Well, it’s really over now, or is it just beginning…, again? The Democrats received their much anticipated shellacking. Republicans gained 60 seats in the House of Representatives and 6 seats in the US Senate. 
They also claimed 10 Governorships as well. All in all a very good night for the Republicans especially if you hear them talk about it!
First of all, as James Carville, a Clinton strategist coined in 1992, “It’s the Economy, Stupid.” The party in power during a bad economy usually takes it in the shorts. In spite of the billion dollar bail out of Wall Street, Main Street is still hurting with unemployment still high, the economic growth for families’ non-existent and jobs continuing to be shipped overseas. Voters always choose their pocketbooks and wallets over ideology any day.
Is Obama unpopular, you betcha! According to a CNN poll on November 1st, he has a 59% disapproval rating. So, a portion of the vote is also attributed to that.
So, now starting on January 4th, 2011, we have a divided government with no one able to get anything done without the help of the other side. The Democrats in spite of starting out with a super-majority essentially squandered that away to reward Wall Street for being the crooks they are and passing a health care bill no one, even they, did not fully understand. Most Americans might favor some form of national health care, if they truly knew what they were going to get. After all, senior citizens love Medicare and all the other perks they get. But, due to Republican misinformation and Democrats inability to get the word out understandably, Americans are confused. Is it good or bad? Well, who really knows? You know it will be great for the healthcare industries as politicians always take care of their real constituents, the deep pockets.
What is humorous to me is the chest thumping coming from the victors especially John “orange man Boehner and Mitch “Shifty” McConnell. Yes, they won big. Yes, Obama suffered a huge defeat. But a mandate? Hardly.
At best, the parties have to work together to get anything done now. At worst, government comes to a grinding halt. The Republicans do not have a veto-proof majority in the House, so they will not be able to get anything passed that Obama and the Democratic-controlled Senate do not like. But repealing healthcare and renewing the tax cuts? Not without significant compromise. The only thing the American people have to fear is that any compromise will leave the battered middle class with the majority of the burden while the politicians once again reward their friends and benefactors. That might be the biggest fear of all.
The other wild card in all this is the Tea Party candidates who did get elected. Sarah Palin had a pretty good night endorsement wise as 29 of her endorsed candidates won. While the big names (and the crazy ones, I might add) like Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle and the hideous Carly Fiorina (Sorry, but I work at HP) lost, others won pretty big. So the Republican Party has to deal with them as a new found force. Imagine the Dems aligning with the Tea Party group against the Republicans. Probably won’t happen, but it is fun to dream.
One thing the Tea Party movement did show was that a few hundred thousand people can really make a difference in our system. Once the wackos are thinned out, we could have something worth looking to, to break the stranglehold of our exclusive two party system.
Just get Glenn Beck the heck away from me!
Oh, and before I forget, the Mormon News of the Weird: Political Edition: An incumbent Democratic Congressman, Jim Matheson of Utah wins re-election.
I know a lot of Republicans will be down on their knees nightly praying for the economy to get better in the next two years. I even imagine December’s Fast day in Utah being specifically dedicated to that.
In conclusion: It was the Economy, Stupid!
Wheat & Tares 
In re Obama’s approval rating…in the 1982 midterm elections, Reagan’s approval rating was even lower than Obama’s was this time around. Members of his own party were calling for someone to run against him in the 1984 elections.
The fun part about this all is that the Democrats and the Republicans have equal disapproval ratings. This was as much an anti-incumbent movement as anything else.
it’s the historical trend, stupid.
I know a lot of Republicans will be down on their knees nightly praying for the economy to get better in the next two years.
From a political standpoint, they should be careful what they wish for. A stronger economy will help them keep their seats in Congress, but it will also help Obama get reelected.
Your general assessment, however, is correct. Conservative pundits are claiming that Obama doesn’t “get” that his policies have been repudiated. But they haven’t been. People voted against 9.6% unemployment and Obama’s policies did not cause that–in fact, they kept it from being about 2 percentage points higher. If Obama had implemented the exact same policies in an environment with 6% unemployment, the independents would still be with him. (But I suppose that financial reform could not have passed in such an environment because there would have been no crisis to respond to.)
Jim Matheson: Nominally Mormon. Nominally Democrat. His religious affiliation is of no concern to me, and I guess his nominal party affiliation is better than nothing.
“This was as much an anti-incumbent movement as anything else.”
Absolutely correct. Of the 39 Dems who voted against Health Care Reform, only 12 are going to be returning in the next Congress. Does that sound like a call to repeal healthcare?
“You know it will be great for the healthcare industries as politicians always take care of their real constituents, the deep pockets.”
Amen to that!
Don’t you think the Tea Partiers will fall in line to reward donors and potential donors now that they’re elected?
Sorry, I don’t think a few hundred thousand people can make a lasting difference when it’s our system of special inteests running the country that is at fault.
#4 – I would agree with this to a point. I think it’s true that the policies, in and of themselves, were not totally repudiated in this election, particularly by independents. However, I think it’s clear from all the data that the majority of Americans were badly spooked by the amount of spending Obama and the Dems did to achieve those policies. So whether voters would have otherwise liked the policies themselves, they clearly didn’t like the cost of implementing them. In that sense, it’s disingenuous to blame their repudiation solely on the dissemination of misinformation by the GOP or a simple failure to effectively communicate by the Dems. Secondly, although voters didn’t necessarily repudiate Health Care, Financial Reform or Cap and Trade on their merits, the election was clearly a repudiation of Obama’s priorities. It’s simply offensive to voters that with almost 10% unemployment and financial crisis seemingly hovering a breath away, Obama/Pelosi/Reid would pursue a behemoth Health Care bill and Cap and Trade over job creation. Nothing anyone says is going to change this fact. Obama made a massive, and completely inexplicable, miscalculation. The term ‘Tin Ear’ doesn’t begin to describe Obama’s political strategy his first 2 years in office.
One last point. In Evan Bayh’s Op-Ed piece in the NYT Wednesday morning, he noted that in exit polling from the 2008 election, 76% of voters identified themselves as conservative or moderates. Whatever you want to say about the Obama/Pelosi agenda, there’s no arguing that it’s a progressive/liberal agenda, and they were trying to sell it to an electorate that is overwhelmingly NOT politically liberal/progressive. AND they were trying to do it in the worst economy in recent memory, and at the cost of focusing on unemployment. I think it’s a stretch to write this election off simply to historical trends, lack of effective communication or deceptive Republicans.
Perhaps Americans are open to progressive ideology, but they’re not particularly open to it right now, and they definitely aren’t open to it all at once.
Nice post. A correction and a comment:
“At worst, government comes to a grinding halt.”
I’d change that to “At BEST, government comes to a grinding halt.” 🙂
Also, regarding, “..You know it will be great for the healthcare industries”
This is a broad stroke. For the industries, possibly yes. But they are already known to have a number of onerous practices anyway that have lead to all this.
But as a physician, it is completely unknown. where this will lead. Most doctors I know are glad that more people will be able to get the care they need, yet also realize that doctors are going to make LESS in the future than in the past. In reality, you can only see a certain number of patients in a day and still give them the care they need. With all of the proposals, the amount paid for any given visit will go down while expenses will continue to go up. In fact, for things like hip and knee replacements, the reimbursement by Medicare has increased by literally $1 over a decade, while expenses for a practice have gone up 30-40%.
Giving more people insurance won’t change that. I already lose money for each Medicaid patient that I see, and making more people qualify for Medicaid won’t make me any more money. To be honest, it doesn’t bother me too much, as I went in to this profession for rewards besides how much money I could make. But I agree with you that the insurance companies and drug companies and everyone else around the edges of the “industry” will figure out some way to turn this to their advantage.
#8, brjones,
I don’t totally disagree that Obama’s ears need a bit of fine tuning and that he seems not to “get it.” And while the Repubs have tried to make this election about him /Pelosi and Reid, I stick to my original premise.
for instance, the war seemed to play no role in this election. Talk about a waste of money and lives. And you really didn’t hear a peep about it.
It is the common consumer that drives the economy and he ain’t got no money. So we are falling flat.
I have to say, I am getting a little wary of hearing that familiar refrain about “special interests” running the political system. You know, these special interests do actually, at some level, represent the interests of certain demographics of American citizens. We lament the access and sway of lobbyists, but there are millions upon millions of voters who support the efforts of the NRA or the AARP or the Trial Lawyers’ Association. I understand the problems with political access for lobbyists, and the corruption that exists. I just think people are too quick to blame everything on the influence of those big bad “special interests” when it suits their argument. Meanwhile, everyone, and I mean everyone, from individual politicians to voters, benefits in some way from the activities of those special interests in certain contexts. Democrats are as happy to have George Soros and Moveon.org out there doing their work as Republicans are to have Karl Rove and his Crossroads groups out doing theirs.
