Grand New Party and Political Narrative
Grand New Party, which I'm honored to be discussing at TPMCafe this week, is a book that spends a great deal of time arguing against two powerful narratives of recent American political history - one left-wing, and one right-wing. The left-wing narrative is most famously associated with Thomas Frank's bestselling What's The Matter With Kansas?, but it's been woven into liberal arguments about conservative succcess going back decades: In a nutshell, it holds that the migration of working-class voters - defined for our purposes as Americans without college degrees - from the Roosevelt majority into the Reagan-Gingrich-Bush coalition has been driven by the GOP's ability to essentially trick these voters into casting their ballots based on symbolic culture-war issues, rather than on their economic concerns, and that the Republican Party has used this bait-and-switch to enrich the already-rich and deliver the American working class to economic ruin. The right-wing narrative, meanwhile, holds that the rise of the modern Republican majority represented a triumph of Barry Goldwater's purist small-government message, which failed in 1964 because the country wasn't ready for it, succeeded in 1980 when the country was ready for it, and could provide the basis for an enduring GOP today if Republicans are bold enough to stand, and run, on rock-ribbed Reaganite principle.
Against these two (often mutually-reinforcing) narratives, we argue that the left misunderstands the working class's present situation, and the right misunderstands its own history. In our view, the long era of Republican dominance hasn't been nearly as bad for middle America as Frank and others on the left argue: Despite stagnating wages, on a variety of indicators working-class voters are considerably better off than they were in the 1970s -- and moreover, the challenges that they do face relate directly to precisely those problems that the left considers "symbolic" and therefore beside the point. This is true on issues like crime, welfare policy and immigration, but it's especially true where the American family is concerned. Indeed, we argue, the post-Sixties shifts in family structure, and especially the broader decline of marriage, are at the heart of the current challenges facing the working class - particularly the twin challenges of financial insecurity and social mobility.
This defense of the GOP broadly, and social conservatism specifically, coexists in the book with an argument that conservatives have achieved their greatest successes, both politically and on policy matters, when they've stood for a limited-government pragmatism rather than a small-government purism, and for efforts to reform and restrain the welfare state rather than frontal assaults that seek to abolish it outright. This tradition, which we term "applied neoconservatism" - in reference to the domestic policy-minded neoconservatism of the 1970s, rather than pro-Iraq War variety of the last six years - played a significant role in Ronald Reagan's governance, in the shape of Contract with America and the 1990s successes of Republican governors and mayors, and in the (temporary) political victories of George W. Bush. And at a time of GOP disarray, we think it offers the only plausible way forward for Republicans - a vastly superior alternative to both the sort of retrenchment being counseled by, say, a Rush Limbaugh, and the kind of me-too, Democrat-lite politics that has kept Republicans like Gordon Smith and Susan Collins afloat, albeit perhaps temporarily, in a hostile political environment.
Obviously we can use this discussion to debate whether this tradition actually exists, whether we're wildly misreading both recent history and the contemporary socioeconomic landscape, and whether the various ideas that make up the second half of the book are actually viable as policy or as politics. But since our interlocutors represent an interesting cross-section of young political opinion, I'm also curious about what they think of the broader question of how we should think about the various narratives that dominate discussion of politics in our society. Each generation of political observers and activists inherits pre-existing narratives, it seems to me, which we can adopt, amend, or discard depending on whether they're useful, and whether we think they conform closely enough to the truth. And in a discussion about a book that tries to edit certain narratives of American politics and reject others entirely, I'm curious what other major political narratives - whether liberal or conservative, socialist or feminist, libertarian or social-conservative - our conversation partners think should be up for debate, renovation, and/or elimination.
I would be willing to consider some of that if I thought that anyone in the Republican party or on the right in this country was an honest governing partner who cares about the wellbeing of this country. Unfortunately, your party has spent the better part of the last two decades trying to destroy the United States of America--not just the New Deal, income tax, and the economic policies that have kept us together but also our Constitution and founding principles.
If you want me to believe anything you have to say, please admit right now that George Bush has been an unmitigated disaster for this country, that his foreign policy has destroyed our standing in the world and weakened our ability to counter crises, that his economic policies have hurt the poorest and helped the richest, and that he is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors under the Constitution.
I know you won't admit any of that, of course, but that's the problem. You have to explain how your party could do so much serious damage to us and still be worth trusting.
July 14, 2008 1:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
uhm, you don't go QUITE far enough
July 14, 2008 4:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Noble comment Reece.
The presidency of George W. Bush, and the imminent nomination of McCain, prove that competence, honesty, a respect for the law and the lives of Americans are not qualities that the Republican Party values in it's presidential candidates.
July 14, 2008 7:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
I had to laugh at your partner's example of the cycle of poverty - to paraphrase, when the working class goes to the Hamptons they have to rent hotel rooms, they don't have the savings needed to put down a deposit on an apartment for the summer, thus, the vicious cycle of poverty grasps these unfortunates in its claws forcing them to a life of dire poverty and missed opportunity. If only they would take the subway to Coney Island Beach where they belong...
Conservatives are hopeless...
July 14, 2008 2:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just to restate that point: Everyone, not just lefties, but everyone, thinks that you and the Republican party are essentially dishonest because you continue to advocate policies that do material harm to individuals, personal freedom, the environment, human rights, the economy, and international relations.
