The Republican core base and those who manipulate it
Stan Greenberg, James Carville & Karl Agne conducted some very interesting focus group studies with groups of conservatives and independents. This is the Executive Summary of their report of findings:
This is a report of what focus groups show the Republican base believes, not necessarily what their leaders believe. The right wing political leaders have to cater to this base to maintain their leadership positions. I think that some believe this stuff and a lot do not. For the leaders personal ambition is as much a motivator as is ideology, if not more so.
The evangelicals like Sens. Ensign, Coburn, Enhofe and I suspect, Demint, are true believers. There is no doubt that the more extreme Representives such as Bachman believe this. I'm not sure whether to put Sarah Palin into the group of true believers or the group who manipulates them. Or both. A lot of the conservative leaders are there for their own advantage, not because they buy into the full core conservative base agenda. That's probably why the base is so ready to kick out any backsliders like Specter and Lindsay Graham. They don't trust them. They can't trust even other conservatives. Only the core members of the oppressed conservative group can be trusted. Any evidence of doubt or of pragmatism on core beliefs makes them outsiders to that core group.
Then there are the Wall Street Republicans (big business, big banks, and big oil especially) who are ready to capitalize on this group of isolated and disaffected conservatives. By feeding propaganda to the Republican base directly and by buying off the evangelical leaders, they can manipulate the right-wing politicla leaders into handing them control of the American economy. The entire TV business news system is under their control because they control the advertising revenue that makes the business news possible. The wealthy ultra-conservatives like the oil tycoons, Amway people (i.e. Eric Prince of Blackwater fame), the Walton family (Walmart), the news tycoons (Richard Mellon Scaife, Rupert Murdoch) etc. are a noticeable subset of this group. So are the Libertarians and the Neocons. They are also members of minorities who feel oppressed by the mainstream and they also practice manipulating the Republican core base to the extent that they can.
The Democracy Corps report gives an intriguing look at the nature of the Republican core base. It is a major population group that a number of politicians and economically powerful groups and individuals manipulate to get what they want from the government. That base and its vulnerability to being manipulated politically appears to me to be at the core of America's currently largely dysfunctional politics. So I classify the important players as the core Republican base, the Republican political leaders, and those who work to manipulate core base and the political leaders to get what they want out of government.
So what have I missed?
The self-identifying conservative Republicans who make up the base of the Republican Party stand a world apart from the rest of America, according to focus groups conducted by Democracy Corps. These base Republican voters dislike Barak Obama to be sure - which is not very surprising as base Democrats had few positive things to say about George Bush - but these voters identify themselves as part of a 'mocked' minority with a set of shared beliefs and knowledge, and commitment to oppose Obama that sets them apart from the majority in the country. They believe Obama is ruthlessly advancing a 'secret agenda' to bankrupt the United States and dramatically expand government control to an extent nothing short of socialism. They overwhelmingly view a successful Obama presidency as the destruction of this country's founding principles and are committed to seeing the president failA major conclusion they drew from this study is that the press is focused on racist explanations for the voter's beliefs, but there are indications that racism is not the main driver of conservative attitudes and behavior. What they did find, though, is that conservative beliefs are very different from those of even the more conservative independents. The independents tend to just blow off the more extreme statements from the conservatives, considering such extreme rhetoric as efforts to influence people politically but not really representing what the conservatives actually believe themselves. Here are the findings regarding what the extreme conservatives do actually believe:
So that's the essence of what the report states.[I have taken the liberty of adding numbered grouping what was a single paragraph to emphasize the three points.]
- ...[T]hese conservative Republican voters believe Obama is deliberately and ruthlessly advancing a 'secret agenda' to bankrupt our country and dramatically expand government control over all aspects of our daily lives. They view this effort in sweeping terms, and cast a successful Obama presidency as the destruction of the United States as it was conceived by our founders and developed over the past 200 years.
- This concern combines with a profound sense of collective identity. They readily identify themselves as a minority in this country - a minority whose values are mocked and attacked by a liberal media and class of elites.
- They also believe they possess a level of knowledge and understanding when it comes to politics and current events, one gained from a rejection of the mainstream media and an embrace of conservative media and pundits such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, which sets them apart even more.
