Republican Death Spiral
Interesting quote in http://FiveThirtyEight.com today where Nate Silver quoted himself from last January in regards to Arlen Specter's party swtich:
Thus the Republicans [...] are in something of a death spiral. The more conservative [...] their message becomes, the more they alienate non-base Republicans. But the more they alienate non-base Republicans, the fewer of them are left to worry about appeasing. Thus, their message becomes continually more appealing to the base -- but more conservative, partisan, and strident to the rest of us. And the process loops back upon itself.
This is a classic feedback loop. And given that Nate Silver made this observation five months ago, I think it's holding water as a theory.
This is why people like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter do more harm than good to the Republican party. But don't expect them to change their ways anytime soon. While every moderate defection lowers the likelihood of Republicans winning back Congress or the White House, it also distills and motivates ("purifies?") Rush and Ann's audience.
The genius of the Republican Hate Machine created by Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes in the 1990s was that it was a win/win proposition for both the G.O.P. and the bulldog right-wing pundits. This was a positive feedback loop, and it didn't hurt that Bill Clinton played right into their hands.
But today the only way the pundits can win is if the G.O.P. continues to lose. We've seen this already. Michael Steele may be incompetent as a leader, but he understands the math. The Republicans can loose more seats in Congress while FOX continues to gain ratings points. So Steele tries to separate the party from the mouthpieces. And they crucified him.
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Admirable, but...
I do admire the Liquidator's consistency. The courage of one's convictions is rare, indeed. However, that sound you hear is Abraham Lincoln turning over in his cement-encased grave.
For the Liquidator has left out a couple essential ideas that are increasingly becoming tenants of the Republican party:
- Science Bad! - From evolution to global warming to stem cell research. Real, hard, indisputable scientific facts are increasingly disputed in the media by completely ignorant Republican pundits. Since when did the the truth become a progressive-only value?
- Individual rights are more important than group rights, unless that group is a corporation in which case Scalia, Alito & Pube-guy have got your back.
- Be Afraid. It's a scary world full of scary people with towels on their heads who do not accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior. So talk a good game about individual rights, but give it up like France when the government says "Boo!"
- Be Ignorant. Reasoned thought and argument are elitist. Go with yer gut. Do whatever Joe the Plumber or Sexy Sarah tell you to do -- even if it's against your best interests.
If you eliminate all dissent, Liquidator, you don't become a stronger party. You become FOX News or MSNBC.
A Cautionary Tale
Well, let us speak of truth, reason and values, my progressive colleague. You write of some essential ideas that you think are tenets (I think you meant tenets and not tenants) of the Republican Party. Once upon a time it was an indisputable scientific fact that the sun revolved around the Earth and that the Earth was the center of the universe.... until Galileo proved that to be wrong. Just a few decades ago it was the consensus of the scientific community that a cooling Earth was entering a new Ice Age. Allow me to quote from a Time Magazine feature article from 1974 titled "Another Ice Age?"
"Telltale signs (of global cooling) are everywhere ---- from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest."
And from this Newsweek article from 1975 titled "The Cooling World."
"The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth's climate seems to be cooling down....... Meteorologists are almost unanimous in the view that the trend (of global cooling) will reduce agricultural production for the rest of the century."
Now the accepted truth is that the world is warming and anyone who dissents from this assertion is a "completely ignorant Republican pundit." Well there are a great many dissenters. They included the highly respected author Michael Crichton, Vaclev Klaus, President of the Czech Republic and respected economist, and more that 31,000 scientists, climatologists and meteorologists who have signed a petition rejecting the theory of human caused global warming. The earth has actually been cooling slightly since 1998, so maybe the Ice Age theory is right after all. And the evidence now shows that the warmest decade of the 20th Century was the 1930s. All we are saying is that there is still room for doubt and that global warming or climate change should not be treated as a religious dogma.
Let us agree that there are valid reasons to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Then why are progressives in the forefront of opposition to the one form of energy that is clean, viable and unlimited.... nuclear power. We have not built a nuclear power plant in the United States in more than 30 years and still nuclear power supplies 20 percent of the electrical power in this country. All nations on the planet that holds scientific truth to be a value higher than fear-mongering myth are building nuclear power plants for their future energy needs. There is no valid alternative to nuclear other than coal, gas or oil. It will take a wind farm the size of North Dakota to supply the electricity of one nuclear plant.