If you have any views about politics at all, there is a special interest out there making your argument for you. Does anyone honestly believe the political system would be better or more noble or pure if there weren’t any lobbyists involved? Power is a corrupting force, period. Whatever particular system is in place, there’s going to be powermongering, pandering and corruption. It is what it is.
#10 – I don’t disagree with this, Jeff. I think there are other issues that are compelling and important, even to American voters, but that just couldn’t break through the din during this election. It’s unfortunate for many incumbents who bit the dust this year based on nothing whatever that they had done while in office.
To hearken to your original post, the fact is that when people are unemployed, they don’t want to hear ANYTHING from politicians except how they’re going to get them a job. This is politics 101. So I’ll concede that it’s a stretch to jump to conclusions from this election about the ultimate vindication of conservative ideals or the repudiation of liberalism, etc. I do think it’s fair to say that Obama/Pelosi, et al are guilty of overreach, as well as badly reading the mood of the electorate. It would be interesting to see how the Democrats’ policies would have been received in a stable economy, but obviously we’ll never know.
I agree that in large part the change in leadership was driven externally by the economy, however that exacerbated by bad policy timing. I worked for several years as an Insurance Agent representing employer health plans. Rates have been spiraling out of control into absolute unaffordability for years. The system needed an overhall – but this was not the time. What is even more ridiculous about this is that that none of the democrats should have expected to enjoy the after effects of the bill, since much of what is to happen won’t until 2014 – but as markets do, they responded to the news. Who’s shocked to learn that firms have quickly adopted conservative hiring forecasts to anticipate the litany of impositions related to health care reform. You don’t need to be very intuitive to see that writing on the wall. Instead the democrats thought that the irrationality of American public would be ecstatic over the possibility of “solving” the health care dillema, over the immediacy of paying the mortgage. Bad gamble. I get the impression that democrats have been suffering from tunnel vision since the failed “Hillary-care”.
11, brjones,
I have to say then that you are a bit naive about the influence of big money and special interests. Certainly, some groups, a lot of groups, claim to represent the interests of certain constituents. Like the NRA and AARP. But they first and foremost serve themselves. Every major corporation has lobbyists running around as well as every industry group. They have time and access to YOUR representatives that you could only dream of getting. The time is influence. They sit with the staffs and draft legislation. When was the last time you or any one you know did that?
#14 – I get this, Jeff. I know that the concept of “power to the people” is an illusion, for the most part. We get to vote, ultimately, but special interests set the agenda and determine the conversation. I just don’t know what the point is in lamenting it constantly. It’s an unfortunate reality, and it’s never going to change. Doesn’t it make more sense to work within the confines of the system we’ve got and try to do what we realistically can? Talk about “bringing dignity back to Washington” or “curbing the power of special interests” is just a waste of breath.
#14 – Maybe one of the reasons I find it difficult to get too excited about special interests that serve themselves first, is that the politicians they’re trying to sway serve themselves first as well. In fact, ultimately they ONLY serve themselves. The interests of their constituents are merely a means to an end, which is a career in politics. If politicians weren’t getting their sugar from special interests, they would find somewhere else to get it. It’s absurd to think that if it weren’t for special interests, politicians would truly be working for the good of the people. That’s lunacy. Politicians, particularly on the federal level, are the lowest of the low in this country. They’re belly-crawlers, pure and simple, with few exceptions. Again, that’s just the way it is, and it’s not going to change. The best we can do is try to find a way to make the situation work for us if we can.
One of the least attractive things about the liberal mindset, is the constant running back to Soviet-era psychiatry, diagnosing people who disagree with one as clinically insane.
“But, due to Republican misinformation and Democrats inability to get the word out understandably, Americans are confused. Is it good or bad? Well, who really knows?”
But we do know that whatever the actual content of the bill is, the Republicans misdescribed it.
“What is humorous to me is the chest thumping coming from the victors….”
Funny, because the pundits’ consensus seems to be that Mr. Boehner took pains to avoid chest-thumping. Certainly he was more humble than Mr. “We won…don’t do a lot of talking, losers” Obama.
There is some truth to the bottom line — that with the economy continuing to suck (and it will continue to suck through 2012, or even later), the party in power will lose seats. But it will typically not lose a record-breaking number of seats (like this time) unless there is something else going on. What there is, I believe, is a sense that Americans were sold a bill of goods. On the one hand, President Obama is billed as a great orator; on the other hand, our standards for measuring great oratory have declined so, that what passes for a great speech is typically a big blustery gasbag of loftier-than-realistic ideals and promises that can’t possibly be fulfilled. Obama sold himself (with the complicity of the media) as a savior figure, who would end divisiveness in politics and make the seas start receding. When he proved to be a more conventional left-liberal figure, he lost a lot of the goodwill he had won on arguably false premises in the first place.
America is still a center-right country. A leftist can come into power, when the conservative faction (a) becomes captured by the system it’s supposed to be limiting, (b) presides over a recession, and (c) fields a bad candidate. But time and again, whenever someone actually tries to govern as an unabashed liberal, he the wheel turns.
President Obama could almost certainly win a second term if he pulls a Clinton, and pivots toward the center leading up to 2012. I don’t think he will — or that he’s capable of doing it.
Re: the influence of special interests (which will always be with us, evidently), an interesting take:
Of course, that presumes conservatives will actually govern as conservatives and not as just another flavor of thieves.
#18, Thomas,
“The first is that negative ads became boring, unpersuasive. Forty years ago they were new, exciting in a sort of prurient way.”
This is probably the only thing you and i can agree on. I find BAY-NER to be an obnoxious, smug, over the top politician who thinks he’s better than everyone else. He plays the “I’m just like you” game and it was very touching to see him all verklempt the other night. But he is an uncompromising pitbull is notihing more than a male version of Nancy Pelosi. Just on the other side of the aisle. SNL will still have a field day with the orange man.
It’s simply offensive to voters that with almost 10% unemployment and financial crisis seemingly hovering a breath away, Obama/Pelosi/Reid would pursue a behemoth Health Care bill and Cap and Trade over job creation.
The stimulus bill was the job creation bill. Obama got the biggest bill he could through Congress. To create more jobs, he would have had to propose expanding the deficit even more. Anything else would have been just so much hand-waving theater. Given the choice of waving his hands, pursuing a futile quest for yet another stimulus bill, or taking advantage of the once-in-every-sixteen-years opportunity to enact health care reform, he chose the real accomplishment. I agree that he should not be surprised that he was not rewarded for it, but he would not have been rewarded for waving his hands or beating his head against the wall either.
Thomas,
You don’t need a Soviet-era psychiatrist to declare someone clinically insane when they truly are clinically insane. 😉
How about Senator Mitch “We’ll get Obama to be a one term president” McConnell…no chest thumping there…
Yeah, the pervasive negative influence of Fox News preying on America’s worst weakness: its short term memory. Americans are really dumb about this. In 2008 they voted for the Democratic plan, which included health care reform. What Democrats passed here in 2010 is pretty much what they ran on in 2008. Why can’t Americans remember the debate from 2008? Fox News.
No he didn’t. This is the right-wing caricature. Once again, Fox News. I’m rather amazed. You guys are like authors who write fantasy stories creating a nice world but with one main missing piece in the nature of man: the existence of real actual evil: Satan. It’s as if Obama had no foil, no enemy constantly at his heels to undermine and destroy what he attempted. As if Obama had powers, and only of his own failing, didn’t manage to do what he wanted. No credit goes to the devil for his efforts. Be not afraid, Thomas. The devil exists. And it resides in Fox News.
Again, that’s the right-wing caricature, and inaccurate. He lost a lot of goodwill from those on the left who realized he wasn’t liberal but some silly centrist, always trying to work with those on the right who had no incentive to work with him. Why the hell do you think the health care bill had the individual mandate in it? It’s a freaking Republican idea! Lots of liberals were upset with Obama for not going with single payer.
No, it’s not.
You mean, “move toward the right.” He’s already at the center. No Republican is willing to go to the center to meet him, Thomas.
Because, of course, Fox News is the only media outlet in the country.
It absolutely slays me that when liberals have virtually the entire American media (except non-NPR radio) at their disposal — the universities, Hollywood, every major newspaper except the Wall Street Journal editorial page, every television network except one — that one network is capable of hiding the self-evident manifest truth of the left-liberal agenda.
