It’s easy to argue like a rightie, since you don’t have to know what you’re talking about. Just keep shoveling baseless smears and insults, like calling person with whom you disagree a liar. And let the facts be damned.
Also: See this.
Category Archives: conservatism
Dichotomies
- The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.
If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind.
When the deep meaning of things is not understood, the mind’s essential peace is disturbed to no avail. — Sengtsan, 3rd Zen Patriarch
Humans have a proclivity for framing issues as dichotomies — this and that, right and wrong, black and white, us and them. Old Sengtsan would have called this “dualism.”
Dualism is actively at work distorting our ongoing political discussions. For example, few days ago Glenn Greenwald wrote about the Iraq Study Group:
But more notable than the supposed exclusion of neocons (something that should be believed only once it is seen) is this claim about Washington-style balance and “centrism”:
The panel was deliberately skewed toward a centrist course for Iraq, participants said. Organizers avoided experts with extreme views on either side of the Iraq war debate.
I’d really like to know what the excluded anti-war “extreme view” is that is the equivalent of the neonconservative desire for endless warfare in Iraq and beyond. The only plausible possibility would be the view that the U.S. ought to withdraw from Iraq, and do so sooner rather than later. What else could it be? Nobody, to my knowledge, is proposing that we cede American territory to the Iraqi insurgents, so withdrawal essentially defines the far end of the anti-war spectrum.
Is withdrawal — whether incremental or total — considered to be an “extreme view” that the Washington “centrists” have not only rejected but have excluded in advance even from consideration?
Good question, and I fear the Baker panel does consider withdrawal to be an extreme view not under consideration. We’ll see.
But I’ve long believed news media screws up discussion of abortion the same way. We’re told there are two “extremist” views, pro- and anti. But what is the “pro” extreme view? I know of no reproductive rights organization that advocates elective third-trimester abortion, for example. Reproductive rights organizations have been fighting to maintain Roe v. Wade, which allows states to ban abortions after the 23rd week gestation (earliest possible viability; late second trimester) as long as exceptions are made for life and health of the mother. That’s extreme? Extremists on the other side not only want to eliminate the “health” exception. They’re not crazy about the “life,” “rape,” and “incest” exceptions, either. And don’t get them started on birth control.
I could be wrong, but I suspect the enormous majority of pro-choice people would accept some kind of legal gestational limit on elective abortion as long as it wasn’t set absurdly early and as long as physicians are allowed a decent amount of discretion for deciding what constitutes a legitimate medical reason for a non-elective abortion. In fact, I think a big whopping majority of the American electorate would accept that compromise. The Fetus People, on the other hand, will not rest until they achieve a total ban on abortions, no matter what voters want.
So who’s “extreme”? Seems to me the preponderance of the extremism is on one side.
I thought of dualities today when I read this column by Cathy Young:
Behind the political divide in America, there is also a religious divide.
The split is not just between people who believe and people who do not; it is between those who see religious faith as society’s foundation and those who see it as society’s bane.
I guess those of us who see it as neither society’s foundation nor society’s bane don’t count.
A look at recent best-selling books illustrates the divide. Ann Coulter’s “Godless: The Church of Liberalism” excoriates liberals for being, well, godless. Bill O’Reilly’s new tome, “Culture Warrior,” urges traditionalists to combat the evil influence of the “secular-progressives.” For the other side, there’s “Letter to a Christian Nation” by philosopher Sam Harris, who calls all religion “obscene” and “utterly repellent,” and “The God Delusion” by biologist Richard Dawkins, a tome whose title speaks for itself.
Both sides in the debate traffic in simplistic stereotypes.
Sort of like Cathy Young?
It doesn’t help that religion has become intertwined with politics. A recent column by film critic and pundit Michael Medved conflates attacks on religion with criticism of the political power of religious conservatives.
Such books as “”The Left Hand of God: Taking Our Country Back from the Religious Right” by Rabbi Michael Lerner, written from a religious point of view, are lumped together with Harris’ anti-religion screed. Meanwhile, conservative author Heather MacDonald, writing in USA Today, complains that “skeptical conservatives” feel marginalized in today’s discourse.
Over the past several weeks I’ve seen the “religious right” juxtaposed against the “unreligious left” dozens of times, and hardly anyone questions this. I don’t think it reflects reality, however. There are plenty of deeply religious lefties, and plenty of atheist and agnostic righties.
What’s more, if the “extremes” are pro-religion (as defined by Michael Medved) and anti-religion (ditto), then what the hell is the center? The “I don’t give a shit about religion (and/or Michael Medved)” faction?
What if we change the dichotomy? Let’s put everyone who thinks religion should be everyone’s bleeping personal business at one extreme, and people who want to coerce everyone else to think his way (a.k.a. God Nazis) at the other? This would put Richard Dawkins and Michael Medved together at the “God Nazi” end of the continuum, opposite from me.
I’m sure Dawkins and Medved would disagree with this model, but I care what they think about as much as they care what I think.
But I suppose I should try to take Sengtsan’s advice. Looking at religion dispassionately reveals a lot of people frantically grabbing for something to either soothe their existential fears or stoke their egos, or both. There are people looking for easy answers to difficult questions and finding difficult answers to easy questions. There are dogmatists and there are mystics; there are those who approach religion with fear, and those who approach it with love. There are those who find comfort in familiar liturgy and iconography and those who leave the familiar behind and wander off in search of something else. And there are those who don’t see any point to religion at all.
The problem is that people mistake whatever little bit of doctrinal or institutional jetsam they’re clinging to as the Complete and Total Absolute Truth and Wisdom of the Cosmos Forever and Ever Amen. This reminds me of an essay written by John McGowan and posted at Le Blogue Bérubé in June 2005. This is about politics, but it speaks to any issue (emphasis added) —
My point is that liberalism, first and foremost, is a set of expedients (mostly institutional and legal) for minimizing tyranny by setting limits to government power. It also tries to prevent the consolidation of power by fostering the multiplication of power. Democracy, in my view, is not worth a damn if it is not partnered with liberalism. Democracy and liberalism are a squabbling pair; they each locate power in a different place—democracy in the people, liberalism in the law—and they aim for different goods: democracy (in its most ideal form) for something like the “general will,†liberalism for a modus vivendi in a world characterized by intractable conflicts among people with different beliefs, goals, ambitions, and values. Neither one trumps the other; both, in my view, are essential ingredients of a legitimate polity.