President George W. Bush was the first President to authorize federal spending on stem cell research with the caveat that no stem cells would be created just for research. Not just Religious-Right Republicans, but theologians, philosophers, scientists and moralists around the world were concerned about the slippery slope of creating human embryos for scientific experimentation. President Obama has changed this policy and many people, including myself, have concerns about this change and what it may hold for the future of humanity. Now this may in your view reflect our ignorance and disdain for science. However, history has shown that when you divorce science from morality, you are on a downward slope that leads some highly educated scientists to abandon their humanity in the name of perverted science. May I present to you the ultimate example of a young scientist, a graduate of a prestigious university, a physician presumably bound by the Hypocratic Oath, the son of educated and wealthy parents, who was presented with an unlimited opportunity to advance science without any moral constraints applied by an ignorant, religious and traditionalist society. His name is Dr. Josef Mengele and he would agree 100 percent that scientific truth is a progressive value.
The world is indeed full of scary people who do not accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior. And some of them do scare the living daylights out of me. It is not usually Christians and Jews who lack tolerance of others, but almost always those in the Islamic world who are at war with the Judeo-Christian West and will not stop making war until Christians, Jews, athiests, agnostics, Buddhists and Wiccans are all either dead or enslaved. Not all or indeed most Muslims are terrorists and extremists, but Islamic societies the world over are remarkably tolerant of those who are terrorists and extremists. I fail to see what that has to do with the conservative view of individual rights in the United States. As Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes pointed out nearly a century ago, Mr Wirtes, "the Constitution is not a suicide pact."
So far neither Governor Sarah Palin or my fellow Ohioan Joe the Plumber has told me to do anything. Is it your contention that their freedom of speech should be taken from them. It would appear to me that progressives have a much greater problem with dissent than us Republicans. Try to speak at any university as a conservative and you will be met with threats, organized heckling and sometimes physical assault, while I know of no progressive speaker who was ever prevented from speaking at a college or university by young conservative thugs shouting obscenities and threatening violence.
And there are far more dissenting voices on FOX News in a single night than there are on MSNBC in a year. Surely that is apparent to anyone who watches both networks and still retains any level of objectivity.
You get a point for grammar...
I'll concede the point for grammar, but please don't confuse Time magazine with a peer reviewed journal. And congratulations on being the first one here to prove Godwin's Law.
I would bid you to look closely at those who persecuted Galileo and every other scientist who dared to to speak scientific truth to power. For those who persecuted them were invariably those who were in charge. And those who are in charge tend to be "small C" conservative, since they generally wish to remain in charge above all else.
Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin are both living examples that celebrity is more important than intellectual diligence and hard work. Certainly neither would have anything to add to a discussion such as ours.
As for the amount of dissent on FOX News compared to MSNBC, there's probably more water in Death Valley than the Sahara Desert, too -- but you'd die of thirst just as quickly in either place.
Not all Celebrities are Created Equal
The changes on your site are a bit dismaying, but conservatives just by nature hate all change. I must say I miss the still from King Kong, one of my favorite films. In fact, I may do a popular culture piece on King Kong someday. I expect I will be making many grammatical errors.... the telltale sign of the self-educated.
All I am saying about the global warming issue is that there are still a lot of what I would call authoritative dissenting voices. As an historian, and not just of Nazi era, I can tell you that there have been other major climate shifts during recorded history, the most significant being the Little Ice Age that lasted from the middle of the 14th century to the middle of the 19th Century. It was once a much warmer world and mankind seemed to get along just fine. A major part of glacial Greenland used to be green, which is why the Norsemen were able to build and maintain substantial settlements there from about 1000 to 1300. Before we turn the economy of the Western World upside down and reduce our standard of living with cap and trade policies, conservatives want to be certain this is the kind of crisis that the global warming Chicken Littles are telling us it is. Let me see more two-sided debate on the issue before we commit economic suicide and turn our economies over to a new and powerful regulatory bureaucracy.
Let me point out Lyman's Law Number Five, which states that the danger of a crisis is inversely related to the level of fear that is generated about that crisis. The greater the manufactured fear, the less dangerous the crisis turns out to be in the long run. Remember the fear and the deserted airports and train stations after 9/11. Remember the SARS virus and the dire warnings back in the 1970s that we would be out of oil by the end of the century. Watch the latest pandemic flu crisis turn out to be not so dangerous after all. Now the inverse is also true. There are some real threats out there that get no attention from the media whatsoever and I expect they will make all our other fears seem quite puny in comparison. Lyman's Law Number Five is not a 100 percent barometer, but it runs a good 80 percent country average.
