The sad spectacle of the GOP’s ’08 nomination race underlines major problems that the party will wrestle with for a long time. Following six years of criminal mismanagement the explosive immigration debate finally broke the fragile truce between business conservatives and social cons. Since then the rift has festered to the point that Dems trump the GOP on every economic indicator and the business vote stands ready to stampede left en masse.
Losing corporate conservatives only makes the religious bloc that much more critical, yet for some reason Republicans want to nominate a giant red middle finger like Giuliani and push Dobsonites out of the tent as well. If I had to guess why I would say that they probably understand that spiking Giuliani won’t do much good when the next options include a Mormon and a swinging, halfhearted embarrassment of an actor. Unless the GOP reaches into the backbench for non-candidates like Brownback or Huckabee their most motivated voting bloc will find something else to do in 2008.
But if fiscal mismanagement has driven away the corporate cons and issue neglect drives away the social cons, what’s holding up the tent fabric? The answer, I think, looks a lot like the two GOP candidates with something like traction – Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul. Done laughing? Let me explain. Giuliani collects and expands on everything that the GOP has come to represent in the late years of Bushism: dictatorial executive power, corrupt cronyism, pseudo-religious leader worship, unprovoked wars of aggression, torture, an unaccountable police state at home, party unity through racial demagoguing. Strip away the morality voter baggage and the fiscal conservatism and you have, basically, fascism. Rudy’s support conveniently illustrates the constituency in America who personally vindicate Sinclair Lewis’s famous thesis.
Ron Paul’s insurgent campaign represents almost exactly the opposite. Paleo-con in every way including racism, the Paul movement out-Goldwaters Goldwater. Paul’s insurgent success comes entirely from the Buchananite faction who have quietly (and not so quietly) stewed since they lost their party to Gingrich/DeLay corrupticons and Pat Robertson Jesus warriors. They hated Iraq, detest Bush and want their party back.
A Giuliani nomination win would cement the GOP’s place as a catchbasin for islamophobic security freaks, basically a militia without the greasepaint. A Ron Paul win would put the GOP exactly on the rails that it left some time between Goldwater and Reagan, and I honestly can’t blame GOP supporters who want to get back in touch with their roots. However, Pauliacs need to remember that movies we saw when we were twelve seemed so crazy awesome because, well, we were twelve. The Legend of Billy Jean remains one of the coolest movies ever made and I will brook no disagreement on that topic, but neither will I ever watch the movie again. The world has moved on since Paul’s isolationism, small-government absolutism and racial baggage were relevant, and I suspect that a Ron Paul win would ghettoize the party as effectively as Giuliani would.
In my view the rest of the GOP frontrunners are basically ciphers, non-entities whom GOP voters would support tepidly in 2008 and forget soon after he loses to Hillary in a landslide. A nomination win by any of them won’t create any clear direction for the party, meaning that the intra-party civil war will just go on for another four years until Newt tries to bring back the 1998-2002 corrupticon glory days in 2012.
Billy K
I realize this post is about the GOP, but don’t underestimate Ron Paul’s attractiveness to card-carrying Lefties as well.
Xenos
All together now…
C’est la lutte finale
Groupons-nous et demain
L’Internationale
Sera le genre humain.
Let’s brush up on that one to be ready for the Hillary Inauguration party. It sounds even better in Russian, with less sentimental, more bloodthirsty lyrics.
The Other Andrew
I think the religious right is more about authoritarianism than strict doctrine, that’s why I think they could easily adopt Rudy. They’ll treat his old abortion position like his old marriages–IOKIYAR.
Future GOP axis: police staters, social darwinists, xenophobes, anti-modernists. The small-government types, relatively sane corporate types, and competent foreign-policy types will jump ship, IMHO.
Tim F.
Sorry Xenos, hysterical fearmongering won’t cut it this time. This year you’ll need to field a real candidate.