Not only the Republicans, but the American nation as a whole, seem to have lost any sense whatsoever of what liberalism means and what it strives to insure. Even at the best of times, the liberal check upon power is a tenuous bulwark that fights against the odds. There is nothing that underwrites the rule of law except the continued practice of upholding it. The law must be reaffirmed anew each and every time it is enunciated and enforced. And the temptation to circumvent the law, to rewrite it to accommodate one’s current beliefs and practices, is also ever present. To pay the law heed is to accept that one’s own virtue is doubtful—or that one’s own beliefs are, in every sense of that word, “partial.†It is their assurance in their own virtue that renders the Republicans most dangerous, most prone to set the law aside when it gets in the way of doing when they know in their hearts is right. Impatience with the law is endemic—and it is the harbinger of extreme politics of either the right or the left. (It is here, of course, that the leftist will leap. But why should we think leftist self-righteousness any more attractive or less dangerous than the rightist variety?) …
… I just want to end by noting how “unnatural†liberalism seems. It involves self-abnegation, accepting the frustration of my will. It involves, as I will detail in my next post, compromise in almost every instance, and thus can seem akin to having no strong convictions, no principles. Yet its benefits are enormous; it provides, I am convinced, the only possible way humans can live in peace together in a pluralistic world. Given how distasteful liberal expedients are in experience, it is a miracle that they ever get established and maintained. But the benefits of that miracle are multiple—and we, as a nation, will sorely regret it if we trash our liberal edifice out of impatience, frustration, or, even worse, sheer forgetfulness of why that edifice was put in place, how it works, and what it accomplishes.
It frustrates Michael Medved’s will that filmmakers are allowed to express their own points of view in their films. Religion itself seems to frustrate Richard Dawkins’s will. But the contest shouldn’t be between opposing points of view on religion, but between those who support the First Amendment of the Constitution and those who would circumvent it.
Whatever your religious beliefs, as long as you’re with me on the Constitution’s side, we’re good.
Why Does Dennis Prager Hate America? And Other Religious Questions
Dennis Prager: One more rightie who wants to shred the Constitution. Just read this sewage he spewed out at Townhall.
Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress, has announced that he will not take his oath of office on the Bible, but on the bible of Islam, the Koran.
He should not be allowed to do so — not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization.
First, it is an act of hubris that perfectly exemplifies multiculturalist activism — my culture trumps America’s culture. What Ellison and his Muslim and leftist supporters are saying is that it is of no consequence what America holds as its holiest book; all that matters is what any individual holds to be his holiest book.
If “America” forces an elected official to venerate a religion other than his own in order to take office, then “America” has just shredded the First Amendment and violated Article VI, paragraph 3:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
According to Robin Marty of the Minnesota Monitor,
In our country’s history, four presidents have been inaugurated without swearing an oath on the Bible. Franklin Pierce was affirmed, and swore no oath, Rutherford Hayes initially had a private ceremony with no Bible before his public ceremony, Theodore Roosevelt had no Bible at his ceremony, and Lyndon Johnson used a missal during his first term.
Despite Prager’s insistence that “for all of American history, Jews elected to public office have taken their oath on the Bible, even though they do not believe in the New Testament,” it is clear that he is wrong. Linda Lingle, Governor of Hawaii, took the oath of office on a Torah in 2001. Madeleine Kunin, a Jewish Immigrant and Governor of Vermont “rested her left hand on a stack of old prayer books that had belonged to her mother, grandparents, and great grandfather” as “a physical expression of the weight of Jewish history.”
And in North Carolina, the Notary Public has a written code for swearing in:
“A person taking an oath should place one hand on the Holy Scriptures. This book will vary depending on the person’s religious beliefs: Christians should use the New Testament or the Bible; Jews, the Torah or the Old Testament; Moslems, the Koran; Hindus, the Bhagavad-Gita; etc.”
Prager’s column is nothing but bigotry and jingoism. Prager and other whackjobs (see previous post) demand that their points of view be respected, but there’s no virtue in tolerating intolerance (or, as in the previous post, plain ol’ idiocy).
Cute Animal News
Off the whackjob charts — Media Matters reports that the Christmas warriors have taken cartoon penguin hostages.
Not content with their annual discussion of a supposed “War on Christmas,” conservative talking heads have taken on a new issue this season: environmentalist propaganda in children’s movies. CNN Headline News’ Glenn Beck and Fox News’ Neil Cavuto recently spoke out against Warner Bros.’ new animated children’s movie Happy Feet; criticizing the film for its alleged pro-environmentalist content. Media Matters for America spokesman Karl Frisch responded to the criticism, lambasting the conservative talking heads for their return to holiday-season absurdity.
“The idea that anyone would make such comments against a children’s movie about a tap-dancing penguin shows just how low the bar has dropped for what the media consider real news,” Frisch said. “Conservatives seem to have abandoned their traditional coverage of the supposed ‘War on Christmas’ for a ‘War on Penguins.’ “
Full disclosure: My daughter and I saw Happy Feet this weekend at the local IMAX cinema. My daughter is 26, btw. Except for the excessive number of rugrats in the audience, we had a fine time. Good animation, catchy music, Hugh Jackman doing an Elvis impersonation. What more could one want?
…in a November 17 entry on his Townhall.com weblog, conservative talk-show host Michael Medved referred to the film as “Crappy Feet,” and said it was the “darkest, most disturbing feature length animated film ever offered by a major studio.”
I take it Medved never saw Dumbo.
From the November 20 edition of Fox News’ Your World with Neil Cavuto:
CAVUTO: Well, those cute little penguins in Happy Feet winning at the box office, earning more than $42 million. Now, in the movie, the penguins are starving, the fish are all gone, and it’s clear that humans and big business are to blame. Is Hollywood using kids films to promote a far-left message? Entertainment critic Holly McClure says yes and it’s wrong. Holly, so you thought it was over the top?
McCLURE: Well, I did, Neil. I tell you. First of all, I went watching this movie thinking, “OK, great. A lighthearted, fun film. Love these animated pictures, and it’s interesting how realistic it looks.” And you get in there and you’re enjoying all the fun and frivolity, and, yes, it’s kind of a takeoff of the penguin documentary, and then along comes the subtle messages. And one by one they come in, and I felt like I was watching Dirty Dancing, penguin-style.
Perhaps McClure was watching a different penguin movie.
CAVUTO: Well, you know, Holly, I saw this with my two little boys. And what I found offensive — I don’t care what your stands are on the environment — is that they shove this in a kids movie. So you hear the penguins are starving, and they’re starving because of mean old man, mean old companies, Arctic fishing, a big taboo. And they’re foisting this on my kids who, frankly, were more bored that it was a nearly two-hour movie, and they’re kids!
McCLURE: Well, I’m just kind of curious. Were your kids scared or kind of bothered at all by the big walrus?
There was no walrus.
Because I thought there were some pretty intense scenes. I don’t call this a toddler — a little-kid-friendly movie.
The penguins are chased around by leopard seals and killer whales, but nobody dies. (Unlike in Bambi.)