And what do we get for all this? We get a world that is marginally more in line with your preferred ideology. The world isn't better, but it's more like how you want the world to look. After so many years of the same crap, it becomes clear that you all aren't concerned with the damage that you've done.
Do you have a single shred of scientific evidence in your book to support anything you are claiming? Given your party's hatred of science and tenuous relationship with reality, I would be surprised.
So, I'm going to lower my standards for you. Before proceeding with this discussion please admit the following:
1. There is an objective reality.
2. We can know things about that reality by investigating it using scientific techniques.
3. Sometimes the products of social science will contradict my preferred ideology.
4. When such contradictions exist, it is my ideology that is wrong and not the science.
5. I will try to learn about the world.
6. If I do not try to learn about the world, I will not write any more books.
Thanks.
July 14, 2008 2:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes indeed, but to get back to "narratives" ---
Are not both parties slaves to old, outdated mini-metanarratives (Jean-François Lyotard) whose "functors" (Rudolph Carnap), their great heroes Roosevelt-Truman-Kennedy and Goldwater-Reagan, are, in the current state of affairs, no longer legitimate?
I think the answer is "Yes" and that each party is in a race to develop a new "narrative" which persuasively explains "reality" -- political, economic, and cultural. Thus far, neither has broken the tape.
July 14, 2008 2:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
First I'd have to see something "outdated" about the "narrative" of the New Deal. That's just a Repuglican talking point, which should be a desperate shot in the dark, but for some reason people who don't know history buy into it. What we can discuss are that unions can be abusive (but are still necessary), that bureaucracies can become bloated and inefficient if not watched by some sort of an opposing party, and that taxes in the late 50s may have been too high, which is why Kennedy/Johnson enacted the first "supply side" (actually Keynesian) tax cut, and the only one that's ever actually worked.
July 14, 2008 8:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
You may be right.
I don't think so, principally because I see the New Deal as an answer -- not wholly successful but what is -- to the problems of a nationally based industrial capitalism.
I believe we live in a globally based financial capitalist environment and have no story which tells us what we should do with it.
July 14, 2008 10:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ellen:
I'm hardly the first person to say this, but its pretty easy to make the case that Liberals, by our nature, are more pragmatic and less ideological than Conservatives. I'm not saying that Liberals aren't ideological, but what Liberals think does change in response to what works and what doesn't. That's lot more true for Liberals than it is for Conservatives. We're a lot more willing to fiddle with what Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson put in place than Conservatives are with Reagan's programs.
July 14, 2008 8:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
You can't be serious? Republicans have had the most success under Reagan's "limited government?" Except for the fact he increased the national debt to unbelieveable levels which continues under Bush. Republicans love government spending because it goes to all their rich friends. See: Cheney-Halliburton. I imagine you folks won't be satisfied until you've "drowned the government in the bathtub", to borrow a phrase. It seems you guys may be all out of ideas for fooling the population into believing your BS. I only hope we as a country can recover. I imagine it will take taxing "rich people", like myself at appropriate levels. I'm sure it will be a long and painful ride.
July 14, 2008 2:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Look, Douthat, even this post is dishonest. No one in your party or on your side sat down face to face with the American public and said, "We're going to implement policies that will ensure your wages stagnate, but instead of growing wages, you'll get cheaper goods from China. See, the way it works out, you'll have more stuff but without any more money. How's that sound to you?"
The Republicans didn't strike that deal with the American public. Instead, they said, we can't raise the minimum wage because you'll lose your job. They said, we must lower taxes on the richest people in this country, because if we do, then they will create more businesses and grow the economy. Those were the arguments you were making. No one was talking honestly about making wages stagnate while allowing cheap Chinese imports to lower the cost of living. It's ridiculous.
You're going to have to do a lot more than find CYA excuses for terrible policies if you want to get your party back in power.
July 14, 2008 2:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's a good point; the other "hidden deal" was that Republicans worked to shift the more of the cost of government to middle class and poor taxpayers in an effort to make government programs less attractive. Meanwhile they promote the idea that the very purpose of government is to protect property. Poor and middle-class taxpayers have thus been brought to subsidize the rich.
I don't see how Republicans (or Conservative for thet matter) can get back into the good graces of the voters until they confront the deceptions they've foisted on the American people.
July 14, 2008 9:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
All that aside, and despite the gestures toward a new generation on TPM today, I think I see your generation already starting to replicate the mistakes of your elders. Both young liberals and young conservatives seem to be committed to legislating social attitudes and morality, or coercing it through the courts.
This is not how social change happens, and this is how we end up discoursing on issues and voting on issues that are not national political issues. Like marriage promotion, as mentioned above, or what my kid learns about sex. You're making the same mistakes social liberals made in the 1970s and social conservatives made in the 1980s, of thinking that you can force feed the public your personal beliefs about personal life. You can't. I already know what I think. I think, for example, that divorce can be a damn good thing and that there's no way you're telling my kid it's okay to have sex "because we just know you will."
Meanwhile-- and this is where we can talk about President Bush and his entire administration-- some authoritarian comes in and captures the real powers of the federal government and starts to turn our country into something we don't even recognize. Nero fiddled whil Rome burned.
