[Op/Ed] Posner: "conservatism at lowest ebb since '64"

[CaptainChewbacca]

Food for thought

In politics, as of today, do you consider yourself a Republican, a Democrat, or an independent? (Asked of independents: As of today, do you lean more to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party?)

2009 May 7-10 Repubs: 32% Independents: 34% Democrats: 32%

2009 Apr 20-21 Repubs: 27% Independents: 36% Democrats: 36%

2009 Apr 6-9 Repubs: 24% Independents: 40% Democrats: 35%

As of last week, it was all tied up 32-32.

[Darth Wong]

Food for thought

In politics, as of today, do you consider yourself a Republican, a Democrat, or an independent? (Asked of independents: As of today, do you lean more to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party?)

2009 May 7-10 Repubs: 32% Independents: 34% Democrats: 32%

2009 Apr 20-21 Repubs: 27% Independents: 36% Democrats: 36%

2009 Apr 6-9 Repubs: 24% Independents: 40% Democrats: 35%

As of last week, it was all tied up 32-32.

That's not really that surprising. America still has a ton of people who have been raised their entire lives with the whole "small government", "cut taxes", "hate liberals" mantra. If Republicans can make people forget that they had anything to do with the last 8 years (also not difficult to imagine, since the average voter seems to have the attention span of a gerbil), then they can position themselves as the people to stop Obama's reckless spending, as if all of this came out of nowhere just a few months ago when he took office.

Mindless repetition of talking points works really well on stupid people, ie- most people. I already see a lot of people referring to the entire deficit as Obama's creation, as if he came into office to inherit a balanced budget from Bush. And I see most people referring to his entire stimulus package as "spending" even though almost half of it is tax cuts, yet they never referred to Bush's tax cuts as "spending".

[Axis Kast]

Sorry, I should have said "Nothing has changed in the conservative movement", rather than implying that nothing has changed in society as a whole. They still believe that if they can just recapture the essence of Reagan, then all their woes will end. This is a fundamentally backward-looking party right now, trying to convince the public that it's still 1985.

It's a party based on a lot of whole lot of theory, most of which has either been proven wrong, or lacks supporting evidence.
The run-of-the-mill Republican is big on "slippery slope" dilemmas. If you give a man a fish, he will deduce that the best place to find food is the soup kitchen. When you take some cut of a man's money, he will conclude that he ought to work less, and so loose less. And so on. (And here, we're talking explicitly about sociological and economic outlooks; there's the whole neo-Conservative foreign policy agenda and the Christian Right theology, both of which often co-vary with this kind of thinking, but about which I won't say much here, except to assert that when Republicans aren't particularly religious, they either accept the trade-off of civil rights vs. butter to get more butter (simple alliance politics), or are inclined to view certain behaviors as "unnatural" or unappealing, and hence unnecessary. For this latter constituency, social issues aren't a priority, but a candidate will never lose their votes for taking the conservative stand.

Part of the problem is that they view it in terms of Social Entitlement for those who seek it, rather than Social Responsibility for those who have the power to provide it. Ironic for a self-styled "Christian nation", which purports to follow the teachings of a man who declared that you must care for your neighbour. By calling it "entitlement", they try to make it seem like a personality flaw on the part of those who receive assistance. And it's certainly true that many of these people do have deeply flawed personalities. But at the same time, they are thoroughly ignoring the concept of social responsibility: they do not want to confront the idea that a powerful man may have a moral responsibility to those who are weaker than himself. In an economy, power is money. Rich people have a moral responsibility to poor people.

Most Republicans have not internalized this kind of culture shift. Particularly when Republicans are immigrants who escaped a "bad situation" elsewhere, they are inclined to be champions of the individual. One often hears the following type of confusion: "Well, I did it, and I'm successful, so why can't they make the same changes? Nobody handed me anything!" They then complain that they should not be obliged to part with any of their hard-earned wealth in order to: (1) subsidize government programs managed by bureaucracies that they suspect won't obtain even minimally useful outcomes; (2) pay taxes for the benefit of other people, who seem to be getting something for nothing. "Where," they ask, "was the government when I was coming up?"
There are also plenty of folk who have been sold, at face value, on the idea that universal health care will be an expensive and unmanageable boondoggle. The idea of guaranteed access seems to imply price- or wage-fixing, which strikes them as inefficient. People will demand too much, doctors will go on strike, etc.
I sincerely doubt you'd make much headway with a direct, "Rich people have a moral responsibility to poor people" argument. The rejectionists will explain that nobody had a responsibility to them; that they pay enormous sums in charity; and that the ideal thing is to stop taking people's money in the first place. Lower taxes seems like a panacea for everything because people can see only what's right in front of them. You can feel a lighter wallet. You can't see the empty local, state, or federal piggy bank.

[Big Orange]

On hindsight it seems that economic Neoliberalism is the crap it always was when the tired bloat of Old Labour in the UK led to Thatcher's reign of terror with whole industries collapsing, high unemployment, the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, house property crashes, banking crisis, and decreasing investment for most of the country, that continued with the disappointments of John Major and with the hailing in of New Labour (who promised to fix it, but mostly didn't).

The Republican pseudo-conservatives could cleverly manipulate of millions people into supporting them with their harsh policies on ethnic crime, terrorism, and social "abnormals", in addition to deceptively generous tax cuts, but they're losing badly by endorsing the blind and brainless Neoliberal "super" capitalism that is doing nothing for practically nothing and nobody, except for a select few, and even they'll get fucked.