… McCLURE: Well, what’s even more objectionable is the fact that they present all these things about man being mean, and taking the fish away, and the — you know, killing the wildlife and fish and penguins. And then furthermore, which, I don’t want to ruin anything for anybody, but to see penguins in an aquarium situation. OK, are we supposed to tell our kids then it’s not right to go to San Diego Sea World, or it’s not right to go to your local zoo, or it’s not right to have animals where you can go observe them? Should they feel guilty, then? I think the message is, “Yeah, we subtly put it in there.” But where does it stop? It doesn’t give you any solutions. So our kids should feel guilty, then, for enjoying to see wildlife, you know, in man’s environment?
My daughter commented after we left the theater that it was nice the humans in the film were not bad, meaning that they were not deliberately mean to the penguins. They just didn’t realize there were all these singing and dancing penguins that didn’t have enough fish to eat. (Should I post a spoiler alert? Oh, who am I kidding …) At the end people came to make a film of the singing and dancing penguins, the humans stopped taking all the fish, the hero penguin (Elijah Wood) gets the girl penguin (Brittany Murphy; not sexually explicit), and even the grumpy old penguin who didn’t approve of dancing (Hugo Weaving) was happy.
I suppose PETA could complain that the film says animals are only worth saving if they are entertaining.
On reflection, I suppose one could say the film makes fun of religion. The penguins have a penguin religion that venerates a mystical giant penguin. And a penguin character named Lovelace (Robin Williams) is depicted as a cross between a television evangelist and New Age guru. (The main penguin characters go on a heroic quest to get one of those plastic six-pack ring holders off Lovelace’s neck. I won’t reveal how that turned out.)
You might also argue that the film promotes family values, since the penguins’ highest purpose in life is producing chicks. This is why righties got off on March of the Penguins, which is about penguins producing chicks. Jonathan Miller wrote for The New York Times (September 13, 2005):
“March of the Penguins,” the conservative film critic and radio host Michael Medved said in an interview, is “the motion picture this summer that most passionately affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing.”
Speaking of audiences who feel that movies ignore or belittle such themes, he added: “This is the first movie they’ve enjoyed since ‘The Passion of the Christ.’ This is ‘The ‘Passion of the Penguins.’ ”
In part, the movie’s appeal to conservatives may lie in its soft-pedaling of topics like evolution and global warming. The filmmakers say they did not consciously avoid those topics – indeed, they say they are strong believers in evolutionary theory – but they add that they wanted to create a film that would reach as many people as possible.
“It’s obvious that global warming has an impact on the reproduction of the penguins,” Luc Jacquet, the director, told National Geographic Online. “But much of public opinion appears insensitive to the dangers of global warming. We have to find other ways to communicate to people about it, not just lecture them.”
OK, but Happy Feet didn’t say a word about evolution, and I don’t recall anything about global warming. And Medved is OK with films that push his political ideas.
But if Medved was offended by Happy Feet, this news story ought to make his head explode:
Cetaceans, the group of marine mammals that includes whales and dolphins, have demonstrated remarkable auditory and communicative abilities, as well as complex social behaviors. A new study published online November 27, 2006 in The Anatomical Record, the official journal of the American Association of Anatomists, compared a humpback whale brain with brains from several other cetacean species and found the presence of a certain type of neuron cell that is also found in humans. This suggests that certain cetaceans and hominids may have evolved side by side. The study is available online via Wiley InterScience at http://www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/ar.
Could humpback whales be smarter than Michael Medved? Hell, there are goldfish smarter than Michael Medved.
God Nazis
Two stories being linked to on the Right Blogosphere:
Tricia Bishop writes for the Chicago Sun that retailers have already surrendered in the Christmas Wars.
Christmas is back at Wal-Mart – not that it really ever left.
After testing out a generic, yet all-inclusive, “happy holidays” theme last year, the nation’s largest retailer announced this month that Christmas will dominate its seasonal marketing in the U.S.
“We’ve learned our lesson,” said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Marisa Bluestone. “This year, we’re not afraid to say, ‘Merry Christmas.'”
Neither are Walgreens, Target, Macy’s, Kmart and Kohl’s, among others. In interviews this week, spokesmen from those major retailers said that their stores acknowledge the Christmas holiday, hoping to avoid a repeat of last year’s backlash led by conservative Christian groups. …
… “Clearly, retailers have learned that they can still be inclusive of all religions while wishing their customers a ‘merry Christmas,'” she said.
Sure, they have.
Some said Wal-Mart might actually be asking for trouble with its new policy. Employees were encouraged to mix it up this year and toss out a “Happy Hanukkah” and “Kwanzaa” among their “Season’s Greetings,” or maybe even a “Feliz Navidad” if the mood strikes.
Wal-Mart workers are supposed to “use their best judgment” to figure out what’s appropriate for whom, spokeswoman Bluestone said.
“How can they tell? They’re going to look at people and [guess]?” asked Amna Kirmani, a professor of marketing at the Robert H. Smith School of Business.
At the Wal-Mart on Port Covington Drive this week, aisles were stocked with Christmas items and their generic, wintry counterparts – such as decorative snowmen and sleds – but nary a menorah to be found. A manager said the store doesn’t stock many Hanukkah items, and what it had this year was already purchased.
This rightie blogger is glad Wal-Mart has “seen the light,” but I’m not persuaded that all the God Nazis will be appeased. When people want to take offense, they nearly always find something that offends them.
The other story is from Australia, where Scholastic Australia has killed publication of a book because it might offend Muslims.
A LEADING children’s publisher has dumped a novel because of political sensitivity over Islamic issues.
Scholastic Australia pulled the plug on the Army of the Pure after booksellers and librarians said they would not stock the adventure thriller for younger readers because the “baddie” was a Muslim terrorist
You need to read the whole story for the context in which this decision was made, but it is a shame, when people allow themselves to be intimidated into self-censorship.
The arbiters of righteousness at Little Green Footballs are outraged. (Linking to LGF violates Mahablog policy; I trust you can find the post if you really want to.)
The Australian branch of a multinational publisher of children’s books has canceled their publication of an adventure thriller by an award-winning novelist—because the bad guys are Islamic terrorists: Islamic fears kill off children’s thriller. (Hat tip: Andrew Bolt.)
But get a load of what they are willing to publish.
The article describes a couple of other books, recently published in Australia, that allegedly make excuses for Islamic terrorism. However, the article doesn’t say that Scholastic Australia published those books. I checked Scholastic Australia’s web site and couldn’t find them; I suspect another publisher brought them out.
Once again: Righties can’t read.
But the moral is, intimidation by Muslims is bad; intimidation by Christians is good.
One more example of God Nazis — I don’t have time this morning to do this subject justice, but I call your attention to this article by Deepak Chopra at Huffington Post. I agree with Chopra’s basic premise — that religion and science are not mutually exclusive — but then he goes off on some mushy New Age tangent about consciousness that destroys his own premise. (I added a comment to the article, but my comment hasn’t been published yet. It may show up later today.) Chopra has established himself as some kind of spirituality guide, but after reading this I question if he has ever gone beneath the surface himself. For another take on spirituality and consciousness, try this.
