The Party Of Nowhere

Conservative writer and NYT columnist David Brooks has an interesting piece here about what the Republican party must do to revive itself. After a not especially original interpretation of John Ford films as being about community building and safeguarding, Brooks writes:

Today, if Republicans had learned the right lessons from the Westerns, or at least John Ford Westerns, they would not be the party of untrammeled freedom and maximum individual choice. They would once again be the party of community and civic order.

They would begin every day by reminding themselves of the concrete ways people build orderly neighborhoods, and how those neighborhoods bind a nation. They would ask: What threatens Americans’ efforts to build orderly places to raise their kids? The answers would produce an agenda: the disruption caused by a boom and bust economy; the fragility of the American family; the explosion of public and private debt; the wild swings in energy costs; the fraying of the health care system; the segmentation of society and the way the ladders of social mobility seem to be dissolving.

Now, I don't knock Brooks' sincerity in writing this; however, I do wish that he would remove his rose-colored glasses. Because the truth is that in the 1968 presidential campaign, Richard Nixon perverted phrases like "the party of community and civic order" into code words for his race-baiting Southern Strategy.

Ronald Reagan's simple-minded platitudes belied the underlying cynicism of his 1980 campaign kickoff in Philadelphia, Mississippi, locale of the 1964 murder of civil rights activists James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Reagan did not have reconciliation in mind when he averred that

I believe in states' rights ... I believe we have distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended to be given in the Constitution to that federal establishment.

Reagan communicated nothing subtle when he committed to states' rights, the euphemistic mask behind which southern politicians had created a system of apartheid below the Mason-Dixon line.

In 1984, Reagan campaigned for reelection on the claim that under his leadership, it was morning again in America:

Watch the commercial a second time. The only black and Latino faces are prepubescent (read: unthreatening) boys gazing up adoringly after the words "under the leadership of President Reagan" and just before a montage of flag raisings and displays. This ad makes it perfectly clear that "morning in America" is reserved for traditionally minded white people and minorities who know their place.

Now, reread Brooks' second paragraph. By asking "What threatens Americans’ efforts to build orderly places to raise their kids?" he strikes directly at conservative paranoia and fear of the other. This renders the remainder of the paragraph into so much noise until he closes with "the way the ladders of social mobility seem to be dissolving." This phrase could mean almost anything. Liberals might point to income disparity and rising college costs, but today's conservatives will be drawn immediately to affirmative action, and immigration -- that is, ongoing threats to tradition white social mobility.

Again, I'm not arguing that this is Brooks' intent. He seems like a decent and well-meaning man who believes in the best parts of his writings and public statements. But he doesn't push the Republican party to confront the way that social conservatism -- social fascism, really -- has polluted any ideals that the party might have. Most of the country has turned away from right wing values issues as divisive and disconnected from everyday reality. Until Republicans face up to this, the party will remain in the grip of the Deep South and the rural west, a sure path to national irrelevance...

The New Orleans Times-Picayune excoriates the Army Corps of Engineers for recommending an obviously inferior plan for NOLA's canals that would

leave deficient floodwalls in place -- something that a regional levee official described as "criminal." The fear is that the existing canals and floodwalls won't be able to hold water from a 100-year rainfall if one occurs during a storm, and that's a reasonable concern.

The Corps selected the cheaper of two options ($800,000,000 compared to $3.4 billion) while freely admitting that the second option was technically and operationally superior. Here's what Citizen K. doesn't understand: The impetus for this came from the destructive aftermath of a hurricane that did over a hundred billion dollars worth of damage. In light of this, the Corps is being penny wise and pound foolish, and the difference between $800,000,000 and $3.4 billion seems downright piddly. Anyway, what is the price of an orderly place to raise kids (as David Brooks might put it)?

"We can't ever again let the corps force us to live with inferior protection," Jefferson Parish Council member John Young said last week.

That's for sure, and the fact that the corps is putting its weight behind an inferior plan is a bitter disappointment...