The only explanation is that Americans really are too dumb to govern themselves properly. That’s the idea, isn’t it? So why isn’t the logical next step “…and therefore, they should not be allowed to govern themselves?”
“[Obama is] already at the center.”
On a spectrum that runs from Dennis Kucinich to the arch-conservative Bill Clinton, perhaps. On a spectrum visible to those of us with our feet on the planet Earth, not so much.
Another thought re: “it’s the economy, stupid”: In 1982, with the unemployment rate much worse (and the liberal media blasting out tales of misery & woe at full volume), the Republicans lost — 26 seats. That is, about forty less than Democrats lost this time around. It’s not just the economy, stupid. Although I suppose I should hope the other side continues to refuse to acknowledge this thumpingly obvious lesson; we’ve got some more Senate seats to pick up next go-’round and a veto pen to confiscate.
“In 2008 they voted for the Democratic plan, which included health care reform.”
First, the devil is in the details. Americans may have voted for the general proposition “our health care system blows chunks, and we need to do something about it.” They voted for a candidate who promised his reform would “bend the cost curve down,” but later acknowledged he knew all along costs would rise. It is a mistake to conclude that support for the general objective of health-care reform, translates out into any specific policy proposal.
Second, if I can take up the left-liberal “Americans are dumb as rocks” meme for a moment, how are you so sure you knew what Americans were voting for? Remember that Obama supporter effusing about how Obama would pay her mortgage and her bills? A certain percentage of Americans voted for CHANGE — understandably enough; it was a truly sucky time — without necessarily paying too close attention to what particular CHANGES they were implicitly endorsing. When they saw the details, they got buyer’s remorse.
You can argue all day long that this is just a matter of ruthless Republicans outwitting tongue-tied Democrats, but look: Mr. Obama has been sold as the greatest orator of the age, and he’s absolutely talked his head off since getting elected. If even that level of eloquence isn’t capable of persuading Americans of the obvious worthiness of his agenda, then it might be wise — just as an insurance policy, mind you — to at least consider whether there might be a wee bit of unpersuasiveness in the underlying policies.
Europe is presently fleeing huge categories of “European” command-and-control policies as fast as it can. In many ways, the “socialist” Scandinavian countries are already more free-market-oriented than we are — and their public sector is vastly more efficient (since it’s not run by the descendants of Tammany Hall, for one thing, and doesn’t have our litigation culture, for another — so government can actually execute what it undertakes). Call it insane if you like, but a sufficient number of Americans can be forgiven skepticism about boarding a ship whose present passengers are stampeding off.
Thomas,
Oh you mean like MSNBC who just suspended Keith Olbermann? yeah, liberal media alright. and non-NPR radio…heh, as if NPR overwhelms the radio waves.
Right, because the center of the universe is somewhere between Sarah Palin and…well, who on the conservative side is actually moderate these days? Sorry dude, but you’re way off on this. Obama is to the right of Clinton. See, Obama shifts to the right and Republicans run away…they don’t want to be touched by Obama, no matter how close he gets to them. He’s gotta be careful about how far to the right he goes or he might face a real liberal in the 2012 primary.
“It’s as if Obama had no foil, no enemy constantly at his heels to undermine and destroy what he attempted.”
Yes, not ruling uncontested in a one-party state is a real drag, isn’t it?
Look, there is always going to be an opposition. There was, for instance, quite an effective opposition to President Bush’s abortive efforts to rein in the GSEs and reform Social Security — both of which are going to have to be done at some point. I can either stand here and waah that Americans are just too dumb to know what’s good for them — or I can try and do better at making my case.
Thomas,
No, it’s not. We have been debating health care reform as a nation for several years, if not several decades now. It was no secret what Democrats proposed.
In other words, Americans didn’t know what they were voting for when they voted for the Republicans this round?
Not at all influenced by the pervasiveness of the evil coming from Fox News….
yeah pretty much. Democrats suck at messaging.
Not by Obama. Not by Democrats. Fox News is the one who played this up.
Or that good oration doesn’t succeed against slime negativity.
oh how I would love for America to adopt the policies of the Scandinavian countries. Can we band together on that one, Thomas? 🙂
Nope, they cannot be forgiven. They’ve gotta wake up from the trance Fox News put them under.
“Oh you mean like MSNBC who just suspended Keith Olbermann?”
Yes, like MSNBC. Which only made the (utterly boneheaded) decision to can Olbermann, because it persists in trying to maintain the fiction that it’s not a left-leaning network.
Again, the point is that there are plenty of non-Fox News outlets in which liberal ideas can be articulated. (Typically, btw, without formal identification as “liberal” ideas; conservative voices typically have a great big scarlet “C” hung around their necks whenever they’re grudgingly included on a panel with “objective” pundits who just happen to be in perfect agreement with the left-liberal conventional wisdom.)
“He’s gotta be careful about how far to the right he goes or he might face a real liberal in the 2012 primary.”
You just gave me a Chris Matthews tingle up my leg. Please, please, please, please let that happen.
Thomas,
Health care reform has already passed. I don’t need to make a case anymore for it. It’s not going to be repealed.
Thomas,
As long as you give us Sarah Palin…pretty please 🙂
RE: 15
“I just don’t know what the point is in lamenting it constantly.”
Bri, one way to ensure that things NEVER change is to shut up about it. I’d prefer to lament a bit while I take mine in the shorts thank you very much. 🙂
“No, it’s not. We have been debating health care reform as a nation for several years, if not several decades now. It was no secret what Democrats proposed.”
Which is why we had to wait until passage of the thousand-page bill to find out what was in it.
“oh how I would love for America to adopt the policies of the Scandinavian countries. Can we band together on that one, Thomas?”
To a point, absolutely. Let’s start with Swedish-style school choice, Norwegian corporate tax rates and dividend exemption, Norwegian state-mandated religious education (actually, let’s pass on that one); Norwegian abortion law, Danish business deregulation.
True, Scandinavia has an overall higher tax burden — of which working- and middle-class taxpayers pay a far greater share than in the United States, where a more progressive (really!) tax structure, mainly because it lacks a VAT, derives a greater share of overall revenue from the wealthy.
When American liberals praise Scandinavian welfare states, what they generally have in mind are the policies of the 1970s — which have by and large been abandoned, since they couldn’t be sustained.
Finally, re: Scandinavia, a vignette: A Scandinavian economist once stated to Milton Friedman: “In Scandinavia we have no poverty.” Milton Friedman replied, “That’s interesting, because in America among Scandinavians, we have no poverty either.” There are cultural differences between American demographics and Scandinavian, that would probably complicate the liberal ideal of importing (1970s-vintage) Scandinavian policies whole hog to the United States.
Ah, the kids are playing in the sandbox again. 😀
Thomas,
Get your talking points from somewhere other than Fox News, please.
Jeez, Thomas, to this point you almost had me at hello. Then you had to go and ruin it. You just showed that you have absolutely no idea what liberals actually want. The points you noted in your previous two paragraphs before you dropped back into Fox News partisan mode, are things liberals would like to see adopted from Scandinavia as well. Still, you’re getting better, Thomas.
RE: 32
I’m enjoying the show Jeff! Aren’t you?
Thomas said: “Obama sold himself (with the complicity of the media) as a savior figure, who would end divisiveness in politics and make the seas start receding.”
Dan said: “No he didn’t. This is the right-wing caricature. Once again, Fox News.
So who was the imposter who made the following comments in 2008, speaking of his election?
“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
Sure sounds messianic to me.
brjones,
That’s maybe messianic back in the day when only a god could provide such miracles, but today, we’re capable of that ourselves. That’s the point. He didn’t sell himself above that which he was able to do. Fox News and her allies wanted to play up His Oneness, as they called it.
Beansdude,
“I’m enjoying the show Jeff! Aren’t you?”
This is a great example of the problem the country has.
#38 – I’m convinced that Dan has a marketing agreement with Fox News, and he gets a royalty every time he says the name in print.
“That’s the point. He didn’t sell himself above that which he was able to do.”
(Blank stare)………………………………………………………………………………….huh………………………………………………?………………………..
Jeff,
Has it ever not had this problem?
“Has it ever not had this problem?”
Not in my lifetime. But the Tip O’Neill’s and Ronald Reagans as well as the LBJs and opposite leaders seem to be able work things out.
Funny, there is much less personal acrimony between the combatants than the rhetoric would suggest. Most of the long term pols are friends.
#41 – Yes, they laugh themselves back to Washington after every election. In that sense, maybe they’re right that the American people are stupid. We get worked into a lather about stuff the pols don’t even really care about.