However, I am not calling Chopra a God Nazi. I may disagree with him, but he’s not marching around trying to intimidate people into thinking the way he does. Some of the commenters, on the other hand, want to stamp out Chopra. Some put him in the same box as James Dobson; hardly. In this case, the militant atheists are the God Nazis.
Update: Glenn Greenwald points to righties who are upset by the word Christianist but who themselves use the word Islamist.
Remarkable
Via Avedon, via Digby, a conservative writes honestly and candidly about what happened to conservatism. If you don’t have time to read it all, be sure to read the last eight paragraphs.
As Digby says, “After living with ‘movement conservatism’ for so long it’s actually a bit disorienting to see a conservative under the age of 70 or so with intellectual integrity.”
Rightier Than Thou
For a great many years, most Americans have found presidential elections to be a choice between someone they don’t like and someone they can’t stand. That’s largely because the early nomination process is less about capturing the public’s imagination than about running a gauntlet of activists and interest groups. The candidates are already bruised and bleeding, sometimes fatally, before active campaigning for primaries even begins.
Thus, the nomination process is less about vision and leadership than about picking the least objectionable positions on hot-button issues. Or, like George W. Bush in 2000, carefully maintaining blank-slate status so that voters saw in him what they wanted to see. Being the fair-haired child of party insiders didn’t hurt, either.
Considering the drubbing hard-right Republicans took in the midterms, it may seem odd that some Republican presidental hopefuls, notably John McCain and Mitt Romney, are moving further right. For example, both McCain and Romney have moved to the right of their former positions on abortion. Both politicians have been making nice with the religious right. Earlier this week Romney declared himself to be a “conservative Republican†as he attempts to position himself to the right of McCain.
David Bernstein writes in The Phoenix:
To woo those conservatives, Romney has staked out a position in the GOP presidential field akin to that of George W. Bush, without the taint of Washington. He supports the Iraq war as a necessary part of the war on Islamist-fueled terror. He has embraced social conservative causes by shifting to a strict pro-life position, denouncing stem-cell research, and, of course, bashing same-sex marriage. And Romney is on even steadier ground with what you might call the corporate wing of the Republican Party, which is looking for a pro-business, small-government, anti-regulation, low-tax candidate.
But, dude, the guy’s from Massachusetts.
That all looks good on paper, but not everybody’s buying it. “Nobody in the party movement establishment thinks of him as a conservative,†says David Carney, a political consultant with Norway Hill Associates in Hancock, New Hampshire, and former political director for George H.W. Bush. “You can’t be a conservative and take an inconsistent position on abortion.â€
As for his economics positioning, Romney earned a mere “C†grade from the Cato Institute in its new ratings of governors’ fiscal conservatism. The report called Romney’s no-new-taxes claim “mostly a myth,†and warned of “massive costs to taxpayers that his universal health care plan will inflict.†Further, Romney’s limited government experience gives conservatives little to judge him by, and he’s never been the kind of intellectual heavyweight who builds a reputation by penning articles for right-wing think tanks.
As a result, he has tried to prove himself by association — getting people known to movement insiders to sign on with his political-action committee, Commonwealth PAC. Names like Barbara Comstock mean little to the average voter, but they matter to right-wing insiders. Romney also has two top former aides of Jeb Bush, as well as George W. Bush’s former top domestic speechwriter on his payroll. And many other solid conservatives populate his “steering committees†in early-voting states such as Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.
Conventional wisdom says that John McCain is the most electable of the potential Republican presidential candidates. Too bad the righties can’t stand him.
“Movement conservatives†— the type who gather at Grover Norquist’s famous weekly breakfast meetings at Americans for Tax Reform headquarters on L Street in Washington — despise John McCain. Loathe him. Would do anything to stop him. …
… McCain’s frequent television appearances give the average viewer a distorted view of his relationship to the Republican Party. In fact, his well-cultivated image, so appealing to independent voters in 2000, has earned him the ire of movement conservatives.
“I find John McCain completely unacceptable,†says Peter Ferrara, senior policy analyst for the Institute for Policy Innovation, a Washington-based small-government think tank.
“He’s completely unfit to serve as president,†says David Keating, executive director of Club for Growth, a powerful right-wing organization.
This hatred dates to McCain’s signature campaign-finance-reform legislation, co-sponsored with liberal senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, which severely limited the large-sum individual and corporate contributions that had previously fueled Republican campaigns.
But that’s not their only problem with the Arizona senator. McCain voted against the Bush tax cuts (although he later voted for making them permanent). He has supported gun-control legislation. He led the “Gang of 14†senators in preventing the so-called nuclear option, a change in procedure that would have allowed Republicans to confirm conservative judges over Democratic opposition. He voted for federal spending on stem-cell research, and opposes a federal ban on gay marriage. He is one of the most pro-environment Republicans on Capital Hill, supporting the Kyoto Treaty and even co-authoring a failed bill to limit carbon-dioxide emissions. And, in a move tailor-made for attack ads, he co-authored the “amnesty-by-another-name†immigration-reform legislation — with Ted Kennedy, no less — that dominated right-wing talk radio much of the year.
Worse, McCain is “soft” on torture. He can forget the Freeper vote. And so far Romney has found far greater favor than McCain on the religious right.
By now you may see the GOP’s problem; any candidate who survives the gauntlet and passes a sufficient number of rightie litmus tests will be way far right of the general public.
In the current political climate I don’t think Rudy Giuliani has a chance, in spite of his current front-runner status in some polls. So far the Republican Party has maintained a rosy glow around “America’s mayor.” But if he does choose to run, the gloves will come off, and the other candidates will destroy him. Just watch.
So “movement” conservatives hate McCain, and “social” conservatives will never accept Giuliani. George Allen is already gone. Last year there were presidential noises coming from Sen. Sam Brownback who is, IMO, the wingnut’s wingnut. A space alien would make a less extreme candidate. If he does get in the race, he might pull social conservative votes away from Romney.
Senator Chuck Hegel could make a palatable presidential candidate in the general election, if he chooses to run, but I doubt he’s popular among the GWOT hawks. However, the Right Blogosphere for the most part pretends Hegel doesn’t exist. Considering the many stands he’s taken against Bush foreign policy, there’s not a lot of grumbling about him on the rightie blogs. So I’m not sure what they’re thinking. Hegel would be very competitive if he can survive the gauntlet — he’s McCain with less negative baggage — but it’s hard to predict how much of a gauntlet he’d have to run.
In any event, for years the pundiocracy has snarked that Dem candidates had to move left to get the nomination and then right to win the election. How true that might have been is, IMO, debatable. But now, I think the GOP may have painted itself into the opposite corner. To get the 2008 GOP nomination, a candidate may have to move so far right he’ll drop off the bleeping map. And the GOP base is so fractured, a candidate who makes nice with one faction might well alienate another.