This is a report of what focus groups show the Republican base believes, not necessarily what their leaders believe. The right wing political leaders have to cater to this base to maintain their leadership positions. I think that some believe this stuff and a lot do not. For the leaders personal ambition is as much a motivator as is ideology, if not more so.
The evangelicals like Sens. Ensign, Coburn, Enhofe and I suspect, Demint, are true believers. There is no doubt that the more extreme Representives such as Bachman believe this. I'm not sure whether to put Sarah Palin into the group of true believers or the group who manipulates them. Or both. A lot of the conservative leaders are there for their own advantage, not because they buy into the full core conservative base agenda. That's probably why the base is so ready to kick out any backsliders like Specter and Lindsay Graham. They don't trust them. They can't trust even other conservatives. Only the core members of the oppressed conservative group can be trusted. Any evidence of doubt or of pragmatism on core beliefs makes them outsiders to that core group.
Then there are the Wall Street Republicans (big business, big banks, and big oil especially) who are ready to capitalize on this group of isolated and disaffected conservatives. By feeding propaganda to the Republican base directly and by buying off the evangelical leaders, they can manipulate the right-wing politicla leaders into handing them control of the American economy. The entire TV business news system is under their control because they control the advertising revenue that makes the business news possible. The wealthy ultra-conservatives like the oil tycoons, Amway people (i.e. Eric Prince of Blackwater fame), the Walton family (Walmart), the news tycoons (Richard Mellon Scaife, Rupert Murdoch) etc. are a noticeable subset of this group. So are the Libertarians and the Neocons. They are also members of minorities who feel oppressed by the mainstream and they also practice manipulating the Republican core base to the extent that they can.
The Democracy Corps report gives an intriguing look at the nature of the Republican core base. It is a major population group that a number of politicians and economically powerful groups and individuals manipulate to get what they want from the government. That base and its vulnerability to being manipulated politically appears to me to be at the core of America's currently largely dysfunctional politics. So I classify the important players as the core Republican base, the Republican political leaders, and those who work to manipulate core base and the political leaders to get what they want out of government.
So what have I missed?
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Richard Good Take!!! Thank you for the cite/site. I see a real connection between your post, Sleepin's post and Barth's post. OH and Jep's comment in my blog. There may even be a couple more that I am too lazy to look up.
This group you focus on per Carville now feel permanently dispossessed. Certainly we on the left can sympathize. It looked like it was all over by 2002.
And yet, a portion of the left, like myself, see that the big chance to change everything has passed. Instead of replacing a failed system, w and Obama buttressed it. Now Wall Street simply pays out the bonuses they did before, 10% are unemployed--which means a real 16% are unemployed; credit interest rates are at the same highs, bankruptcy laws have remained the same...
The middle class is screwed.
Now i read the 'news' every day. For hours. The average guy does not.The average guy chooses one station to watch and then have a beer and visit reality television and then goes to bed.
If the one station if fox and if the radio is turned to rush...well. What is he supposed to think?
The right wing 'base' will never go away. ever. And the worry is that some subgroups who carry guns and wish to express power in some manner, may explode. Any day now.
Again, thank you for this post Richard.
October 18, 2009 2:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with you that it looks pretty dark for the middle class and the general American population right now, and the problems are primarily political and cultural. The thing is, the opportunity to change Wall Street appeared to be in the middle of the crisis, and that happened last Fall. Wall Street bankers were still totally in control of the government with Bush in office. There is an opportunity for change to this control, but only after health care reform is finished. The idea that the structure of banking and bank regulation could have been changed last Fall is a fantasy. Nothing was in place make the changes and too many things would have all needed to be changed at once. There was no organization capable of doing all that, including the federal government - and the Bush government didn't want to do it.
Obama never had an opportunity to change anything in banking when he came in. He was set up to tackle health care as his highest priority before he took office, and the forces of darkness have delayed his takeover of the federal government in every way possible. He is still getting government appointees into place at a snail's pace because of the foot-dragging by the Senate Republicans.
