AZspot

…some prominent conservatives and Christians have been flacking for Laurent Gbagbo. These include Glenn Beck, Pat Robertson, and Sen. Inhofe, among others. This is unfortunate, but not primarily because it shows their “Christianism” or anti-Islamic sentiments. It is most unfortunate because Americans must get out of the misguided, dangerous habit of picking and taking sides in other nations’ internal conflicts. This is misguided whether or not it has policy implications, but it is especially dangerous because this tendency to choose sides can have an effect on how the U.S. eventually responds. That means refraining from both cheering and booing Gbagbo, because the Ivorian civil war is none of our business. When Americans choose sides in a conflict they barely understand, they are going to latch onto the most superficial things or the things they recognize in one of the warring parties. Eunomia ☀

The idea that America came to “the rescue of civilization” in 1917 by entering WWI is bizarre. One could argue that civilization was far past the point of being rescued in Europe; it had been destroyed. Regardless, it is a strange, very antiquated idea that American involvement in WWI rescued anything except for the Allied war cause. Plunging the U.S. into WWI has some part in creating the conditions for the “Carthaginian peace” imposed on Germany after the war, which had rather unhappy consequences for the world. Tipping the balance in favor of the Allies may have facilitated the consolidation of Bolshevik control in Russia, which the Allies then belatedly, half-heartedly tried to undo. Wilson’s role in breaking up the Austrian empire created a vacuum filled by fanatical nationalisms that plagued central Europe, and which continue to plague some parts of Europe to this day. Far from coming to the “rescue” of civilization, Wilson unwittingly contributed to its practical annihilation in many parts of the world. Eunomia ☀

For one thing, the Egyptian protesters are not “our democratic allies overseas.” If Americans wish to sympathize with Egyptian protesters and want to petition the government to lend them support, that is their prerogative, but it simply isn’t true that these people are “our democratic allies overseas.” As understandable and legitimate as their grievances are, the Egyptian protesters are very actively urging the dismantling of a regime that is formally allied to the United States government. That makes them something other than “our allies.” Even if we all agree that the vast majority of the protesters who have shown up in Tahrir Square are well-intentioned secular democrats, that makes them democratic, but it doesn’t make them our allies. Understandably, the Egyptian public is not well-disposed towards U.S. foreign policy in the region, and to the extent that a future democratic Egypt actually represented the views of most Egyptians in its foreign policy it would be one that is largely independent of the U.S. or formally non-aligned. Egyptians would be perfectly within their rights to do that, and it might be best for their interests if they did, but “our allies” are exactly what they would not be. Eunomia ☀

It would be very healthy if the GOP moved towards a more Jeffersonian foreign policy after the disaster of the Bush years, and it would mean that a large number of conservatives learned some of the right lessons from the past decade, but it is more likely that very little will change in Republican positions on foreign policy. For one thing, foreign policy is one of the areas least affected by popular movements. On the whole, elected Republicans have no interest in a reduced American role in the world, and instead believe that the administration has been far too “passive” in its conduct of foreign policy. Except for a few honorable exceptions, Jeffersonians among Republican Tea Partiers have no one to speak for them in Washington, and there do not seem to be enough of them to bring much pressure to bear on Republican politicians. More to he point, Republican leaders make a habit of actively ignoring the interests and concerns of their constituents. Even if it is true that self-identified Tea Partiers are generally more “protectionist” and less supportive of military interventions, their political leaders seem to be reliably supportive of free trade and hegemonism. Eunomia ☀

On the whole, I don’t regard Tea Party activists as enemies at all, even if some or many of them might see me as one. In many respects, they are on the right track. It’s true that I don’t have much respect for movement conservatives who aligned themselves with Bush until things went awry, then pretended that they never treated Bush as one of their own, and have now once again identified themselves completely with Republican electoral fortunes. It’s certainly true that I am annoyed by some conservatives. These are the conservatives cheering on the current electoral wave driven by economic discontent and anxiety, but whose economic and trade policies would tend to exacerbate that discontent and anxiety in some of the very states that are about to deliver Republicans so many House seats. Do voters in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Pennsylvania really want to empower the party that is foursquare in favor of outsourcing and free trade? That’s what they seem poised to do, but I don’t think they’re going to be happy with the results. Do people who are furious over the bailout of Wall Street really want to make John Boehner, the pro-bailout friend of financial interests, into the Speaker of the House? If things work out as most people think they will, this is what will happen. I hope I’m not the only conservative who finds that a perverse and rather sickening outcome. I don’t consider that to be “making the same arguments the other side makes.” I consider that to be a critique rooted in conservative skepticism of state capitalism and decentralist distrust of concentrated wealth and power. Eunomia ☀

