A festering climax

This morning's NY Times editorial condemns the GOP for having "moved so far to the right that the extreme is now the mainstream," and for conjuring a witches'-brew platform that is "mean-spirited and intolerant" and "patronizing" and stands "on the most extreme fringes of American opinion" and "espouses the most extreme Republican views on taxation, national security, military spending and other issues."

A festering climax, one hopes, in which a sobered descent from the radicalized mountaintop is the only possible next move.

The GOP's weight in madness is rather easy to quantify but problematic when plotting its historical development. Was it the tea party that sparked this unsightly overindulgence? Hardly. Tea partiers are but the GOP's traditional far right, which has been around since the Birchers and Joe McCarthy and some of the more gruesome elements of prewar American Firsters. Was it Bush-Cheneyism? Doubtful. Its fiscal pixilation came from Reagan and its neocon delusions from Wilsonianism and its social conservatism from a Rovian hoax. Gingrichism? No. Pure power politics. Reaganism? Another socially conservative hoax, yet an ideology that was willing to suffer compromise under the strain of fiscal and international realities. Nixonism? No way; again, pure power politics, admixed with flashes of Metternichian ingenuity and Corleone-like evil.

The 1970s New Right and its precursor of Goldwaterism? Now we're getting somewhere, in that these were Frankenstein concoctions of fundamentalist religionism, harsh libertarianism, fawning militarism, severe simplicity in reaction to complex challenges, and a clinically rabid anti-liberalism. Sound familiar? 

That, anyway, is one reasonable starting point when setting out to chart the GOP's morbidity. Jagged though its charted line of ascent has been, its outlying, right-wing dots of Bill Buckley's late-1950s and early-1960s' "fusionism"--libertarianism, social conservatism, militarism--connect rather nicely with what the NY Times calls the GOP's modern "mainstream" extremes.

For GOP pols of natural intelligence and irrepressible humanity, it's been one long and bumpy and alarmingly frightful ride. For GOP pols of opposing qualities, it's been a picnic. And then there's Mitt Romney, who has yet to demonstrate any human qualities at all; he's just a bobber in GOP waters, happy to go up, delighted to drop down, content to drift hither and yon in all the madness, as long as he makes it safely to the terra firma of personal success.  

Let's just say that Mr. Romney avoids the helm. I think we can all agree on that. And that, in relation to the NY Times editorial wrap, is what puzzles me endlessly:

Mr. Romney has a chance to move back in the direction of the center by amending this extremist platform. It will be interesting to see if he seizes it.

They're joking, right?

Comments

[Ted Frier]

The half century year (at least) civil war within the GOP coalition between "regulars" Republicans and "movement conservatives" is now over, as you say, and the far right won. I like to think of the current rightest coalition as a fusion betweeen Plutocrats and Populists -- two factions whose joint disdain for the American nation-state feeds off one another from opposite ends of the socio-economic spectrum.

The Plutocrats actively work to dismantle the USA because they do not want a strong state trimming their profits or regulating their behavior -- though they do love to loot its wealth. The populists loath the nation because the price of having one is co-habitating with all of "those people" that Rand Paul, Barry Goldwater and other assorted neo-confederates think God-fearing, white Christian Americans have a constitutional right (through the First Amendment's supposed guarantee of freedom of non-association) to avoid.

This union of finance, industry and populist nationalism has disturbing echoes, as goes without saying, in the illiberal and anti-democratic right wing fascist movements of the 20th century and beyond.

[Peter G]

I worry about systems. In particular the stability thereof. It is what I do for a living. I have done so since my young adulthood when the seminal ideas of Norbert Weiner came to my attention in the course of my studies. Looking at the very complex American political system and the Republican party in particular, I have to ask, where is the negative feedback that will restore stability? There doesn't seem to be a whole lot. And let me be clear that I do not think this is limited to just the Republicans. There appear to be two main options for voters to take to deal with their terminal frustration when it comes to government gridlock. Tune out or pull farther to either extreme in the hope that a compromise on their side of the center line will result. This does not argue well for a return to a moderation in the Republican party. There is little punishment to be found for going ever farther right if one is not stupid enough, as Akin was, to publicly make your general argument a particular one. Most of American political life is on auto pilot. People vote for the party they were brought up with. It will be fascinating to see how this plays out.

[Robert Lipscomb]

The New Right movement brought structure and organization to message building. A subsequent vacuum in radio created a low-cost media outlet for a unified message, combined with its chief spokesman, Reagan. Add to that Fox New and you have an insulated feedback loop of propaganda. from this sprang a new reality which had little to do with, you know, reality.

[Peter G]

Just so Robert. But that is a positive feedback loop. And any such thing uncountered by negative feedback forces the system to early destruction. Countered by an inadequate negative feedback what you get is oscillation that ultimately tends to destruction. Analogy is always suspect when one attempts to apply mathematical constructs to human behavior but this is more an application of applied philosophy than math. Failure modes are a matter of probability.