Obama didn't have the necessary people who knew the financial and economic systems well enough to begin to actually implement changes there. Besides, no one knew or even yet knows what changes need to be made. There are a lot of good ideas, but changes that massive need to be understood like an engineer understands the bridge he is going to build. You can't do that just good ideas. The planning has to be extensive before the first real change is attempted. Besides, the first priority was and remains the health care system.
The Obama team was ready to make the health care changes to our basic governmental structure. The problem was widely recognized across the nation, the Democrats had the people in place to implement the change, the earlier effort by Clinton taught everyone what had to be done politically, and it has still been a tough row to hoe to get as far as has been achieved right now. It's still a nail-biter. Then there's Afghanistan.
There are good reasons why Bush/Cheney did not want to invade Afghanistan. Even then it was clear that once we got in, no one knew what we had to do or even what we COULD do. As I recall, the Bush people were forced to do invade Afghanistan by public and Congressional pressure when it became clear that 9/11 originated there and the Taliban kept on protecting al Qaeda. But Bush/Cheney wanted their Iraq war and they couldn't get it without doing
Afghanistan first. So they did it using Rumsfeld's minimum resources strategy, making it a sideshow to their real effort futher south.
Yes, the Bush/Cheney military adventures were almost completely incompetent. As nearly as I can tell, nearly everything they did militarily in the middle east was done without any real strategy for winning beyond simply handing them off to the military and telling the Generals not to spare resources for Afghanistan because Afghanistan has no oil and no international economic impact. Iraq mattered and we had already beaten them in the Persian Gulf War. Afghanistan was the graveyard of Empires.
At the White House level, the primary Bush strategy in the middle east was to use foreign military actions to influence elections in America. The wars were a kubuki theater to demonstrate how tough the Republicans were. Such theater was an attempt to build on the political base that Carville/Greenberg describe. The wars also kept the military industrial complex delivering cash for political use and corruption and gave the conservatives reasons to pretend to be tough - all to win elections and stay in power.
The economic crisis was a surprise to everyone in politics. Wall Street has had a great propaganda effort going since the 50's. (Probably a reaction to the bad press they got out of causing the Great Depression.) Free enterprise and no economic regulation has been taught by the economics profession to most college students for at least six decades now, and the so-called business news has a key function of protecting Wall Street from Washington. Economic research Wall Street approves of gets grants and wealthy men get their names put on business schools because of those grants. The schools compete for their grants. And much of the propaganda is quite positive. The economy is too complex to operate without the people embedded in it knowing the rules that make it work.
The government is largely designed to make things predictable - especially economically - so that individuals and business people can plan and invest to grow businesses and economic lives. That's a key function of the police and the entire justice system, and the military protects the society from outside disruption. But that's what government does. Government provides stability and predictability. What it stabilizes is not always right, but the first requirement is that government action be predictable, and the second requirement is that contracts by private individuals and companies be carried out. (I can expand on this at length, but I won't at this time unless asked except to point out that a key function of the Rule of Law is to provide administrative certainty.)
Changes should come in little pieces within the framework of stability. Changes come from privately operated organizations embedded in the overall economic structure of government, ideas values and norms. The bigger the pieces to change, the more dangerous it is to the overall system.
This is a different perspective from the common political one that private business and government oppose each other and keep each other in check. There is a lot of that, too, but the idea that government provides stability and within that umbrella of stability allows private organizations to innovate and adjust, changing the economy and society and adjusting to those changes is critical. Private organizations cannot exist without being inside the bubble of stability provided by government. Similarly, individuals need the same kind of stability to plan for the future. Why would anyone commit to years of education without a solid idea that the education was likely to pay off in the future? That solid idea of the future is permitted by the stability provided by government, and free market institutions do NOT provide any similarly stability for individuals or smaller organizations to base planning on.
My key point, though, is that to make major changes in the structure and operating processes of the entire banking system is not something that can be started and implemented within a year. The banking system is too critical to the overall economy and society. Band aids can be applied within a year or so, but major permanent changes cannot. Big changes disrupt too many already established plans and greatly disrupt both the economy and the general society. Obama has not had either the time nor has he had the resources to seriously begin implementing such changes.
