In this week's Sift:
- The Party that George Built. Conservative writer Jonathan Rauch uncovers the original source of today's Republican message: Not Ronald Reagan or even Barry Goldwater, but George Wallace. (Except that “racism … is marginal in today's GOP.” Thanks for clearing that up, Jonathan.)
- The Power of One Senator. Jim Bunning blocking an important piece of legislation is just the latest example of how much power a lone senator can wield. How does that work exactly?
- Health Care and Public Opinion. Republicans are shocked that President Obama would continue pushing a bill that polls badly. But ignoring the polls was a virtue when Bush was president. Or, as Dick Cheney summed it up: “So?”
- Changing the Tone. Those who say Obama hasn't changed the tone in Washington have forgotten what the old tone was. Liz Cheney reminds them.
- Short Notes. Breaking news from Tom Friedman: Intel execs want tax breaks and subsidies. Obama gets a midnight visit from all the SNL presidents. National Grammar Day. Creationists join up with global-warming deniers. Stephen Colbert pimps up an interview with Sean Hannity. Same-sex marriage is legal in two more North American capitals. And more.
Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller got into an argument and George Wallace won.
What disturbs Rauch is that Wallace was not a conservative at all, but rather a “right-wing populist”. He describes Wallace as exploiting “a deep sense of grievance” against “elites”, but notes that
What Wallace did not do was frame a coherent program or governing philosophy.
like Wallace and his supporters 40 years ago, today's conservative populists are long on anger and short on coherence. For Wallace, small-government rhetoric was a trope, not a workable agenda. The same is true of his Republican heirs today, who insist that spending cuts alone, without tax increases, will restore fiscal balance but who have not proposed anywhere near enough spending cuts, primarily because they can't.
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can't say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff.
Today's conservative says “English only” or “illegal immigrant” or “Obama's a Muslim” or “Where's his birth certificate?” or reserves the word terrorist for Muslims, preferably swarthy ones. But they don't say “spick” or “nigger” or “camel jockey” in public, and they don't stand up and yell “Segregation forever!” like Wallace did, so they're not racists or any other kind of bigot. (Among themselves, though, they still think racism is funny. Still.)
Matt Yglesias critiques Rauch, saying that right-wing populism's place in the conservative movement is not some new trend.
When the prejudices of the sociocultural minority clash with the interests of economic elites, as they do on immigration, then we see splits inside the movement. But ordinarily business conservatism and right-wing populism work together extremely comfortably and always have.
Politico got its hands on a slide show prepared for Republican National Committee fund-raisers. On the Motivations to Give slide, #1 on the list is “fear”. Another slide asks: “What can you sell when you do not have the White House, the Senate, or the House … ? Save the country from trending toward Socialism!” Politico comments:
Manipulating donors with crude caricatures and playing on their fears is hardly unique to Republicans or to the RNC – Democrats raised millions off George W. Bush in similar terms – but rarely is it practiced in such cartoonish terms.
My reaction: It's a real shame that the RNC can't “sell … the White House” any more.
[I]n the context of donor targets that are visceral, reactionary and motivated by fear, it makes sense to portray your opponents as scary, cartoonish radicals. Nonetheless, my suggestion, based on some grainy footage I saw recently of Ronald Reagan, is to consider a more optimistic frame. This might be off the wall, but hear me out: What if the RNC developed a couple of serious policy initiatives and then messaged them as concrete reasons for people to support you? I'd be happy to look at any ideas, if that'd be helpful.
Rachel Maddow's response to the RNC slides was pretty funny too. The whole idea that portraying Harry Reid as Scooby Doo is scary … well, that's scary in a different way. Or, as Rachel put it in her teaser for this segment, “Roo?”
North Carolina Republican Rep. Sue Myrick faced her Muslim constituents last week and answered questions about why she wrote a positive foreword for a Muslim-bashing book, describing its author as “a great American”. Like the Republicans who aren't racists, Myrick isn't anti-Muslim. She's just against (as the book's subtitle puts it) “the secret underworld that's conspiring to Islamize America.” In the past she has raised suspicion about the Middle Easterners “who run all the convenience stores across the country.” But she can't be a racist because, as she notes, “I've got Arab friends.”
I really don't care what the polls and focus groups say. What I care about is doing what I think is right.
Senator Byrd, widely considered the Senate's foremost expert on its own history and procedures, explains why the plan to use reconciliation in health-care reform passes muster.
Check out Jon Stewart's take on the health-care debate and its coverage.
Something struck me wrong about Tom Friedman's column Wednesday, but it took Matt Yglesias to nail it down for me:
it’s really remarkable that we live in a world where talking to the CEO of a large company [and then] reporting that the CEO wants tax breaks and subsidies for his firm counts as serious political commentary. Read today’s Tom Friedman piece and watch in amazement as he doesn’t even consider the possibility that [Intel CEO] Paul Otellini’s ideas might be motivated by anything other than a disinterested concern for the welfare of the American people.
Funny-or-Die assembles all the presidents since Ford (well, their Saturday Night Live equivalents, anyway) to buck up Obama's courage for taking on the banks and re-regulating finance.
Thursday was National Grammar Day, with a music video and everything. That got Kevin Drum talking about the related subject of punctuation, which we take very seriously here in New Hampshire. Punctuation is the only difference between “John Lynch, the governor” and “John! Lynch the governor!”
The last thing I edited out of last week's Sift (to keep the word-count down) was an article about how creationists and global-warming deniers are getting together in one big anti-science coalition. I was just 48 hours ahead of the New York Times, which covered the same subject Wednesday.
Stephen Colbert follows up on the revelation that the ACORN-pimp-advising video was edited by doing an edited interview with Sean Hannity.
Same-sex marriage became legal in two new capitals this week: Washington D.C. and Mexico City. Officials at the National Weather Service report that the sky has not fallen.