After the midterms, the Usual Bloviators opined that the Democratic Party’s liberal base had lost the election. Many fingers were wagged at us liberal bloggers; we were warned that the new crop of Democrats were more conservative than we were. Never mind that these were the same politicians we had just helped elect, and we knew good and well who they were. The pundits assume that we liberal bloggers are just the next generation of the New Left, and we’re out here in bloggerland fighting over identity politics and applying our own single-issue litmus tests to the candidates. But in fact we’re less about ideology and more about building coalitions and dragging the Democratic Party back to its populist roots.
Conventional wisdom about who will be nominated by either party ain’t worth a bucket of spit, IMO. But if current patterns hold, expect the GOP to marginalize itself right out of the White House.
Jealousy
You know the VRWC is off the sexism chart when even Ann Althouse notices. But apparently the Right’s brilliant plan to “get Hillary” is to “get Nancy Pelosi.” Because, you know, one Democratic woman is just like another.
Hans Nichols and Philip Sherwell write in The Telegraph:
The Republican strategy is not only to undermine Mrs Pelosi’s control of the House but also to associate her in voters’ minds with Senator Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner for the 2008 Democrat presidential nomination.
“Two years of Pelosi gives a good idea of what four years of Hillary will be like,” said Tom DeLay, the Republican powerbroker who ran his party in the House before he was caught up in a lobbyist corruption scandal. “They are both committed liberals and we will make that clear to the American people.”…
…A senior Republican operative who planned the damaging advertisements against Sen John Kerry, the Democrats’ presidential candidate in 2004, predicted that it would not be easy to turn Mrs Pelosi into a surrogate target for Mrs Clinton.
“If Hillary has been able to separate herself from criticisms of her own husband, she’ll try to do the same with Pelosi,” he said. “She and her people are very smart and they will try to highlight the difference between the two women. You will see Hillary move more to the centre.”
But a former strategist for a Republican House leader said: “If Pelosi comes across as not ready for prime time, that’s going to hamstring Hillary. Fair or not, people can’t help but make that comparison… Even Hillary’s people are recognising that their fates are linked.”
Oh, jebus, where to start …
First off, Republicans are acting like a loser ex-boyfriend who turns homicidal; the guy who thinks “If I can’t have her, no one will.” Apparently this isn’t just the stuff of TV serial drama. It’s a syndrome, called “male sexual proprietariness.”
It is manifested in the dogged inclination of men to control the activities of women, and in the male perspective according to which sexual access and woman’s reproductive capacity are commodities that mean can “own†and exchange. This proprietary point of view is furthermore inextricably bound up with the use of threat of violence in order to maintain sexual exclusivity and control. [page 259]
Substitute “government” for “women,” and I think you’ll see the point. Republicans are jealously stalking the Dems, shrieking “If we can’t govern, no one will!” After four years of complete control of Congress and the White House — four years of utter incompetence, please note — voters rejected them, and they can’t deal with it. They’ll foul up any attempts by Democrats to govern rather than accept the will of the voters. We should call this “wingnut governmental proprietariness.”
They were the same way after Bill Clinton won the 1992 presidential election. If you read David Brock’s Blinded by the Right, you’ll remember his descriptions of wingnut hysteria that Clinton was not “legitimate,” in spite of the fact that he had just won the bleeping election. Clearly, there are some aspects of republican government that wingnuts don’t grasp. The street sweepers were still cleaning up after the inauguration when the VRWC “punditocracy” were all over news media declaring that the Clinton Administration had already failed. Nothing the President did was too trivial for the wingnuts to blow up into a scandal. And as documented by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons in The Hunting of the President, U.S. news media willingly allowed themselves to be tools for the VRWC cause.
The ever-alert Digby has documented symptoms of wingnut governmental proprietariness in news media for the past several days, albeit framed as the female equivalent of male sexual proprietariness — Queen Bee syndrome; see “Shrinking the Kewl Kids” and “Toxins.” Queen Bees are “mean girls” who control their friends and enhance their social power by social intimidation; see also Sara Robinson, “Kewl Kidz and Queen Bees.” As Digby says,
This kind of derisive babble is not simply a bunch of overgrown frat boys ‘n sorority girls disrespectfully talking about these women’s looks. It’s designed very specifically to trivialize them. It’s right out of the Spring 2000 Earth Tones catalogue.
And the Kewl Kidz, anxious as ever to prove their sophomoric Spite Girl bona-fides, are more than happy to “pass it on” …
The “pundits” already are picking Pelosi apart with comments about botox and designer suits. Her failure to get Jack Murtha elected Majority Whip is being blown up into “proof” that Pelosi will fail as a Speaker, in spite of the fact that she was elected unanimously. You know if something like this had gone on with Republicans ca. 1992, no one would have noticed. [Update: Michael Stickings reminds us that the same thing did happen when Newt G. was elected Speaker in 1994; see also Specious Reasoning.] Just as there has been little mention in media of the discontent over the election of John Boehner and Roy Blunt as House Minority Leader and Whip, a development that could prove to be more significant in the long run.
Back to the sexism angle — other than Althouse, rightie bloggers so far haven’t noticed their own biases in this matter. My favorite comment is at Macsmind:
Both Pelosi and Hillary have one distinct problem. Call it an identity crisis. That is that they – like most democrats – will not run for office on who they are – liberals. They are constantly trying to remake themselves appear “conservative†or if you will – republican. The problem with that is that they can do either because liberals cannot lead – except haphazardly, and they haven’t a clue about what conservatism is – therefore, they can screw up quite nicely on their own.
It’s all there, folks. Implicit sexism and explicit ideologism (liberals try to act like conservatives; think feminist women try to act like men). The dig about “liberals cannot lead,” which is a five-alarm hoot after the abject failure of movement conservatives (who had all the power) to lead. “They haven’t a clue about what conservatism is” — like this guy would recognize real liberalism if it bit his butt. Actually I doubt he knows what conservatism is, either, or at least what it used to be. The people running around calling themselves conservatives these days are mostly of the pseudo variety.
The wingnut definition of liberalism is, of course, is “whatever we want to diss.” The actual philosophical foundation of liberalism is irrelevant.
Likewise “women.” I think women are individual human beings, but when wingnuts think of women, they are thinking of something else entirely.
Old Dogs
Following up the last post — a few rightie bloggers have commented on the Dean Barnett FAQ and the political effectiveness of the leftie netroots. On the whole my quibbles with their analyses are minor, but they all relate to one major point.
Alabama Liberation Front writes,
In the 2005-2006 election cycle, the three major GOP committees — RNC, NRSC and NRCC — collected more than $438 million dollars. How much of that money went toward cultivation of the blogs? Hmmm?