A pox on both your houses.
July 14, 2008 2:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
I saw you and former congressman Edwards talking with Bill Moyers. It was fascinating.
Edwards sees how bad things have become under the Republicans, but from what I saw, you don't.
The point that neither of you seem to grasp is that the "scavengers" -- as Mr. Edwards called them -- are always going to run amok when given the chance. Your "limited" government not only gives them the chance; it cheers them on.
Your assertion that the working class is better off now than in the 1970's is bizarre to say the least.
You may not like Thomas Frank's book, but unfortunately it's true. It's taken a long time -- and many, many, members of the working class have worked diligently to avoid accepting it -- but lower middle class Americans who have voted Republican are finally realizing they've been had.
July 14, 2008 2:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Boy, I hope you're right, but see, today's comment by ARG in Chicago reporting on the current susceptibility of voters to the new "welfare Cadillac madam" Republican memes.
July 14, 2008 3:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
As the economy turns worse, people will begrudge taxes more and more. They all know someone who games the system or have heard stories about the preverbal “welfare mom”. People can relate to that level of misuse of public funds. They really don’t understand how corporations do the same thing but on a grand scale. Republicans know how to exploit this. They hammer on the welfare moms while they’re giving no-bid contacts to their friends. They bemoan deadbeats who live beyond their means then declare bankruptcy while they bail-out failed S&Ls or Bear Sterns. The past and future success of the Republican Party is pushing the buttons of folks to get them to vote for things that are not in their best interest.
As for Republicans being fiscal conservatives and small government advocates, that’s a load of rubbish. The last Republican to balance a budget was Eisenhower. Every post WWII Republican administration has increased the total number of Federal employees. Every Democrat during that time frame has decreased the number of Federal employees. Small Government is a code for less regulation, not less spending. In this respect George Bush has been a resounding success. He’s practically eviscerated our government’s oversight responsibilities.
In the short term, Republicanism is running on fumes. In the long term, people will forget how bad they are. In eight years they’ll be back like a pack of locusts.
One last observation on Conservatives. In general, they lack empathy. What often appears to be empathy is just their tendency to project their own emotions on others.
July 14, 2008 5:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
I saw you on Bill Moyers last Friday. I found you to be a big jerk who cares about nothing except his own tidy, conservative, gated world. You continually blew off any questions about the problems people are facing these days. Mickey Edwards I could talk to - you aren't worth my time.
July 14, 2008 6:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Despite stagnating wages, on a variety of indicators working-class voters are considerably better off than they were in the 1970s..."
Which is a completely irrelevant observation in the absence of the counterfactual of whether they would have been even better off with alternative policies, and if so, which?
The problem with the Frank's narrative is even simpler than you present here: it relies on a false consciousness argument that people's true preferences must represent specific economic ones. There's nothing "the matter" with Kansas if its conservative voters care more about social issues or even, perish the thought, agree with Republican economic policies on principle (much like wealthy Democrats who don't mind paying higher taxes to realize their broader policy preferences).
July 14, 2008 6:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Temperamentally I'm conservative-- cautious with resources and prone to consider tradition when making big decisions. But, politically conservatives seem too cramped in their views of what can be, too ready to ignore the problems in favor of settling for the status quo.
And Republicans, that's totally outside the conservative-liberal debate. They're just fucked up.
Your opening post rang true enough, but it will be hard to get anywhere with your arguments without blowing away the Republican Party. After the last 30 years plus Nixon they're too corrupt and tainted with incompetence to ever be trusted again. Get rid of them, start fresh with a new conservative party, then make your arguments. You'll never get anywhere carrying that baggage.
July 14, 2008 7:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.
July 14, 2008 8:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ross -
A little help for those of us get started who haven't yet read your book:
1) You write above: "Conservatives have achieved their greatest successes, both politically and on policy matters, when they've stood for a limited-government pragmatism rather than a small-government purism..." What do you consider these "greatest successes" to be.?
and you also write:
2) "Despite stagnating wages, on a variety of indicators working-class voters are considerably better off than they were in the 1970s." What exactly are some of these indicators?
thx
July 14, 2008 7:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
If your are going to argue that Republican economic policies help hold families together, you are going to have a tough sell. Families are falling apart because they can't afford health care and can't get health insurance, because they are working more hours for less money, because they are working two or three jobs, because Republican (Darwinian) economic policies have created a glass ceiling that working class people can't break through. Politics is economics. It always has been. It always will be. Cultural issues are a distraction, and Republicans have learned to use them with great skill.
July 14, 2008 7:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Russ--WTF did they teach you at Harvard because you sure didn't learn much about history, politics, statistics, economics, or moral values. The Republican party is politically and morally bankrupt. While the Democratic party isn't all that much better, I find it impossible to see how the party of corporate plutocrats, who have allowed their constituency to rape the country to the point where we're on the brink of the biggest economic disaster since the Great Depression, is going to hold on to the working class without clinging tight to the politics of fear and cultural division.
How anybody with half a brain could write a defense of the GOP after eight years of Bush (who is the natural conclusion of the Reagan Revolution) is beyond me.
