E. J. Dionne: The republican party has finally imploded, but why now?

[babylonsister]

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=00c06f55-a5e0-48fb-a5e1-c3978ba94600

"Whose Side Are You On, Comrade" by E.J. Dionne, Jr.
Why conservatives have finally lost their sense of solidarity and purpose.
Post Date October 24, 2008

snip//

For years, many of the elite conservatives were happy to harvest the votes of devout Christians and gun owners by waging a phony class war against "liberal elitists" and "leftist intellectuals." Suddenly, the conservative writers are discovering that the very anti-intellectualism their side courted and encouraged has begun to consume their movement.

The cause of Edmund Burke, Leo Strauss, Robert Nisbet and William F. Buckley Jr. is now in the hands of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity--and Sarah Palin. Reason has been overwhelmed by propaganda, ideas by slogans, learned manifestoes by direct-mail hit pieces.

And then there is George W. Bush. Conservatives once hailed him for creating an enduring majority on behalf of their cause. Now, they cast him as the goat in their story of decline.

The conservative critique of Bush is a familiar rant against his advocacy of big government and huge deficits--now supplemented by a horror over his embrace of actual socialism with the partial nationalization of big banks. And, yes, a fair number of conservatives were never wild about the adventure in Iraq.

Things are so bad that the internecine warriors on the right have begun copying the rhetoric of the old left. In a Washington Times column this week upbraiding dissidents such as Brooks and Noonan, Tony Blankley, the conservative writer and activist, fell back on an old left slogan, asking them: "Whose side are you on, comrade?"

This is a revelatory question. It arises when a movement has lost its sense of solidarity and purpose, when the "sides" are no longer clear. There is no unified "right" or "center-right," which is why we are no longer a conservative country, if we ever were.

Conservatism has finally crashed on problems for which its doctrines offered no solutions (the economic crisis foremost among them, thus Bush's apostasy) and on its refusal to acknowledge that the "real America" is more diverse, pragmatic and culturally moderate than the place described in Palin's speeches or imagined by the right-wing talk show hosts.

Conservatives came to believe that if they repeated phrases such as "Joe the Plumber" often enough, they could persuade working-class voters that policies tilted heavily in favor of the very privileged were actually designed with Joe in mind.

It isn't working anymore. No wonder conservatives are turning on each other so ferociously.

[fed_up_mother]

1. Excellent article

from a good progressive Christian.

[Jennicut]

2. They went to far to the right and the country has rejected it.

Only ones left to drink the kool-aid is that lovely crazy 27% which unfortunately includes my parents (I have tried to reason with them, but no use....they are good but misguided people who think Ronald Reagan was a god).

[gatorboy]

6. Not only too far right. They haven't spoken to anyone outside the base for years.

Shockingly, there was a time after 9/11 when they could get away with it. But it's what was so profound about this election. Palin and McCain constantly preached to the base. And never once tried to sway anyone outside the right aisle.

[Jennicut]

7. McCain used to try to talk to independents but he gave up.

Its as if he thought they would come along with him no matter what he did. His support with them was very tenuous at best. He got my parents on board but I lost all respect for him. I told my parents that Palin was a huge mistake and they were all excited about her, he should have chosen who he wanted to, screw the base. Its the middle you need in an election.

[Cosmocat]

14. YEP ...

The further behind they have gotten, the MORE they have preached to their "base" which has had the inverse effect of driving the center away from them - and they just DO NOT get it, even today, more of the REAL americans vs bad americans nonsense.

[Liberalboy]

21. Bingo!

[DemocratSinceBirth]

3. I Like Edmund Burke

If he was alive he certainly wouldn't be a Republican and recognize the people who call themselves conservatives...

[Doctor_J]

4. Let's not forget these three words

Barack Hussein Obama

[myrna minx]

5. K&R Great article. The conservative intelligentsia must be horrified by the monster they

helped to create. Theirs is not the party of ideas, it is the party of propaganda, lead by caricatures who actually believe that they are brilliant and now their monsters are out of control and being rejected by the good people of the USA.

[Essene]

8. fantastic commentary. I think Brooks deserves the credit for the initial war cry

when he declared palin a cancer in the party, representing anti-intellectualism and a disregard for ideas.

being critical of the neocons was one thing.

being critical of the lack of actual fiscal conservative actions was another.

being critical of the power of the social conservatives and religious-right... yet another.

but focusing on the lack of sincerity and intellectual integrity... really brought it all into focus.