Helena Montana
I am a liberal Democrat and I. Will. Never. In. This. Life. Vote. For. Madam Clinton. Never. I could, however, see myself voting for Huckabee, who seems compassionately (genuinely, not conservatively), articulate, engaged, intelligent, and all around not too much of a cryptofascist. If I could just be assured that he wouldn’t try to cram his religious and abortion beliefs down our collective throat, I’d vote for him before I’d vote for most Democrats and CERTAINLY before I would vote for Madam Clinton.
RSA
I am old. My first two thoughts were “Wait, not Billy Jack?” and “They made a movie about Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs?”
Xenos
Drat. I doubt Hillary even knows the tune for L’Internationale, anyway.
whippoorwill
I just want the press to drag out all of G-mans skeletons crammed into his closet. There ought to be all kinds of salacious shit in there. All guaranteed to cause mass wingnut head explosions across the country. Yipeee!
Tim F.
Indeed. Hope you pick ’em better in 2012.
Xenos
Talk about the tyranny of low expectations…
JWeidner
How DARE you sir! How DARE you.
Thompson was AWESOME in Die Hard 2. Who among us DIDN’T feel the tension he brought to the screen in every scene set in the air traffic control tower? Who among us didn’t SOB in relief when he single-handedly saved the day by clearing the planes for landing? Who could possibly FORGET this winning turn as “Trudeau, Chief of Air Operations”?
For SHAME Tim….for shame…
Brian
whipporwill-why are you assuming that the “liberal” media will be at all interested in digging into Rudy’s closets? They only do that for Demoncrats and when the story explodes before it can be buried!
over_educated
Irrespective of the situation with the current Republican field: The Legend of Billy Jean is cruise control for awesome. I think the better 80’s movie description for this Republican field is “Better Off Dead.”
Sirkowski
Concern troll.
Justin
Then you’re not a fucking liberal democrat, are you?
Someday, someone has to do a psychological profile of people who believe everything that the hard right believes, and yet insists that they’re Democrats.
NickM
@Helena – “I am a liberal Democrat…. I’d vote for [Huckabee] before I’d vote for most Democrats and CERTAINLY before I would vote for Madame Clinton.”
@ Justin: “Then you’re not a fucking liberal democrat, are you?”
Hey – if Larry Craig can be heterosexual while favoring sex with men, Helena can be a liberal Democrat and prefer voting for Religious Right loonies. Not everyone fits into tiny little boxes, man, especially not liberals. Expand your mind, baby!
Zifnab
If only more people said that back in ’00.
whippoorwill
Brian says’
I bet your a buzz kill at all the parties, Brian. I was having a pleasant day dream and now you’ve ruined it by pointing out realty type stuff. Oh, the humanity.
Fe E
Are you talking about Orson Scott Card?
Alan
It’s back. OK, here’s my post I put on the other thread:
I wanted to address this small comment by Tim F:
That’s the claim I always hear about the social cons. But their issues have not been neglected. Their issues seem to get all the attention over any other issues. As Tony Blankley stated:
Personally, I’d be glad to see the Social Cons go. Their issues, IMO, sabotage practically everything which has to do with Goldwater conservatism, like limited government.
scarshapedstar
A long time? Huh? What about the Rapture?! After all, God Is In The White House!
Tsulagi
Yeah, it seems current Republican strategy is to disassociate with the fundie activists as much as possible while occasionally tossing them a wink about future SCOTUS appointments. They know the Jesus warriors have no other home. Plus they don’t want to lose the saner Pubs and Independents who unlike Brownback don’t think Jesus talks to them through smiles and frowns on zygotes before the flying Rapture busses arrive.
Sort of McCain 2000. But that guys seems to have missed the memo. Recently said he was a non-baptized Baptist, which didn’t win him any converts for that pander. Ironic, to win, McCain 08 should have been McCain 00.
I’m with you there rooting for a darkhorse Ron Paul win for the nomination. A Hillary vs. Ron Paul contest. You just couldn’t dream up comedy like that. The Hillary/Paul debates would be awesome. While the “serious adults” like the Malkinettes and Kristolites in the party slit their wrists. Go Ron Paul!