Dan @1:42: “Get your talking points from somewhere other than Fox News, please.”
Fair enough. Straight from the horse’s mouth:
http://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/pressreleases?id=1576
Really? School choice, more restrictive abortion laws, religion taught in schools, corporate tax relief, deregulation? I think the last liberal who would have been comfortable advocating even any two of those was Grover Cleveland.
Re: “caricatures,” the art of caricature is about taking a feature and exaggerating it. The feature still has to be there to begin with, for the caricature to make any sense. There was certainly more rock-star groupie response to Obama (including leg-tingles in certain odd-duck commentators) than there was for any of the previous three Presidents.
Finally, re: the Fox News boilerplate — your Jedi mind tricks won’t work on me. In some circles, invoking the name “Fox News” may operate something like yelling “Ollie ollie oxen free!” and conclusively establish a point without further explanation. But of course that only works when everyone in your audience has a testimony of Fox News’ wickedness. With everyone else, you have to actually rebut specific points.
And if you disagree with me, it’s probably because you got it from those nincompoops at Kos or Puffington.
Jeff,
You mean you didn’t think the attacks on Clinton throughout his whole administration was not a “problem?” Nixon? Not a problem? The Birch Society not a problem? McCarthyism not a problem? Go back all the way to the beginning. This country has always been at each others’ throats.
“Ah, the kids are playing in the sandbox again.”
Thanks for setting it up, Gramps!
There’s a certain gap in that list, there:
Thomas,
on most of those yes. Liberals are not as against school choice as you think. Teachers’ unions may be. Religion taught in schools you dropped, so drop it here too. 🙂 But yeah, liberals would love to see more of Scandinavia here.
No it doesn’t. Have you so easily forgotten “death panels” which did not even exist in any form in the health care bill? Or how about the whole “back of the bus” scandal of late. You don’t have to even have a feature in order to create a caricature.
Oh, you so don’t want to go there…Observe the leg tingling hyper adoration at work.
oh and here’s an image that might burn your eyes but spoke to the rock star adoration of which you speak of….
Thomas,
As if Puffington speaks for liberalism…Kos on the other hand, hands down, he speaks for populist liberalism.
as for Bush and Hitler…well, there were family connections….….just sayin… 😉
No, you’re right the acrimony has been in place for a long, long time.
Kumbaya, my Lord, Kumbaya…….
bah, I messed up that link somehow….
Dan, thanks for proving my point. Left-liberals in 2010 have absolutely no more business lecturing others about “civility” than Ted Haggard has giving sermons on chastity.
And if you disagree with me, it’s probably because you’re an atheist cannibal who gets his news from left-wing rags like the Guardian.
(Actually, I think there’s something to be said for British-style partisan media: You read the Telegraph for the right-of-center view, and the Guardian for the left-of-center. That way, nothing gets swept under the rug in the name of an “objective” standard that is nevertheless slanted.)
“Probably” = “not in a million years. Squared.”
That said, some pretty major conservative figures are on record as declaring that if this crop of Republicans behaves at all like the crop from about 2002 on, the Tea Party activists will go somewhere else. Normally third-party challenges go nowhere and burn out — but every once in awhile (as in 1856), enough of the Whigs go to the third party that the third party becomes one of the two major parties, and the rump major party dies. Would that happen this time? Maybe.
Thomas,
Uh, where did I speak of being civil?
What can we pay Tea Party folk to go somewhere else? Please, pretty pretty please. 🙂
Dan, believe it or not, the universe of liberals is larger than just you. And a good fraction of said universe been lamenting about lost “civility” since about five minutes after their man stepped into the Oval Office.
Because “Dissent is Patriotic” only when you’re the opposition party. When you’re in charge, dissent is “uncivil,” darn near treason.
Thomas,
You can’t have it both ways. I either speak for all liberals or I’ve at some point decried the lack of civility since Obama became president. I don’t speak for all liberals and I haven’t decried the lack of civility since Obama became president. Thus I have not made your point that left liberals have no business lecturing others about civility.
Thomas, please stop feeding the troll. Dan, like his idol, is tone-deaf due to the single note stuck in his mind.
I am going to cut Dan some slack — he’s had enough grief for one week — and go back to the original title of the post.
Charles Krauthammer had an interesting point in a Washington Post opinion piece this morning. He notes that this week’s wave put things back slightly to the right of where they were in the House of Reps in 2004. Republicans recovered the 54 seats they lost in 2006-2008 combined plus gaining 7-10 more seats (depending on how the last few too-close-to-call races turn out). They start the campaign for 2012 with institutional advantages because of the high fraction of Dem senate seats up for reelection then, and because of the redistricting advantages gained through the gain of almost 700 state legislative seats and several Governor wins by Republicans last week.
So I think Krauthammer’s thesis is correct: this was not so much an election as the people issuing a restraining order against continuation of the Dems’ agenda. This is more a return to center-right normalcy in this country.
I don’t know whether we’ll recover from the damage of the last several years. Nuts, I’m not all that sure we’re going to survive the mistakes the Carter Administration made with Iran.
But the next time the Dems or Repubs want to get back into control of all branches of Federal government, they better remember that people who habitually treat their actual bosses as stupid are the REALLY stupid people.
“Ah, the kids are playing in the sandbox again.”
I would look at it as Thomas is schooling Dan again.
As for your post, I would say the message is more STOP OBAMA and his socialist agenda, stop spending our money, keep the taxes where they are and repeal Obamacare and keep repealing it as often as Obama veto’s it. Again and again and again and force Obama to defend nationalizing healthcare.
With this strategy, the good guys can pick up the executive branch, keep the house and the the Senate which is already slated to go right. With this we can take total control and really fix things.
Will, #60,
“I would look at it as Thomas is schooling Dan again.”
Thomas has a single tunnel vision point of view driven by Fox News and reinforced by Republican propaganda from HQ. There is little independent analysis done on his part. He loads his posts with a ton of words taken from official Republican position papers.
The world is not that cut and dried. There must be room for compromise or no one gets anything they want. And the government comes to a grinding halt. In some cases, that is not a bad thing.
But there are two legitimate sides to everything. To paint it as though one side is evil and the other is angelic is just crazy.
“But there are two legitimate sides to everything. To paint it as though one side is evil and the other is angelic is just crazy.”
Can you think of any historical instances in which this is not true?
Anyway, who says anything about “angelic” and “evil”? I certainly don’t think Republicans or conservatives are angelic. That’s the whole point: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Because I know that men — Republicans or Democrats — are no angels, I want to have at least as effective restraints on men in government, as I do men in business. Because, as Mr. Keynes was compelled to remind his dirigisme-happy acolytes (how’s that for six-dollar words?) it is a mistake to think politicians are less immoral than businessmen.
And again, who said anything about “evil”? I’m not the one, you’ll notice, calling the other side “hideous” and “crazy.” That’s one honkin’ beam you’ve got in your eye, old bean.
Jeff, the irony here is that your (condescending, and I think a bit white-knuckled) notion that conservatives (like me) are simply Fox News and Republican propaganda-parroting automatons, is itself nothing but paint-by-the-numbers left-liberal boilerplate. You are simply repeating what every right-thinking progressive loves to tell himself — that the independent thinkers are all on your herd’s side.
“There is little independent analysis done on his part.”
Would that it were so. If I were not (ahem, he said modestly) far and away a better defender of Republican principles than the Republican Party or even Fox News has been over the past decade, my side would never have lost the fifty-odd Congressional seats we then had to go to the trouble to win back. (Plus a dozen or so for good measure.)
Thomas,
“Jeff, the irony here is that your (condescending, and I think a bit white-knuckled) notion that conservatives (like me) are simply Fox News and Republican propaganda-parroting automatons, is itself nothing but paint-by-the-numbers left-liberal boilerplate.”
The trouble is I am not a left-liberal, so I guess that doesn’t really apply.
I am glad that you recognize that are no angels in this. But I view each post as a diatribe where the word “liberal” is used by you as a pejorative the same as if you used “evil.”
I don’t have a side in particular, I am all over the map in my political persuasions and independence is clearly in the eye of the beholder. One side does not own it.
And if the antidote to Keynesian economic policy is reverse Robin Hood, (stealing from the poor and middle class to give to the rich) then I am more inclined toward Keynes.
It all goes back to the original post, I don’t think the Republicans won as much this week as they’d like to think. I think Obama was a bigger loser than they were winners.
Jeff always seems to be the voice of reason when we all get off on tangents. Maybe the beard reflects wisdom. Thanks.
I’d add my 2 cents, but don’t know that it would mean much in the maelstrom.
