Month: November 2009

Afternoon Joe, Ctd.

A reader writes:

I think, as I suspect that you do, that Mr. Scarborough is off on this. After all, if this were, "an opportunity to stick it to an incompetent GOP Establishment", there would be associated with it attacks on the Bush-Cheney legacy, a recognition that Reagan and Bush actually increased deficits, and a rejection of the sort of populist, conspiracism which drove the "Contract with America" crowd to office, and hence, to the record profligacy of the Bush Jr. years.

Instead, what we see is a glorifying of those people who most embody these patterns of thought (like Glenn Beck) within the Republican, now re-branded as big c "Conservative", ethos.

For all their rhetoric and puffed-up pride, this is little more than what Boehner and the Republican leadership claimed to be necessary after the Democratic victories of 2008; a re-branding in nothing but name and a purging of moderate elements for not "fighting hard enough". To these true believers, failure is never the result of rejection by society; it is the result of betrayal, indiscipline, and the shadowy, nefarious plotting of the global, cosmopolitan cabal of Jews, gays, non-Anglos, and effete, back-stabbing, white intellectuals.

This derangement has proceeded so far that, in the words of Dick Armey himself, to place the welfare of one's district before the dictates of the Party's Glorious Social Revolution is to be "parochial"! Such views are hardly the makeup of a return to small, locally-interested government. For Mr. Scarborough to ignore such central aspects of this movement in his analysis of its motives and nature reduces his statements regarding it, in truth, to little more than propaganda.

Would Hoffman Lose If He Were On The Republican Ticket?

Nate Silver makes an interesting point:

The Democratic brand is marginal in about half the country, but the Republican brand is radioactive in about two-thirds of it. The biggest story of the cycle is that a non-Republican conservative, Doug Hoffman, might win. Counterfactual: if Hoffman had in fact been the Republican nominee in NY-23 all along, would he be in the same strong position that he finds himself in today? Methinks not: it would have been easier for Owens — who isn't much of a Democrat — to identify himself as the moderate in the race.

What Happens In NY-23 Now? Ctd

A reader writes:

The post from the North Country native was a wild oversimplification of the district.  I went to school in the district and worked the state senate special election last year which put in a Democrat.  This area is not Palin country.  I live in Virginia now, "Real Virginia"…I know Palin country. There is an "us vs them" mentality in Upstate NY, but it's more about wanting to be represented by someone who is one of them–someone with blue-collar values.  This is not a front line in the culture wars.  There is a reason the GOP establishment chose a pro-choice, pro-marriage, pro-union, candidate. Mark it down, Owens will come out the victor when the polls close tonight.

I'll be gobsmacked if he does. Another writes:

I grew up in Rouses Point, New York, on the shores of Lake Champlain and arguably in one of the nicest little villages in the country. The economy, while not entirely dependent on the state and federal governments, does need their help. A victory for Hoffman would remove an advocate for the region and in its place stick a repulsive ideologue whose commitment to the cause of the conservative appears to outweigh any obligation he has to best serve the people who send him to Washington.

Thus imagine how sick I feel when I see leading Democrats write and say that a victory for Hoffman would be a victory for Democrats. These Congresspeople we elect to Washington are still servants of the People in their districts, whether political operatives wish to see it that way or not. And Doug Hoffman wants nothing of it, only wishing to push his ideological conservatism and the national agenda of the likes of Beck, Limbaugh, and crew.

Not Mary, Joan

A reader writes:

You wrote this afternoon, “[Palin's] being turned into a kind of Marian figure, a blessed icon whose mere touch bestows some kind of aura on a candidate or race.” Not a Marian figure, I suggest.

The Wasilla warrior is more like a Maid of Orléans sort of figure. Sarah Palin has become a latter-day Joan of Arc to the populist or “Jacksonian” elements of rural, red-state America.

Afternoon Joe

Joe Scarborough looks on the bright side of today's Beck-Palin insurgency:

Hoffman's ascendancy in NY-23 is less about Barack Obama than it is about a decade of bloated and corrupt Republican leadership in Washington, D.C. This race gave the same conservatives who helped drive Ronald Reagan's victory and the 1994 Republican Revolution something to cheer about for the first time in a long time. It also gave them an opportunity to stick it to an incompetent GOP Establishment.

This was, after all, same political party that promised to balance budgets in the 1990s, but then turned around and produced record deficits a over the next ten years.

And those same Republican leaders who called for military restraint and a focused foreign policy while Bill Clinton was president then spent the next decade promising to rid the world of tyranny by exporting Democracy across the globe.

Man, I hope he's right.

But when you examine the actual positions of this movement, you find a re-dedication to certain Bush themes: there is no open skepticism of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Kristol Palin is arguing for a massive increase in troops. There is an absolute prohibition on raising any taxes. There are no proposed spending cuts to bring fiscal sanity back from the Bush-Cheney ditch. There is denial of human-driven climate change. There is religious hostility to gay couples. There is increasing insistence on no legal abortion including rape and incest.

I'm glad there is finally a protest against Bush-Cheney. Some of us protested when it could have made a difference. But if it is just a protest, if it has no content, if it continues to placate the Christianist right, if it refuses to tackle neoconservatism in foreign policy, if it fails to offer specifics on spending cuts, then it is hard to take seriously. And, in fact, it is important not to take it seriously.