Besides, the health care revamp has removed all the political wind from the sails of economic structural change for now.
Anyway, we are in a lull in the economic crisis. I don't think it is nearly over, but the stimulus is working to keep the economy from going over the cliff. But the mortgage crisis is coming back again, and worse in many ways because now it is based on people who can't pay what should have been predictable mortgage payments. (There's that predictability bit again.)
Once health care reform is finished, the political forces protecting the Wall Street status quo in Congress can be isolated and teh concepts for change marshaled to bring against them. Right now the forces for status quo can threaten health care to prevent economic changes. As for the necessary concepts of what to change and what the new structure is to look like, I have no doubt that there is a lot of economic theorizing going on to determine what changes need to be done. The discussions must be frequent and deep. (Krugman's recent New York Sunday Times article was a hint to the public. Salt water vs fresh water economic schools of thought, remember?) When the economic crisis again becomes obvious, then all the work that is being done now will start to surface.
And the crisis will come back. The current system is too dysfunctional and corrupt for it not to come back to bite us, and soon.
The problem is that all this stuff (war, health care reform, the economy and banking) can't be changed at once. The first function of every government is to provide stability and predictability to those who are governed! That has always been the main function of government and always will be. It's why governments exist at all. The extreme alternative to that is Somalia. It used to have a stable government and mostly outside forces came in and destabilized it, and they continue to do so. People try to recreate little patches of stability and a warlord, or Ethopian army, or Islamists or something disapproves and smashes what was put into place, leaving room for nothing but bandits, pirates and graves.
The conservatives came into American government in force again with Nixon and their effort has been to destabilize America's government so that they could remake it in their Libertarian, militarist and (since Reagan) Christianist mold. They've been at it in force for over four decades. Obama's not going to change that overnight, no matter how bad the current situation because we are not yet in economic and social collapse. Obama and Paulsen prevented that collapse from occurring. (Bush delegated the job to Paulsen and did nothing himself, going on vacation for the last months of his "Presidency.")
Suffice to say, though, that the libertarian ideal that the conservatives have attempted to implement onto government has failed and obviously so. Most sensible people are at least aware of that, even if the business news is filled with economic happy talk because they are trying to sell financial instruments that depend on financial stability. Libertarians do not not provide social institutions designed to preserve social and economic stability, and without such institutions, no one can plan and operate long term.
This comment has gone on far beyond reasonable length, and since I can only see about three inches above at a time, it is not organized to be a lengthy post. Nor do I have time to rewrite it reasonably. But if anyone reads it (always iffy - say something, damn it!) and has questions or criticisms I can expand on most of what I have written.
The key point I am trying to make, though, it that because government is responsible for social and economic stability and because the changes needed to Wall Street and the banking system are massive, deep, and critical to the economy and society, the people and concepts required to make changes are not yet in place and the political climate is sidetracked onto health care - which, if anything, is more socially important in the long term than big regulatory changes to the banking system. Additionally, getting health care financially stable will be critical to the economic changes needed anyway.
Changes this big are always done by taking a piece of a massive problem, solving it, then going back to fix some other part of the problem. Read the classic book "Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis" by Graham T. Allison for a superb explanation of real-life decision making. It's also quite readable.
October 18, 2009 1:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent big picture ruminations, Richard. These lyrics came to mind:
October 18, 2009 2:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Beautiful. What's the source?
October 18, 2009 2:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
John Lenon and Paul McCartney! Flip side of the "Hey Jude" single, 1968, and my memory is that they played both songs on the radio daily for about 5 years after that. (Of course I was only an infant so I could be wrong. :-))
October 18, 2009 2:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ah. I was a folk music fan and remain a great lover of Joan Baez. I was one of those who were angry at Dylan when he deserted folk music and started using an electric guitar at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival - and I hated those four idiots from England who came in and destroyed my folk music scene. Didn't listen to them until the late 70's, and never dug into their lyrics.
So there are big gaps in my musical knowledge. Thanks for that one.