As far as a more rational comment re: healthcare (the aspect of this with which I’m most familiar), I do think it’s a difficult problem. I don’t know that any “bill” can fix it, however, as we have a different social contract in this country.
In Scandinavia, there is truly more of a sense of camradarie. The money from their oil doesn’t go into the pockets of private companies, but goes into a trust fund to fund their children and their grandchildren’s worlds. Their income tax information is published on the internet for every to see, literally. The Gini coefficient (measuring disparity between rich and poor) is among the lowest in the world. They are a society that accepts they are “in it together”.
Granted, there is a different set of problems in a society structured like this, but that is the reality. Given this, it is easy to set up a “socialized” system of medicine, as their society is already like that in many ways.
Contrast that with our society in the US (apologies to folks reading from around the world). We are the “land of opportunity”. If you work hard, you can “get ahead”. It is much more individualistic. Again, there are strengths and weaknesses with this as well. It is much more difficult to make a “socialized” medicine change in this type of society.
The basic problem with what Obama tried to do was to push more socialized programs on a society who wasn’t raised with that mentality. Whether someone agrees with whether that was the “right” thing to do is a completely different question, and spawns the diatribes above and on cable, but that is the essence of the problem.
Thomas,
Restraints in business? heh, that’s a major laugh. Though I’m sure politicians would love to have their own golden parachutes the day they leave their posts…
The people who think divided government is bad are either buying into the hype or think government actually is the answer. The US government was designed to be divided and inefficient–the idea was that unity would happen only for really important, big issues and only after much debate. What we’ve seen in the last eighteen months or so was not that.
I would FEAR a “United” and/or “Efficient” government – I can think of one that well met the criteria within the last 100 years (in “this” century, since we’re only into the second decade of the 21st). It was a FOREIGN country…Twilight Zone fans, remember that episode and what the hapless shop owner, having tried and floundered with sudden wealth, wanted to be the ruler of said country that couldn’t be “voted” out of office?
We WANT Government overall to be INefficient..sure, we want hard-working Federal Employees (been one for 26 years), BUT, we don’t want the Government to be TOO effective and certainly NOT too over-reaching.
Though this election can be construed as a rejection of Obama-led politics AND incumbency, the “Wascally Wepubblicans” need not crow too lustily. Remember the so-called “revolution of 1994” led by Newt Gringrich? And THAT got the Republicans in power in both houses of Congress for 12 years! That particular episode confirmed my decision to stay Libertarian.
there you go. Conservatives decry the inefficient government, but that’s EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT! Silly conservatives.
At present we have a budget that is 50% entitlements, 35% military spending, 15% interest on the debt and not much else. There is not much that can be done as none of the sectors are willing to give up their benefits or revenue streams.
#70 – Exactly. Too many “third rails”, except the “Big Train” (with apologies to Walter Johnson’s descendants) will ultimately derail given how the railroad is being run.
#68 – RU calling ME a ‘conservative’??? Them’s fighting words, suh! Choose ya’lls “weapons” (flaming posts at twenty paces?)
I am a LIBERTARIAN. I’m against big government regardless of it being led by a herd of braying jackasses or a herd of blundering elephants trampling everything and leaving big steaming piles of….
Doug,
Should I point out the obvious, that you are charging yourself? #68 is your comment, and #69 is my comment. 🙂
Stephen,
Do you consider public education as “entitlement?” Because under your numbers, it would be a part of that 50%.
Stephen:
I have no idea where you are getting your numbers. We haven’t actually passed ANY part of an FY 2011 budget; we’ve been operating on FY10 autopilot (a continuing resolution) since October 1
The FY10 Federal budget has its own wiki page and breaks down the spending,
You can see that “mandatory spending” makes up 61.5% of total Federal spending. Included within that total are Federal payments for SS, Medicare and Medicaid, that make up 40% of all Federal spending, and do not count, of course, mandated state government contributions. Interest payments are 4.6% of Federal Spending. Other (undefined) mandatory spending, is almost 17% of the budget.
Defense Department and Veterans Department Spending are listed under the discretionary part of the budget. COMBINED, they account for a bit less than 21% of the 2010 budget spending. Other discretionary spending, which includes separate budget items for all the other Federal departments and agencies (including the Education Department, Dan) constitute less than 18% of Federal spending.
So unless you have some reason for tying a lot of that “other mandatory spending” to military spending, Stephen, you are significantly overstating the military component of the Federal Budget.
thanks for clearing that up Firetag.
#71 – Yer right. My bone of contention was with #69 (don’t read too much into that).
Due to needing my prescription renewed, I can be as bad as the Kosher butcher who, in attempting to assure his customers of the freshness of his product, posted a sign in the window, stating: “I slaughter myself twice daily”
#75 – You’re pointing out what’s obvious and yet few if any are stepping forth and saying, “take it out of my hide, please”. The “mandates” that mandate “mandatory” spending MUST eventually be revised, else the laws of economics will cause benefits to be sliced one way or another, be it by outright benefit cuts, tightening of eligibility, age postponement, back-door taxation, inflation, or whatever exotic combination thereof. Project Federal revenues will continue to fall far short of expenditures and eventually the system will collapse. Why it hasn’t already baffles me.
Sacred Cows:
Medicare
Social Security
Defense Spending
Pork Barrel spending (earmarks)
You can’t mess with things that have major constituencies attached to them without pissing someone off and losing votes.
Jeff,
You are right. Until the first three in the list are cut, and the last one on your list is eliminiated, we are headed for diaster. Social security needs to be cut back to the point the recipient only receives what they paid into the program, which for most is about 18 months. We need to completely eliminate this as a federal entitlement. If the states what to assume this responsibility that would be just fine. And, as for the military it too needs a major overhaul. For the regions of the world we have troups stationed long term (japan, Germany and Saudi Arabia) we need to pull them out, unless these countries want to foot the bill.
Robert Ringer and the late Harry Browne, Libertarians both, each postulated that we have a Department of “Offense”. I’ve heard talk about an “exit strategy” from Iraq, when we’ve been in Germany and Japan for 65 years and counting! Korea for 57 years since the war “ended” (technically it’s still “on”, they’ve had an armistice all this time).
It’s like one of the fictional Ferengi “Rules of Acquisition” – #34 – War is good for business…#35 – Peace is good for Business. Whether “War” (declared or not) or “Peace” (w/o the dividend), the military-industrial complex grows like Topsy.
Of course, this is but a fraction of why “Uncle” is broke and is breaking the American people. Methinks it’ll require breakdown and anarchy before a realistic solution is brought forth.
Well, yes. It’s easier to have a sense of cameraderie when your society is homogeneous. Robert Putnam, the sociologist who wrote the well-received book Bowling Alone, about the decline in American social cohesion and involvement, did some later research in which he discovered that the more diverse a society becomes, the less civic involvement there is. Unexpectedly, not only does civic involvement between people in different groups decline as diversity increases, but civic involvement within each group declines as well.
I believe it’s no coincidence that Scandinavian support for socialism has been declining at about the same rate as its Muslim immigrant populations have been rising (and are seen as not assimiliating to Scandinavian culture).
The same is largely true in Alaska. This is a function of where and when oil was discovered. In Norway, almost all the oil is offshore, in the North Sea, in territory that is exclusively controlled by the state, which basically created the property right out of whole cloth when international law shifted to allow states economic jurisdiction up to 300 miles offshore. Norway could exact royalties from developers of its own oil resources. In America, traditionally, oil was originally discovered on private land, where the landholders held the mineral rights. You can tax them, but under the Constitution, you can’t just appropriate them.
Also, Norway’s oil revenues are disproportionately large compared to its overall population (5 million, I think). You could devote virtually every dollar from American oil production to social spending, and you’d get about $500 per person per year — hardly enough to finance a lavish welfare state.
Yearning for a perceived Scandinavian utopia (pining for the fjords?) is all well and good, but practically speaking, we’ve been dealt a different hand. We need to play to our own strengths, not someone else’s.
“I am glad that you recognize that are no angels in this. But I view each post as a diatribe where the word “liberal” is used by you as a pejorative the same as if you used “evil.””
This reminds me of a BYU Shakespeare class I and two other guys took, in a class otherwise populated by women. It was astonishing to hear, in class discussions, just how many late-twentieth-century feminist themes ol’ Bill managed to pack into his plays.
In other words, a lot of what we hear is in the ear of the beholder. (See also “Semitic and literary complexity, teeming with.”) Looking back, I don’t see myself using “liberal” as a synonym for “evil.” I do use it as shorthand for a manner of thinking which I perceive to be widely present among certain people, which I believe suffers from serious errors in information and judgment. But I recognize a person can be wrong and not “evil.” (Would that more folks on the other side — heck, on all sides — could concede the same.)
