The Great Tea Party Divide

[Einzige]

The South didn't go GOP overnight, mind; there was years of preparation, not necessarily conscious, for it (Dwight Eisenhower, a Texan by birth and moderate conservative, was the first Republican nominee to make serious inroads into the Solid South). I'm certainly not saying the day is here, but we must prepare for it. And with that I'm going to sleep.

[Coyote]

A huge opportunity came during the Terry Schiavo case, when the "small government" GOP folks saw the "religious right" GOP folks use the Federal government to steamroll their way into a personal decision that the state of Florida had already settled on its own. It was a prime moment to point out that "state's rights/small government" was completely lip service as far as the GOP was concerned, but the Democrats just wrung their hands.

The GOP doesn't care a rat's ass about "small government"; they're willing to replace "big government" with either "big church" or "big business" --whoever steps up to the plate first.

[Darth Wong]

A huge opportunity came during the Terry Schiavo case, when the "small government" GOP folks saw the "religious right" GOP folks use the Federal government to steamroll their way into a personal decision that the state of Florida had already settled on its own. It was a prime moment to point out that "state's rights/small government" was completely lip service as far as the GOP was concerned, but the Democrats just wrung their hands.

The GOP doesn't care a rat's ass about "small government"; they're willing to replace "big government" with either "big church" or "big business" --whoever steps up to the plate first.

It doesn't matter. You're still thinking like someone who actually values the argument, and these people only use arguments as a form of handwaving pretension, to make it seem as if they actually have an intellectual foundation for their opinions. That's why they are completely unfazed when they massively contradict their own rhetoric.

In reality, it's all about emotion and identity politics. Whatever argument they slap on top of this is just window dressing, and you could shoot it down and poke a hundred holes in it with no effect whatsoever. The real problem for the Democrats is that they're perceived to be in alliance with far too many types of people who are absolutely despised in the South (a list which is too long to print, so let's just say it includes everyone who does not fit their notion of a "real American"). That's why the Democrats and Republicans could propose the exact same idea and get totally different reactions (in fact, that's exactly what happened during the health care debate).

In short, it's not about the policies; it's about the people. George W. Bush or John McCain could propose any damned policy they like, and it would be received better in the South than anything Barack Obama proposes.

[Simon_Jester]

It's about the people... and the party's ability to brand themselves as "we are your kind of people." What Einzige is talking about is a systematic effort by Democrats to brand themselves as the libertarians' kind of people, by playing up "we aren't colossal dicks about social freedom!" as a counter to Republicans "we're for small government!" And by pointing out that Republicans are, in fact, not for small government.

Now, that's not going to shift the Republican majorities in the South. Who cares? It makes more sense for the Democrats to worry about other parts of the country that they can actually swing than it does for them to worry about Alabama.

Even given that it's all about emotion or identity politics, you can still use that to your advantage when people start having mixed emotions and are confused about whether they should really identify with Party X.

[Darth Wong]

It's about the people... and the party's ability to brand themselves as "we are your kind of people." What Einzige is talking about is a systematic effort by Democrats to brand themselves as the libertarians' kind of people, by playing up "we aren't colossal dicks about social freedom!" as a counter to Republicans "we're for small government!" And by pointing out that Republicans are, in fact, not for small government.

And what I'm pointing out is that this won't work, because that "freedom" rhetoric is nothing more than window dressing. The real identity politics are all about really stupid things: what kind of vehicle you drive, what kind of food you eat, what kind of music you listen to, the colour of your skin, etc.

Now, that's not going to shift the Republican majorities in the South. Who cares? It makes more sense for the Democrats to worry about other parts of the country that they can actually swing than it does for them to worry about Alabama.

Even given that it's all about emotion or identity politics, you can still use that to your advantage when people start having mixed emotions and are confused about whether they should really identify with Party X.

Once agaijn, you are not going to cause emotional confusion about identity politics by pointing out that Republicans are full of shit on freedom issues. The whole "freedom issue" is nothing more than empty rhetoric in the first place, so what the fuck difference will it make to attack them on it?