A Republican House majority starting next year most likely makes Boehner and Cantor “our” spokesmen and the ones responsible for advancing “our” agenda. This is the political equivalent of getting out of a car that had just been driven into a telephone pole by a drunkard, finding a new car, and then handing the keys to the drunkard for another spin around the block in the hope that something different will happen. “It’s been five minutes, so he must be sober by now! He knows to watch out for telephone poles now.” It would be one thing to have trustworthy leadership that deserved respect trying to advance our agenda. They might succeed, or they might not, but we could assume that for the most part they were not actively conning us and abusing our trust. We could assume that they were actually working for our agenda rather than serving interests that have nothing to do with it. If the GOP falls short, it is hard to see how the current leadership remains in place. House Republicans could then make up for lost time and replace them. Eunomia ☀

Unfortunately for the GOP, some of them are still dreaming. It is a fantasy to believe that the political environment was created by “unpopular policies.” It is almost entirely the result of economic weakness and economic anxiety. It is absolutely a fantasy to imagine that the reaction to Democratic policies has been driven by a straightforward rejection of “out-of-control-spending,” as Barnes claims later in the article. Aside from high unemployment, the most important factor in explaining Democratic weakness is that they have lost significant support among elderly voters. This probably would have happened at a time with much lower unemployment, but they have not lost this support because of “out-of-control-spending.” On the contrary, the reason so many elderly voters have turned against them is to express their anger at proposed cuts to Medicare. That doesn’t fit in very well with the argument that “out-of-control spending” has been the catalyst when the single-largest shift among voters came from a backlash against proposed spending cuts. Barnes writes that the “heart of the comeback in 2010 is the Rust Belt,” but he shows no awareness that this is driven almost entirely by the reaction to the more severely depressed economies across the Midwest and Pennsylvania. Eunomia ☀

My insistence on calling such killings assassinations comes from a weariness with our culture’s habit of dressing up everything with euphemisms. Even though it was/is a war of aggression, the invasion of Iraq is not called a war of aggression, our continued combat presence in Iraq is re-defined as “residual forces” because we have decided to declare an end to combat operations, and occupation is called nation-building. People use euphemisms for two main reasons: to put others at ease, or to put oneself at ease with something that is genuinely disturbing. Calling these killings assassinations doesn’t concede all that much, which is why it is all the more remarkable that supporters of the administration’s power-grab keep rejecting it. Eunomia ☀

If [Glenn] Beck’s understanding of social justice is as flawed as I think it is, the alternative that he is proposing is no better and it may be even worse than the idea he is attacking. The point here is not simply to beat up on Beck, but to make an important correction to Beck’s idea that there is something evil or Satanic in understanding the salvation Christ accomplished as something collective. As he did with social justice, he makes such a sweeping rejection of what he calls “collective salvation” that he promotes something he calls “individual salvation,” which is a doctrine that none of the Fathers would recognize or accept. Because he is reading political categories back into theological questions, which is the very thing he finds so offensive about liberation theology, he gives the impression that he is repudiating what most Christians would consider to be a core teaching of their faith. Eunomia ☀

Where movement conservatives enable their political leaders to do more or less as they please, progressives seem far more willing to challenge and question “their side.” The siege and persecution mentalities that movement conservatives have long cultivated as coping mechanisms for their long history of domestic policy defeats and losses in the culture wars tend to make them far less willing to break with “their side,” which is why there is such importance placed on conformity and “team” loyalty. That means that movement conservatives typically have had to stifle, mute or otherwise water down any objections they do have to Republican policies under Bush. Then, once Bush is gone, for the sake of “the team” they feel they have to exaggerate their objections to Democratic policies and politicians to the point of absurdity to create sharper contrasts with the dismal record of Republican governance they just spent the last decade making possible. Eunomia ☀