Jeff, you decline to call yourself a liberal. Fair enough — most people do. And yet the list of flaws in American democracy, in the OP, is almost exclusively populated by grievances generally associated with the political left. You rail against “corporate” money in politics, but omit to mention that Big Labor spends more than Big Business. (With the result that California has become basically ungovernable.) Fine, you have strongly-held opinions. I’d rather that, I suppose, than that people just not care. But I see you getting quite cross with people expressing equally strongly-held opinions.
Not Evil. Just Wrong.
Thomas,
I do not like labor unions at all. While they may have served a purpose at one time, they played a large role in the disintegration of American Industrial might.
But, you’ve raised an interesting point, in that you think because someone has issues with the way things are, that puts them in one political camp or another. Another symptom of the larger problem of divisiveness. the labeling of people as good or bad because of their positions.
I thought I was pretty even-handed in my analysis of the last election while you have done little else but demonize liberals and far left leaning people while there is enough blame to go around for the issues the country now faces.
so I am all for strongly held positions but a little balance would also go a long way.
Again, “demonize”? What’s wrong with a simple “rebut” or “criticize?”
You raise an interesting point: You thought you were “pretty even-handed”; from another perspective, your choice of issues to be concerned about looks less so. Almost by definition, when a sufficient majority of the issues you identify as being of concern are higher on one faction’s priority list than another’s, that does effectively put you in that faction’s political camp — whether you consciously adopt its label or not.
Maybe this is a relic of Church influence, where you are good or bad based on what you think or believe. But believe it or not (and clearly you still don’t), I really don’t mean to insult people by arguing against their political thinking. I wonder if “Mormon Nice” expectations may be playing into this idea that wrong = evil.
Jeff:
(Dan + Thomas)/2 = insight
“Almost by definition, when a sufficient majority of the issues you identify as being of concern are higher on one faction’s priority list than another’s, that does effectively put you in that faction’s political camp — whether you consciously adopt its label or not. ”
I reject the labels on two important grounds.
1. One size does not fit all. Having a single or even a few views of one group does not put you necessarily at odds with the other because we are taking large tents here, not narrow ideologies. At least in my case. Just as there are Pro-life democrats and pro-choice republicans, for example.
2. The labels are pejoratives at this point, so why would anyone want to identify with a group whose label has been a negative.
“I wonder if “Mormon Nice” expectations may be playing into this idea that wrong = evil.”
I doubt that is the reason….
Firetag,
Wow, you can write that into a formula. Cool
Jeff, you’re a logical gentleman, so I’m still interested in seeing your work in getting from “makes a strong case for one broad ideological position, without making a sufficiently ‘balanced’ case against that position” to “thinks the other position is evil.”
“Labels” may not be perfect, but they absolutely do describe something. If you take a person’s thinking on four or so issues — say, abortion, gay marriage, school choice, and tax policy — you will, more often than not, be able to predict to a certain level of confidence his thinking on a whole spread of other issues. This is because people’s thinking on retail issues isn’t randomly distributed; often, there’s some underlying First Principle informing a person’s particular choices. That will of course not lead to unanimity — nobody will agree with the majority of people in either party 100% of the time — but it’s not nothing, either.
As for “labels” being “pejoratives,” why is it that more people tend to run away from one label than the other? Granted that labels are imperfect stereotypes, and even, often, absurd caricatures and exaggerations, why is does one caricature get more traction than the other?
Unless you want to fall back into “we’re angels and they’re devils” territory, you can’t simply say it’s because one side is so much more ruthlessly effective at mischaracterizing the other. It must be that there is something to the caricature that, for whatever reason, isn’t being effectively refuted.
I have no problem whatsoever identifying myself as an American conservative. If some people want to try and caricature my worldview as racist, warmongering, plutocratic, Christer, etc., have at it. They’ll just look stupid.
Ok, I give
don’t give in, Jeff. Thomas’ cheerleading squad is gonna appear and gloat over how Thomas schooled you…
Thomas,
You have no problem identifying yourself this way because it’s a safe identification. Mormon prophets (at least the ones after Joseph Smith) are conservative. Your friends are generally conservative. Most Mormons around you are generally conservative. Conservatives are tied to the Republican party, the oldest surviving political party in the country. It doesn’t require you to think about others or the plight of others because your identity is firmly planted. So you’ll hold it as a badge of honor that you are called a racist, warmongering plutocrat. Because you’re in like company.
In the end, the world does not improve because of the conservative position. It improves because of those who push the man-created boundaries who are despised by the conservative man. While the conservative denounces “progressivism” as a cancer and a disease, it would be well warranted for the conservative to consider that God wishes us to participate with him in eternal progression.
Dan (#55),
“What can we pay Tea Party folk to go somewhere else?”
No, no, no. They’re the one’s that are really serious (supposedly) about getting the budget numbers down pronto. The old-school Republicans are going to butt heads with the Tea Party on an epic scale when push comes to shove in deciding where the cuts (not yet announced, but sure to come any day now, I’m certain) are going to come from. This is going to be major entertainment. Get a bowl of popcorn and wait for the show to begin.
It should also be noted that liberal and progress are both found in the scriptures. Conservative, conserve, conservation are nowhere to be found.
Jeff:
The more fundamental problem is that you are to the left on a left-right axis, but the primary factor explaining your belief system isn’t parallel to a left-right axis.
Now, if I knew how to write matrices into comments, I could put that into a formula, too. 😀
“It should also be noted that liberal and progress are both found in the scriptures”
Along with ass and damnation, I think they are all linked.
Dan:
Put it out there. Are you in favor of gay marriage?
Dan, American conservatism is designed to conserve the principle of consensual government — the one truly liberal idea in all of history. Left-liberalism is in fact reactionary, a conclusion that the ideal of self-government, while nice in principle, fails in practice — and therefore, philosopher kings must rule the unwashed masses for their own benefit. “Feed men, and then ask of them virtue.”
Re: identifications, it’s not just me (and I don’t live in the Corridor surrounded by fellow “Fox News automatons,” either.) Something like 40% of Americans will self-identify as conservatives, as against only 20% who will confess to being liberal.
The reason the caricature of liberals as well-meaning sorts who nevertheless never quite think through the implications of what they feel must be right, takes hold, whereas the racist/warmongering/plutocrat caricature doesn’t, is that people are naturally generous. I’m a nice guy, in person. Really, I am. People are reluctant to think I’m really no different from Vlad the Impaler, or whichever lunatic some leftist is trying to call people who say the things I do. So even if there were some truth to the mental teenagers’ screeching, they’re simply not capable of persuading many people of it.
“Conservatives are tied to the Republican party, the oldest surviving political party in the country.”
Huh. Coulda sworn that Andy Jackson was a Democrat, back in the 1830s, and the Republicans didn’t get started until 1856.
The Democratic Party’s website says they were founded more than 200 years ago, so I guess they’re counting Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans as Democrats. Either way, the party of rum, Romanism and rebellion has been around longer than the GOP.
“While the conservative denounces “progressivism” as a cancer and a disease, it would be well warranted for the conservative to consider that God wishes us to participate with him in eternal progression.”
Ah, but with God’s guidance, not man’s. “We have the power to create a Kingdom here on earth” was doubtless the last word spoken in Adamic, right before that tower project ran into a communications hitch.
Thou shalt not immanentize the eschaton.
Dan:
Being a liberal (or even left of liberal) Democrat in New York city isn’t exactly going to win YOU any “valiant in testimony” points, either. It’s hard to get fed to the lions within commuting distance of Central Park.
New week, Dan. No more slack. 😀
#96 (gay marriage question)
In a country that places great value on the concept of equal rights and that “separate but equal” doesn’t cut it, and where gay people are no longer seen as morally compromised or damaged or abnormal, to what legal notion would you look to as a way of prohibiting “gay marriage”?
Thomas,
Oops, looks like I gotta catch up on my reading (currently reading Chernow’s Hamilton). I could have sworn that Republicans were continuous from Jefferson’s days, but I guess that was not the case. In that case, then, it is Democrats that are defending the country from the “other” conservatives who wish to change America to a time that never existed… 😉 looks like we’re going to have to “take back” America…
That’s bullcrap baloney poppycock.
