Amen.
Posted on 06/08/2008 6:37:34 AM PDT by vietvet67
The first boss I ever had, in 1968, was a Nixon-hater. A Democrat from upstate New York, he kept a coffee mug emblazoned with a Nixon $3 bill, and he could recite the litany of Nixon's red-baiting campaigns. First there was Jerry Voorhees in 1946, then there was Alger Hiss and the pumpkin papers. Then there was Helen Gahagan Douglas in 1950. You can imagine that I was surprised when Nixon won the presidency that November.
We learned later that Richard Nixon's victory over Hubert Humphrey in 1968 was the first victory of Nixon's "southern strategy," a deliberate attempt to woo Southern Democrats in the years after the passage of the landmark civil rights acts of the mid 1960s. "States rights" and "law and order" were racist code words calculated to appeal to the racist hearts of white Southern voters.
Over the years this meme seems to have become all-consuming and all-explaining for our Democratic friends. On the net there are hundreds of liberals for whom politics is defined by the Democrats' support of civil rights versus the Republicans' racist Southern Strategy. In Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America Rick Pearlstein tells us that today's divisive politics is all the result of Richard Nixon's cunning rise to power. We are the divided nation that Nixon created.
Even John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira in The Emerging Democratic Majority,a generally optimistic prophecy of future Democratic dominance, need to poke Republicans in the eye on civil rights.
After 1964, the Democrats embraced, and the Republicans rejected, the cause of civil rights. The new conservative movement took root in opposition to the federal civil rights acts of 1964 and 1965.
(In the Chicago Spring of Reverend Wright and Father Pfleger, the above statement is hereby declared inoperative.)
Now comes The New Yorker's George Packer to expand on this in "The Fall of Conservatism." Pat Buchanan and Richard Nixon, he writes, saw the potential for a right-wing coalition back in 1966.
"From Day One, Nixon and I talked about creating a new majority," Buchanan told [Packer]... "What we talked about, basically, was shearing off huge segments of F.D.R.'s New Deal coalition[.]"
So off they went to sow division in the Democratic Party, using a politics of "positive polarization." It "ensured that American politics would be an ugly, unredeemed business for decades to come."
But now in 2008 "the movement that Goldwater began, Nixon brought to power, Ronald Reagan gave mass appeal, Gingrich radicalized, DeLay criminalized, and Bush allowed to break into pieces" is over. America is moving on into a new political era, for neither John McCain or Barack Obama got signed up in the Sixties for the culture war. According to David Brooks, "there's just no driving force, and it will soften up normal Republicans for real change."
It is certainly true that conservatives and Republicans feel disoriented and confused this election season. But it misses the point to say, as Packer does:
Now most conservatives seem incapable of even acknowledging the central issues of our moment: wage stagnation, inequality, health care, global warming. They are stuck in the past, in the dogma of limited government.
On the contrary, conservatives have rather clear ideas on the "central issues." Conservatives have a cure for wage stagnation and inequality. It is called education reform. Conservatives have a cure for inequality. It is called Social Security reform and aims to get lower-income Americans onto the wealth creation ladder. But we can't enact reform because Democrats won't let us. We'd like to reform health care by curbing the wasteful third-party payment system, and we are making some progress under the radar with Health Savings Accounts. But Democrats are pushing one-size-fits-all top-down changes to health care policy instead.
If you look back over the last 30 years, back over the record of conservative reform, there is one thing that stands out. Conservative reform never had a chance unless there was a crisis. The Reaganomics of hard money and low tax rates only got done in the crisis of Carter inflation/recession. The Bush tax cuts only got passed in the tech meltdown. Welfare reform only got passed when Newt Gingrich put a gun to President Clinton's reelection prospects in 1996.
The problem that today's conservatives face is that things aren't bad enough on the Social Security front, on the education front, or on the health-care front for the American people to be ready for "change." So Republican primary voters sensibly nominated John McCain, a man to fight the war on Islamic extremism while holding the line on domestic issues.
If you want to be cheered up about conservative prospects, you need only take a look at the resurgent Conservative Party in England. Eleven years ago Tony Blair got elected as "New Labour" to improve public services, supposedly wrecked by "Tory cuts." But after a doubling of health care expenditure and huge increases in education costs there is no improvement and the voters are hopping mad.