[Orsino]

9. Ask rather, "Why not twenty years ago?"

The only thing that's changed is that many Americans are finally wising up, and many Republicans are realizing that we are aware of their failures.

We should be asking what took us so long.

[nichomachus]

10. One problem is that the "conservative" movement was fatally flawed

It is based on a flawed philosophy. As it became more apparent that the Utopian schemes at the core of the movement were unworkable -- and dangerous -- they were left with nothing but the slogans. The slogans had been created because the working class would never have resonated with the real aims of the movement, which was to enslave the working class. That's a hard sell.

Now, the "conservative" movement has been reduced to a howling mob -- driven in the last eight years by a campaign of fear.

[Starry Messenger]

11. k&r

I want to read this more in depth later on after work.

[SmokingJacket]

12. Those rich "elite" Repubs were happy to be on the side of the

conservative working class when it made them rich.

Oops! Now they've lost $$$, time to jump ship...

[glitch]

13. Sow the foul wind, reap the foul whirlwind. nt

[starroute]

15. It's also a demographic shift

You can see round one of the shift -- don't laugh! -- in 1930's cartoons.

Disney cartoons from the early 30's are all rural and small town -- with farm animals, rustic scenes, maybe at most a small town garage -- and project a sentimental small town sensibility.

Betty Boop cartoons from the same years are far more urban and rooted in the immigrant experience -- but they also have a somewhat musty, old-fashioned feel to them.

Warner Brothers cartoons from the late 30's, though, start to become fully "modern." They're urban, wise-cracking, and sophisticated. The stars may still be the funny animals of yore, but somehow they're now hanging around in department store window displays or hobnobbing with gangsters.

The country had changed long about then. Instead of a nation of "real Americans" (Disney) and slightly alien city-dwellers (Betty Boop), it had become a unified community of people who all listened to the same radio shows and could parrot back the same gag lines.

But somehow, the change didn't fully take. Or it more be more accurate to say that it did take -- except for that 30% that now forms the Republican base. It's those people, living in the "pockets" that Palin extols, who never fully became part of modern America -- even when the Rural Electrification Administration came through to wire them up -- and who both fear and envy that larger world they missed out on.

But things are starting to change again. The pocket-dwellers know in the depths of their apocalyptic little souls that their old world is about to be swept away -- and they're fighting that loss of identity tooth and nail.

Unfortunately, the Republican Party, looking for a winning electoral strategy in the late 60's, threw in its fate with the 30%. The world has held still in many ways for the last forty years -- in fact, the nation's slow economic decay means that the modern world may have actually receded further from those pockets rather than sweeping in to engulf them, as would have happened in more expansive times -- so the strategy has persisted.

But the fate of those remaining pockets is finally upon them. They're doomed, destined for the dustbin of history, ready to be swept away by the overwhelming intrusion of the Internet, wind and solar power farms, and whatever else it takes to bring the last pockets of tribalism and primitivism into the modern world.

But as that happens -- and it surely is happening right now -- they will become even more rigid, more dogmatic, and more xenophobic until their resistance finally crumbles.

Already they are operating as bitter-enders and not as any sort of viable alternative to mainstream 21st century culture. And for that reason, if no other, more cosmopolitan Republicans have less and less in common with them, less and less ability to make even McCain's devil's bargain for electoral profit.

Intellectual Republicanism has its own problems at the moment stemming from the failure of the free market. I don't doubt that, as in the 30's, Democrats will manage to patch some form of capitalism back together and a new generation of Republicans will arise to idolize it. But the alliance with the bitter-enders will not recover, because by then it will be far too late.

[SoonerPride]

16. The country clubbers courted the fundies for their money and votes.

Now they want a divorce only to find they no longer own the house.

The fundies moved in and took over.

Too fucking bad.

[struggle4progress]

17. Don't snooze: sooner than we like, they'll be back with new improved lies.

[Laelth]

18. We never were a conservative country.

For as long as I have been watching politics (28 years), Americans have regularly agreed with the Democratic Party on most policy issues ... but lots of people (mainly white men) voted for Republicans regardless of their positions on the issues. Yes, Republicans got elected (and selected), but that never made us a conservative country.

The United States is a LIBERAL Country.

:dem:

-Laelth

[Cha]

19. From "The Pet Goat" to..

"Now, they cast him as the goat in their story of decline."

[FKA MNChimpH8R]

20. Leo Strauss was not a conservative. He devoted his life and work to creating

and teaching a variant of Nazism, minus only the anti-Semitism. In every other way, Strauss was a totalitarian fascist. Edmund Burke would have nothing to do with the likes of the asshole Strauss.