A terribly poor analysis of the liberal position. Let me quote the introductory section from wikipedia’s “liberalism in the United States” because I think it effectively demonstrates the liberal position in the United States today:
Note the difference between what liberals profess and what conservatives see. Conservatives have created their own boogeyman of the liberal, their straw man. And they raise that straw man to pummel it at their discretion. It still doesn’t change that it is a straw man, a logical fallacy. Here is the conservative view:
From the two lists, which one more closely resembles the principles of the Founding Fathers? I’ll take liberalism for 1000, Alex.
Thomas,
No doubt you are. I’m a nice guy too. 🙂
well, he was conservative…
Firetag,
#100,
You weren’t by any chance at the soap box at BYU in the years 1998-2000, were you? I would on several occasions rise up to say my view. I’m in the minority, Firetag, and I always will be. I’m a liberal Mormon.
Jon,
I don’t care either way. Frankly I think government should get out of the business of marriage and let religions handle marriage.
Dan, from your quotation:
Exactly.
Whether actual American liberals, in actual practice, live up to their espoused ideals, is debatable. Just to take one “ideal” as an example — free speech — their approach is telling: Defend strippers’ rights to “free expression” to the death, but advocate all kinds of restrictions on the kinds of political and philosophical speech (campaign finance “reform”, university speech codes) that were supposed to be at the heart of First Amendment protection. Yea verily, liberals do draw near liberal ideals with their lips, but their hearts are far from them.
Why being a libertarian for sexual libertinism (not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that) is supposed to give people a pass for all manner of authoritarianism in other fields, I’ve never quite figured out.
Thomas,
heh, well seeing that what you claim conservatives stand for is far removed from their actual practice, this appeal from you leaves much to be desired.
Probably the answer is pretty simple. Your distorted view of liberalism is just that: distorted, faulty, leaving much to be desired. Thus it flummoxes you that you see this contradiction.
As I’ve been several years removed from university, I have no idea what you mean by “university speech codes.” Surely you’re intending for me to believe private conservative universities are a bastion of free speech…
As for campaign finance reform, there’s no authoritarian nothing there. Liberals believe all speech ought to be equal in the game of thrones, which is at the heart of the creation of this nation. When a billionaire like David Koch can spend $350 million dollars in one year’s campaign, his “voice” drowns out practically everyone else’s. Not everyone has $350 million to spend as they will trying to influence voters. True freedom for “all” (that weird word conservatives seem to hate) requires restrictions so that everyone has a fair shot at being heard. You fail to mention another big “authoritarian” Act that removed a freedom a certain group of people used to have that they no longer have. In fact this was a right in the Constitution itself. Surely we should go back to the days before the Civil Rights Act, and before the 14th Amendment and view blacks as 3/5ths of a person, as defined in the Constitution. That’s more “free” for…well, whites.
hey Thomas,
Here’s what conservatism stands for today, as noted by a Sharron Angle supporter:
That’s your ideology there, Thomas. What do you think of your compatriots? All they care about is removing that “D” cancer from society.
Since we’re piling it on here, enjoy this video of Darlene McBride and her “Take Back America” tour. We see where Sarah Palin and her tea partiers got their inspiration from…
Dan:
There are more liberal Mormons than there are ALL Community of Christ. Being THAT MUCH of a minority is a problem I think the liberals (and leaders) of the Community of Christ would LIKE to face.
#94, Firetag,
“The more fundamental problem is that you are to the left on a left-right axis, but the primary factor explaining your belief system isn’t parallel to a left-right axis.”
Well, I never thought about it that way since I see myself all over the map depending on the issue. But, I suppose you are right. I see myself on the compassionate side of the spectrum toward people, not big business.
“There are more liberal Mormons than there are ALL Community of Christ. ”
I afraid there are more Mormon “anything.”
Jeff,
You should take the political compass test which plots your views on an x y plane, and is generally more accurate than the line. It’s still not a perfect way to attempt to plot where a person’s political views are vis a vis his neighbor, but it’s better than the straight line.
Right now 68% of the budget is fixed spending, 18% is military … and the areas where the fixed spending goes (medicare, social security, debt payments) all seem to be ones where no one is willing to make alterations.
Anyone have a political position that discusses those issues?
“You should take the political compass test which plots your views on an x y plane, and is generally more accurate than the line.”
Weird. I could have answered those questions a few different ways. I am a left-leaning libertarian.
Having gotten dragged into a pissing contest, and since Jeff has reminded me I need to be more “balanced,” I will say this about liberalism: Amid all the noise — the statism, the class resentment, the busybodyism — there is still to be found, in pockets, the core of American liberalism, which at heart is basically a populist mistrust of excessive power.
I can admire that, in principle. Conservatives are right to echo the Founding Fathers in mistrusting government authority — but private economic interests can sometimes grow so large and powerful that they can start acting like little governments themselves. And if I’m going to be consistent, if I’m concerned about unrestrained government power, I ought to be concerned about unconstrained private power, too.
I have a strong Distributist streak — a sense that the human ideal is for every man to sit under his own fig tree, not beholden to others. In a modern, interconnected economy — which I have to acknowledge has its advantages over the Jeffersonian ideal of yeoman freeholders practicing more or less subsistence agriculture; I like flush toilets and not having my kids die of diphtheria, for instance — that ideal may not be totally attainable, but I do think we ought to structure society as much as possible so that political and economic power is concentrated as close to the individual citizen as possible.
In the present political environment — especially living in California — that has me landing as an American libertarian-flavored conservative. There is a point beyond which more government yields diminishing returns — where any additional benefit it gains in reining in private power, is exceeded by the impositions (in compliance costs and inflexibility) of additional government. Worse, the larger and more far-reaching the government, the more opportunities, and incentives, there are for private interests to seek to capture decisionmakers, and steer decisions for their private benefit. I know from personal experience that it’s a lot easier to hide fudged numbers in a large budget. The larger the government, the greater the opportunity there is to sneak something nefarious through among all the other line items.
The American founders have been accused of having an excessive, pre-Hume trust in the utility of reason. They set out to create a republic where the laws would be clear and few enough to be known, so as to minimize fallible men’s (these guys were mostly Calvinists or Calvinist-influenced, you’ll recall) opportunities to exercise arbitrary power. In the Federalist, they argued that even when laws are enacted by democratically-elected representatives, if the laws are too “voluminous” for a citizen to know the law, or if they are too flexible to prevent an official’s discretion from being what really matters, self-government is diminished. We’ve long passed that point.
For a long time, the left has gotten more mileage than it should out of the power of its narrative. It’s been too easy to shut someone up by calling him a racist; fortunately, the race card is showing signs of being overdrawn, as it’s been deployed in so many contexts totally unrelated to race that it’s starting to look mostly silly. Ditto the “look out for the little guy” angle, as the Democratic Party becomes increasingly dominated by urban/academic coastal elites with a manifest sense of entitlement and disdain for the unwashed. With any luck, we can actually come around to having a rational discussion someday.
Stephen,
“Anyone have a political position that discusses those issues?”
Well, Medicare ought to be converted into a means-tested catastrophic-coverage program, not just a general entitlement for everyone who happens to be old. My default rule is that government assistance should be a last resort, not the first one. Costs and benefits are most efficiently aligned, when the person consuming the benefit is the one who pays the costs. Any time what you reap is different from what you sow — whether we’re talking Medicare, public pensions, or investment bankers trusting in an implicit government guarantee — the incentives get misaligned, and the transaction gets distorted, often to the point where it’s unsustainable.
“…and view blacks as 3/5ths of a person, as defined in the Constitution.”
You do realize that you’re taking the slaveowners’ side, right? They were the ones who wanted to count *all* of their slaves, for purposes of allocating representatives.
The 3/5 compromise wasn’t about diminishing the humanity of “blacks” (it didn’t apply to free blacks, after all). It was about limiting the slave power, by recognizing that slaveowners shouldn’t be able to pretend that people they held in bondage were the democratic equivalent of free citizens.
This is a time-worn soundbite left-liberals often use to denigrate the Constitution and the Founders’ generation, but if you actually pay attention, the 3/5 issue has pretty much the opposite import of what they think.
“That’s your ideology there, Thomas. What do you think of your compatriots?”
First, Mr. Rothbart speaks for Mr. Rothbart. I think I’ve given a pretty fair description of my own ideology, and leave it to fair-minded readers to judge whether you’re summing it up accurately.
Second, while — for the record — I do not agree that Democratic senators are a “cancer,” hanta virus, or even the common cold, Mr. Rothbart is Mr. Freaking Rogers compared to the Daily Kos psychotics whose praises you, Dan, have sung. Exhibit A:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/11/3/75623/1733
Thomas,
Then you’re a liberal, because that’s what liberals believe.