Alan
Ron Paul is a Pro-Lifer, which rules him out as a slap in the face to the Social Cons. I have my priorities.
The Other Steve
I for one am cheerleading for him. I think he’s great.
Sort of a Joe Lieberman for the Republican Party. Every debate he’s up there bashing on the republicans, is a great day for America.
Pb
That “Ron Paul is a racist” smear is actually a bit more complicated than some seem to wish it was. In fact, this is typical of such one-sided smears, racist or no–there’s a whole “Abraham Lincoln was a racist” argument out there as well. It’s dangerous to just throw the race card out there as a political tool–that is, if you’re interested in combatting actual racism.
So let’s review. George Allen is a racist. Ron Paul is a white politician in Texas. The band “Prussian Blue” is racist, as was Hitler. Abraham Lincoln was a white politician from over a century ago. Stephen Douglas was a racist. Mark Twain was a white writer from over a century ago. And Fred Phelps and Alan Keyes are totally insane.
Zifnab
Fixed.
Compare ’07 Huckabee to ’00 Bush, and tell me what differences you see. Why would I think I could expect anything different?
Now compare ’07 Clinton to ’92 Clinton. Tell me how Bill’s wife is going to run the government radically different than the big pumba did? Are you seriously going to believe Hillary and Bill weren’t joined at the hip when making decisions during the first Clinton terms? Were the 90s worse than I remember, and no one told me? I can’t seem to recall.
Davis X. Machina
Fiscal conservatives received tax cuts but not spending cuts.
Blankley sees this as a disappointment, but isn’t this more or less what they wanted in the first place? Certainly it was the formula in place during their last heyday, the paeleoReagan era…..
Pb
Hello Alberto!
Davis X. Machina
The ticket should be Brownback and Someone Sane, for balance.
grumpy realist
Huckabee intelligent? Isn’t he one of the three candidates who doesn’t believe in evolution?
Anyone who refuses to believe in evolution due to a literalist reading of the Bible is no better than a flat-earther in my book. And boy do I wish we could withhold from them all technology that was developed through the scientific process they hold in such disdain.
Slightly OT, but I just read somewhere that one of the reasons that the Saudi oil fields are depleting rapidly is because of acutely bad mismanagement and mis-engineering by the locals. Also heard that the Saudi universities teach that “the Sun goes around the Earth.” I find this hard to believe–maybe some of the religious schools but the universities as well? Anyone got anything on this?
Tsulagi
Yeah, he is that. But I can almost see a President Ron Paul after taking office say there shouldn’t be a president so as to remove the temptation to sign legislation creating laws or approving government funding for anything.
President NO! It would then create a situation where Dems and Pubs would have to work together to get anything done. Ron Paul, a true uniter. He’s looking better all the time.
grumpy realist
Oh, and I doubt that Rudy will be given as much of a pass as people think. He pissed off a large section of NYC and they’re not going to remain silent.
DragonScholar
An interesting assessment. Let me add some thoughts.
First, this actually can represent a shift in the Republican party from who they are to what they say they are. Despite all the talk of conservativism and values, 9/11 Tourettes was the order of the day. So after all this time talking one thing while playing authoritarian police state warmongering games . . . the Republicans get a lead candidate exactly like that. Rudy.
The problem being that the candidate’s appeal to some of the base elements is not what expected – and frankly Rudy isn’t going to attract the liberal crowd anyway. Essentially, if he gets the nomination, it’s the indication it’s truly become the Party of Crazy – and knowing the Republican inability to back down, the party will try and run with that.
Secondly, I think part of the split is due to the growing religious right influence. They expect payback for their support, essentially. They won’t be satisfied unless they get some capitulation. A third party may not mean they win the presidency – but if they stayed united and focused on some regions, they might get into state government at least.
Third, it’s pretty much shown that the Republican coalition was one based on winning – not governing. I don’t think what they had can be recreated until memory of the failure fades.