Honestly, you would have ten times better chance of changing a Southerner's mind on Barack Obama by showing him a documentary of him being a good father to his children than you would by talking about policies or freedom issues. These people think small; it's all about convincing the guy that you'd be a good guest at his backyard barbecue.

[Illuminatus Primus]

I'm glad to see that at least certain segments of the blogosphere are beginning, in their own inept way, to pick up on the basic facts of the matter as I have been arguing for them since before the last election. That is to say the alliance between libertarians and conservatives is an alliance of convenience, as surely as was that between the "hippies" and the New Dealers during the 1960s, and any reasonably skilled political operative ought to be able to pick up on this fact and exploit it.

That's probably because when push comes to shove, most libertarians are wiling to overlook the sins of the Republican Party as long as their taxes are cut. Funny, I don't seem to remember too much libertarian pushback from 2001-2009. But every Obama/Democratic policy is Stalin Incarnate to them.

Two things are needed to generate a widening of this schism: an active campaign to court disaffiliated libertarians, and a reframing of traditionally liberal ideas in a pro-libertarian rhetorical framework. This does not mean abandoning Leftism, but modifying it, encouraging ideas that are both progressive and promoting decentralization.

I don't see much of a way you can work for left-libertarianism through the normative political processes (i.e., through the State), by definition. This would be why anarchists (as in real anarchists: left-anarchists) -radical left-libertarians- do not participate or advocate for liberal electoralism. Left-libertarianism does not have a role for the State: it may tolerate the welfare State and strong civil liberties in the interim for the purposes of expanding the room for libertarian forms to develop, but unlike right-"libertarianism", it does not have a job for the State. Right-"libertarians" naturally are the allies of corporate plutocracy because their social model is unproven (are largely nothing but plutocratic rhetoric and truism) and probably impossible in the real world. The right-"libertarians" crypto-require the State in order to protect capitalism, and functionally all they do is provide some political support, ideological cover, and clever "liberty" rhetoric for class warfare directed by the ruling class against the population (as often noticed, "smaller government" means "fewer public services", never "small military", etc.).

In short, I hear you out on the captive state of political rhetoric and language. I agree with you. But as a libertarian socialist, I am not particularly surprised: such distortions will always exist in societies of highly-concentrated power, where some kind of professional intellectual class (read: propagandists) will flourish in service to it. I also do not see how for these same structural reasons, that one can expect some kind of sustained organized electoralist political movement serving popular and left-libertarian causes. The system exists and persists as it does precisely because it successfully serves power - to be sure there has been some important popular modifications which expand the role and freedom of the population, but the people who own the country generally continue to govern it.

EDIT: Mike is right. One of the largest reasons I think your suggestion is stillborn is it takes a much too optimistic and substantive (and I would say naively liberal and pluralist) view of our electoral political institutions. The public relations industry and corporate sponsorship has made a mockery of elections, and I think you perceive that they are decided much more on account of substantive political issues than they really are. People frequently vote against their interests, and even consciously so, that is, when they think elections even matter. I find if you act plain-English questions of more working-class people about elections and their meaning and the distribution of power, you get answers, though divorced from ideological systems, might well be uttered by Emma Goldman or Karl Marx. It is the upper middle, university-educated class which thinks substantive issues have any involvement in political outomces.

[Patrick Degan]

It's about the people... and the party's ability to brand themselves as "we are your kind of people." What Einzige is talking about is a systematic effort by Democrats to brand themselves as the libertarians' kind of people, by playing up "we aren't colossal dicks about social freedom!" as a counter to Republicans "we're for small government!" And by pointing out that Republicans are, in fact, not for small government.

And what I'm pointing out is that this won't work, because that "freedom" rhetoric is nothing more than window dressing. The real identity politics are all about really stupid things: what kind of vehicle you drive, what kind of food you eat, what kind of music you listen to, the colour of your skin, etc.

It also comes down to whether the candidate in question looks like a winner or a loser compared to his opponent. The guy who comes off looking like a loser during the campaign doesn't have a hope in hell on Election Day.