July 14, 2008 7:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
the migration of working-class voters - defined for our purposes as Americans without college degrees - from the Roosevelt majority into the Reagan-Gingrich-Bush coalition has been driven by the GOP's ability to essentially trick these voters into casting their ballots based on symbolic culture-war issues, rather than on their economic concerns, and that the Republican Party has used this bait-and-switch to enrich the already-rich and deliver the American working class to economic ruin.
Very well summarized, but while it's quite possible that the GOP will continue to succeeded in this "essential trickery", I'll be quite impressed if you have any luck whatsoever in convincing the TPM crowd that the statement above is anything other than appallingly self-evident.
July 14, 2008 8:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
... and even more appallingly self-evident is the problem of TPM not having a preview mode!
July 14, 2008 8:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Best comment of the day. I won't post again until I've got a preview.
July 15, 2008 10:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Limited government pragmatism my foot. Limited government means Bush wants to eliminate the (insert Federal agency here.) Pragmatism means he knows he can't just do it. So he back-doored the agency into a submissive, three-monkeys posture: See no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.
July 14, 2008 8:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
"limited-government pragmatism ? C'mon. That's Bill Clinton talk.
Botomline is this country is a oligarchy and Washington's warnings about political parties and corporations were are being ignored. There is but one party(league) with two teams(red and blue) whose goal is to satisfy those who give them the most money.
July 14, 2008 8:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
a variety of indicators working-class voters are considerably better off than they were in the 1970s
In the 70s, my girlfriend's father was a milkman in Los Angeles. He bought and paid off a house and put 3 kids through college. His wife didn't work.
My girlfriend's son, also non-college educated, and desirous of a life that includes home ownership and fatherhood, would like to know where he can partake of this wonderful variety of indicators that you offer. He's given up the house & kids pipe dream and has now realized that his car is also unrealistic, trading it in on a bike. His only hope for anything resembling a lower-middle class lifestyle would be for me and my girlfriend to die off early and leave him the inflated CA real estate that we inherited from the last true middle class generation.
To that end, he's offered to buy me a copy of your book, hoping that I'll laugh myself to death.
July 14, 2008 8:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
I get your point, but ---
The house? how many bedrooms for the three kids? how many bathrooms?
College? residential or commuter?
The milkman's car? how many airbags? and what about that Sirius radio, huh?
July 14, 2008 8:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
The election process is just one big soap opera, nothing more.
Who's kidding who?
What the candidates and political partys say and promise the American people doesn't matter.
It is a fact that to the politically illiteral initiated, the incumbent party loses a national election not so much because it is seen as inept, but because it is seen as corrupt.
A more pragmatic look shows that both partys are as corrupt as can be and in effect Congress is legally as corrupt as it can be; just like the mafia.
What Americans do every four years is vote to see who will be the Don.
And if what I'm saying is contempt of Congress, then let my words make the best of it.
You don't have to be a blind conservative not to see it, just an ignorant one to deny it.
July 14, 2008 8:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
the incumbent party loses a national election not so much because it is seen as inept, but because it is seen as corrupt.
The Bush/Cheney Republican administration may be the exception, their incompetence is so transparent and crystal clear that it is becoming pervasively evident even in the most remote caves and recesses of the heartland.
July 14, 2008 8:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
GOP, Republicans, Conservatives are all just cover names for Pro Business or Pro Corporation.
I too feel that Mr Douthat is not really being totally truthful with his appeal to the readers...I have never met a Rightwinger who asked to be convinced "otherwise" or took an objective view.
I believe Mr Douthat in his opening monologue has the LeftWing viewpoint correctly stated. At least that is one count in the indictment. There are many more. Mr Douthat is also incorrect in assuming that there is a republican playbook where the Constituents Lives Are Made Better. Show me! When was that?
Maybe there is a conservative/libertarian viewpoint somewhere on paper that actually has the avg. american's welfare at heart....but in practice for the last 40 years I have never seen a republican effort that was aimed at helping avg. america. It is always some big giveaway to Corporations dressed up as "Keeping us Competitive" or "Trickle Down" or whatever the hell wild rationale was behind the Bush Wealth Takeover (I think Cheney said it best: "We're Due" (google it). In some way they always try to pass off, and almost halfof americans buy this, that what is good for Corporate America will eventually be good for Avg. Joe. If only Avg. Joe would believe.....
Corporations (or FatCats in the olden tymes before Corporations became the latest way to immortalize the wealthy and their wealth)
have been our enemy all along. The rich bubble makers of the past led us to THe Great Depression. It wasn't plumbers or welfare moms who caused all the great panics and depressions....and this one is no different.
Rightwingers would like to tell you that regular folks are evil. Gays, single moms, less affluent, homebuyers, non christians....and they must be eradicated. Enemies are everywhere....can't trust people. But whenever we do find malfeasance it is a corporation or a fatcat behind it. And I mean Large Scale Frauds, the kind of things that actually can ruin a nation and enslave our people.
The Dems are a lot more like their constituents. The republicans like to fool their constituents, play like regular folk but they are selling you down the river. Yes, some Dems stray from the true path (and it is always Corporations and FatCats that lead them astray....no Dem ever sold out his homefolks for God, or to go back to college, or to plant a garden). And NO republican ever strays and renounces his years of lies and deceptions and ProCorporate lobbying and decides he has to switch sides and go to bat for the little guys.