Yeah, not a bad example. I’m sure we could go tit for tat on such examples (plenty of red meat out there for this), but the difference is that Mr. Rothbart’s view is held by actual conservative leaders and Republican representatives to Congress. Case in point, Mr. Paul Ryan and Glenn Beck duking it out as to who can first call progressivism a cancer to America. If you really wanna go tit for tat, sadly, Thomas, your fellow compatriots have been far nastier, far meaner, far crazier than any lefty has since Woodstock. Bring it on, dude, if you dare.
It hasn’t gotten enough. It was progressivism and liberalism that brought more Americans freedom than just for white men. Conservatives stand against the rights of women to vote. Conservatives stand against the rights of blacks to vote. Conservatives denounce progressivism as a cancer, but this cancer is what made America the mighty power it is today. The light of American freedom shines all the brighter, and less hypocritical, because of progressivism. And conservatives not just stand against it, but call it a cancer. Who is the lunatic, Thomas? The one who defends the rights of women or the one who wants to go back to the days before women had rights? You cannot go around saying that the country veered off course because of the group that brought us rights for the rest of the population. Conservatives refused to give that right, instead keeping it solely for whites, and white males. Conservatives are the “other” who wish to take America away from its actual origins: the origins of the rights of ALL men AND women to be equal, to have equal opportunity in life, to have the ability to do of their lives what they would regardless of background, to not be held down by any group for whatever reason. This is liberalism. The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. FOR ALL.
But as they said about Wehrner von Braun, “ve aim for ze stars, but zumtimes ve hit London.”
When you find that guy, let me know. For someone who gets irked about people entertaining “distorted” conceptions of liberalism, you’ve got one heck of a blind spot.
The argument seems to be that because the Founding era, or the pre-Wilson era, or whatever, was flawed by the persistence of racism and sexism, therefore all the thinking of that age is discredited, and what replaced it is superior in every respect. I disagree. I think we threw an awful lot of baby out with the bathwater. We could have increased the reach of liberty, without dialing back its scope as much as we have done.
I see this a lot: Self-identifying Progressives define Progressivism as congruent with every positive thing in American history. In fact, Progressivism was a comprehensive ideology, not all of whose precepts were good, or were adopted. Those that conservatives and true liberals effectively resisted to some degree or other — overarching state central planning, replacement of democratic institutions with technocratic administrators, eugenics, race-conflict theory — have been quietly shoveled down the memory hole, and airbrushed out of the Progressive movement’s portfolio like Trotsky from the official Party photographs.
Social issues like women’s and minorities’ rights were second-tier issues in the Progressive project; indeed, much of the early Progressive economic legislation was bitterly protested by advocates for minorities, as Progressive regulatory schemes often had the effect of pricing poor minorities out of markets; for instance, the Progressive NRA program was said to stand for “Negro Removal Act.”
The overarching Progressive theme was and always has been based on excessive faith in the State. Progressives are basically Pelagians — they think that people are basically good, or at least that with the right environmental influences, they can be made good. Since we Mormons aren’t Calvinists like the grumpy New England Founders, I’ll give them partial credit — but they invariably take things too far, pretending that the problems that indeed are endemic to human nature can be solved once and for all if we simply get the policy mix right. (Neoconservatives — many of whom used to be Progressives — often also fall into this error.) Once in a while, that leads them to assist (along with plenty of “conservatives,” or classical liberals, whose participation is typically promptly scrubbed from the narrative) in solving problems that were thought insoluble; often, though, it leads them to keep banging our heads into a brick wall (for our own good, which they know better than we) long after it ought to be obvious the solution is doing more harm than the disease.
Thomas,
Not superior, but flawed and incomplete. The Founders knew this, as is evidenced by the concern from northerners like John Adams that they had to compromise on the “black problem.” And when it comes to women, yes, their views were inferior. I stand by that. The men of that time could not view women as their equal.
There you go again, bringing in the conservative mantra. The overarching progressive theme was and always has been based on the excessive faith in the individual over the state and/or business interest that would overpower the individual.
Well human beings are indeed designed in the image of God, and God is not inherently evil, now is he? Nor is man inherently evil. Man is good, because that Being that created man is Good.
Man is potentially anywhere on the moral spectrum. In any population you’ll see people and societies moving forward or backward: potentially godly, and potentially demonic.
Evil is designed into the system for the sake of God’s purposes.
And yet the natural man is…what?
I’m sorry, but this crosses from “entitled to your opinion” to “not entitled to your own facts.” The Progressive ideology was overwhelmingly and consistently anti-individualistic.
Herbert Croly wrote what is virtually the Bible of Progressivism, The Promise of American Life. Croly’s basic thesis was that the State had to destroy individualism, in effect, to save it. “The Promise of American Life is to be fulfilled … by a large measure of individual subordination and self-denial.”
The Progressives practically wet themselves in glee about World War I, which they saw as a force to jolt Americans out of their “good-natured individualism” and get them properly used to being (progressively) regimented in the service of the Common Good.
Here’s a description of Progressivism, from a sympathetic source, that lists opposition to individualism as a key tenet of the movement:
This may come as news to you, but “conservative mantras” would not be effective if they were simply invented out of whole cloth. The evidence is overwhelming that Progressivism thought “individualism” was a dirty word, a mere cloak for privilege. Whether they were right in that is something you and I can debate. But whether Progressivism emphasized the collective over the individual is not.
Thomas,
heh, I could bring up the fact that conservatives wish to claim there are two “naturals.” Usually in a discussion over homosexuality, where homosexuality is both natural and unnatural… one natural refers to the “spiritually natural” and the other to “carnally natural.” So which natural man are you referring to? Because I don’t care either way. Man is designed in the image of God, and if God is not inherently evil, neither is His creation made in His image. That assumes, of course, that God is not inherently evil. We don’t know to verify…He sure allows a hell of a lot of evil in this world…
Now, on to progressives, to quote from the link you provide:
Sounds good to me. And no, progressives didn’t think individualism was a dirty word. Read the words correctly, Thomas. Excessive individualism, i.e. Randian Objectivist selfishness level of individualism, which creates a state of the well to do and a state of the rest. I’ll take progressivism and liberalism over Ayn Rand conservatism. Better for each individual human, and better for the overall community.
Re: the link, Dan, I did say it was from a perspective sympathetic to Progressivism. I wasn’t endorsing its content — merely showing, from the horse’s mouth, as it were, that the idea that the Progressives valued individualism is pure bloody bollocks.
Or, putting it more acc, “American Progressives had man-crushes on German political philosophers.” The idea-transfer was markedly one-sided, with insecure Americans, typically, admiring how much more civilized the Europeans are than we provincials. Plus ca change…
So did you ever read Rand, or just the criticism? Granted, she was an odd duck, and not entirely sound, but the Francisco d’Anconia “money” speech was a home run. Keep in mind that she had first-hand experience of one of the more extreme variants of government “for the public good,” which caused more suffering than individual selfishness ever did.
And that’s the problem. The urge to save the world, is so often a cover for the urge to rule it. Which of the great 20th-century megadeathing tyrannies, pray tell, was premised on the inherent, inalienable, non-negotiable rights of the individual?
This conservative doesn’t give a rip whether homosexuality is “natural,” “unnatural,” or a little of both. Plenty of things are “natural” that are not good. And arguably, refraining from slaughtering the next tribe over is the most unnatural thing in the world for us balding apes, considering our evolutionary heritage. That’s the meaning of the whole “puts off the natural man” business.
Thomas,
Don’t worry your pretty little head, I wasn’t implying you were endorsing the link. 🙂
Oh I’ve read The Fountainhead. I wanted to dive into the book and strangle the guy, but opted with just throwing her book into the fire (not literally…I wouldn’t after all want to be associated with book burners…) 🙂
depends on your perspective I guess. Not that I agree with it, but a good number of people in this world view America as just that. Particularly when we go around the world, invading countries not deemed a threat to us and force our brand of life upon those we conquered. After all, the people in the countries we invade have not had an opportunity to decide on the merits of said invasion…
Nicely dodged, old sport.
The funny thing is, despite the different outlooks, there may be more agreement between liberals and conservatives about some of the problems we’re facing. Exhibit A: I was watching the liberal cartoonist/writer Ted Rall be interviewed on MSNBC, about a book he’d just written where he suggested violent revolution as a last resort if his side can’t get things to go his way.
Now, I thought that was just a wee bit over the top, but the funny thing was, I agreed with his basic premise — that ever since the 2008 financial crisis, in the name of “saving the financial system,” the government has basically written a blank check to large banks to allow them to pretend they’re not insolvent. That’s absolutely true, and I’m equally outraged.