M. Boulanger has a warning for us all:
Reports of the Republican party’s crack-up may well prove to be premature. The economy is still staggering about like an oblivious drunk on the edge of a pool, and a second dip would make it possible for anyone—yes, anyone, and that means you, Rick Santorum—to defeat President Barack Obama come November.
Yet it is stunning to see the turn that the Republican primary campaign has taken, heading into the last week of February. I don’t think any major party has ever fielded a collection of candidates who were quite this radical, not to mention mean-spirited, belligerent, and solipsistic. Debate after debate, primary after primary has gone by with this Klown Kollege of Kandidates blithely demanding a war with Iran, accusing the president of being some sort of bizarre alien to American life, and threatening to drastically scale back or eliminate altogether Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public education, housing programs, any and all financial regulations, abortions under any circumstances, equal rights for gays (and even, in Ron Paul’s case, for people of color), and now your right to buy birth control.
Taken together, these agendas—which are actually remarkably similar, for all the squabbling among the ambitious little men proposing them—would not setAmerica
How did we come to the point where a major party—one representing roughly half the country—pushes this out as the best it has to offer?
Historically, Republicans have—for better and for worst—always been the most radical of the two major parties. Sometimes, this has been a very good thing, as whenLincoln reluctantly resolved to go to war and then remake the fundamental workings of the United States
Too often, though, the GOP has violated the most fundamental, Burkean tenets of conservatism by advocating utopian ideas that were bound to rip apart the social fabric of the nation and even the world, for no good purpose. Prohibition, restoring “don’t ask, don’t tell,” bringing back orphanages, privatizing prisons, defunding Amtrak, de-regulating Wall Street, “letting Detroit fail,” invading and nuking China, invading and nuking Cuba, and now, invading and nuking Iran, are just a few examples that spring immediately to mind.
But this year’s collection of looney tunes has gone well beyond what most of the party elders seemed to want. The nominee was supposed to be Mitt Romney, a typical Republican candidate, which is to say a handsome, respectable individual who can mouth the most ridiculous, radical right-wing slogans in the most moderate and appealing way possible. Romney paid his dues, going through a losing primary season before, and spending years denouncing his own moderate record and building up an enormous war chest.
And yet, what should have been a cakewalk of a nominating campaign has instead wandered off in all sorts of impossible directions. One plainly crazy or narcissistic candidate after another has topped the polls, with loose cannons such as Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum even winning primaries. Romney may yet pull out the nomination, but there is now an excellent chance he will not be able to win a majority of delegates before the Republican national convention inTampa
This would be a disaster for the party’s November prospects, guaranteeing almost three full months of infighting between the last major primary in early June and the convention, and leaving President Obama free to play off the still further right-wing stands and pronouncements they will utilize to pander to the party faithful.
How did this come about?
It says here the real answer lies with two practices the Republicans always claim to love when it comes to business, government, and society in general, but which may not be working out so well for them as a party. That is, “outsourcing,” and “privatization.”
Thanks to years of Republican policies, the party’s campaign this year has been largely outsourced. Its main opinion shapers are not Republican leaders or elected officials but ranting radio jocks and Fox News celebrities, the Limbaughs and Glenn Becks, Anne Coulters and Mike Savages of the world...who have proliferated ever since Republicans led the charge to end the Fairness Doctrine and allow massive media monopolies.
Trouble is, all the Rushes and the Coulters out there have no vested interest in the Republican party, per se, doing well. In fact, the worse the party does at the polls, the more crazed callers and listeners they’re likely to get, spewing out their hatred and frustration, and their doomsday scenarios. All they have to do is pander to these listeners by cleaving to ever more extreme, ever more alienating right-wing lines.
At the same time, the Republicans did the most to launch another political power base the party can’t control by systematically attacking and undermining all campaign financing laws for the last forty years. Now, thanks to the rise of the SuperPACs, candidates can stay in a race as long as they can find a sugar daddy to back them.
In past years, discredited fringe candidates such as Gingrich and Santorum would long ago have run out of money and folded their tents. But thanks to Santorum backer Foster Friess—you remember, the one who talked about women putting aspirin between their legs as a form of birth control—and Gingrich patron and super-Zionist Sheldon Adelson, losing means never having to say you’re done.
Notions such as party discipline or having a long-term, general election strategy mean little to these feckless magnates (or to many others, such as the Koch brothers). As the old song goes, they want what they want when they want it, and the tricky business of maneuvering through to November is irrelevant to them, at least compared to getting to watch their little darlings call down lightning upon various foreign peoples and offer to annihilate social structures and conventions that have held this country together for decades.
Call it the new Padrone system forAmerica
Want that neighborhood park preserved while public funding is slashed away? Better find yourself a group of rich people willing to pay for it—such as the Central Park Conservancy. Want the litter off the street? Don’t go looking to the Sanitation Department; beg local businesses to form a “Business Improvement District”—in which they’ll set the laws and treat the street cleaners as they see fit.
Rick Santorum has recently denounced all of publicly funded education as “anachronistic.” Don’t have mysteriously large sources of income after twelve years of serving in the U.S. Senate? Guess you’d better get some benevolent wealthy person to get that genius kid of yours into a good private school.
On and on it goes, quite the intellectual rage even with many people who don’t think of themselves as being particularly right-wing. It’s a matter of faith with many internet devotees now that all or most intellectual property should be free.
Don’t worry about stealing music; the band will make up the money touring. So will the author...somehow. People are always flocking to those bookstore readings, big bucks in hand. Same thing with movies. Maybe the actors will travel around and re-create the best scenes. I’m sure scientists can do something like that, too.