So, to recap....No republican ever comes over to the people....the people are not paying. Some dems go over to the corporation side. Why? Because the Corps ARE paying. They specialize in buying politicians. Owning our govt. This little fact should explain EVERYTHING and put to rest forever whether corporations are bad (YES) and republicans are their puppets (YES). The parties are not both corrupt (NO). The Dems occasionally mess up and a small number become corrupted. The Repubs never were going to help The People and are corrupt from the beginning.
It is not a crime to be a great advocate for The People. Nobody ever went to jail for doing too much for their voters. A thousand have gone to jail for Payola and selling out their people. Somehow the Republicans have done a pretty good job of Criminalizing helping the people (call you apinko communist).
So, quit acting like there is no difference. Dems are for people. Even if the Dem officeholder themselves is not a perfect person. Even if his constituents are not perfect people. The people are never WRONG. Doing the right thing for your people (even if there are imperfections and unintended consequences) is always right. History here has proved it. Doing things for corporations and how FatCats want things done (most of Republican Theology) has always been WRONG. Everytime. Corporations have caused ALL of our historic woes and they are causing them again.
Republican lawmakers are just wolves in sheeps clothing....and the american voter (whom they need so desperately) is just dumb enough or confused or distracted enough.....to (oddly, incomprehensibly) vote for Republicans at almost a 50% clip. When you own all the microphones, and all the papers, and all the Networks, and half the net....and you ruthlessly restrict the news and spend 3 decades constantly denouncing LeftWing principles...you get a populace who cares more about Desperate Housewives and believes silly things. Mass communications works (especially if brainwashing and dumbing your audience is your definition of "works")
One last note....I think it is a signature of a RightWinger to believe in things very strongly. It saves time with all that pesky thinking and those troublesome facts. You believe in deities, rightwing dogma, televangelist preachers, NASCAR, Wrestling, GeorgeBush, Adam Smith's InvisibleHand, Goodness of Corporations, Newt Gingrich, Kinder and Gentler Conservatives (BTW - if you have to brand yerselves as Kindler and Gentler....then WHAT THE HELL were you before? Malevolent and Cruel? I mean it's an admission of sorts even before you start. If I said I was going to be a less molesting and violent daycare provider....) anyways, You RightWingers just fall all over yerselves BELIEVING all kinds of stuff.
LeftWingers actually think situations deserve our best mental alertness and attention and an open mind. We are not WED to particular stance if the facts show otherwise. Sure we have some Pet Oxes but most of our ideas have human, touchable proofs. Not edicts from The Great Unseen One or The Invisible Hand of the Markets.
In essence:
Leftwingers think for themselves. Our party's great strength and sometimes weakness is Diversity and acknowledging limitations and reality.
Rightwingers follow Corporate Puppets and refuse to believe that their representatives are indeed Corporate Puppets. Mindless devotion and unwillingness to face facts/limitations is their short-term strength and long-term affliction.
We will never destroy the species or the earth following Leftwing ideas. We could quite possibly destroy ourselves with Rightwing thinking and maybe even the current version of earth.
July 14, 2008 8:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
i>Despite stagnating wages [...]
Now that's a hell of a way to start a sentence! Here are some more fun beginnings! Despite getting kicked in the teeth ... Despite your brother sleeping with your wife ... Despite going outside and finding your car missing ...
[...] when they've stood for a limited-government pragmatism rather than a small-government purism [...]
Real world examples, please. The phrase "limited-government pragmatism" is completely new to me, but I've heard plenty about small government.
I'm curious what other major political narratives - whether liberal or conservative, socialist or feminist, libertarian or social-conservative - our conversation partners think should be up for debate, renovation, and/or elimination.
Here's a narrative to consider: Conservatives only care about wealth and power. Discuss.
July 14, 2008 9:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Too funny. Reminds me of that old joke:
"Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?"
-- ARG
July 16, 2008 5:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
"So, quit acting like there is no difference. Dems are for people. Even if the Dem officeholder themselves is not a perfect person. Even if his constituents are not perfect people. The people are never WRONG."
I disagree. At this point, the two plutocratic parties merely rotate what segment of the population to scapegoat for X national problem, in order to throw them before the firing line. It's like the Wheel of Fortune--every group has a slice of the pie, and first one plutocratic party and then the other, takes their turn spinning the wheel.
We saw the Democratic Party pulling this one, all on their own, even without Republican help during the primary.
"The people" are WRONG because they play along with this little game, becoming willing executioners, even as Machiavellian Pat Sajaks are making off with the national Treasury. It's the single mothers' fault!--no, no it's the Nascar dads!
If we'd like to contend that the Republican Party is evil and the Democratic Party merely gullible and stupid, I suppose that is a debate that the American people can have. Although it may be that they're both evil and stupid in their own particular ways, and they attract likeminded jerking knees to their respective firing lines.
July 14, 2008 10:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
. . . the two plutocratic parties merely rotate what segment of the population to scapegoat for X national problem . . . .
Nicely said! Better? Nicely interpreted! Best? Nicely ironized!
July 14, 2008 10:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nicely Said but not quite true. Clever, Cute, but wrong.