October 18, 2009 2:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well I should give you a little context then. Lennon the peacenik's words were not intended to be supportive of SDS types, though it wasn't clear how many recognized that as they were already considered sell-out "pop" musicians by many such folks at the time, rather than serious rockers.
October 18, 2009 3:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
I missed, as I do so often, that you had a hyperlink to the pdf file Democracy Corps posted. Duh. I found it, and have been reading it. I still can't quite get what conclusions are reached on the Georgians polled vs. the Clevelanders polled; I'll try later.
One biggie I thought they blew right by: They claim they gave respondents 'every opprtunity to talk about race in their perceptions of Obama.' They may have. But I think what they missed was that they all know that their objections to him and his polcies are being repported as racist; of course that can have the effect of muzzling their mouths! As we have found out, not many want to own that term in regards to themselves! I haven't finished it all, but many went on about Obama 'closing his records and files'; this led to Kenya and Hawaii and his school records. I haven't read the word 'Muslim" yet either; and if it doesn't show soon, I will think they didn't get accurate info from these folks, as that Secret Muslim Socialist meme is very evident at the rallies.
And the recurring belief that he is a puppet, groomed by wealthy people like George Soros since he was an ACORN activist in Chicago; that hints strongly about race. We know ACORN is about the poor and disenfrachised, but they don't.
I'll read some more after I get some blood back into my a**, and go look at the nice autumn day out there.
October 18, 2009 12:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with you on the racism thing. I'll excuse them on that, though, because this is a report of the results of research and they reported what they found.
As a guy who graduated from an all-White segregated high school in East Texas I have watched the changes in race in Texas all my adult life. I have been surprised to look back and realize that sometime rather recently conservatives have become very sensitive about being called racist. If someone were to want to study when that happened, I'd bet you could find it by tracking William Buckley's writings or by reading National Review. It would have occurred when conservatives realized that the flagrant racists no longer won elections.
Equally interesting to me is that Hispanics here in Texas used to get treated much like African Americans, but that has mostly disappeared in the last 50 years also. The public expression of that bigotry is the constant attack on "illegals." It seems to be a very similar language shift in politics and in social life.
What seems to me to have happened is that the racists have quit speaking in racist terms (and so believe they are no longer racist) but still consider being poor and Black to be automatic disqualifiers for anything other than suspicion. But nothing that I saw in the study addressed that, so the report Carville/Greenberg wrote does not address it.
Thanks for bring that up. It bothered me quite a bit, but I felt it was tangential to what I was writing.
October 18, 2009 1:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm just saying I think they missed it; they even noted that the folks knew they were being accused of being racist. 'Get over it' was the conclusion of what they found. I just don't think that's what they found really, is all.
October 18, 2009 5:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think you are right, but I know if I show this to my dad (for instance) he will dismiss you as a 'liberal conspiracy nut.' Consider your phrase, "...they can manipulate the right-wing politicla (sic)leaders into handing them control of the American economy." I think I know what you mean, and I absolutely agree that the influence of big money has to be accounted for. It is a powerful distorting force in the 'marketplace of ideas.' But I won't wave your post under my dad's nose because of the predictable result.
Now that I think about it, I think you are actually wrong to say this for another reason. It implies that these moneyed forces don't already control the U.S. economy.
But apart from those quibbles, I like your post. Thank you.
October 18, 2009 12:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think we agree very much.
If you read through what I posted at 1:23 pm, I think you will see that I consider the federal government to have a somewhat overall control of the economy and the society, with the intent of providing stability and predictability. Yes, the Wall Street bankers and the business culture control the economy, but only within the framework permitted by the government. The bankers and big business try to expand the limits while the government works - or should work - to keep in place those controls and limitations that protect the rest of society from the risks taken on and predations committed by the bankers and big business leaders.
It's an ever-changing balance, or it should be. Part of our problem is that we look at the structure in static terms. But it is in fact perpetually changing.
It's not one-way top down control by the government, either. Instead it's a constantly renegotiated situation with each side doing what it does best. But it's always with the government on top because too many people get hurt when the economic powers have total control over the society. That's why no nation in the world is run by bankers. Bankers are too narrowly focused for that kind of job.