Now that he is 20 points ahead in the polls, what are the "central issues" for Conservative leader David Cameron? School choice, welfare reform, and police reform.
Christopher Chantrill is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. See his roadtothemiddleclass.com and usgovernmentspending.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.
These themes appealed to a much broader audience than racist white Southerners. In 1968, concern over the growing power of Washington bureaucrats, the rising crime rate, and riots on college campuses and at national political conventions was rising throughout the nation.
By the way, in his book The Winning Side--The Case For Goldwater Republicanism (Putnam's, 1963), Ralph de Toledano provided evidence that in the South, white racists tended to vote for Democrats, while a growing, nonracist conservative element was increasingly voting Republican.
But I’m not quite so ready to live in that toilet while waiting for the great revival as some on this site seem to be.
It’s hard to enjoy shouting ‘I told you so, while floating around with t**ds.
Those are slow, academic cures that won't appeal in the political arena to voters who demand instant solutions. Democrats have no moral issues with lying about the supposedly immediate effects of their proposals (usually, tax increases on people the public dislikes, anyway) so they get the votes.
Someone forgot the “barf alert”...
I agree, and it goes much beyond that, as well. Surely the labor movement in the north and east was a prime mover in driving the leftist agenda toward identity politics and that was the era of “right to work “ laws and opposition to closed shops, union shops, etc. in the south.
‘Upon further review’.
McCain thinks Lieberman is a Conservative. Conservatives haven’t disappeared they are just reinventing themselves as McCain supporters.
Perdogg: “I do not believe the Govt should be there to pick up people after they have screwed up their own life. Therefore, my beliefs cannot be characterize as “liberalism”.”
Thanks for the clarification. Realize that liberty cannot be maintained without individual morality. So, even though you and others believe government shouldn’t bail out immoral or irresponsible people, your numbers are dwarfed by those who want government to protect them from their own mistakes. That is why libertarianism cannot work. The closest we ever had to achieving something like it was in the past when Americans were more Christian. That is why you’ll find many of the older conservatives, while not necessarily religious themselves, greatly respected and encouraged the Christianity that modern libertarians seem to fear. Believe me or not, but the greatest threat to your liberty comes from the left.
No, not dead or resting. Restless, maybe. Pissed off, definitely.
What we are lacking is someone to lead and inspire. Someone to steel the spines of those who are willing to vote for McCain and sell out the Republican party.
Arkinsaw: “There is nothing to be afraid of, most conservative principles stand up very well in a debate if you properly arm yourself with logic.”
What you say is true. Nearly every conservative principle can be well defended on logic. However, it’s a mistake to assume logic is all that’s involved. For every argument, the left has a counter argument. You make a point, they make a point. At some point, the discussion ends with neither side being persuaded. Why? Because the debate was never just about cold, hard facts.
Also, I completely disagree that religious arguments are irrational or not based on logic. In fact, my faith in Christ would not exist had I not read the Bible and reached the intellectual conclusion that #1 it’s an accurate and credible depiction of man’s interactions with God, #2 Christ’s wisdom and teachings are true based on my own observations of the world and the people in it, and #3 if it’s true (and I believe it is) then I’m compelled to act on it.
Maybe we need to form a new party. Make the Repubs court our vote. Elect a farm team of state and local politicians to draw on for future Congresscritter slots.
Any leader put up for examination will be dissected and reduced to trash within a few weeks.
The party is dysfunctional and vanity rules. It has devoured it's self. It must be completely rebuilt from the ground up.
The up coming election will serve to begin that process. Where it goes from there, and how long it takes will be difficult to predict, so I won't and can't say.
I'm still laughing after reading that.....
The very fact that they shoved McCain in your face should tell you something.
LOL!
You oviously can’t see past the end of your nose. If conservatives were not part of the Republican party we could not be taken for granted. If a real Conservative had been running in a real Conservative Party, McCain might not have made it. Even if he were the GOP nominee we would still have someone to vote for. Who you going to vote for now?
Amen.
Wasn’t it Huckabee who said that he wanted to make “God’s law” our law?
I don’t know if he did or not, but either way it wouldn’t be a theocracy. Which theological position do you want our laws based on? The insistence that laws not be based on some religion is still equally theocratic.
Just think - we coulda had Mitt - but noooooooo, wasted days and wasted nights waiting for another Ronny.
Would Mitt have been an improvement over McCain? I’m not sure.
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