Or...maybe they can get a wealthy backer. A padrone. Everybody’s doing it now, beginning with Republican candidates. Once again, the right wing is ahead of its time—even if just now it’s being hoisted by its own petard. Free men and women coming together in free societies is so anachronistic, too. Better to just throw a few more pearls before the swine.
--M. Boulanger
Yet it is stunning to see the turn that the Republican primary campaign has taken, heading into the last week of February. I don’t think any major party has ever fielded a collection of candidates who were quite this radical, not to mention mean-spirited, belligerent, and solipsistic. Debate after debate, primary after primary has gone by with this Klown Kollege of Kandidates blithely demanding a war with Iran, accusing the president of being some sort of bizarre alien to American life, and threatening to drastically scale back or eliminate altogether Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public education, housing programs, any and all financial regulations, abortions under any circumstances, equal rights for gays (and even, in Ron Paul’s case, for people of color), and now your right to buy birth control.
Taken together, these agendas—which are actually remarkably similar, for all the squabbling among the ambitious little men proposing them—would not set
How did we come to the point where a major party—one representing roughly half the country—pushes this out as the best it has to offer?
Historically, Republicans have—for better and for worst—always been the most radical of the two major parties. Sometimes, this has been a very good thing, as when
Too often, though, the GOP has violated the most fundamental, Burkean tenets of conservatism by advocating utopian ideas that were bound to rip apart the social fabric of the nation and even the world, for no good purpose. Prohibition, restoring “don’t ask, don’t tell,” bringing back orphanages, privatizing prisons, defunding Amtrak, de-regulating Wall Street, “letting Detroit fail,” invading and nuking China, invading and nuking Cuba, and now, invading and nuking Iran, are just a few examples that spring immediately to mind.
But this year’s collection of looney tunes has gone well beyond what most of the party elders seemed to want. The nominee was supposed to be Mitt Romney, a typical Republican candidate, which is to say a handsome, respectable individual who can mouth the most ridiculous, radical right-wing slogans in the most moderate and appealing way possible. Romney paid his dues, going through a losing primary season before, and spending years denouncing his own moderate record and building up an enormous war chest.
And yet, what should have been a cakewalk of a nominating campaign has instead wandered off in all sorts of impossible directions. One plainly crazy or narcissistic candidate after another has topped the polls, with loose cannons such as Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum even winning primaries. Romney may yet pull out the nomination, but there is now an excellent chance he will not be able to win a majority of delegates before the Republican national convention in
This would be a disaster for the party’s November prospects, guaranteeing almost three full months of infighting between the last major primary in early June and the convention, and leaving President Obama free to play off the still further right-wing stands and pronouncements they will utilize to pander to the party faithful.
How did this come about?
It says here the real answer lies with two practices the Republicans always claim to love when it comes to business, government, and society in general, but which may not be working out so well for them as a party. That is, “outsourcing,” and “privatization.”
Thanks to years of Republican policies, the party’s campaign this year has been largely outsourced. Its main opinion shapers are not Republican leaders or elected officials but ranting radio jocks and Fox News celebrities, the Limbaughs and Glenn Becks, Anne Coulters and Mike Savages of the world...who have proliferated ever since Republicans led the charge to end the Fairness Doctrine and allow massive media monopolies.
Trouble is, all the Rushes and the Coulters out there have no vested interest in the Republican party, per se, doing well. In fact, the worse the party does at the polls, the more crazed callers and listeners they’re likely to get, spewing out their hatred and frustration, and their doomsday scenarios. All they have to do is pander to these listeners by cleaving to ever more extreme, ever more alienating right-wing lines.
At the same time, the Republicans did the most to launch another political power base the party can’t control by systematically attacking and undermining all campaign financing laws for the last forty years. Now, thanks to the rise of the SuperPACs, candidates can stay in a race as long as they can find a sugar daddy to back them.
In past years, discredited fringe candidates such as Gingrich and Santorum would long ago have run out of money and folded their tents. But thanks to Santorum backer Foster Friess—you remember, the one who talked about women putting aspirin between their legs as a form of birth control—and Gingrich patron and super-Zionist Sheldon Adelson, losing means never having to say you’re done.
Notions such as party discipline or having a long-term, general election strategy mean little to these feckless magnates (or to many others, such as the Koch brothers). As the old song goes, they want what they want when they want it, and the tricky business of maneuvering through to November is irrelevant to them, at least compared to getting to watch their little darlings call down lightning upon various foreign peoples and offer to annihilate social structures and conventions that have held this country together for decades.
Call it the new Padrone system for
Want that neighborhood park preserved while public funding is slashed away? Better find yourself a group of rich people willing to pay for it—such as the Central Park Conservancy. Want the litter off the street? Don’t go looking to the Sanitation Department; beg local businesses to form a “Business Improvement District”—in which they’ll set the laws and treat the street cleaners as they see fit.
Rick Santorum has recently denounced all of publicly funded education as “anachronistic.” Don’t have mysteriously large sources of income after twelve years of serving in the U.S. Senate? Guess you’d better get some benevolent wealthy person to get that genius kid of yours into a good private school.
On and on it goes, quite the intellectual rage even with many people who don’t think of themselves as being particularly right-wing. It’s a matter of faith with many internet devotees now that all or most intellectual property should be free.
Don’t worry about stealing music; the band will make up the money touring. So will the author...somehow. People are always flocking to those bookstore readings, big bucks in hand. Same thing with movies. Maybe the actors will travel around and re-create the best scenes. I’m sure scientists can do something like that, too.
Or...maybe they can get a wealthy backer. A padrone. Everybody’s doing it now, beginning with Republican candidates. Once again, the right wing is ahead of its time—even if just now it’s being hoisted by its own petard. Free men and women coming together in free societies is so anachronistic, too. Better to just throw a few more pearls before the swine.
--M. Boulanger