Who have the dems thrown under the bus or scapegoated....except Corporate FatCats? And Corporations aren't really people. Remember?
Hell, Rightwingers have an active platform that destroys their voters quality of life and may prove to be destructive to their own health. They pander to their base while killing them legislation-wise....and they're even less friendly to their enemies. If all rightwingers did to me was scapegoat me I'd be a lucky man.
Here is what is true in what you say....All humans are imperfect and fallible.
So, if Lefties scapegoat Corporate Righties, and Righties scapegoat on the underpriveleged and under-represented.....who is more correct there? Which party/group is actually the cause of most troubles......The People or The Corporations?
I would take the Left (people first, war-wary, share the wealth) and its mistakes and flaws and warts every time over the Right and their mistakes. The Right is basically every man for himself and FU - and it only gets worse from there. Their lack of scruples, mismanagement, and sheer Mass Criminality don't have Good unintended consequences. Their ideas are nasty and brutish and profit driven, and the mistakes are even uglier.
Lastly, you fail to calculate the INTENT of the voters. People on the left can often be seen to be voted in with all the best intentions, with the voters pulling the lever FOR the people. Much of what RIGHTWING voters pull the lever for is AGAINST something. Against gays, ss marriage, blacks, mexicans, and basic fairness. Their representatives often get voted in because they ran on a "hate" issue. And it is their fellow americans they "hate".
One party in this country actually runs campaigns and platforms that put them at war with half of america, and the rhetoric is that of eradication. And it isn't coming from the Left.
July 14, 2008 11:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
The only problem with all this talk about stagnating wages is that it ignores one major factor as to why wages are stagnating: we are importing millions of poor people, largely from Latin America. Bringing in more low-wage workers means that the average wage will be lower.
July 15, 2008 1:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
I caught Ross on Moyers show on PBS last week. And if I am not mistaken I thought he said he supported the Republican/conservative "we have to try to preserve our 'traditional' cultural/societal values" core principle. Which means, in my mind, women have an unequal place in our society, minorities being 'kept in their place' and more wealth being distributed to the already obscenely wealthy.
So we have Ross trying to repackage a past expiration date tainted product as something fresh. Just an exercise in rearranging deck chairs on the Titantic.
Despite stagnating wages, on a variety of indicators working-class voters are considerably better off than they were in the 1970s
I almost stopped at this inexplicable passage (and probably should have seeing the sheer dishonesty in what it implies). This the 'even though you have less you really are better off' corporate mantra. Yes, black is really white and up is really down. I never knew...
July 15, 2008 9:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Lastly, you fail to calculate the INTENT of the voters. People on the left can often be seen to be voted in with all the best intentions, with the voters pulling the lever FOR the people. Much of what RIGHTWING voters pull the lever for is AGAINST something."
You're laboring under a delusion. In 2004, people voted against Bush. In 2008, even more people will vote against Bush, while a bunch vote against Obama and we'll see where that calculation ends up. (If they count the votes this time). That's about as far as I expect the one party anti-people state to get, if it even gets that far.
July 15, 2008 9:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
As usual, I made my point quite inelegantly.
Instead of saying people vote FOR things.....I should have said that the Left platform is uniformly FOR the people. The Right is uniformly AGAINST things, without a POSITIVE goal on the table (unless you are ultraRich or a Corporation)
Anyways, what I meant is the goal, the aim, the trajectory, the intent of most Left ideals is for positive GAIN for the people....Gains in opportunities or education or fairness. The Right is always AGAINST in their issues and policies. Their campaigns and 'appeals to voters' use fear, hatred, racism, sexism. In order to STOP something....never to GIVE something.
July 15, 2008 10:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
This sounds like a good book.
Is there any empirical evidence that government can change the culture of families? If not, we're verging into the realm of "Red vs. Blue": the (self-fulfilling) myth that culture drives politics even though they have very little AS A PRACTICAL MATTER to do with each other, and therefore should be kept distinct (two and four-fifths cheers for Limited Government!). Without granting Frank's premise, that cultural issues are merely symbolic, I'd submit that serious analysis is needed to show that a GOP motivated by these cultural aims could actually accomplish anything (at least without social engineering so strict that it resembles the Soviet Union in its intrusion into people's choices).
The analogy on the left is a very powerful one, and one that is ignored in this presentation of the Frank straw-man: I refer to Paul Krugman's most recent book, which set out to prove that economics drives politics and found, in the face of rigorous economic analysis, that the opposite is the case. A very significant swatch of Republican voters from 1967ish on founded their political identities (a concept itself new in its reification of ideology in US voting), not on relatively minor family-values issues, but on racism.
My point is not that this is a more compelling narrative than the alternatives, but that Krugman makes what seems to me a strong QUANTITATIVE case that it is *truer*.
Is there data in your book to back up your policy recommendations for the future? When it comes to the past, I think Krugman's _Conscience of a Conservative_ has it all over you guys.
I think, moreover, that when it comes to the past eight years all the shrill lunatic posters above are absolutely right. Perhaps your Grand New Party will need a new name....
