Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Republican Fractures
B
Ken Lay has died unexpectedly of a heart attack.
Limbaugh will not face charges for his Viagra affair. Since when do people with a history of prescription drug violations on probation get let off with a warning when they are found with another bottle of prescription drugs that doesn’t belong to them?
North Korea test fired several missiles yesterday. The long-range missile they fired failed after 42 seconds of flight.
Grover Norquist accused McCain’s investigation into its relationship with Jack Abramoff of being tainted by McCain’s alleged personal animus towards Norquist. Norquist is alleging that McCain hates him because Norquist helped defeat McCain in the South Carolina primary in 2000. McCain’s camp had some choice words for Norquist: “The one thing I admire about Grover is how hard he works to make himself relevant. But he’s not relevant. He never has been and never will be. He should go pick on some fourth-graders,” sneered John Weaver, who directed McCain’s 2000 campaign.
Norquist’s ties to Abramoff and ATR (the organization that funneled some of Abramoff’s funds) are well documented, and I don’t think McCain could be justly accused of some anti-Norquist witch-hunt. But the arrogance of McCain’s people, including his Chief of Staff Salter, is something else that’s well documented. It reflects McCain’s own colossal arrogance, which I have covered before. Weaver should choose his words more accurately: Norquist is very influential, as the cited article describes.
George Lakoff has an excellent article over at alternet. He maintains that Bush hasn’t been “incompetent” but has actually been very successful at advancing a conservative agenda.
He has an excellent point, and I appreciate his efforts to remind people that Bush’s agenda is standard conservativism, not some accidental plan. He maintains that illustrations of Bush’s incompetence, like the Katrina disaster, are simply manifestations of the conservative belief that people should not rely on government relief for anything. He points to Bush’s success advancing his agenda through Congress as proof of his effectiveness.
I agree, to a certain extent. Bush was effective at getting elected twice (through lies and posturing, of course). Bush’s agenda was powerfully advanced by a Congress dominated by republicans; I think that had less to do with Bush’s amazing leadership powers and more to do with the incredible internal cohesiveness of the Republican Party that has been building for years.
Bush has been a failure, to a large extent, with his public relations. Lakoff can’t argue that a president who hasn’t seen the sunny side of 50% in a year and a half hasn’t had some kind of significant failure. Neither Reagan nor Clinton was ever this unpopular for this long. In fact, even his father didn’t spend this much time below 50%. In fact, no modern president ever has.
Reagan’s policies were nearly identical to Bush’s, but Reagan was far more effective at knowing when to make small concessions to his base or the opposition. This president has proven incapable of even small concessions to his own base when his corporate masters have a different idea: witness the Dubai Ports deal. Reagan didn’t nominate his unqualified former personal attorney to be a Supreme Court Justice, irritating his base that had campaigned for years to get a genuine conservative on the Supreme Court with a long track record.
Lakoff’s only answer to this seems to be that this kind of incompetence is considered competence in the eyes of conservatives, but I beg to differ. No demented branch of conservativism values leaders that become unpopular and engender popular backlash against them and their policies.
When conservatives follow unpopular polices that are conservative doctrine they seek to disguise those policies. Reagan’s Central American policy was his least popular, but his administration disguised it by lying about it constantly. They kept it low-key by not committing American troops but instead by sending massive military aid.
Most of Lakoff’s thesis is absolutely true, however. This president’s policies are standard conservative policies, and their consequences are not the result of “incompetence” but of the inevitable result of those policies. Disputing government’s right and power to help Americans will lead to disasters like Katrina, where people die who might otherwise have been saved. Believing in America’s supremacy over international law will lead to America being regarding as a threat to world peace, ostracized by its former allies. Believing in the supremacy of the Executive Branch (at least, when occupied by a conservative) will lead to Constitutional clashes with Congress and the Supreme Court and lawlessness in the highest reaches of government.
Pursuing a rampant and belligerent foreign policy will lead to terrible overreaches, as in Iraq. Disregarding science (when it suits your purposes) will lead to more global warming. Believing that corporations should operate with minimal oversight will lead to massive pollution, accounting scandals, and corporate abuses. These are not accidents.
More importantly, when an entire political party decides that it is OK to sell its very ideology to corporate America it is unlikely to attract idealistic or honest people. The Abramoff scandal is the biggest congressional bribery scandal in generations, maybe in history. Three republican leaders in the last seven years were forced to resign their leadership positions in Congress. How realistic is it to expect republican congresspeople to stay true to fiscal conservativism or any other traditionally conservative ideal when their organization approves rampant bribery?
This Congress and this president are in the slow process of being repudiated. Bush’s approval ratings have already broken modern records: he has set an all time record for lowest job approval ratings among independents and members of the opposite party. If current trends continue until the end of his term he will have spent more time below 50% than any president since Truman and more consecutive months below 50% than any president in the history of polling. This president’s approval ratings have been locked in a steady descent since the start of hostilities in the Iraq War over three years ago. I don’t see any miraculous recovery in the making. No president has ever endured a descent like this and recovered to see the better side of 50%. Congress’s approval ratings are similarly bad and bode ill for the incumbents.
I am sure future republicans will try and disavow this president and this congress and say they weren’t real republicans. Lakoff is wise to anticipate this argument.
