SATSQ: Conservative wonk edition

The people who started the Southern Strategy knew better. The Nixon and Reagan dogwhistles are far too artful to be ignorant. Maybe some of the people who grew up with the Southern Strategy don’t realize what’s going on. A lot of the Tea Partiers in Congress seem to actually believe the dogwhistles.

Modern (since the 1960s) conservatism has always been about white nationalism. I could see this as a black girl growing up in a predominantly white, predominantly Republican Chicago suburb in the 1970s and 1980s. But then, I couldn’t afford delusions.

They knew, they’ve always known. They just thought their “voters” were in on the gag that the white racism was supposed to be on the downlow.

Oh, yeah, now they come clean because they have a dickwad for a nominee. As Fair Economist, Karen S and satby mention, this has been an ongoing “thing” for them for quite some time.

Whenever I see the phrase “conservative intellectual” I remember the quote from John Kenneth Galbraith: The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

Roy, YOUR center is white nationalism. You just want it framed as responsibility so your beautiful mind can believe it’s Democrats who are the real racists.

I read that title as “Conservative Wank Edition”

Likely more accurate my way.

I have never heard a conservative of any strip admit that the GOP was the inheritor of the Dixicrats – people and politics. They like to talk about being the party of Lincoln and elide over that post Goldwater change in the party.

In other news, water is wet, the sun is very hot, gravity sucks, and we all die.

From TPM, Reports: Clinton camp in talks for Sanders to formally nominate Clinton. Strictly symbolic, but I look forward to seeing HA Goodman choke on this in his next video.

@Cacti: Eh, he’s been using them too; it gets the GOP votes so the finance sector can steal social security, public education, public services — the scam works in 2 directions. After all, do you think your average stormfront reader really gives 2 sh!ts about charter schools?

@Elizabelle:

an efficient, relatively low-cost safety net for everyone

Where Collins goes wrong here is that you really can’t do this kind of thing on the cheap.

Who the hell is Roy? Patrick or Mr. Horn?

@PaulWartenberg2016: and it will probably take another decade to come to some conclusion.

@Dork: a conservative health policy wanker

When a person of colour like Avik Roy has the scales fall from his eyes, and he realises he’s been a dupe all along for white racism, one should rejoice that he is finally woke (did I say that right?).

“We’ve had this view that the voters were with us on conservatism — philosophical, economic conservatism. In reality, the gravitational center of the Republican Party is white nationalism.”

They knew damn well racism was at the core of the “conservative movement.” They – all of them – from William F. Buckley on down to Ted Nugget embraced it. They want it. It’s who they are.

Fuck this revisionist “who could’ve known conservatives were racist” shit. At least own who you are.

@MattF: The first time that I saw the performance, I though the parents
should be investigated for child abuse.

@Amir Khalid:

he is finally woke (did I say that right?).

not quite: He has finally woken up. or He is finally awake.

They say there are harder languages than English, but I don’t know any of them.

I’m pretty tired of these “intellectual” republicans still pretending they don’t understand what happened to the GOP. They’ve been banishing other Republicans from the clan for years such David Frum and Bruce Bartlett for being too truthful.

OT:

Another proud moment in law enforcement/minority relations.

Dr. Dre detained and cuffed outside his Los Angeles home, when driveby racist calls 911 to complain of a black man with a gun (actually a cell phone).

@Bill:

They knew damn well racism was at the core of the “conservative movement.” They – all of them – from William F. Buckley on down to Ted Nugget embraced it. They want it. It’s who they are.

No kidding.

William F. Buckley was racist as shit, and early editions of National Review contain his explicit defenses of southern segregation laws.

@Elizabelle: You have to understand that in his world, as in that of many people, identity politics simply means having more than a certain percentage of non-white people appearing on stage, which no one would ever even think of doing unless they were pandering, because, basically, everyone knows that such people do not deserve to be their based on their own merits. White is normal and white people are presumed to be competent, so by definition, you are not engaging in identity politics when you pander to white people.

