Ross Douthat, on Americans Elect's unepic failure:
It’s possible to imagine a gifted political figure emerging to fuse elements from the Tea Party and O.W.S. critiques into a plausible third party challenge to politics as usual.... Such a candidacy (Pat Buchanan meets Ralph Nader) wouldn’t have to actually govern the country; instead, its purpose would be to jolt the two parties out of their usual habits and arguments and to persuade one or both of them to adopt some of its ideas.
Embedded in this critique--which helps to impel desperate, ill-advised, ill-considered third-party movements--is the right's fashionable bugaboo of late: that both major parties bear roughly equivalent blame for the wretched condition in which we find ourselves. The national debt and annual deficits? Republicans and Democrats, equally--or thereabouts--responsible. The Iraq war? A Republican and Democratic war. The housing crisis? You have, in equal measure, asses and pachyderms at fault. Wall Street's shenanigans? Republicans and Democrats alike joined with about equal fervor in dismantling the New Deal's financial protections ...
You get the point: Any conservative willing to blame Republicans is a confessor only to the extent of an offsetting, nullifying, symmetrical blame. In numbers, there is safety. In bipartisan guilt, there is anonymity. In 'So's your mama,' there is absolution. When everyone is to blame, no one is to blame--especially those to blame.
What's exceptionally perverse about this conservative tactic is its saintly subtlety. "OK, look everybody, we're willing to accept some of the blame for this contemptible state of affairs, which proves what genuine, above-board, capital fellows we are. And that, by definition, proves that we're not all bad."
What's omitted from that false humility is the final confession that conservatives (pseudoconservatives, actually) are reaping precisely what they wanted, all along. They're willing to take some of the "blame," because the present outcome of their actions is the long-sought, far-right Ideal. "Conservative" pols labored for decades to ratchet up the debt--through the slashing of revenue and the explosion of defense--to unendurable levels, at which point any new revenue would be vigorously anathematized as unacceptably destructive to a wounded, debt-laden economy. The only option: dynamite the New Deal, the Great Society, and any of their corollaries.
Take some blame? You bet they'll take some blame. They're delighted to do so. After all, they're very gracious winners, don't you think? So gracious, they're even willing to share some of the public's condemnation.
What menschen they are.
I just laid down a biography of John Tyler who became president upon the death of William Henry Harrison. The Whigs comprised a majority of nationalists (Henry Clay "American System) and a minority of disaffected (we hate Van Buren) Democrats. harrison represented the former and Tyler the latter. When Tyler (surprise, surpise) governed as Democrat, everything went to hell.
To ultimately be effective, a party has to be for something. For over thirty years, the GOP has been for lower taxes and fewer regulations - with a vengenance. Democrats have spent much of that time looking like slightly better formed Whigs. i have no problem with the party having a "big tent". I have been bothered by their lack of being FOR something.
Until recently.
Obama has been FOR something. The GOP interprets this as being radical left which is wrong. What they seem to be reacting to is that Obama is forcefully and unapologetically championing a left of center agenda in explicit opposition to their agenda.
My take on Obama's 2012 campaign is that he is doubling down - across the board. rather than taking a defensive position and limiting himself to "jobs", he is asserting a vision on a wide range of left of center issues.
In short, he is FOR something. What he is FOR is easily synthesized into a shared vision by his party. The Dems look less "Whiggish" every day.
Posted by: Robert Lipscomb | May 16, 2012 at 08:30 AM
To be undeservedly kind to Douthat and other such right wingers as are now willing to accept that Democrats and Republicans are equally culpable for the policies and governance that resulted in the current fiscal situation: this is how they admit their own policies were completely and utterly wrong.
Posted by: Peter G | May 16, 2012 at 09:14 AM