In context, he seems to be implying (without explicitly saying so) that the DNC, DCCC, etc. do give money to cultivate blogs. I assure you, they do not. However, I call your attention to the Garance Franke-Ruta article in the April 2005 TAP, “Blogged Down,” and her account of the Eason Jordan smackdown (emphasis added).
He was brought down not by outraged citizen-bloggers but by a mix of GOP operatives and military conservatives. Easongate.com, the blog that served as the clearinghouse for the attack on CNN, was helped along by Virginia-based Republican operative Mike Krempasky. From May 1999 through August 2003, Krempasky worked for [Morton] Blackwell as the graduate development director of the Leadership Institute, an Arlington, Virginia–based school for conservative leaders founded by Blackwell in 1979. The institute is the organization that had provided “Gannon†with his sole media credential before he became a White House correspondent. It also now operates “Internet Activist Schools†designed to teach conservatives how to engage in “guerilla Internet activism.â€
Indeed, Krempasky could be found teaching this Internet activism course one recent February weekend to about 30 young conservatives at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington. “He advocated that people write from their experience — and not necessarily as conservatives,†a Democratic consultant who attended the seminar incognito told me. For example, Krempasky told “a conservative firefighter†that he should write about firefighting because that would be of interest to readers. Using that angle, he could build an audience. And if push ever came to shove, he could respond to an online dogfight from the unassailable position of being a firefighter — and not as just another conservative ideologue. Krempasky then offered to help all the attendees set up their own blogs. “We’re definitely in serious trouble,†said the Democratic attendee.
The tactics Krempasky promotes are directly descended from those advocated by the late Reed Irvine of AIM, whose major funder was, for the past two decades, Richard Mellon Scaife. “Many bloggers and blog readers might not even know who Reed Irvine was, nor understand the debt we owe him as conservatives,†Krempasky wrote upon Irvine’s passing last year. “But that debt is tremendous.†In the late ’80s, Irvine had started the campaign to “Can Dan†Rather, coining the phrase “Rather Biased,†which became a rallying cry for anti-rather bloggers. Last fall, Krempasky was operating the main anti-Rather site, Rathergate.com, and organized a vast letter-writing and e-mailing campaign “to contact CBS and express themselves,†as he put it in an interview with Bobby Eberle of GOPUSA, an activist Web site founded by Texas Republicans and merged with one now owned by Bruce Eberle (no relation), the proprietor of a conservative direct-mail firm. “Conservatives have operated through alternative media for 40 years, direct mail being the first one,†Krempasky told me, sitting in the food court of the Ronald Reagan International Building as the CPAC wound down. “As far as the Internet goes, conservatives have largely been ahead of the left.â€
Also part of the Easongate.com team was La Shawn Barber, who writes a biweekly column for — again, the name pops up — GOPUSA and has written for AIM about “the Bush-bashing media.†Working alongside Krempasky and Barber was another site, RedState.org, “a Republican community weblog†registered with the Federal Election Commission as a 527. Krempasky helped found that site along with Senate staffer Ben Domenech, the chief speechwriter for Bush ally and Texas Senator John Cornyn; and former U.S. Army officer Josh Trevino, a conservative blogger who used to write under the name “Tacitus.†The goal of RedState.org? “[T]o unite … voices from government, politics, activism, civil society, and journalism†in service of the “construction of a Republican majority.â€
Power Line, another conservative blog deeply involved in the Rather controversy, helped push the Jordan story as well. Described by Time magazine as “three amateur journalists working in a homegrown online medium [who] challenged a network news legend and won,†Power Line was voted Time’s “2004 Blog of the Year.†In reality, its three writers are all fellows at the conservative Claremont Institute who attended Dartmouth College in the early 1970s and now work as attorneys; two of them have been writing articles as a team for conservative publications such as the National Review and The American Enterprise for more than 10 years.
“As far as the Internet goes, conservatives have largely been ahead of the left.†The VRWC — the conglomeration of think tanks, media, and astroturf organizations that work with the GOP — made Matt Drudge a Somebody back in the 1990s, for example. I believe the VRWC was attached to the unseen hands of Rathergate that took an anonymous post on Free Republic into national media in only 12 hours. The top tier of the Right Blogosphere contains a number of bloggers with long-standing affiliation with movement conservatism — in media, in think tanks, in the GOP. Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt, Andrew Sullivan (who has fallen from grace lately, I understand), in addition to the above-mentioned RedState, PowerLine, and La Shawn Barber, were never just disgruntled citizens blogging in their pajamas. They are for the most part establishment operatives. Not always, but often.
And this takes us to the blind spot in rightie analyses (see also Jon Henke and Riehl World View). They do not see the extent to which the Republican establishment co-opted the Right Blogosphere from the beginning. Mr. Henke suggests that the Republicans should “develop strategies and hire experts to engage the blogosphere quickly and bumpily as happened with the successful Democratic engagement of the blogosphere.” The problem is (as Chris Bowers discusses) that the Right Blogosphere already has been integrated into the right-wing message machine. This is much less true on the Left Blogosphere, mostly since the Dems can’t seem to push a message any more than a squirrel can sing.
All along many Republican Party operatives have been using the Right Blogosphere the way they’d use any other mass medium — as a medium to disseminate talking points and reinforce narratives. But like any other mass medium, the conversation goes only one way — from the top of the power pyramid to the bottom.
This doesn’t mean the rightie blogs never go off message. They do, far more than a lot of us on the Left give them credit for. On two issues in particular, immigration and pork, they have been solidly critical of the Bush White House and the Republican Congress. It’s also pretty obvious that the Republican establishment doesn’t care what rightie bloggers think.
Does that mean that the Dems care what leftie bloggers think? A lot of them still don’t, but this year some of the fog between the Dems and the bloggers has lifted, and I know that some people on Dem payrolls really do read us. I credit Peter Daou for much of this development, and the organizational skills of Kos and Co. and the bloggers of MyDD, Swing State Project, and others were essential, also.
This didn’t just happen. If you go back to, say, 2002, the Left Blogosphere was not only critical of the Bush Administration and the Republicans. We lefties also badmouthed the Washington Dem establishment robustly. We wailed when, in October 2002, too many of them paid no attention when we hollered don’t vote for that bleeping war resolution! In 2003 we supported non-establishment candidates, notably Howard Dean and Wesley Clark, for the Democratic presidential nomination. Even though our guys lost, we got our virtual toe in the water. Mostly, we saw that the Dems were sorely in need of a major shakeup. We also realized that if we were going to become effective shakers, we couldn’t do it by marching in the streets with protest signs. What was needed was good, old-fashioned politicking — raising money and volunteers for Democratic candidates we thought would represent our point of view, as well as fighting the rhetorical fight here on the web.
Basically, we figured politicians would listen to us when they understood it was to their advantage to do so. Thus, leftie bloggers took the initiative and worked independently from the Dems to set up ActBlue and various GOTV projects.