As for the relationship between the economic powers represented by bankers and big businessmen and on the other side, the government, I have been reading Sara Robinson's work at Orcinus on the move towards Fascism. In her first of three articles she describes Robert O. Paxton's five stages to reaching Fascism. Paxton describes of Fascism as a combination of a right-wing populist movement based on violence against labor which is enlisted by big business to keep unions limited which allies itself with right-wing politicians. The right-wing politicians get elected and gain power by using the populist right-wingers and the big business money. (I hope I haven't oversimplified that into meaninglessness, but it does explain why I consider the economic powers and the right-wing political powers as separate groups.)
Sara links to an excellent article by Paxton who describes it all in detail.
Since TPM doesn't publish comments with more than one link in them, I won't link to Paxton's excellent article but yhou can find the link to it in the third paragraph of Sara's article. I'll suggest to anyone who wants to read Sara's other two article in her series that they google -- "Fasciam" "Sara Robinson" Orcinus --. The link to the Kos diary ("It's Not Just About Racism or Anti-Liberalism - It's About Change" by xaxnar ) was my way in to the other links.
I try to read the academics because I understand how they work to weed out the fallacies in their arguments. That is going to automatically make me a liberal because liberals value rationality above tradition or authority or group acceptance. But I am also a retired Army Major (Ordnance Corps) and a life member of the NRA with an MBA and an undergraduate in Economics if you want conservative credentials. ([grin])
Thanks for your comment.
October 18, 2009 2:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh--the survey indicated that most of the base had a HIGHER level of information and understanding than did the rest of us, and are so surprised we aren't up in arms. (Well, I wonder that, too, but for different reasons.)
The praised heaped on Glenn Beck was astounding:
He checks every fact three times. 'He never lies. He is in danger, and we worry for his safety.' (The might worry for his sanity, instead.) Did you see the youtube where his make-up woman was smearing fix under his eyes in preparation for one of his 'crying' segments? It's really awfully funny.
They worry about Obama undermining the Constitution, but from the quotes, two things stuck out. Less government, no one telling you what to do, and Constitution = Judeo-Christian values, Tablets, demonstrative Christianity.
I always want to ask them what Ronal Reagan gave them for the Christianist allegiance to his election and support.
The answer, of course, via Sergeant Schultz is:
No-Thing!
Anyway, of course they are being manipulated, just like Before Reagan. I would be interested to see another such survey done, to see how much of it tallies, mainly o the issues of Blackness and Muslim-ness. I have long believed that race is only a part of the hatred, but I can't dismiss it as easily as Carville, et.al. do.
I don't know the others, but James Carville makes me want to barf in my shoes. No; HIS shoes.
October 18, 2009 1:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
What about the RW Think Tanks and their founders?
http://www.truthout.org/100109A
The most evil families in America.
Or I could blame Reagan for closing the mental hospitals.
October 18, 2009 2:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's a very interesting article from Truthout. I found this particularly interesting:
An interesting book called "The Big Rich" by Brian Burrough was published last summer. It names four Texas Oilmen who made it big in the Texas oil patch and then spent the rest of their lives fighting against the New Deal and liberalism. They were the core of the early conservative movement. They were Roy Cullen, H. L. Hunt, Clint Murchison and Sid Richardson. Founding conservative think tanks was one of their attacks on liberalism.
I was reading the wikipedia article on The Age of Enlightenment last night and it pointed out that the basis of the Enlightenment was to promote rationality, individual freedom, and free public discussion in the "public Space" of public policies previously discussed only by high government and religious leaders.
What I have seen from the conservatives in the last forty years has been a shutting down of the "public space" and instead of discussion of the policies, we get ad hominum attacks on those who bring up ideas the conservatives object to. It's exactly what the constant complaints to newspapers about their "liberal bias" are intended to achieve, and they work. Look at the New York Times and the Washington Post as high visibility examples.
Today's newspaper has an excellent article my McClatchy Newspapers about how after 2000 Moody's financial rating company removed people who warned of the dangers of the excessive ratings they were giving structured finance instruments and promoting those who over rated them. That's just typical conservative practice.