Ken Lay has died unexpectedly of a heart attack.
Limbaugh will not face charges for his Viagra affair. Since when do people with a history of prescription drug violations on probation get let off with a warning when they are found with another bottle of prescription drugs that doesn’t belong to them?
North Korea test fired several missiles yesterday. The long-range missile they fired failed after 42 seconds of flight.
Grover Norquist accused McCain’s investigation into its relationship with Jack Abramoff of being tainted by McCain’s alleged personal animus towards Norquist. Norquist is alleging that McCain hates him because Norquist helped defeat McCain in the South Carolina primary in 2000. McCain’s camp had some choice words for Norquist: “The one thing I admire about Grover is how hard he works to make himself relevant. But he’s not relevant. He never has been and never will be. He should go pick on some fourth-graders,” sneered John Weaver, who directed McCain’s 2000 campaign.
Norquist’s ties to Abramoff and ATR (the organization that funneled some of Abramoff’s funds) are well documented, and I don’t think McCain could be justly accused of some anti-Norquist witch-hunt. But the arrogance of McCain’s people, including his Chief of Staff Salter, is something else that’s well documented. It reflects McCain’s own colossal arrogance, which I have covered before. Weaver should choose his words more accurately: Norquist is very influential, as the cited article describes.
George Lakoff has an excellent article over at alternet. He maintains that Bush hasn’t been “incompetent” but has actually been very successful at advancing a conservative agenda.
He has an excellent point, and I appreciate his efforts to remind people that Bush’s agenda is standard conservativism, not some accidental plan. He maintains that illustrations of Bush’s incompetence, like the Katrina disaster, are simply manifestations of the conservative belief that people should not rely on government relief for anything. He points to Bush’s success advancing his agenda through Congress as proof of his effectiveness.
I agree, to a certain extent. Bush was effective at getting elected twice (through lies and posturing, of course). Bush’s agenda was powerfully advanced by a Congress dominated by republicans; I think that had less to do with Bush’s amazing leadership powers and more to do with the incredible internal cohesiveness of the Republican Party that has been building for years.
Bush has been a failure, to a large extent, with his public relations. Lakoff can’t argue that a president who hasn’t seen the sunny side of 50% in a year and a half hasn’t had some kind of significant failure. Neither Reagan nor Clinton was ever this unpopular for this long. In fact, even his father didn’t spend this much time below 50%. In fact, no modern president ever has.
Reagan’s policies were nearly identical to Bush’s, but Reagan was far more effective at knowing when to make small concessions to his base or the opposition. This president has proven incapable of even small concessions to his own base when his corporate masters have a different idea: witness the Dubai Ports deal. Reagan didn’t nominate his unqualified former personal attorney to be a Supreme Court Justice, irritating his base that had campaigned for years to get a genuine conservative on the Supreme Court with a long track record.
Lakoff’s only answer to this seems to be that this kind of incompetence is considered competence in the eyes of conservatives, but I beg to differ. No demented branch of conservativism values leaders that become unpopular and engender popular backlash against them and their policies.
When conservatives follow unpopular polices that are conservative doctrine they seek to disguise those policies. Reagan’s Central American policy was his least popular, but his administration disguised it by lying about it constantly. They kept it low-key by not committing American troops but instead by sending massive military aid.
Most of Lakoff’s thesis is absolutely true, however. This president’s policies are standard conservative policies, and their consequences are not the result of “incompetence” but of the inevitable result of those policies. Disputing government’s right and power to help Americans will lead to disasters like Katrina, where people die who might otherwise have been saved. Believing in America’s supremacy over international law will lead to America being regarding as a threat to world peace, ostracized by its former allies. Believing in the supremacy of the Executive Branch (at least, when occupied by a conservative) will lead to Constitutional clashes with Congress and the Supreme Court and lawlessness in the highest reaches of government.
Pursuing a rampant and belligerent foreign policy will lead to terrible overreaches, as in Iraq. Disregarding science (when it suits your purposes) will lead to more global warming. Believing that corporations should operate with minimal oversight will lead to massive pollution, accounting scandals, and corporate abuses. These are not accidents.
More importantly, when an entire political party decides that it is OK to sell its very ideology to corporate America it is unlikely to attract idealistic or honest people. The Abramoff scandal is the biggest congressional bribery scandal in generations, maybe in history. Three republican leaders in the last seven years were forced to resign their leadership positions in Congress. How realistic is it to expect republican congresspeople to stay true to fiscal conservativism or any other traditionally conservative ideal when their organization approves rampant bribery?
This Congress and this president are in the slow process of being repudiated. Bush’s approval ratings have already broken modern records: he has set an all time record for lowest job approval ratings among independents and members of the opposite party. If current trends continue until the end of his term he will have spent more time below 50% than any president since Truman and more consecutive months below 50% than any president in the history of polling. This president’s approval ratings have been locked in a steady descent since the start of hostilities in the Iraq War over three years ago. I don’t see any miraculous recovery in the making. No president has ever endured a descent like this and recovered to see the better side of 50%. Congress’s approval ratings are similarly bad and bode ill for the incumbents.
I am sure future republicans will try and disavow this president and this congress and say they weren’t real republicans. Lakoff is wise to anticipate this argument.
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 6:20 PM 