Jim von der Heydt
July 15, 2008 10:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
You all are too much. It's clear that most of you haven't spent even 5 minutes talking with an actual free-market conservative, because all you are doing is displaying cartoonish corporatist nonsense about conservatives. This is probably a waste of time but I'll try anyway:
The real reason why so many conservatives and Republicans do not favor most (not all) regulations of the marketplace, why so many favor tax cuts for the rich AND the nonrich, why so many want to limit the size of government, is because they favor expanding economic choices. Economic choice is the most powerful form of personal liberty that the world has ever seen. Each of us take advantage of it every day and we mostly take it for granted.
We have the liberty to choose Pepsi over Coke. We have the liberty to choose chocolate ice cream over vanilla ice cream. We have the liberty to choose PCs over Macs. This liberty isn't legislated by Congress. It's not in the Constitution. It results when we have a market-based economy that is full of choices.
Whenever government raises taxes, it takes money away from individuals and thereby depriving them of the capability of participating in the full range of their potential choices in the marketplace.
Whenever government increases regulation, it makes companies less able to offer a full range of choices to their consumers than they otherwise would have been able to in the absence of such regulation, because now they have to spend money satisfying the demands of regulators instead of putting that money towards actually making a product.
This is not to say that all regulation is bad or that taxation is evil. Only the most hard-core libertarians would argue that, and I am not one of those. Nevertheless it behooves all of us to understand that increasing government and taxation only comes at the cost of decreasing economic choices, and hence decreasing personal liberty.
This is the guiding philosophy behind tax cuts and limited government. I will be the first to argue that not all Republicans act with this philosophy in mind - in fact, far fewer than I would prefer. Some actually are corrupt and simply sell out to corporations. (Some Democrats too.) But for your honest free-market conservative, it isn't about the money. It's about the liberty to make one's own choices and to direct one's own life according to one's own wishes. This is a far cry from Marxist-sounding drivel about "keeping the poor down".
July 15, 2008 6:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bernanke and the Fed just reduced the 'liberty' to lend for mortgages with these regulations:
• bar lenders from making loans without proof of a borrower's income.
• require lenders to make sure risky borrowers set aside money to pay for taxes and insurance.
• restrict lenders from penalizing risky borrowers who pay loans off early.
• prohibit lenders from making a loan without considering a borrower's ability to repay a home loan from sources other than the home's value.
July 15, 2008 8:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm faintly suspicious that chemjeff's post is satire, but he's (Jeff's?) trying hard to fool me. Choosing Pepsi or Coke...now that's the freedom of John Paul Jones, or was that liberty?
Freedom, keep marching, get on your toes and don't stop talking about freedom...to pick products?! Good grief.
July 15, 2008 6:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, it is not satire. You miss the point if you think it's only about choosing between soft drinks. It is the freedom to choose at all that is the point.
July 15, 2008 7:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, Chemjeff. You seem to work on the assumption that a wide range (ever expanding) of products to choose from (soft drinks or mortgages) is the pinnacle of human endeavor.
That consuming and buying and having everything on earth commodity-ized and shipped to your door is the highest achievement.
Every creature EVER on this earth got by without that particular gem. And we did too for at least a few hundred-thousand years. Next you'll be telling me the invisible hand of the markets will stroke my head until I fall asleep! Sweet Dreams DickTater, and more buying power to you!
You're forgetting the math, basically every creature on this earth scrapes by day to day, eating things that would turn our stomachs. Just barely enough, no storage for next year. That is the calculus of life. All things dependent on the other. You have to understand and adjust your equations. Endless market choices come at a heavy and unlive-able price. Your invisible friends have had their chance. They caused every single financial calamity in the modern world. The priests of your religion are fleeing their altars (and the authorities) as we speak, with the taxpayer picking up the tab of their colossal criminality.
I suggest you listen to some new people, some new friends, ones you can see.
July 15, 2008 10:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
July 16, 2008 5:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Chemjeff
The realities are we are not guaranteed plenty and choices and even governments or markets. We need to think in terms of killing ourselves with our own system, and how we can make EVERY choice at EVERY instance to do what is right for the planet.
Any system based on consumption is going to deplete resources, here or elsewhere.
We are not calling any of the shots....Coke and Pepsi are. We are not making choices, they are telling us what we are getting. And that is just what you get when Nationwide and Global monopolists come to your town.
I don't have all the answers, but our system has been running for a couple of centuries....always trending in one direction. And it's effects are irrefutable. Ruinous. At it's most regulated and least corrupt iteration....it offered a lot of fairness and opportunity even if it destroyed the earth at a fairly high rate. In it's least regulated and most corrupt eras, it bankrupts everyone (except the Uber Rich), and it destroys the earth at an even higher rate.
Insurance companies and Engineers and Economists are so good with Math, but they only measure what they want. Case in point....they all took the effects of their business on EARTH right out of their equations. No matter how much land, water, air, O2, that was being manipulated...in their books it was ZERO cost. Zero Effect. Zero Dollars. Squeezing their employees....Zero Cost. Trees destroyed, watersheds ruined, wetlands drained.....Zero Cost.
Heat, pollutants, effluent....Zero Cost. It just disappears! The Invisible Hand takes care of it!