The think tanks are just one element of this attack on democracy, government, and the American people by the wealthy.
Is it a liberal conspiracy theory when I can name the well-known individuals orchestrating the movement? Add the Coors family, Richard Mellon Scaife and Rupert Murdoch. These are all high profile conservatives pushing the movement. Then look at who the Think Tanks list as their donors. It's a who's who of conservative wealthy individuals and foundations they have created. Is it wrong to suspect a conspiracy when Rupert Murdoch got sudden American citizenship out of the blue when he needed it to buy up the TV stations that were used to create the FOX network? How many wealthy Americans were required to make that happen literally overnight?
As the history of the Texas oil conservatives shows, the conservatives displaced during the Great Depression because in their blindness, greed and incompetence they created the Great Depression fought back and passed the fight down through their families. They are recruited new wealthy people (especially those who inherited their wealth and fear losing it) to their cause.
The conservative movement didn't come out of nowhere. It was the culmination of the money and organizational efforts that have been going on since the 1930's as a reaction to the New Deal. And it remains corrupt, greedy, largely irrational at the level of the political base and thoroughly incompetent.
[End Rant]
October 18, 2009 4:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
For someone to have more information on a subject is useless if they don't apply critical thinking to determine the value of the assertions made based on that information.
Since the conservative politicians decide what they want to prove then go collect information to prove it, their supposed greater amount of information is useless. If you google "Motivated Reasoning" or go to my blog at
http: [] //politicsplusstuff.blogspot.com/2009/09/those-crazy-right-wingers-cannot-be.html
(remove the [] and the spaces and paste the resulting link into a browser - this should get around the limitation of only one link from a comment.)
you will find a good discussion of right-wing political logic.
To address the right-wing use of motivated reasoning would require a completely different study from what Carville/Greenberg performed.
October 18, 2009 2:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
To address the right-wing use of motivated reasoning would require a completely different study from what Carville/Greenberg performed.
/their motivated reasoning/
has been converted to moral justification.
This study proposes 3 right-wing additions to the equality/justice divide normally recognized. They argue that the 3 are morality issues, but your motivated reasoning term makes more sense to me.
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:j0orQx3dB1cJ:faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/articles/haidt.graham.when-morality-opposes-justice.doc+moral+development+conservatives&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
The five foundations are psychological preparations for detecting and reacting emotionally to issues related to harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. Political liberals have moral intuitions primarily based upon the first two foundations, and therefore misunderstand the moral motivations of political conservatives, who generally rely upon all five foundations.
October 18, 2009 9:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
'Obama never had an opportunity to change anything in banking when he came in.'
He had a huge choice as to who to choose for the Head of Treasury and his White House Economin advisors. He went with the Wall Streeters.
Your contention about the purpose of government being to provide stability will ring pretty hollow when the Wall Street antics (which have gotten worse, not better, and will get even worse, not better, with the current 'reforms' cause another major meltdown. Or if by 'stability' and 'predictability' you mean doing boom and bust and meltdown, send the bills to the taxpayers, then I get your drift.
Sorry for being snotty; I ain't buying it.
October 18, 2009 4:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is short term stability and long term stability. The two are quite different.
The problem in the middle of the crashdown last Spring was short term stability. Go back and look at the declines in production and employment. It really was heading in the Great Depression direction. It would be fair to consider the analogy to a critical injury reaching the emergency room. That's when Obama was inaugurated. The first problem was to stop the bleeding and act rapidly. It was not possible to go in and do the necessary repair surgery.
I'd say that Obama had to choose people who could hit the ground running with very little time to ramp up their skills. Those people are from the banks or from academia, and the problem of hitting the ground running and making rapid decisions pretty much eliminated academia. Then the auto company melt-down took a lot of effort to head off.
The long term repairs require political action, and that is close to impossible right now because of health care.
We were frankly lucky that Ben Bernanke was already at the Fed last fall. He has spent his academic entire career studying the Great Depression, and although he was and remains a conservative, he spotted the signs of disaster earlier than almost anyone else. He adjusted in a most unconservative and clearly non-ideological way to the new situation he found himself it.