If Joe the Plumber and Governor Palin are living examples of the triumph of celebrity over diligence and hard work, then I would have to call President Obama an even better example. Perception is the most important single factor in politics. The perception is that Sarah Palin is a lightweight and that Obama is this scary smart American Pericles. I am not so sure that it is a correct perception. As far as Sarah Palin is concerned, I simply do not believe that anyone can run a family business, function for a decade as an effective small town mayor, run a state as large and as complex as Alaska and raise four children in the process without being a smart and resilient woman. She does not seem to require a teleprompter in order to communicate on every single occasion and has not had two bestselling biographies ghost written for her. Otherwise she and Obama have a lot in common except for their treatment by the mainstream media.
Joe the Plumber is a prime example of William F. Buckley's statement that he would rather be governed by the first 2000 random names in white pages of the Boston telephone book than the 2000 members of the Harvard faculty. I expect you would disagree vehemently with Buckley as I would agree with him on this issue. All Joe the Plumber did was ask Obama one of the few tough and revealing questions that he was asked during the campaign. Obama came to his neighborhood; he did not go to seek out Obama. I have known guys like Joe the Plumber all my life and frankly there are many of them that I really like..... as I like you, Mr. Wirtes. My father was Joe the Plumber. These are the people who are the nation's mechanics, artisans, factory workers, electricians and plumbers. They fought the wars in Korea and Vietnam, marched to Baghdad and fill the majority of the spaces at Arlington National Cemetery. While it was people like you and maybe me who signed the Declaration of Independence at Philadelphia in 1776, guys like Joe stood their ground at Concord and fired the shots heard around the world. Maybe Joe has had his 15 minutes of fame and will end up an asterik in American political history. Who can say? I have not really been following his present activities. However, I have to say that I would much prefer Joe the Pumber to Barack Obama as the man to deal with Achmedinejad and the Iranian Bomb, an aggressive Putin-dominated Russia, the rising power of a militant China and the Marxist troublemakers in Central and South America and I would much prefer his common sense economics over Obama's tax and spend till we're bankrupt economics. So, let me say it in clear terms. In an election between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Joe the Plumber or Sarah Palin, I would vote for either Republican over Obama..... hands down.
The Only Reason Buckley said that...
...was because his surname starts with "B."
Rove's Law: If you repeat a lie enough times it is not necessary for it to become a truth. It only needs to become "debatable."
Barack Obamas Background:
- Columbia University - B.A. Political Science
Major International Relations Thesis topic: Soviet nuclear disarmament - Harvard Law School - J.D. magna cum laude 1988-1991
- Elected President, Harvard Law Review
1983-1988 Director of the Developing Communities Project
1993-2004 Senior Lecturer in Constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School
Joe the Plumber's Background:
- Not even a plumber.
You Just Proved My Point
You just proved to me why Buckley was right about those first two thousand random names. I don't want anyone with Obama's academic and community organizer background to be President of the United States. The Harvard Law School view of our Constitution is so far removed from that of the people who conceived and wrote it as a framework for our republic as to make the founding document meaningless. James Madison would agree with me on this and be turning over in his grave. Obama's background is a perfect storm of Leftist ideology and judicial activism that makes the Constitution of the United States say anything they want it to. And that perfect storm is anathema to a Constitutional republic; it is the tyranny of the majority to loot the pocketbook and repress the liberty of the minority, who might still hold the outdated and rather primitive viewpoint that the best government is limited government bound by a separation of powers and where the courts do not act as a super legislature to impose their values on the people.
Now Joe is just too dumb to see the Constituion that way. He looks at it and thinks that the words mean exactly what they say they do without any ambiguity. He actually thinks that freedom of speech and freedom of the press means that there should be no restrictions on political speech, even on the radio. That ignorant pipe cleaner really believes the right to bear arms means that individual citizens can own and keep firearms in their homes and on their person. That simpleton really believes that the free exercise of religion means that you and your kids have the right to use the schools and other public buildings for religious gatherings and displays. And that bigot actually thinks that people ought to have the right to assemble peaceably in protest as in the recent tea parties across the nation. Why at the very least he should have his taxes audited and his background thoroughly checked for any blemishes....... wait a minute, the Democrats running Ohio and at MSNBC have already done that.
Joe Wurzelbacker, aka the Plumber, made 40,000 dollars in 2007 working for a plumbing firm. The fact that Joe has not paid the state for a licence, not required for employees, in no way indicates that he does not work as a plumber. They did not pay him the 40,000 dollars because he had a pretty face.
