Begun, These Pundit Wars Have Not
I think Ross Douthat is right about this and the much-hyped conservative infighting has actually been extremely tame. I think he’s further correct to say that this is probably a bad thing for the movement. Sometimes it’s helpful to have a good intra-party fight. It doesn’t need to be a fight to the death, but I think something like the Iraq hawk/dove fights of the past several years had a useful impact on progressive politics. The issue was never “resolved” as such and people on both sides of the divide are still in the coalition. But the balance of power was renegotiated, some key players switched sides, and ultimately a standard-bearer with a different kind of record rose to the fore.
I was about to type that those kind of disputes are a sign of strength rather than weakness, but I’m not sure that’s quite right. Rather, the point is just that it’s a helpful exercise that ultimate serves to clarify things and give different elements a chance to rise in prominence rather than just endlessly being stuck with the same old thing. Indeed, I think one problem with Ross’s Grand New Party is that it seemed to lack the vividly drawn intra-party villains that a good intra-party fight requires.
32 Responses to “Begun, These Pundit Wars Have Not”
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November 11th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
1) David Brooks in today’s NY Times notes that the Traditionalists (Southern, etc) hold all the cards, will drown the Reformists at birth, and will lead the Republican Party into defeats for the next several elections or so.
2) I myself think the Republican Party will evolve according to the opportunities that Obama gives them. I’m already getting emails from the NRA noting that Obama plans to take our Assault Rifles away. So I think the Republicans will evolve in an opportunistic way — they will shape-shift into whatever gives them the most political advantage.
3) Obama’s early favorable ratings will evaporate like snow in the desert as the economy worsen. George W Bush once had approval ratings of almost 90? percent — where did those go?
4) So I think it is very important for Obama to ignore factions within the Democratic Party pushing their agendas and focus on the fights he can win. Focus more on helping the 95 percent of the population so badly screwed by the Bush era.
5) Now that Obama has won, he –or a surrogate –really, REALLY need to kill off the Republican leadership –both in and out of government. By reminding people OVER and OVER that they are paying for the acts of Bush.
For example, when Republicans complain about tax increases on the rich, point out that we are merely asking the rich to pay off the $10 Trillion in debt incurred by THEIR Republican Presidents — Ronald Reagan, George H Bush, George W Bush.
NOTE that the Republicans are being two-faced liars.
When the Republicans complain about “socialist” measures to help the Middle Class, SLAM them hard by pointing out that you are just adjusting for the deeply unfair “Socialism for the Rich” promoted by the Republicans under George W Bush.
Like the $1.5 Trillion to bail out Wall Street. NOTE how the Republicans are being two-faced liars and are trying to mislead the country.
6) Do what’s right for the country , defend it strongly, and knock the living shit out of the Republicans whenever they try to oppose us. If they are intimidated and on the offensive , they won’t have time to think up mischief.
November 11th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
“Sometimes it’s helpful to have a good intra-party fight. It doesn’t need to be a fight to the death, but I think something like the Iraq hawk/dove fights of the past several years had a useful impact on progressive politics.”
You’re forgetting that today’s conservatives are, by and large, authoritarian. Those sort of folk don’t engage in civil disagreements or sprited argument. You either agree with an authoritarian or it’s full out, thermonuclear, genocidal war. That’s why Douthat didn’t specify intra-party villains, because he knows doing so would have produced a swift, vicious and all encompassing backlash and created grudges that people would have carried against him for years.
If conservatives could handle disputes in a calm and reasonable manner, they wouldn’t have turned thoroughly conservative John McCain into their favorite whipping boy for daring to defeat the Annointed One in the 2000 New Hampshire primary.
Mike
November 11th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Let me add that over on Kos, there was a thing where Harold Ickes grudginly gave Howard Dean credit for being right about the 50 state strategy. It was a bit of a backhanded admission, but Ickes did essentially admit that he had been wrong and Dean right. The Limbaugh/Hannity wing of conservatism is incapable of anything like that.
Mike
November 11th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
1) We also need to destroy several high-profile Southern preachers who, in my opinion, are corrupt con-artists using religion to cover their political operations.
2) I sure a Democratic politican would like it if his income was tax free, if he could grab a monopoly slice of the public airwaves, if his donors could take tax deductions for what they give, if their donations could be made anonymously by dropping an envelop into a collection plate, and if people came every Sunday to listen to him make deceitful and misleading claims about the opposition.
AND if his opposition was unable to criticize any of the above lest they be accused of violating the taboo against attacking “religion”.
3) However, Democratic politicans DO NOT have the above privileges — and I don’t see why Rev Hagee, Pat Robertson, or James Dobson should have them either.
November 11th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
I’m a big Darth Maul fan. Can’t I send him to the Conservative side to stir things up? Darth Don the libertarian Democrat
November 11th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Whatever happened to these two conventional wisdoms about Democrats and Republicans?
1. Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line
2. Democrats hunt for heretics, Republicans welcome converts
November 11th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Fight, monkeys, fight!
Beyond that, I’ll just second everything Don wrote and add that it’s too soon for the infighting really to begin. It’ll happen alright. I’m icing up some beer in anticipation.
November 11th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
However, most of the faults of the Republicans lie not just with the Republicans but with we Democrats. Because we lack a spine.