My bet is that after health care is finished, we are going to see personnel changes in the Treasury. And have the Republicans ever approved all of Obama's treasury appointees?
I'm not saying that everything the Obama administration has done was correct. They were in one of those situations when it was more important to do something than to do the correct thing.
As for governments existing to maintain stability, check it out. Governments that don't maintain stability fail, suffer invasion or are replaced or overthrown. That is as close to a certainty as any social fact is. The only thing not certain is how soon it will happen and that depends in part on whether there is a believable replacement waiting to step in.
October 18, 2009 7:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Richard, Desidero just posted this Glen Greewald piece. I wonder, after reading it, you will be so sanguine about Obama not being able to get ahold of Banking problems.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/10/16/goldman/index.html
October 18, 2009 4:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am not a bit sanguine about the banking problems. They are on hold right now.
But I really think that the banks themselves are stepping into the barnyard stuff by their behavior. They are doing just what the health insurance companies did with the recent reports they attempted to use to bludgeon the politicians. This stuff is going to come back and bite them big time.
The problem is, right now is not a time for banking actions by the President and Congress. Health care has sucked all the air out of the room, and the media is lulled by the apparent stability of the markets.
The problem is that the apparent stability is a false one. It is based on the government money that is flowing into some industries, not on the economy correcting itself. The economy will not start recovering really until the consumers start spending more, and that won't happen until they start getting more jobs and more money to spend. As it is, the unemployment rate continues down and the long term unemployment runs close to 20%.
Right now the government band aids are holding the bleeding down and that's about it. The stupid bankers are playing their usual short term games and ignoring the wave that is going to hit them soon. Unfortunately, it is also going to hit the whole damned economy at the same time.
Economically we are off in unknown territory. Bankers who think otherwise are fools. We saw over the last four years just what kinds of fools they are.
As for Obama, I simply don't think he is in any position to do more than adjust the band aids on the critical care patient and hope it will stabilize soon. The resources of the White House are stretched tight because of health care and two wars.
I'm glad that Glenn is publishing what he is publishing. Atrios has done good work describing the continuing mortgage crisis which is getting worse. The medics are at work, but the operating room simply isn't free yet.
One thing I am certain about Obama, though, is that he doesn't tip his hand in advance. We won't know what he plans to do until he starts to implement his plans. I don't guarantee he'll get it right, either. But I can't name anyone else who could do better.
No, I am far from sanguine. It's only a lull in the storm. But personnel appointments don't disturb me too much right now.
And the media won't have a clue until weeks after the deed is done, whatever it is.
October 18, 2009 7:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
"...the survey indicated that most of the base had a HIGHER level of information and understanding than did the rest of us..."
and
"...to have more information on a subject is useless if they don't apply critical thinking..."
Don't forget this is a group that describes itself as better informed, not one that is objectively better informed. I suppose you are all familiar with Dunning and Kruger's work?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyOHJa5Vj5Y
In a nutshell, this shows that people with an incompetency are also incapable of judging their own performance in the area of that incompetency.
October 18, 2009 6:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gad-zukes! So Sorry; the report said they BELIEVED that they were better informed with facts and figures and truths. I left out a word or two. There were self-described Keepers of the Faith (my words) who said they watched news on teevee all day, just to compare other coverage with Fox coverage, and then spread the word to the followers when their were Major Ommissions by other news programs.
The simple corollary is that a stupid person can't tell if a smart person is smart or not. (I'm not trying to paint them all as stupid, either, but...)
October 18, 2009 6:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
According to social psychology and sociology, our self-image is largely based on the information we get about ourselves from others. If you actively ignore bad news, then your self-image is automatically going the be better, right?
These are people who restrict the sources of information they get to those that agree with what they believe. So they are told they are better informed and that they are the Keepers of the Faith. What else are they going to believe?
Surveys that ask people to rate themselves as good communicators almost invariably have everyone reporting they are in the upper half of all communicators.
And I'm charming, attractive, a good cook and an excellent Raconteur, too. Just ask me.
October 18, 2009 7:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
What have you missed? Your lobotomy! ;)
November 15, 2009 10:47 AM | Reply | Permalink