Posted on 08/02/2008 10:05:18 PM PDT by stan_sipple
The US should avoid suggesting that the withdrawal of troops from Iraq will be followed by a surge of troops in Afghanistan, according to Jim Webb, senator for Virginia. Ruling himself out as a possible running mate for Barack Obama, Mr Webb’s comments come as an implied criticism of the Democratic party’s orthodoxy on Iraq and Afghanistan – including Mr Obama’s own stance. "The dynamic is that terrorism works the seams of international law. We can’t create stable societies in places like Afghanistan;that can’t be our objective.”Mr Webb’s background as a “Reagan Democrat” – the group of working-class Democratic supporters who switched to the Republicans in the aftermath of the Vietnam war gives him the most clout with his Democratic colleagues. The senator believes that the conservative revolution that was fuelled by the switch of voters from his own Scots-Irish background to the Republicans in the 1970s and 1980s is drawing to a close. He said that the Democrats now had a “historic opportunity” to win back those voters and change the contours of American politics. “if you take this bellwether [Scots-Irish working class] group, this is a test to see whether it can come back to its natural populist roots in the Democratic party and if you do that you will have a redefinition of the two parties,” he said. As he stated in his book Born Fighting, which argues that the Scots-Irish Protestants are the most important and overlooked ethnic group in the US, Mr Webb rejects the view that they are racially motivated. “The story of the American south was never white against black. It was always a small minority of whites setting whites against blacks, and if those two cultures can get together at the same place on the table they can remake American politics.”
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
Stan, you could perhaps give a synopsis covering the rest of the article, seeing as FT won’t allow the rest of the article to be read.
What is Jim Webb’s solution?
Webb wants to group Americans into ethnic blocks to encourage group-think over idealogy.
My Scots-Irish ancestors were solidly Republicans from the Civil War era onward.
the scots-irish populism idea is intriguing but it’s too simplistic.
reagan democrats changed because of the failure of social-liberalism of 50-80 years.
but reaganism was both a return to the u.s. constitution and a cyclic response to social-liberalism.
webb’s playing the left’s “identity politics” and using white scots-irish as a pawn.
“Given that Mr Obama is African-American, Mr Webb’s thesis is about to receive the ultimate test. Mr Webb says that the Democrats alienated working-class voters by following the dictates of “special interest groups”...In order to win back states such as Virginia for the Democrats in November and take the White House, Mr Obama will need to show a cultural affinity with them, says Mr Webb. “
Webb is also a former Republican. He was a Reagan appointee and endorsed George Allen in 2000.
Webb wrote good pro-military articles, but I think he tends to throw temper tantrums when he doesnt get his way. I think his going over to the Obamacrats represents this.
“My Scots-Irish ancestors were solidly Republicans from the Civil War era onward.”
I take it you also read Jim Webb’s book Born Fighting? Being Scots-Irish myself with ancestors from the south, it was a must read. I read the whole book before finding out he is now a Democrat. It was a shock. This guys really needs to rediscover his own roots and jump back into the fold.
“I take it you also read Jim Webb’s book Born Fighting? Being Scots-Irish myself with ancestors from the south, it was a must read. I read the whole book before finding out he is now a Democrat. It was a shock. This guys really needs to rediscover his own roots and jump back into the fold.”
I know quite a bit about the “Scots-Irish,” however the migration of my ancestors does not follow the better known southern path.
Mine went in 1718 from Londonderry to Boston, then later to NH, Maine, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick.
In 1856 they went to Minnesota. They were abolitionists, fought for the blue, were Republicans from the beginning.
In 1928 my mother, her parents and her grandparents drove from Minnesota to California, to a walnut ranch (Whittier). My mother’s maiden (scots gaelic) name is derived from a village in Ayreshire, Scotland.
On my mother’s other family side they, too, were abolitionists from mid-New York state. So I don’t have much in my background in common with the southern democrats, if that is your idea of “scots-irish.”
In recent elections, my mother re-registered independent, because she rebels at the takeover of the GOP by the religious right.
I suppose all this makes us more like fiscal conservatives, social moderates. Close to Barry Goldwater, and far from Huckabee.
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