I know of no other democracies where scum like Rush Limbaugh , Bill O’Reilly, and Ann Coulter could broadcast their bullshit for years without EVER being challenged , discredited, and driven into the wilderness.
I know of no other democracies where people like Hagee, Robertson, and Dobson could so abuse the teachings of Christ — and be so confident that no other religious or political leaders would challenge them.
The thing that bothers me –especially in light of the UNQUESTIONED $1.5 Trillion bailout of Wall Street — is that I’m beginning to think that Democratic leaders don’t criticize the Republicans because they are all working for the same Billionaires.
Billionaires who dissipate popular anger and unrest over how Republicans have screwed us on behalf of rich interests by giving us the “illusion of Revolution”, with displacement of Republicans by Democrats — in order to prevent a real revolution from getting off the ground.
Knowing that Democrats will act on behalf of rich interests just as strongly as have the Republicans.
November 11th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Correction: I should have said “Knowing that SOME Democrats will act on behalf of rich interests just as strongly as have the Republicans.”
I think we know who the SOME Democrats are.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
In the same column, David Brooks explains why Reformist Ross Douthat should enjoy that pair of testicles –because he soon won’t have them.
From http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/opinion/11brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin
“Only one thing is for sure: In the near term, the Traditionalists are going to win the fight for supremacy in the G.O.P….
… this embattled-movement mythology provides a rational for crushing dissent, purging deviationists and enforcing doctrinal purity. It has allowed the old leaders to define who is a true conservative and who is not. It has enabled them to maintain control of (an ever more rigid) movement.”
November 11th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
I think it’s more accurate to say that the infighting among movement conservatives has been so entirely one-sided that it just turned into a purge. The movement purists have simply closed ranks and expelled the reform-minded conservatives from their club. No circular firing squad, no show trials, just bullets to the back of a few heads. Propaganda against the liberal enemy continues unabated.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
the Iraq hawk/dove fights of the past several years had a useful impact on progressive politics. The issue was never “resolved” as such … But the balance of power was renegotiated, some key players switched sides, and ultimately a standard-bearer with a different kind of record rose to the fore.
You’re describing a cosmetic change, not a major ideological shift. You yourself have walked back your quite correct, quite accurate criticisms of the Surge in Iraq, and have recently signaled that you’re going to stop paying as much attention to foreign policy – which in recent years you’d been an increasingly dovish voice on – as our “different kind of standard-bearer” looks increasingly hawkish on Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia, and even Iran. What, exactly, did the dove side win in this exchange?
November 11th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
I think all the talk about which faction of the party or movement is bad is really wrong. It should be about which *candidates* or kinds of candidates are bad or good. A lot of conservatives will say Bush was bad. Why? “Because he wasn’t conservative enough!” Bzzz. Wrong. But that’s the kind of discussion they should and probably will have.
Any good GOP candidate in the future will have some relationship to current ideological factions in the party. None of these factions can or will be “dumped” any time soon because they’ll probably all be there for the GOP. “Conservatism” is not going to change soon, and when and if it does it won’t change because some elites had a summit and decided it should change. So the real question is what kind of candidate is going to get non-Republicans to vote for the GOP ticket and other GOP candidates.
I also hope conservatives stop saying the coming fights will be about “ideas”. They’re not about ideas; they’re about how to win.
November 11th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
When they start dropping dimes, and spilling the beans to get a lighter sentence, it will be most enjoyable. Cannibals.
November 11th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Intra-party fights don’t need to be to the death, but I’d like to see some consequences for being wrong. I just saw Michael O’Hanlon on MSNBC and couldn’t be bothered to turn up the volume. While he doesn’t belong in prison, he deserves to be ignored.
November 11th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Democrats lost narrowly in 2004 and thought they were doomed forever. They even thought 2002 was a Republican landslide, though Republicans gained 8 seats in the house and 2 in the senate. Republicans have lost two elections in a row by much larger margins, and they still think this is a center-right nation. They need to panic before they start infighting, and I don’t know what that will take.
November 11th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
The End of the White Man’s Way militias v. the social Darwinist elites? And the moderates? Girly-men not worth speaking of. Sarah Palin is an honorable woman, McCain a dishonorable loser? “Yeah I know our mistakes have put the nation 5 trill in hock, but we must to stop the Democrats from being big spenders and enacting everything Obama ran his campaign on.” “Commie, Nazi, Rahm Emanuel hard noses.”
But don’t they all look like McCain–soap opera divas out to suspend their campaign to look good and out noise the apparent ditch they’ve driven us into. Oh and then there’s George Bush was not a conservative. Gotta love that one–the whole administration and everything they cheerlead for to the point of shoving it down the country’s throat for 8 years–not conservative. Conservative when it’s Mission Accomplished, I guess. I think they are considering listening to hip hop.
November 11th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Dems have won the popular vote in 4 of the last 5 presidential elections. Center-right?
November 11th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
Maybe it’s time for the left to stop obsessing about the conservative movement. Let them stew and go down with Romney in 2012. It would be more productive to think about how to get Susan Collins to vote the right way on cloture or how to keep the Blue Dogs in the fold and ensuring that the Republican Presidential/Congressional democrats voters don’t desert the Dems in 2010.
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