Be wise. Be brave. Be tricky. ([info]slithytove) wrote,
@ 2008-11-05 08:33:00
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Current mood: uncomfortable

Bowling with Nixon
Lost in the noise and fireworks last night, was this small news item:

CNN calls CT-4 for Democrat James Himes. Republican Christopher Shays represented the Connecticut suburbs of New York City as New England's lone Republican congressman.
Northeast liberal Republicans, who once roamed the land in great herds, are today in danger of extinction. Several were knocked off in 2006, including some in my own Pennsylvania, and it appears that after tonight, no Republican congressmen are left in the entire New England area. An era that started during the Civil War, has now passed into history.

The geographical center of the Republican Party has been shifting south and west, closer to the geographic center of the country, and away from the coastal population centers. Likewise, its base has been drifting, too. Once that base was small businessmen and farmers. They wanted limited government, fiscal responsibility, and non-interventionist foreign policy.

Nowadays, the Republican base seems driven more by religious and cultural issues -- abortion, creationism/intelligent design, resistance to gun control. Its economics is often suspiciously populist. See: Huckabee, Pawlenty, and even (gulp!) Palin. Even McCain. To have a Republican presidential candidate who talks about 'obscene profits' and a vice-presidential candidate who condemns 'greed' is eerie.

The Republican party, from around 1970 through 1990, was a coalition of economic libertarians, religious values conservatives, budget hawks, and foreign policy hawks. They were held together by a fervent opposition to Communism. With the fall of Russian communism around 1990, that bond ruptured, and centrifugal force is tearing the Grand Old Party apart.

The part with the most energy seems to be the religious conservatives. I don't think there are enough of them to win national elections, but they are the core of what's left of my party. I have little in common with them.

I'm not seeing any place for me, in either party.

My guy lost yesterday. My party's womp rat got bullseye'ed. I care less than you might think, because I've never been much of a McCain fan, and as I've said, the core of the GOP has drifted away from me, and I find it increasingly difficult to defend their positions or their candidates. The Democrats are in complete control of both executive and legislative branches. Although I don't think their theories of economic or foreign policy are likely to work, I still wish them well, and hope I'm wrong, and that they succeed.

Politically, I don't have anywhere to go. I plan to keep my head down, my nose clean, and drive my tractor in Manchuria without complaint. This will probably be my last post about current US politics for a while, maybe until after the next election.

I still want to work up those Nixon mood icons, though.


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[info]buymeaclue
2008-11-05 02:02 pm UTC (link)
New England's lone Republican congressman.

People are getting a little bit carried away with this. Yah, Republicans are not faring well in New England, but at the very least, Maine still has two Republican senators.

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[info]slithytove
2008-11-05 02:16 pm UTC (link)
But for how long? New Hampshire used to be solid Republican territory, rock-bottomed and copper-sheathed, the stomping ground of William Loeb and the Manchester Union Leader. Now look. Democratic governor. Of two Republican senators, Sununu was beaten by a Democrat last night, too. One by one, the Republican castles are falling.

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[info]buymeaclue
2008-11-05 06:16 pm UTC (link)
I'm sorry; I was kneejerking on the numbers and missing the content.

I am sorry that you're feeling left out in the cold. It's a lousy place to be.

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[info]slithytove
2008-11-06 08:44 am UTC (link)
I'm feeling the same as I did in the late 1970s, when it seemed that all the world was headed either for religious fundamentalism or left-wing collectivism. I've said this before, so I won't elaborate.

I'm just going to do my own thing, and try to live in the chinks of the world-machine. I will not whine, at least after this post.

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[info]sartorias
2008-11-05 02:02 pm UTC (link)
Pretty fair assessment.

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[info]jaylake
2008-11-05 02:07 pm UTC (link)
Without a supermajority in the Senate, the Democrats are not in complete control of the legislative branch. And I seriously doubt you'll see Reid and Pelosi using the kind of tactics the Permanent Majority employed against the minority -- they certainly haven't the last two years.

Centrists and progressives are far more inclusive than conservatives, pretty much by definition. Which is my way of saying that a Democratic-dominated government is much friendlier to conservatives than a Republican-dominated government is to liberal-progressives. The political history of this country since at least 1968 would seem to bear me out on that.