Though in America, that’ll probably take only ten years. So I hope we have some religious-nut party at least to keep them as isolated as possible from the federal and some state governments.
Pb
Tsulagi,
Yeah, it’d be interesting to see the resultant deadlock (and funding vetoes) created by a Ron Paul presidency. We’d definitely be out of Iraq, but I wonder what else we’d be out of.
Billy K
Haven’t you been paying attention? The 90s were HORRIBLE! The President got a blowjob!
Yes, but this is the GOP, so “Someone Sane” is not available. Any other ideas?
RareSanity
At the risk of sounding like a Pauliac, Ron Paul’s foreign policy is not that of isolationism…that is the neo-con FUD description just like HRC is proposing “socialized medicine”. HRC supports “government subsidized corporate medicine” and Ron Paul supports non-interventionist foreign policy.
Isolationism means “I stay in my part of the world and cut myself off from everyone else.” Non-interventionist means “I will do business with you and I interact with you, but your internal politics are none of my business. If I don’t like your internal politics, I don’t do business with you. If you want to do business with me, change your internal politics. No sanctions, no embargoes, no military action.
Non-interventionist foreign policy also means I am not going to invade your country and install brutal dictators only to invade your country again decades later and actually BE the brutal dictator.
Cyrus
I dunno… some support him because he opposes the war and that’s the only issue they care about (or the only position of his they know about so far). Some support him, like The Other Steve, only so far as he demonstrates just how nutty the rest of his party is. Some don’t support him, but respect him because he’s very rare in actually being loyal to his principles. Saying that he has a lot of “attractiveness to card-carrying Lefties” is putting it strongly.
Zifnab
I’m sorry, but that is completely incoherent. You won’t do business with someone, but you won’t sanction them? It’s none of our business, but we’ll use it as a criteria for pressuring you to conform? Is this passive aggressive foreign policy?
To be fair, this is totally unreasonable. You can’t not participate in foreign governments and economies without holing yourself up in a box and stuffing your ears with cotton. We influence China, Iran, Mexico, France, and South Africa simply by existing. And we’ve got too many cross-boarder business interests, family ties, and historical feuds and fellowships to disentangle ourselves now. Ron Paul would figure this out very quickly if he somehow miraculously became President.
That said, even if its a swan dive off in the opposite direction of the current “We’ll bomb you if you look at us funny” foreign policy of the existing administration, at least its moving in the right direction.
The Other Steve
Technically, that is an embargo.
bittern
Y’all think the Democratic Party is beyond the influence of regular folks now, wait ’til those recently Republican U.S. business interests show up!
caustics
Though he has claimed he won’t consider it, I would love to see Ron Paul run as third-party candidate just for the fuck-shit-up entertainment value. The mere fact that an anti-GWOT conservative could even exist, let alone gain a rabid following, is driving neocons batty (and into knee-jerk smear and destroy mode) even at this early stage.
A three-way debate would be an utter disaster for the GOP, and they know it. Ain’t gonna happen I suppose, but it definitely would be popcorn time.
Jay B.
While i appreciate that Ron Paul is the sole non-neo-fascist running for the GOP ticket (seriously — I hate using the word fascist, but how else can you describe Rudy, or Mitt “Double the Gitmo for Half the Rights” Romney, or John “Bomb, bomb, bomb, Iran” McCain? I suppose Thompson might not be, but he’s got all the verve and dynamism of von Hindenberg before the goons bum rushed the Reichstag. The other ones are mental midgets who confuse medieval superstition with morality and while some of them might not be bad human beings — they should be kept as far away from the presidency as possible.), and he seems to stick to principles, I find many of those principles as anathema to my vision of what modern society should be.
Still, I appreciate his — and Bob Barr’s and Bruce Fein’s — revulsion to neoconservatism.
grumpy realist
Hey, Jay B.–a plug for the medieval period–any medieval jurist would have been totally against what George Bush has been doing. The concepts of “natural law” actually produced quite an amount of protection for individuals–and the Inquisition would have fried Bush’s ass for going against the rules of evidence the Inquisition came up with.