July 16, 2008 4:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Chemical Jeff has a point, Bush chooses who he lets in to his speeches and events, Bush/Cheney choose which laws they enforce or abide by, they choose who to lock up and torture, they choose which are the best lies for any given day, war, executive action or legislation, they pick who to fire for political reasons in the DOJ or any other gov't job, they choose what if any truth to tell the American people, they choose which gov't emails and documents to destroy, they choose who will view or photograph the funerals of dead troops, they choose which group to attack to bait their base, they choose what gov't scientific evidence they will allow published, whether women are allowed to control their own health care, and they choose how many tours and stop losses the troops will have to make to achieve 'victory'.
July 16, 2008 6:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Too funny. Reminds me of that old joke:
"Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?"
-- ARG
July 16, 2008 5:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
D'oh. That was supposed to be in reply to albanylayman, way upthread.
-- ARG!
July 16, 2008 5:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dick Tater,
You write:
I would argue that in a free market, we get Coke and Pepsi because people like Coke and Pepsi and hence they vote with their dollars when they buy these products at the market. In a free market neither Coke nor Pepsi can force you to buy their products.
But, IMO there is some merit to your claim. I would argue that we don't have a free market in soft drinks, let alone anything else in this country; we have a form of state capitalism instead, with corporations using government to advance their own interests, and vice-versa. Naturally, then, this limits the soft drink market to companies that are already in the corporate-government cycle of mutual influence peddling.
But the real question is: do you want a freer market in soft drinks? It would seem to me that your answer must be no, because a freer market means more choices, and more choices means more waste, more materialism, excessive consumption, and generally bad things to the environment and the planet. So are you happy with the status quo vis-a-vis soft drinks? Maybe there should be fewer choices - only Pepsi, say. That would cut down on waste. Maybe government should force Pepsi to make soft drinks in an environmentally responsible way. Maybe government should force Pepsi to pay its workers a "living wage". Maybe government should force Pepsi to make soft drinks that are actually nutritious and not just oversweetened junk. In fact maybe government should just run Pepsi.
Now you will say I've engaged in the slippery slope fallacy, and you'd be right. But where do you draw the line between a free market in soft drinks, which you evidently oppose on environmental grounds, and government nationalization of the soft drink industry, which I'm betting you probably don't favor either?
This is a thorny problem to leftists and statists like yourself who desire to use government regulation to create the perfect society. For me the answer is simple - I reject utopian visions and instead believe that individuals should make their own soft drink choices in a free market with a multitude of choices, with way more than just two.
But, but, what about the environment, you say?
You also write:
There is hardly a soul alive today, not even Republicans, who think we ought to destroy the planet via rampant capitalism. The only real question between left and right is how these matters of environmental protection should be decided upon. Should we have a government regulatory scheme which imposes one fixed vision of environmentalism upon everyone? Or should we leave it up to environmentally-conscious consumers to vote with their dollars on green choices? This is already happening with cars - economic forces alone are encouraging more people to reject large SUVs and to choose more fuel-efficient cars. You don't need a government mandate to accomplish this. All you need are thoughtful consumers who want to do the right thing as well as save money on gas.
July 16, 2008 5:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're wrong.
"Thoughtful consumers" do not exist. The only thing that has caused a shift away from unnecessarily huge and inefficient cars is that only the very rich can now afford to fuel them.
The (very real) costs of the depletion and unnecessary waste of natural capital belong on the bottom line, not as an afterthought.
July 17, 2008 7:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
ChemJeff
I don't know where to start with you. Your slippery slope is composed purely of theorizing and illogical leaps. You hypothesize that my Green assault on Capitalism, and regulation (or slimming our choices) inevitably leads to Stalin's Russia. You invoke invisible forces, and state capitalist "laws" that have no proof they even exist, let alone work.
I am talking about PROOF of where Rampant Capitalism has taken us. And YES there are republicans (and worse) out there who do practice and preach rampant capitalism. Two of them hold the highest offices in the nation. If the hope of our world rests on the 'thoughtful consumers' that you mention, VS the organized corporate forces of destruction....I point to exhibit A, Our Modern World.
We have never tried a socialist scheme, we haven't even been close to being fair with our capitalism. It was basically MiGHT MAKES RIGHT since America was founded, 6 yr old kids working in factories and losing limbs. A few inroads were made, progressing along pretty well through the 1900s until about 1980. Then they started rolling back all the gains. The rich have been pretty effective at using violence during most strikes, busting unions, killing whistleblowers and troublemakers. We finally get a modicum of decent rules about what a corporatist can do to his labor force....but they found new ways to take it all back.
Just look at the facts. Look at the history. You are mouthing all the corporatist points about how I must be a Pinko Communist who wants Stalin Days again. About how we have it so good, and we have choices and ANY limiting of the capitalist system is a direct march right to the Kremlin. Well, that is all in your mind. It is conjecture and projection, not facts. And the facts are all around you, the reality of the Corporate World and the profit driven world-view.
All goods, commodities, gems, coins, balance sheets are not REAL. They are manmade constructs, ideas, illusions. Volcanoes and the atmosphere and oceans and icecaps don't care about dollars or euros. Every other species on the planet, including us, thrived without them for eons. I know it is blasphemy to speak ill of man's pursuit these last 10,000 years but the studies are done and the facts are in...like any un-balanced mechanism, like any ill-conceived largescale endeavor....we are about to corkscrew and auger right into the ground.
July 17, 2008 12:56 AM | Reply | Permalink