next 4 years and that Obama will be blamed. In that scenario, the GOP thinks it can count on no black (or liberal) candidate being fielded for the next 100 years, and a resurgent conservative movement returning triumphant to Washington, to get back to its Permanent Republican Majority thing. If so, it had better get its house in order.
In short, Palin is a logical outgrowth of Nixon's old "Southern Strategy"--making common cause with the racists and Secessionists of the old South, who now extend to fringe libertarians and religious apocalypticians. I don't see her drawing the rust-belt "Reagan Democrats" (witness the fact that Indiana is very nearly in play, Michigan is solid blue, and West Virginia is leaning blue). In fact, on my sunnier days I think the whole stupid mess is on its way out.
Sadly, McCain will certainly take the blame if (when) the GOP goes down in flames. He will be accused of having been too liberal, too nice, too willing to compromise on hardline GOP positions. His failure will no doubt drive the GOP farther to the extreme right. I think, though, that this was going to happen anyway.
The GOP began living in its own reality in 2000, when W was elected. I quote the prophet David Addington (speaking to Ron Suskind in 2002): "[Guys like you are] in what we call the reality-based community, [people who] believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."(From http://www.cs.umass.edu/~immerman/play/opinion05/WithoutADoubt.html.)
The conservatives who today are wringing their hands over how awful Palin is (Brooks, Frum, Froomkin, Buckley Jr., and the rest) did not blink when the New Realitarians were in the ascendant. They did not tisk when torture became ok. They didn't sneeze when Bill Clinton's budget surplus was wiped out, and we began the long, fast climb to the present $10 trillion deficit. They didn't squeak when we began the sorts of discretionary wars and frivolous overseas military adventures conservatives supposedly abhor. Now their party has become a cesspool of fanatical hatreds and delusional paranoias, and they are shocked, shocked.
Rumor has it that McCain wanted Lieberman for his running mate, but was overridden by the party. (For many obvious reasons, though in fact Lieberman might have made the ticket more competitive in the general election.)
I gather that 2012 was always the idea behind the choice of Palin. Some GOP strategists gave up on 2008 long before the economy evaporated--I mean a year or two ago. With Huckabee, Romney, and McCain to choose from--3 weak candidates--they were in the position of the dems in 2004. Plus, most of the party leadership is ooooold. So Palin, Bobby Jindal, and Eric Cantor are three of the small handful of young next-generation glamor kids whose star is being artificially launched now. (A list from last August is here.)
Jindal is Catholic and dark-skinned, so he doesn't have the right components to appeal to the GOP's base. Also, he's even more of a novice than Palin. Cantor is Jewish, which evangelicals like, and he recently got some headlines when he spoke for the rebellious Rep.s who opposed the bailout. In fact, he might have been a smarter choice for McCain since he's popular in Virginia. But the GOP strategists apparently thought Palin would bring in some of the supposed pool of "disaffected" Hillary supporters in states like PA, where she outpolled Obama by double digits. It is a particular pleasure to me to see how utterly wrong they were. When I talk to couples who are splitting their votes, the
women
are going for Obama every time.
The belief that Palin has a big future in national politics is indicative of just how radical the GOP base has become: The party has been sold, lock, stock, and two smokin barrels, to the extremist right. We saw this at the RNC, where the delegates were overwhelmingly evangelicals, even though that group represents at most 40% of the party. Palin's base is not merely evangelical, though; it's at the extreme end of that: about 6 inches from Timothy McVeigh (witness her husband and--we now learn--co-governor, a longtime member of the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party).
Given how radical Palin is, and her utter failure to interest anyone outside the evangelical constituency, this does not bode well for the GOP in 2012. Indeed, I can see one scenario in which the Dems hold the government for the next 12 years--enough time to repair quite a lot of the Reagan-Bush damage. My own guess is that Palin is not going to have the big future she and her supporters imagine. She's too extreme and too clumsy. In her short career she has already done an awful lot of lying and some pretty sleazy and visible lawbreaking. This past week, she has behaved so badly and stirred up so much hatred that her own running mate is revolted, as are the pundits. Her folksy demagoguery is in the grand populist tradition of Father Coughlin and Joe McCarthy, but she comes at a moment when the public is, on the whole, kinda sick of folksy nothings and crackerbarrel slogans. (I do sometimes dream of the day when James Carville interviews her though.)
I imagine that right now those loyal American patriots Rove &co. are hoping veryverymuch that the economy goes utterly down the toilet in the next 4 years and that Obama will be blamed. In that scenario, the GOP thinks it can count on no black (or liberal) candidate being fielded for the next 100 years, and a resurgent conservative movement returning triumphant to Washington, to get back to its Permanent Republican Majority thing. If so, it had better get its house in order.
In short, Palin is a logical outgrowth of Nixon's old "Southern Strategy"--making common cause with the racists and Secessionists of the old South, who now extend to fringe libertarians and religious apocalypticians. I don't see her drawing the rust-belt "Reagan Democrats" (witness the fact that Indiana is very nearly in play, Michigan is solid blue, and West Virginia is leaning blue). In fact, on my sunnier days I think the whole stupid mess is on its way out.
Sadly, McCain will certainly take the blame if (when) the GOP goes down in flames. He will be accused of having been too liberal, too nice, too willing to compromise on hardline GOP positions. His failure will no doubt drive the GOP farther to the extreme right. I think, though, that this was going to happen anyway.
The GOP began living in its own reality in 2000, when W was elected. I quote the prophet David Addington (speaking to Ron Suskind in 2002): "[Guys like you are] in what we call the reality-based community, [people who] believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."(From http://www.cs.umass.edu/~immerman/play/opinion05/WithoutADoubt.html.)
The conservatives who today are wringing their hands over how awful Palin is (Brooks, Frum, Froomkin, Buckley Jr., and the rest) did not blink when the New Realitarians were in the ascendant. They did not tisk when torture became ok. They didn't sneeze when Bill Clinton's budget surplus was wiped out, and we began the long, fast climb to the present $10 trillion deficit. They didn't squeak when we began the sorts of discretionary wars and frivolous overseas military adventures conservatives supposedly abhor. Now their party has become a cesspool of fanatical hatreds and delusional paranoias, and they are shocked, shocked.
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Date: 2008-10-13 06:45 am (UTC)I will predict that the next time the GOP Star Chamber unleashes a stealth VP candidate, he or she will have several years of training in speaking cogently on national and global issues. But it won't be Sarah Palin, who is ethically tarnished and a national joke. They've got a solid bullpen of unknown beautiful white people (and at least one gorgeous black person (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._Watts)).
no subject
Date: 2008-10-13 02:57 pm (UTC)Watts is for sure on the List too. More interesting will be to see if the GOP can dig up a conservative Hispanic. Maybe they can convince Latinos that Jindal is really Mexican.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-13 01:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-13 03:34 pm (UTC)Setting aside women who acted as surrogates for their husbands (Eva Peron or the euphonious Lurleen Wallace (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lurleen_Wallace)), there have been plenty of women heads of state. Benazir Bhutto and Indira Gandhi were both powerful leaders of countries not noted for gender equality, but neither of them was exactly a dedicated progressive. Most women heads of state have been conservative, in fact. (Corazon Aquino of the Philippines and Mary Robinson of Ireland are two exceptions.)
In fact, one of the things that has bothered me a little about Hillary Clinton's campaign (other than the fact that I am not a huge fan of hers anyway) was her claim that electing a woman would in itself be progressive or groundbreaking.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-13 04:19 pm (UTC)