The Right Blogosphere, on the other hand … well, check out this MyDD post by Matt Stoller, from February 2006. On the Right, it just ain’t happenin’, and the GOP can’t do it for the bloggers without running afoul of FEC and campaign finance law. (And as Matt says, the GOP sometimes needs tighter message control.)
If the Dems are starting to pay attention to bloggers, it isn’t because the Dems just took a mind to do so or are somehow less oblivious than Republicans. It’s because a lot of bloggers worked their butts off (some since 2002) to make it happen.
It might be that rightie bloggers will begin to organize and go down this same road. If they do, I wish them well. But a little introspection might be in order first.
More minor quibbles: Alabama Liberation Front continues,
They [leftie bloggers] developed an advertising network that enabled more bloggers to go full-time. They got Mark Warner to drop a huge chunk of cash on YearlyKos. And there was not a single significant Democratic candidate in 2006 who began a campaign without first hiring at least one blogger, and sometimes making payments to multiple bloggers.
I doubt that the Advertising Liberally network, of which I am a charter member, enabled any bloggers to go full-time who weren’t already full-time. Certainly it more than pays for bandwidth and the occasional new pair of shoes, but it’s not a living. And yes, Mark Warner threw a big party for us bloggers at YearlyKos, but my understanding is that YK (or DK, for that matter) could not accept money from him directly. Maybe some rightie bloggers are succumbing to the “grass is greener” syndrome, but I can tell you the grass ain’t all that green on this side of the fence, either.
Alabama continues,
Karl Rove’s top-down, manipulative, control-freak style — which he learned from Lee Atwater — is simply incompatible with the New Media regime. A more open, flexible and responsive approach is dictated by the very nature of the multi-source feedback system that the Information Age makes possible.
Exactly, and this is more or less what Joe Trippi figured out during the Howard Dean campaign, but most of the Dem establishment was (and still is) slow to catch on. Karl Rove is not the only control freak in Washington; the DNC and satellite organizations are just as bad, but without Rove’s relentless shrewdness. The only thing worse than a control freak is a control freak with his head up his ass. Bottom line, politicians in Washington of both parties and their overpaid consultants know all about waging mass media, top-down campaigns, but on the whole they haven’t figured out new media. They’re a bunch of old dogs who won’t learn new tricks.
And the moral is, if you want new tricks, you gotta do ’em yourself.
Under the Radar
Last week, as the mighty national MSM wagged its finger at Nancy Pelosi over the Murtha-Hoyer flap, another House leadership fight was being ignored. This was the fight between the Right Blogosphere and the Washington Republican establishment.
Oh, it wasn’t much of a fight. Rightie bloggers and other conservative activists put up their fists, and the establishment Republicans ignored them. But it reveals something about where the Right (and the Left) might be going.
Last week House Republicans kept John Boehner (Ohio) and Roy Blunt (Missouri) as their respective Leader and Whip, albeit changing from Majority to Minority in January. This was a rebuff of the bloggers, who championed Mike Pence (Indiana) and John Shadegg (Arizona). (For an explanation of the blogger position, see this article written before the House vote by Dick “The Other Dick” Morris.)
McQ at Q and O wrote,
The Arizona Republic pretty well expressed my feelings with their endorsement of Shadegg (who is, of course, a favorite son):
We’re going to learn very quickly, likely this week, whether a lick of sense has been pounded into the craniums of congressional Republicans following their midterm disaster last Tuesday….
…If House Republicans leave either of those gentlemen – Boehner or Blunt – in charge when they vote for new leaders later this week, they will be declaring themselves even more blithering than voters thought. And voters thought Republicans were pretty blithering this election cycle, if you hadn’t noticed.
A lot of times when you hear the coach of a losing team explain how he plans to get his team back on track, he says “we have to get back to basics”. Well that’s precisely what Republicans have to do. And that requires leadership which is actively committed to those basics and steering its members that way.
The results were even more lopsided than in the Hoyer-Burth contest. Boehner bettered Pence 168 to 27, and Blunt beat Shadegg 137 to 57. The Washington Post editorialized,
The results marked a setback for conservative activists who tried to wrest control of the party by arguing that it had lost its ideological moorings and that voters had signaled they wanted Republicans to renew the energetic, activist style that swept them to power in 1994. …
… Rather than retooling political concepts, GOP strategists say, they will focus on strategies that will promote their agenda of making tax cuts permanent, appointing conservatives to the federal bench, and making select spending cuts, while trying to foil many of the Democrats’ domestic proposals, to the extent that the Republicans’ new status allows.
Remember the GOP motto: It’s not what you do, but what you say, that counts.
While researching this development I found this intriguing FAQ by Dean Barnett at Townhall. It begins:
1) How could this have happened? The entire weight and heft of the right-wing blogosphere stood behind a campaign to change the House leadership and nothing happened. Kos holds a putz-fest in Vegas and virtually the complete Democratic establishment comes to kiss his ring. Is the right wing blogosphere only capable of getting congressional types to give us a few minutes of their time on conference calls?
The FAQ answer is “The right wing blogosphere has to deal with the facts. The politicians just aren’t that into us.” But this perception from the Right turns old leftie conventional wisdom on its head — we think they’re marching in lockstep with the GOP while we’re outsiders, crashing the gates of the Dem establishment. So which is it?
I think you can find part of the story in posts by Chris Bowers at MyDD. In fact, the titles of the posts in chronological order tell the story:
September 12, 2004: “Top-Down Right-Wing Blogosphere Growing Powerful.”
January 20, 2005: “Partisan Left-Wing Blogs Growing Far More Influential Than ‘Independent’ Right-Wing Blogs.”
June 12, 2005: “Aristocratic Right Wing Blogosphere Stagnating.”
March 21, 2006: “There Is No Right-Wing Blogosphere Anymore.”
Although the title of that last post may seem a tad premature, the point he makes is about the different natures of the Right and Left Blogosphere and the fact that the two halves of the blogosphere brain are not mirror images of each other.
In a nutshell — in the first post, Chris looked at traffic patterns on both sides of the blogosphere and explained why the Right was better at pushing that “one big story” and getting that story into the headlines than the Left. Back in the glory days of Rathergate, for example, we saw a story travel from an anonymous comment on Free Republic to national media in 12 hours. “The right-wing blogosphere has become integrated into the Mighty Wurlitzer,’ wrote Chris, “while we remain a loose confederation of outrage, analysis and action.”
In the second post, Chris noted that the righties were still better at getting and keeping the attention of news media than we were. But, under the radar, the Left Blogosphere was busy with other matters:
We raised well over a million dollars for Democratic candidates in the 2004 cycle whereas they did not even come close to 100K. We crushed Roemer’s candidacy for DNC chair and are on the verge of basically selecting the new DNC chair, whereas they said nothing about the RNC chair. We changed a law in Virginia, but I have never heard of them contacting lawmakers. We organized a challenge to the electoral vote certification, but I can’t remember the last time a Republican Senator did something on the urging of the right-wing netroots. We have significantly whipped our own party into line on Social Security, and there is nothing comparable on their side.