“Habeas corpus” is only one of the legal traditions we were handed down. So why are all the so-called “conservatives” trashing all these legal traditions left right and center? (And no, the silly thing called “natural law jurisdiction” that Justice Thomas claims he follows is a pale and putrid collapse of what we actually used to have. Anyone who claims to follow “Natural law” should follow what the Hague is doing w.r.t. Human Rights. It’s the modern equivalent.)
Rob
As a registered Independent/expat living in Japan who leans to the bleeding heart liberal side, at least according to my dad, Paul is attractive for two reasons – one, he’s anti-war in Iraq and two, his libertarian streak puts him firmly pro-civil rights. And as I get older, I find myself more and more pro-small government, thinking “government should just leave people the hell alone” instead of “government should help people.” But that’s probably just my cynicism from the last six years showing.
The racist/ghost writer thing is much more complicated that Ron Paul = racist. I’m not inclined to agree, but even if I did, how sad that in the battle of the GOP, I’d still pick a racist Paul over a fascist Giuliani?
I still think my favorite candidate would be [description stolen from BoingBoing] the love child of Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich.
AnonE.Mouse
Yeah,the Clinton 90’s were just fucking great.
The health care debacle.Telecom deregulation.NAFTA.The Balkan Campaign of The Great Oil War.None of which would have been possible without US business ownership of the DLC.
My favorite description of Clinton is that he was the best Republican president of the 20th century.
John's Minions
Hey AnonE. Yeah, we especially loved the way he started all those @#$*!! unprovoked wars that killed all those soldiers.
Christ, we shold have gone to work for Blackwater, at least they show a thug some props.
over_educated
Huh, irrespective fo your complaints Annon, the 90’s were the zenith of American political, economic and culural hegemony.
Few other things the 90’s had: incredibly strong economy, no pointless wars, budget surplus…
Helena Montana
Sirkowski Says:
Am not either. Distrusting, despising, and deploring Madam Clinton does not make me a concern troll. I am certainly not alone in my feelings. From either end of the political pectrum, LOTS of people, liberal and conservative alike, loathe her.
Catsy
No, but asserting that you would vote for any given GOP candidate before her does. Whatever your disputes with Clinton–and believe me, I have plenty–the idea that she would be worse than any of the GOP candidates for just about any single liberal issue, let alone the big picture, is beyond retarded. In order to truly believe that, you would have to be either deluding yourself or so politically ignorant that your opinion is meaningless.
Seriously. Bother to educate yourself on her actual positions on issues that define liberal philosophy. Educate yourself about her legislative record. Do the same for the entire GOP field, and then get back to me about which one you think would do more damage to the things you care about.
Until then, asserting that you’re a “liberal Democrat” who’s willing to vote for a Republican in ’08 is an express ticket to the land of not being taken seriously.
TenguPhule
Yep, not a liberal democrat or a concern troll.
Just a troll.
Sojourner
A libertarian who is anti-choice.
Hmmm. I guess Paul’s anti-government position applies only to men.
Rob
“Hmmm. I guess Paul’s anti-government position applies only to men.”
Yeah, I’m not exactly happy about that, either. And it is a hypocritical and striking contrast to small, non-invasive govt. Religious belief, once again, gumming up the works.
But still, for me, [and maybe cause I’m not female] in a “lesser of all evils” choice, I’d still go with Paul outta that field. Especially considering the Prez’s influence on that particular issue seems mostly limited to Supreme nominations…
rbl
To be fair about Paul’s anti-choice views, if one honestly believes that a 4 week old embryo is a human being, then it is perfectly consistent to favor legal protections of said embryos. Presumably Paul isn’t in favor of legalizing murder in general, so it is consistent for him to oppose legalized killing of Blastocyst-Americans. Not that he is right, but it isn’t particularly hypocritical.