We should all be well versed by now on the does and don't of nation building. You help the moderates in the country, even if you don't like them, in order to empower them and isolate the radical elements.
Easily said. Hard to do.
Democrats are now faced with the need for some serious party-building – isolating the radicals in the party by embracing the more levelheaded moderates in the party.
Oh wait... sorry. I bet you thought I was talking about Democrats rebuilding the Democratic Party. No. Obama pretty much did that during the primaries and campaign that followed. No, no, no. Democrats need to help rebuild the Republican Party, because if we don't “they” will.
And you know who the “they” are I'm talking about. They are the spawn of Gingrich, Delay, Falwell, Perkins, et al. They are the very forces that made ignorance and intolerance litmus tests for GOP party leadership. They, who took the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Ike and pervert it, just as the Taliban perverted Islam, the KKK Christianity and AIG, (et al,) perverted capitalism.
Maybe we shouldn't be just a nation of two parties, but we are. And it's unlikely we are going to become a parliamentary system, which itself is imperfect. So it's Democrats and Republicans, as far as the imagination can conjure. So fixing the badly broken – dangerously broken – GOP should be priority 2 for Democrats.
But why, you ask, at a time when the nation is in such dire straits, should Democrats take the time and make the effort to help the GOP? Why not just let them stew in their own juices? Let Republicans fight amongst themselves over whether to hang their future on the likes of the moron from Alaska in order to appeal to the party's moron base, or to move back towards the center.
And why not just play the next round of political “gotchya” by encouraging GOP fundamentalists so they actually do run someone like Palin in 2012, for all the obvious reasons.
Because, if Democrats go that route they will only sentence us to decades more of the same. More of the boom and bust political cycle, in which one party prevails only because the other over-reached and made a hash of things, to be followed by another power switch, then another, a senseless, non-productive, destructive political see-saw act – plenty of ups and downs, but no forward movement.
The election opened up a rare moment of opportunity to break that cycle, but only Democrats can do it. It begins by reaching to moderate Republicans, some of whom were actually thrown out with the bathwater last Tuesday. By doing so Democrats can play a role in restoring an opposition party made up of men and women of good faith, good intentions, good minds, good character and – maybe most important of all, good manners.
Since the days of Ronald Reagan the Republican party has pandered to America's lowest common denominators, the Joe the Plumbers, Sarah Palins, Tony Perkins types. People who, when having to chose between narrow ideology and the wider common good, always chose narrow over wide. Who, when history, science and data contradict their fondest metaphysical fantasies, decide the only response is to materialize their fantasies by making them into law.
Those within the GOP who had something more than half-frozen tundra between their ears tended to object to the insanity. So, they had to go. Like Cambodia's former fundamentalist rulers, the Khmer Rouge, the GOP fundamentalist systematically purged their party of it's intelligentsia. Some of the last remaining conservative thinkers escaped during the recent Presidential race. Those who remain have been either beaten into submission or learned to grunt the party line with the worst of them.
“The enthusiasm generated by Palin shows that the party intends, wittingly or not, to replicate not just Bush's policies but his whole operating style. She is the most Bush-like figure conceivable. Jeb Bush would be a far more dramatic departure from the incumbent than her. Her utter lack of interest in policy, her obsession with certitude ("you can't blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission"), her folksiness masking incoherence--all reflect the style of The Decider. The way Palin filled her government with grossly unqualified high school cronies eerily apes even the Bushian qualities that many conservatives have come to regret.” (Jonathan Chait, The New Republic.) (Full Article)
And that's why we Democrats need to put aside all our stored up animus towards the GOP and actually embrace moderate Republicans. We need to do this for the same reasons we've embraced Maliki in Iraq and Karzai in Afghanistan. Not because they are perfect, or because we agree with them, or because we think they have the right solutions most of the time -- or any of the time. But because if we don't the alternative is worse – far worse.
So, as we get ready for the coming Democratic Party resurgence, beware of two things: Neo-liberals, and forcing GOP moderates to fend for themselves.
You and I know who I'm talking about when I refer to “neo-liberals. They are the flip side of the neo-conservative coin.
Neo-conservatives created a welfare state for the rich.
Stephen Pizzo has been published everywhere from The New York Times to Mother Jones magazine. His book, Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans, was nominated for a (more...)
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Yeah, but how, exactly? I'm out here with arms spread wide and lips in kissy mode, but conservatives are not exactly lining up, and it's not only 'cause I'm ogly.
After months of working for Obama and for local candidates in Oregon and Colorado, I've observed that the fresh consensus developed during this season did so largely outside the established Democratic party structure (in some cases, silly little turf wars between Obama and Dem organizations flared over who should be poll watchers, and so-forth).
We have a huge problem in institutionalizing progressive values and new-found enthusiasm without trying (fruitlessly) to supersede the Democratic Party structure. As for conservatives, I think that all we can do is indicate a willingness to listen and an insistence on fair play, and then let them get on with reviving themselves as best they can.
In other words, I think we should take your thoughts seriously as matters of principle; but I don't think we can do much about them in practice.
Again, a very fine piece!
by
Jim Stinson (14 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 76 comments) on Monday, Nov 10, 2008 at 6:51:13 PM
The arrogance of this piece is astounding. This is false analysis at its worst.
"We should all be well versed by now on the does and don't of nation building". Huh? I don't see any nations being built anywhere, but I do know the American government has a history of destroying nations, both economically and politically, if not militarily, all over the world. Including our own. And that's irrespective of Democrat or Republican political dominance.
"Maybe we shouldn't be just a nation of two parties, but we are." This is classic question-begging. Might as well say we shouldn't be illegally occupying Iraq, but we are; or, our government shouldn't be owned and operated by Wall Street interests, but it is; then proceed to tell us we should have more of the same.
"Extremists are the real enemies in each party." This is status quo propaganda boiled down to its very essence. It explains in a sentence why progressives' votes are welcome but their policies shunned by the Democrat's political machinery: Progressives are extremists.
"Nation building, party building -- two peas, same pod." Is this a translation of something Hitler said? Sure sounds fascistic. The Nation and the Party are all-important, while individual liberties and social services get nary a mention. What happened to the democratic notion of public officeholders as public servants and representatives of their constituents' needs?
"We can be small and petty in victory, or magnanimous. If we choose the first we get a short-term rush and a long-term crash. If we choose the second we create a chance of getting back a government that can actually govern." Truly a false dilemma, if not a straw man. We have yet to see if this turns out to be a victory at all for the People, or just a political victory for the Democratic Party. The two are far from synonymous. And what government can govern when its money and monetary policy are controlled by private interests? Neither Party has shown any political will to defy and rein in the Money Power that has had every administration in the last 150 years on puppet strings.
by
Jim Eldon (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 253 comments [15 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Tuesday, Nov 11, 2008 at 2:34:43 PM
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