So, I will say again that I would rather have Joe the Plumber as President of the United States than Barack Obama , or indeed any Democrat not from the deep south.
Unrepentant and Still Living Republican Dinosaur Speaks Out
That is a very strange prognosis. I don't feel like I am spiraling to my death and I remain a proud, thoroughly unrepetant Republican dinosaur with an abiding affection for Rush Limbaugh and the gorgeous and charming Ann Coulter. The loss of liberal Republicans, and notice I say liberal and not moderate, like Arlen Specter are not a serious loss to the Republican Party. In fact, I wish it had happened a long time ago. I wish Arlen all the best in the Democratic Party, where he will find that moderate politicians and dissident viewpoints are slightly less welcome than flies in a punchbowl. And we graciously say to our Democratic friends that you may keep him with our compliments.
This is a statement of principle. The Republican Party is a conservative party that embodies the principles of our modern leaders, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. It stands for certain things that are the bedrock of the Party, and should the party ever reject those things for political expediancy, it will no longer be the party of Reagan and Goldwater. And then it will no longer have any room for me. Republicans stand for three essential ideas that are the essence of modern conservative thought and you can not have a conservative party without these ideas.
The first is that individual rights are more important in every way than group rights, whether based on ethnicity, race, religion, class, sex or sexual orientation. That means that you have a right to the fruits of your own labor, the inviolability of your property and to live as unregulated a life as it is possible in a civil society. We believe government should have only the most limited power to take a portion of your wealth and give it to someone else in the interest of fairness, compassion or so-called economic justice. As an individual American, we believe you have the protected rights, as our Founding Fathers guaranteed in the Constitution, to unlimited free political speech and freedom of the press, to practice your religion, and not just inside a church or temple, to educate your children as you see fit and to own a firearm for your personal self defense or to secure your liberty from tyrants.
The second idea is that our republic is a unique and indispensible nation in a world hostile to liberty and the essential dignity of the individual man or woman. Most of what passes for peace, stability, justice and human freedom on this planet is a direct or indirect result of the benign military and economic power of the United States. Our nation has for a century been the single greatest factor in saving civilization from conquest and domination by totalitarian tyrannies and there would be no freedom anywhere without us. In practical terms that means we stand for maintaining and constantly improving the armed forces of the United States, which exist for the purpose of protecting the national interests, sovereignty, liberty and people of the United States from those who wish us ill and not as a jobs program or as a tool for social experimentation. We are nationalists who are suspicious of those who would surrender sovereignty for the ephemeral goals of world peace, global prosperity, economic and social justice or environmental preservation. We believe as did President Washington that the most effective means of avoiding war is to be prepared for it. And we believe that if war is forced upon us that there is no substitute for victory. It is as simple as that.
The third idea and perhaps most important is that we believe that no society is capable of perfection or achieving utopia and that efforts to create earthly utopias will always lead to loss of freedom. We believe that some people will succeed and some will fail. While all human being are created equal under God, they are born with different abilities, advantages and disadvantages and in different life circumstances. Each individual will have differing ambitions, dreams, capabilities and potential for making or ruining their own life. It is not within the power or the parvenue of governments to make life fair or to equalize outcomes and any government of men that attempts such an effort will be doomed to failure and succeed only in impoverishing its citizens, wrecking their dreams and thwarting their ambitions. In practical terms, this means a war on poverty will be a war without end and spreading the wealth will result in the spreading of misery. President Johnson's war on poverty, declared in 1966, is now in its 43rd year and has cost more than all the real wars of America combined. This legacy of the Democratic Party's New Deal, Great Society and Obama/Pelosi programs will in the end be national bankruptcy and the end of prosperity for at least a generation of Americans.
Doubtless other members of my party could state these principles better than me, but I think I have condensed them in unequivocal terms. If you agree with these ideas, then you are probably a conservative and the Republican Party should be your political home. If you find these ideas outdated, reactionary, racist or just plain foolish, then you are likely a progessive and your political home should be the Democratic Party. And that is where Senator Arlen Specter clearly belongs.
We are not a party of perfect men and women and we may not always be popular with the majority of the citizenry. We may even spend years in the political wilderness, but the greatest mistake we could ever make would be to abandon the principles that are the very things that separate us from our adversaries. The nation does not need two Democratic parties, Mr. Wirtes. The one that we do have performs its function as the engine for progessive ideas just fine and hardly needs cloning. So we will remain what we are for better or worse, purifying whenever we can, and I am enough of an optimist to believe that by staying the course we will eventually see better days.