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[info]lonfiction
2008-11-05 02:13 pm UTC (link)
I'd agree with that assessment.

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[info]lonfiction
2008-11-05 02:12 pm UTC (link)
The part with the most energy seems to be the religious conservatives. I don't think there are enough of them to win national elections, but they are the core of what's left of my party. I have little in common with them.

I feel ya brother.

We have similar political roots. The Representative from Galt's Gulch seems to have beat out the Libertarian guy though in a few of the races where they could be compared, which was interesting...

Though I'm convinced the best chance we've ever had had for a true, lasting 3rd party challenge was Perot's Reformers, and he was unfortunately a nutball out for spoiling things for Bush. :)

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[info]dagoski
2008-11-05 02:20 pm UTC (link)
I think it's actually pretty dangerous for the nation not to have Center Right party to balance the Center Left one. There's a very real chance for the current administration to fall into the trap of Groupthink and wind up being a left version of the Bush administration. I know I'll probably always be fairly left leaning if not outright Socialist, but I'd really like someone who I disagree with and can still talk to.

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[info]orangemike
2008-11-05 02:30 pm UTC (link)
Here in Milwaukee, where we know what a democratic Socialist government looks like, the feeling is that the U.S. already has a Center Right party, the Democrats, whose self-chosen role is to balance the Ultra-Right party, the modern-day Republicans.

(For the outlanders: within living memory, Wisconsin had four viable political parties: from left to right, the Socialists, the Progressives/Progressive Republicans, the Republicans and the Democrats.)

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[info]jaylake
2008-11-05 02:55 pm UTC (link)
What [info]orangemike said. The Democratic party is Center Right, taking over from a far Right party. By contemporary conservative standards, many of Nixon's policies were leftist.

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[info]dagoski
2008-11-05 03:02 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, this is why I hope either the Greens Party gets more powerful or the Dems shift towards more progressive ideas while the GOP kicks the crazy people out and shifts center as well. I don't think the later will happen because there's a real culture of circling the wagons in that party and among the cultural groups they represent.

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[info]blogtiderising.wordpress.com
2008-11-05 07:43 pm UTC (link)
Unfortunately until or unless Gerrymandering is abolished, the two party rule will continue. Yes there have been small temporary gains by one third party or another, but the deck is so stacked against them, they have no realistic chance at survival, let alone becoming more powerful. Also, unfortunately, neither of the two ruling parties will seriously consider making gerrymandering illegal.

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[info]dagoski
2008-11-05 07:56 pm UTC (link)
It's so far beyond Gerrymandering. Third Parties in a good many states face obstacles to merely organizing as a political party.

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[info]orangemike
2008-11-05 02:37 pm UTC (link)
A lot of the ex-Republicans I know feel that Nixon's satanic pact with the heirs of the Dixiecrats in 1968 has come back to destroy the party he represented. The race haters and the religious nutbars have taken increasing control (with, as always, honorable exceptions); and what's left has little room for people seeking "limited government, fiscal responsibility, and non-interventionist foreign policy." The party founded in Ripon, Wisconsin has been dead for years; the zombie is rotting, and the parts are dripping off.

(If it's any consolation to you, the Republicans and the Blue Dog Democrats together will still have a majority in both houses of Congress, one strong enough to kill most of the legislation I think is most needed; i.e., any legislation which would mean lasting reforms. What we got last night was insurance against any further degeneration in the body politic.)

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[info]cybaangel
2008-11-05 04:24 pm UTC (link)
The Republican party has become a scary thing. The vibe I sense from many Republicans is almost vicious, like they hate anyone not like them, and want anyone different to not be happy. There has been propaganda springing up attacking Obama for not being christian enough. The area where I work is solid Republican (which means white), and I posted about some of the horribleness I've seen last night.

It's become the party of narrow-mindedness, of fanatics. I don't consider myself a democrat, I just know that I want nothing to do with the republicans that I've met in my own state, or even many that I've seen on television.

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[info]slithytove
2008-11-06 07:41 am UTC (link)
Yeah, the relevant post on your lj is kind of scary.

