Posted on 09/17/2006 6:13:15 AM PDT by AZRepublican
In this autumn of their discontent, Republicans tremble as November nears. But now comes yet another book by a gloomy liberal anticipating permanent Republican dominance. Thomas B. Edsall of the New Republic, in Building Red America: The New Conservative Coalition and the Drive for Permanent Power, argues that inexorable social forces, augmented by the conservatives' superior reservoirs of anger, ruthlessness and cynicism, favor Republicans, ''the party of the socially and economically dominant.''
The parties are almost at numerical parity, but Edsall, who until recently was a Washington Post political reporter, says Republicans rep- resent people ''more broadly skilled in economic combat'' and ''more accustomed to the rigors of the market.'' Hence Republicans can maintain ''a thin but durable margin of victory.''
''The GOP,'' Edsall laments, ''has achieved a gradual erosion of the popular consensus behind the major progressive and social-egalitarian movements of the 20th century.'' But what actually ''achieved'' that? Edsall says the principal Republican objective has been to break ''the trust . . . between the government and millions of its less advantaged citizens.'' But he acknowledges that Republicans have been helped ''inestimably'' by ''the daily inefficiencies of government'': ''The monopoly nature of government guarantees that the public services will often lag in quality behind those delivered in the competitive private sector.'' Hence ''the declining credibility of non-market solutions to economic problems'' and the demoralization of ''backers of a redistributive agenda.''
If Edsall is symptomatic, liberalism is lost in a time warp, thinking in antiquated categories. Edsall approvingly quotes a Democratic activist's opinion that there are twice as many angry conservatives as there are angry liberals: ''Liberals by their very nature don't get as angry as conservatives do.'' Edsall, who evidently has not noticed the vitriol of the liberal blogosphere, is so blinded by his own anger he misperceives Republican realities.
The GOP, he says, courts whites ''whose interests are overwhelmingly focused on tempering, if not altogether rolling back, the civil rights movement.'' Please. Who favors this?
If Edsall really thinks Republicans are marching efficiently in lock step, he has missed bitter intraparty arguments about spending, immigration and nation-building. Edsall says the conservative agenda is ''to dismantle the welfare state.'' Oh? With a prescription drug entitlement that is the largest expansion of the welfare state since enactment of Medicare in 1965? With a 38 percent increase in discretionary domestic spending unrelated to homeland security -- including a 135 percent increase in the Education Department's budget -- since 2001?
When Edsall says middle- and working-class cultural conservatives vote for Republicans who then use their power ''for noncultural objectives,'' he is voicing a familiar liberal lament: All would be well if voters would vote based on important issues -- material, economic concerns; their wallets -- rather than unimportant ones such as abortion, the definition of marriage, the coarsening of the culture and other moral anxieties.
Edsall notes that one-third of American children -- and almost 70 percent of African-American children -- are born to unmarried mothers. Then, in an astonishing passage about this phenomenon, which is the cause of most social pathologies, from crime to schools that cannot teach, he explains how Americans differ concerning what he calls ''freedom from the need to maintain the marital or procreative bond.''
''To social conservatives,'' he writes, ''these developments have signaled an irretrievable and tragic loss. Their reaction has fueled, on the right, a powerful traditionalist movement and a groundswell of support for the Republican Party. To modernists, these developments constitute, at worst, the unfortunate costs of progress, and, at best -- and this is very much the view on the political left as well as of Democratic Party loyalists -- they constitute a triumph over unconscionable obstacles to the liberation and self-realization of much of the human race.''
Looking for the real reason for the rise of ''Red America''? Read that paragraph again.
Is that a joke or what?
This is what 70% out of wedlock births represents? Lovely theory. In practice, I doubt these moms feel liberated.
The are so moronic, they even defining dumbass down.
An extended whine by a supposedly unbiased political scientist, seeking to explain the obvious, that government is corrupt and inefficient, that blacks have been dissed repeatedly by the party that purports to help them, and that the GOP knows how to GOTV.
Obviously, proofreading is not a strong subject for me!
African-Americans are born out of wedlock because they 'differ from the need to have marital bonds.'???? What a bunch of horse puckey.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
The GOP, he says, courts whites ''whose interests are overwhelmingly focused on tempering, if not altogether rolling back, the civil rights movement.''
Dammit! He found me out.
I can't wait to 'git me' a couple House Slaves and a Lawn Jockey -- a LIVE one.
(^%$% *#@* STOO-PID™ moonbats)
I spent the last eight years living in a community of cradle democrats who refuse to vote. The democrats have made some fatal compromises between their ideals and their appetite for power. This has produced cynicism. They need to clean up their own acts internally and be less focused on evil Republicans. In particular, they need to sever their ties with organized crime and democratize machine politics. They also need a way to resolve conflicts between program goals and patronage, especially so that schools return to teaching children. Instead, all they do is refine propaganda techniques.
However, in saying that "conservatives" (I myself am not "conservative") have "superior reservoirs of anger, ruthlessness and cynicism" he could not be further from the beam.
No one could match the U.S. Left, including its Propaganda Machine (the "mainstream newsmedia") and its Political Machine (the Democrat Party), in anger, ruthlessness or cynicism--or sheer mendacity and mass delusion.
Yes of course, this explains why Democrats are three times more likely to pick up and read a tabloid at the check-out counter than a Republican,
I don't know anything about Edsall (I don't even know who he is), but the entire Left is blinded by its own anger, mendacity, and delusion. It's not merely the blogosphere. The entire Left lives in a paradigm of mass delusion, unwilling and evidently incapable of confronting reality.
This is why the Left cannot gain the trust of the American people.
The American people can not and will not entrust the United States--including U.S. national security--to a bunch of delusional fools--and certainly not in dangerous times such as these.
It's not the Republicans or the "conservatives" or anyone else that has destroyed any trust the American people may have had in the Left. It's the Left itself!
Leftists' refusal to comprehend and acknowledge this is yet one more example of how delusional and out of touch with reality they are.
The power of any party is in its policies. It is the people who choose right from wrong. The libs are wrong, and honest, thinking people recognize this.
The GOP, he says, courts whites ''whose interests are overwhelmingly focused on tempering, if not altogether rolling back, the civil rights movement.'' Please. Who favors this?Nobody.
The American people are relieved that the horrors of institutionalized racism have finally been overcome in the United States, even though there is far yet to go in removing de facto racism from American society, and they have no intention of allowing the U.S.A. to sink back into such darkness, injustice, cruelty, inhumanity, etc.
The American people are thankful that the promise of the American Dream--liberty, equality, and prosperity for all people--took giant strides in its ultimate fulfillment through the Civil Rights Revolution of the 1960's and '70's.
It was the Republican Congress that passed the civil rights legislation that finally ended institutionalized racism.
It was the Republican Party--founded as the anti-slavey party, in contrast to the pro-slavery Democrat Party--that ended slavery.
The Democrat Party was not only the pro-slavery party, it is the party of Jim Crow and institutionalized the Jim Crow laws, and, if I'm not mistaken, the Democrat Senate Majority Leader TODAY is a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
Their ideals are their appetite for power.
The Democrat Precinct Captain was treated like a goddess - or maybe more aptly - a Soviet Commissar. People lived in fear of offending her.
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