Balancing the extremes
The Republican party has an interesting set of opportunities and challenges right now. While a fervent grassroots movement helped them seize an unprecedented number of seats in the House, the seated Republican establishment doesn’t like a lot of these new people or their new ideas, and is figuring out what to do about it. It’s notable that John Boehner was a relatively late convert to the Tea Party cause, and now must reconcile its directives with those of his mainstream.
It was with this in mind, as well as the recent calls for more probity in public discourse, that I recently came across this piece from conservative writer David Frum. Personally, I’m not a fan of Mr. Frum’s credentials — to wit, chief speechwriter for George W. Bush — but I find a lot here to agree with. Key takeaway #1: the danger of closed information systems. What was the difference between Barack Obama the candidate and Barack Obama the president? A closed information system: The former got plenty of input and personal experience out on the road, while the latter relied on an inner circle that believed its own perceptions. This sort of isolation calls to mind President George H.W. Bush marveling over how a supermarket scanner could magically ring up his purchase of white tube socks without the cashier having to punch in the numbers. From posits that the GOP is becoming an ouroboros, simultaneously feeding itself and eating itself. I actually find all five of the lessons he seeks to impart to the GOP interesting, the other three being: “the market” must be distinguished from “the markets,” i.e., capitalism is important, but the wants and needs of Wall Street should not be paramount; the economy is more important than the budget, and so restoring employment is more essential, now at least, than budget-balancing; “the welfare state is not all bad”; and “listen to the people, but beware populism.” You begin to see why among so many in the GOP he’s become an apostate. Which is unfortunate. Purges should be the exclusive province of the extremist leftist states (think “Soviet Union” and “China”), not of mainstream American political movements.
Here’s another sort of purge going on: that of the political parties losing their moderates. In Arizona, three moderate Republicans have stepped down, citing venomous attacks from Tea Party rivals. In the November elections, by and large which House Democrats lost? The moderates. I wonder how all those people telling pollsters that they’d like to see the parties work together feel about this.
January 18th, 2011 at 5:41 pm
I hope Frum finds many more creative ways to give the raspberries
to the elders and youngers of the GOP.
It would be funny if the Republicans and the Teabaggers (lets divide them shall we?),
became more like the Democrats of old…difficult in getting agreement, majority votes and
well, things that make progress more likely.
The Dems have been likened to herding fleas in the past…
…but just WAIT until we no longer hear the mantra, “Thou shalt not speak ill of thy fellow Republicans” …also known as the eleventh commandment of Ronald Reagan.
Because if you start to see that starting to happen, fasten your seat belts, and keep your hands inside the ride.
January 19th, 2011 at 8:58 pm
Now, Joe, we must be civil. No namecalling.
I wonder: given the immense popularity of the Tea Party movement and the reluctance of GOP leadership to change if the GOP will find itself without a base. Your thoughts on a third party, Lee?
January 20th, 2011 at 9:39 am
Jim, to answer your question, I have given this a great deal of thought. We may be moving into a period akin to the mid-1800’s, which gave rise to parties such as the Know Nothings, the Free Soilers, and those Republicans you’ve been hearing so much about, and which saw the demise of the Whigs and others. For the past 15 years, a number of American intellectuals have been trying to create a centrist party of moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats; their regular stomping grounds seem to be The Atlantic Monthly, so if that interests you, you might check over there.
The creation — and demise — of splinter parties is always in response to circumstance. In the late 1990’s there was a movement afoot among Democratic activists to form a new, more liberal party. What ended that? Unified opposition to George W. Bush. This is one group he was unequivocally successful in uniting.
January 21st, 2011 at 9:36 am
Yes Lee, very much in agreement with what you have written here…but don’t forget the other similarity with the mid to late 1800s…Yellow Journalism. Everyone with access to a printing press said whatever they thought would sell reams. The youth of the internet is not unlike the early publishing/printing crazies of that period. Where everyone wanted to shout their stuff from the rooftops…I’m thinking like W.R.Hearst. Funny too, is that A.J. Liebling wrote of that period and famously said, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” and “People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.” Liebling wrote a book in 1964 called “The Press” I have a first edition of this book, I paid $12.00 for it and wrote a book report on it. My fifth grade teacher kept this report and I had it returned to me last week from her son, who found it in his mother’s papers. I almost fell out of my chair. We’re headed into a new era, which will dawn sometime in the 2030s. I believe this, the teabaggers will be as much a part of history as the Free Soilers are now.