I've never met people like that. But I know few Republicans. Almost everyone I see every day is a Democrat. The folks I think of as Republicans are those who write for the National Review and the Weekly Standard. I don't always agree with them, but they're a hell of a lot saner than what I see on, say, the Huffington Post, or your average Democratic blog.

But I'm not sure NR or the Weekly Standard guys really represent the party any longer.

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[info]greyvorfeed
2008-11-05 05:42 pm UTC (link)
To have a Republican presidential candidate who talks about 'obscene profits' and a vice-presidential candidate who condemns 'greed' is eerie.

Keep in mind that they said it after a Republican president wrecked both the Armed Forces and the national economy, largely through greed and the pursuit of obscene profits. That's not "eerie", it's Republicans trying to un-make their own bed before they were forced to sleep in it. As for "populist" economic policy, it's worth remembering that the rich can't make money without the help of middle and lower class employees... when greed and profits-over-all are actually starting to affect people's ability to work, the smart businessman naturally starts to rein himself in a bit, because some profit is better than none.

Likewise, the "I'm afraid of Obama's liberal economic policies" thing made a lot more sense before Bush's conservative economic policies triggered the biggest market crash since the Great Depression. At this point, the Republicans' economic policies (which, while they couldn't be further from "fiscal responsibility" if they tried, are indeed quite close to the hands-off, laissez-faire sort of thing Republicans have historically wanted) have been proven disastrous, so we may as well let the new guys try something else, populist or not.

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[info]slithytove
2008-11-06 08:23 am UTC (link)
Liberals complain about 'greed', right-wing preachers complain about 'lust'. Both represent the same thing, a persistent streak of puritanism in the American soul.

I'm in favor of both of these. I think they've gotten a bad rap.

The real bad actors among the sins are Pride, Sloth, and Envy. Especially Pride. In my opinion, more of the world's problems are due to Pride than all the other sins put together.

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[info]greyvorfeed
2008-11-06 03:41 pm UTC (link)
Both represent the same thing, a persistent streak of puritanism in the American soul.

I agree... but "greed" and "lust" do have effects in the real world, including some which are hugely negative. I don't think "greed" is bad, in and of itself, but what the particularly American overindulgence of it has done to my country, my people, and my culture is disgusting. We have become a people more interested in slips of paper and disposable objects than in the quality of our own lives, and we've taken the entire country down with us, from domestic policy to the armed forces.

"Greed" may be fine, but consumerism is a different story: greed is worth no more than the things one acquires through it, and so greed for worthless things, especially when it damages one's life, is nigh unto a pathology.

On the rest, we'll just have to agree to disagree -- to me, all the so-called "sins" are virtues. Especially Pride. In my opinion, Pride is the only thing which calls humanity to greatness, however we may define it. For one thing, anyone with a healthy sense of pride would reject the sort of empty spending I referenced above...

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[info]madwriter
2008-11-05 10:38 pm UTC (link)
Dick Armey said something today that I wholeheartedly agree with as someone who quit identifying himself as a conservative during Bush's first term: Republicans are losing elections because they've forgotten to be Republicans.

The Republican party I belonged to was the one that, in 1996, fought Bill Clinton's PATRIOT Act-like Anti-Terrorism Bill because it violated civil liberties.

And how was it that the party once so beautifully represented by Bill Buckley became the party that denigrates someone who is highly educated and articulate as "elitist"? The "party of ideas" seems to have become the one that's now as static as they claimed the Democrats were in 1994.

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[info]slithytove
2008-11-06 07:36 am UTC (link)
Republicans are losing elections because they've forgotten to be Republicans.

I knew something was seriously wrong when Bush wouldn't veto any spending bills. Ugh. This is a Republican? Billions in highway and farm pork? He didn't veto a single bill until September, 2006. And that was a stem cell research bill, which he should have signed!

However...

The salient question -- which is what I raised in this post -- is 'what is a Republican'? Does being a Republican now mean having to buy into all the religious furniture? I'm okay with the religious right under the big tent of the Republican party. But if they ARE the Republican party, if that's all there is to the Republican party, then there's no place for me.

And it's not like there's any other viable party that fits me.

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