Here's a real howler, courtesy Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY):

The president is free to nominate whomever he likes. But picking judges based on his or her perceived sympathy for certain groups or individuals undermines the faith Americans have in our judicial system.

More on the Republican plan to oppose President Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court -- whoever he or she might be -- here. The choice of ultraconservative white Southerner Jeff Sessions to be the Republican public face during the nomination hearings must tempt Obama mightily to nominate an urban minority woman...

Cinco de Mayo: Lila Downs explains then sings "El Quinto Regimiento," a song of liberation from the Spanish Civil War:

What Cinco de Mayo would be complete without Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass:

The Decline Of Intellectual Conservatism

Leonard Pitts writes of the tattered remnants of intellectual conservatism, "Are we to regard unthinking conservatives...as the only true conservatives?" Sarah Palin, Pitts writes, is as advertised: One of us.

And by "us," I don't mean you, necessarily, or me. I mean the lowest common denominator us, the us of myth and narrative, the us of simple mind, the reactionary, ill-informed, impatient with complexity, utterly shallow us.

He commiserates with fellow pundits Kathleen Parker and David Brooks, conservatives whose criticisms of Palin invoked the wrath of the Republican rank and file. 

To my way of thinking, though, the likes of Brooks and Parker brought this on themselves. Long ago, they looked the other way as the religious right brought both fervor and anti-intellectualism to the Republican cause. No doubt believing that the mob could be controlled, they stood silent while Creationism, homophobia, and irrationality seeped into the public discourse. If Brooks' and Parker didn't exactly create the sans culottes of modern conservatism, they stood by as the rampage began. They spoke out only when their purpose was no longer served, then acted offended when the mob came for them. 

The culmination of this is, of course, the explosions of rage at recent McCain rallies. The reactionary, ill-informed us, aggrieved and resentful even when in power, see their influence and importance slipping away. Fearing irrelevancy, they howl that Obama is a socialist and a terrorist, both patently ridiculous accusations that serve to show how intellectually bankrupt Republicanism has become. Of course, when an ideology characterized by its own moral certitude had driven the country into a ditch before the financial panic made matters worse, perhaps it's to be expected that its adherents will lash out at perceived enemies rather than look to themselves.

Then there are the other conservative intellectuals -- thinkers like William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer. They long ago put their ability at the service of ideology, and now have the credibility of a party intellectual in Stalinist Russia. In a typically over the top column, Krauthammer fulminates about Obama's "associations." Krauthammer admits that Obama is neither corrupt nor racist, but argues that his unscrupulous "use" of William Ayers, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and Anthony Rezko prove how cynically ruthless Obama is at his core. That this doesn't pass the laugh test bothers Krauthammer not at all, a man who will say or write anything to advance his personal agenda of keeping the United States deeply involved in Middle Eastern politics (with the exception of Israel's Likud party, with whom we have a moral obligation to follow in lockstep).

One problem with Krauthammer's argument is that everyone has associations. For example, I find John McCain's association with George Bush, Phil Gramm, Joe Lieberman, and the "shallow us" much more deeply problematic than than Barack Obama's tenuous connection to a former Sixties radical. Were he or she to think about it in those terms, the typical voter probably agrees. 

William Kristol, a leading cheerleader for the Iraq war, also thinks Obama's associations are a legitimate campaign issue. But Kristol counsels McCain to make nice anyway, ignoring the reality that they let the wolves out of the cage a long time ago and that the anger of McCain's supporters has been an inescapable part of the story.

The Kristols and the Krauthammers served an important function in the rise of modern conservatism. They provided a useful intellectual veneer for the gutter politics of Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay, and Karl Rove. By surrendering their independence, they've lent ramshackle intellectual trappings to the savagery of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter. They are also the other half of the story that Leonard Pitts writes about, that modern conservatism is as much about intellectual dishonesty as it is anti-intellectualism...

Unbelievable...