For the last several months the GOP has hoped to benefit from the anti-bank backlash while positioning themselves as even more reliable defenders of financial interests. They would like to tap into the anger the public feels toward the financial sector, but they are never to craft regulatory reform to address the causes of that anger. So they will appease the crowd with strong anti-TARP language, but it would never occur to them to embrace the substance of populist policies. Just as Republicans hope to win by default this fall, they are hoping that the public will become so angry with with the majority is doing that the public will fail to notice that Republicans are trying to play both sides to their detriment. Eunomia ☀

Pro-war conservatives prefer to speak of U.S. hegemony rather than empire, but the case of the Iraq war reminds us that the distinction doesn’t mean very much in practice. They are also reliably among the most ardent and hawkish “pro-Israel” people in the country and they judge every U.S. policy in the region according to its impact on Israel, but it is somehow unforgiveably “kooky” to point out that their views on the Iraq war were driven to a significant extent by their (exaggerated) concern for Israeli security. What is even more strange is that pro-war conservatives always take great offense when they are “accused” of believing things that they believe as a matter of course. Eunomia ☀

On average, Millennials’ underlying social and political views put them well to the left of their elders. If you dig into the full report, you will see that the recent Republican resurgence owes almost everything to the dramatic shift among members of the so-called “Silent Generation,” whose voting preferences on the generic ballot have gone from being 49-41 Democrat in 2006 to 48-39 Republican for 2010. There have been small shifts in other age groups toward the Republicans, but by far it is the alienation of voters aged 65-82 that has been most damaging to the Democrats’ political strength*. As we all know, these are the voters who are far more likely to turn out than Millennials, which is why Democratic prospects for this election seem as bad as they do even though the Pew survey says that Democrats lead on the generic ballot in every other age group. Among Boomers, Democrats lead 46-42, and among Gen Xers they barely lead 45-44. In other words, the main reason why the GOP is enjoying any sort of political recovery is that many elderly voters have changed their partisan preferences since the last midterm. Republicans remain behind among all voters younger than 65. That does not seem to herald the future revival of movement conservatism of the sort Gardiner is so embarrassingly praising. Eunomia ☀

Despite Frank’s best efforts to make the argument, though, centrism did not die in Massachusetts, because it has not been perceived to be the thing voters were repudiating. That doesn’t mean that it wasn’t the thing voters were repudiating, but it means that very few in the media and the political class are willing to believe it. Frank cites all of the right data to make his argument, but something I have realized during the last couple of weeks is that no one of consequence is interested in correctly assessing what the public wants. Republicans have their ready-made narrative that they are going to tell to anyone who will listen, and most Democratic politicians seem to be reacting as if they still lived in the mid-’90s or even earlier. They remain terrified of being associated with real liberal convictions. The instinctive impulse to retreat, cower, fall back and give ground to more assertive Republicans has not been beaten out of them yet, and perhaps it never will be. One thing that is very frustrating about this dynamic is that it greatly aids in the perpetuation of corporatist, militarist centrism as represented by the likes of McCain and Lieberman, and it ensures the perpetual marginalization of any remotely coherent or consistent conservatism. Conservatives effectively pay tribute to a centrist establishment that has nothing but contempt for them and their interests, and so then end up tying themselves to this establishment and defending its interests against left-populists with whom they probably have much more in common. Eunomia ☀

One of the lessons we were supposed to have learned from the off-year elections, and one that I think is correct, is that the public craves competent leadership and that it penalizes any party that fails to deliver it. 2006 and 2008 were repudiations of the GOP because of the war in Iraq and the financial crisis, but more broadly these elections were the public’s demands that the government be ably and competently administered. If McCain ever had a chance of winning, his erratic and confused response to the financial crisis destroyed it, and between his selection of Palin and his insane response to the war in Georgia he drove away many others who simply could not trust someone with such poor judgment with such great power. The elections earlier this month were much the same in that they were protests against Democratic failure to govern well. The Palinites propose to rally behind someone who has no particularly impressive record of accomplishments, who abandoned the highest executive office she has held before completing one term, and who seems to have no great expertise behind her. In other words, Palinites are telling the public that they have no interest in providing competent leadership, and they expect the public to respond favorably to this. Following one of the worst Presidencies in postwar history, one that was marked by incompetence and ideological demagoguery, the Palinites believe that the country is desperately seeking to relive that experience under an even less-experienced, less well-informed, more malleable Western governor. Eunomia ☀