In the third post, Chris wrote about the growth of community on the Left Blogosphere and the lack thereof on the Right. On the Left, it’s much easier for new voices to join our discourse and introduce ideas that will be noticed throughout our side of the ‘sphere. The Right Blogosphere, however, is far more hierarchical, with a relatively small pool of über-bloggers dominating rightie web conversation.
And in the fourth and last post, Chris noted that those über-bloggers had mostly been absorbed into the conservative establishment.
Most major right-wing bloggers have now been incorporated into the established news media apparatus. Glenn Reynolds is a columnist for MSNBC. Andrew Sullivan is a columnist for Time. Michelle Malkin is a frequently published columnist in a number of offline outlets. And now, RedState co-founder Ben Ben Domenech has a regular column in the Washington Post.
We all remember that Ben Domenech didn’t last long in the WaPo position, for which he was colossally unsuited. Still, the fact that a 24-year-old pedestrian writer and college dropout was given such a position at all is wonderfully illustrative of how the Right is becoming a tad inbred; for more on this see DHinMI at Kos.
The many ties between conservative institutions (including media, think tanks, and the Republican Party) and the Right Blogosphere were documented by Garance Franke-Ruta in The American Prospect; see “Blogged Down” from the April 2005 issue. Please do take a look at this, because I don’t want to repeat it all here but it makes an important point about how the conservative establishment has been using the Right Blogosphere all along. There is little parallel with the Left Blogosphere. While some of us have received occasional media attention and gigs with campaigns after we got into blogging, only a handful of people on my blogroll had media exposure or establishment connections before blogging. Of course, what little progressive/liberal media-think tank infrastructure exists is no match for the Right’s.
And then go read (or re-read) Peter Daou’s original “Triangle” essay from September 2005. “[B]log power on both the right and left is a function of the relationship of the netroots to the media and the political establishment,” Peter wrote. Bloggers become effective at pushing a story or addressing an issue when blogs, media, and the political establishment form a power triangle and work together to promote that story or address that issue. And, until recently, the Right was a whole lot better at that than we were. Even before the political blogosphere took off, the establishment Right was incorporating the web into the triangle; think Drudge and the blue dress.
Chris continues,
The right wing tends not to build independent online communities, using their existing offline communities to generate web sites that reinforce their politics and their ideology.
Their web presence is nurtured by institutions and is part of the conservative, right-wing media machine. The Drudge Report, for instance, is one of the largest conservative sites and frequently receives its information from Republican operatives.
Most right-wing blogs reiterate talking points that are generated from inside formal conservative institutions; conversations center on feeling victimized for being right-wing, attacking and hating progressives, and attacking and hating the media….
… I feel it has developed to such a degree that the right-wing blogosphere itself has been all but annihilated … there is almost nothing in the way of an independent right-wing blogosphere operating outside of existing, established news media outlets. The days of the rise of Free Republic have long passed.
By “annihilated” Chris isn’t saying there is no Right Blogosphere, he’s saying there is no community of activist rightie bloggers independent from the conservative establishment that can effectively challenge the establishment. And that takes us back to Dean Barnett’s FAQ.
2) But how come the Democrats are so into the blogosphere and the Republicans aren’t? How come we don’t generate fear and respect like the Kosfather?
Because all we do is opine, and often in an annoyingly independent way. While all of us root for the Republican Party, we’re also pretty expressive when members of the party let us down. We might carry a little water, but as a group, I bet the Republican establishment thought of us as more as a pain in the neck than an asset during the last campaign season. I know I won’t be on George Allen’s Christmas card list.
3) And Kos is different?
Yes. Although he rips Democrats when he’s of a mind to do so, he also brings something else to the party. He brings volunteers and money and buzz. Although my modem might well explode as I type these words, Jon Tester would not be a senator starting in January if it weren’t for the Daily Kos. Same for Jim Webb. He never would have made it out of the primary.
It’s true that, all along, plenty of rightie bloggers have bucked Washington establishment opinion. Most of them hate President Bush’s immigration plans. Many have complained about Congress’s out-of-control spending. But they’ve done very little [*] counter-organizing or activism. They complain, and the establishment ignores them.
[*] One of the few independent rightie blog initiatives that has generated some heat is the Porkbuster project founded by NZ Bear and Glenn Reynolds.
Leftie bloggers on the other hand, began as outsiders, and we have been fighting our way in. A couple of years ago few in the Democratic Party gave us the time of day. Now we’re a force, although how much of a force is a matter of opinion. But the realization that it’s not wise to ignore the bloggers is slowly dawning in some inside-the-beltway Democratic heads.
Dean Barnett wrote of rightie blogs, “I bet the Republican establishment thought of us as more as a pain in the neck than an asset during the last campaign season.” Possibly less of a pain in the neck than dead weight. The Right Blogosphere did plenty of water-carrying for the GOP in the 2004 campaign. They were practically the right arm of the Swift Boaters, for example. Last month they worked mightily to inflate John Kerry’s flubbed joke into a substantial issue, and certainly they helped make it a bigger deal than it deserved to be. (Too bad for them that John Kerry wasn’t running; he would have lost again.) But they couldn’t sustain a power triangle strong enough to hold back the blue wave. This is not the fault of rightie bloggers alone, of course, but rather is symptomatic of a systemic weakening of the entire Right versus a rising tide of discontent across the land.
On the other hand, until recently most of the Democratic establishment did think we leftie bloggers were a pain in the neck, and some of it still does, and we leftie bloggers regard much of the Democratic establishment in the same light. This is an alliance born more of pragmatism than loyalty, although perhaps we’ll get chummier as we get to know each other.
The Right Blogosphere from the beginning was seamlessly integrated into the establishment Right’s message machine, whether the bloggers realized it or not. As long as rightie bloggers can be counted on to support the message or swift-boat attack du jour, the establishment can tolerate (and ignore) their grumblings about Roy Blunt as majority whip. It’s not their independence from the GOP but their lack thereof that makes them ignorable.
On the other hand, the Left Blogosphere did not sit around and wait for direction from the Dems, but worked independently from the Dems to become activists and organizers and influencers in our own right. The point of this is not to be tools of the Democratic Party, which overall has displeased us mightily in recent years. The point is to make the party a better tool for effecting a progressive agenda. And this is just part of a larger effort to heal America’s sick political culture. This effort has only just begun, and we’ve got a long way to go. But we’ve made a good beginning.
The challenge for us going forward is to work more effectively with the Dems without being absorbed into the existing Democratic Party establishment. The Right Blogosphere faces a different challenge, but that’s something they’ll have to figure out for themselves.