@schrodinger’s cat:

Right, hence the quote marks. Media seems to describe Republicans like Roy as the “intellectual” wing. Not sure what else to call that group, establishment or maybe grand old poobahs.

@Linnaeus: You can do it a helluva lot cheaper than we do with our fragmented and exorbitantly expensive health care system.

It’s all about the Whiteness…

they can lie to themselves if they want to…

but, phuck.outta.here.

You point out that Trump’s ‘economic policies’ won’t benefit anyone but Ferret Head and his cronies, and they will shrug.

they only care that Ferret Head is politically incorrect, and will put ‘ THOSE PEOPLE’ in their place.

Riddle me this…am I wrong….

Did previous GOP Conventions actually let the White Supremacist/White Power Groups get credentials ON THE GODDAMN CONVENTION FLOOR?

Just askin’.

@schrodinger’s cat: Identifying with the imperial power?

@Amir Khalid:

There’s a thing now in American English: using “woke”, the simple past tense of “wake”, as an adjective.

Well, so is “redpilled”, but I don’t recommend using it.

@Amir Khalid: Yes, “woke” meaning something like “enlightened.” But I think it’s limited to progressive/social justice contexts.

@Iowa Old Lady: A sort of ethical null hypothesis. Doesn’t require explanation or modeling.

@MattF: Indeed. Kipling’s Gungadin was poor, he had no choice. Avik Roy on the other hand did with his degrees from MIT and Yale.

@MattF:

Reagan Democrats were just social conservatives who got to the point where they didn’t care about liberal economic issues that much.

@Linnaeus:

one should rejoice that he is finally woke

But what noun is woke as an adjective modifying? (my grammatical rules are rusty, but I don’t see it) In that sentence structure, I see Amir using ‘woke’ as a noun, being the state Roy is in?

@PaulWartenberg2016:
But HaHa keeps saying in every single video that he still loves and respects and admires Bernie. In fact, HaHa insists in one of those videos that Bernie’s Democratic convention speech was really telling everyone to vote for Jill Stein; and he’s only doing that because it’s what Bernie wants.

@Chyron HR: I hesitate to inquire….but redpilled? Can you throw me a bone?

@OzarkHillbilly: Just an adjective: it’s a new way to say “enlightened.”

@Gin & Tonic:
I am easily amused by trivial things.
ETA: Plus, he looks so cute when he rolls those big round eyes in that chubby ickle face.

@OzarkHillbilly:

What FlipYrWhig said. It’s saying that “he is aware” or “he is awakened (to a particular circumstance)”. It has its origins in black activist slang.

@negative 1: Could be. Other than my sons, the only youngsters I hang out with these days are in their 40’s (I realized this much to my horror a couple weeks back when a buddy celebrated his 42nd, I first met him when he was 18, and even tho I know I am no longer 34 yo, I still think of him as 18)

Policy Wanker Realizes He Will Always Be Water-Carrying Dupe in GOP’s Eyes Due To Being Brown While Conservative.

::sad trombone::

This Road to Damascus moment brought to you by the terrified white elephants on the Right.

@Fair Economist: We have Lee Atwater’s testimony that at the creation of merger between the Modern Republican Party and the Conservative Movement, it was “evil” not stupid. https://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/

Now a generation of policy apparatchiks like Avrik may have come of age during the 80s, 90s, and Oughts believing the Kool-aid of “Free Market” and “Limited Government” Ideas. But the politicians always knew that “Muslim,” Immigrants, etc, was just another way of saying “n-word, n-word, and n-word.” https://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/

As for why this has found such fertile ground, well, for much of the country things have gotten much worse the last 15 years. http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/re.....s-counties

Also, the NY Times Upshot and the polls show why this will be such a tight election. Trump is getting the white male, non-college educated share in overwhelming numbers, 69% to 20% in on one poll. For these people, Trump is there way of getting even with both the elite and the Other. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07.....ctionfront

yes know what, I’m not at all an HRC fan. But I think it’s interesting that folks have this view of HRC that they don’t have of BillC… tell me how she has higher negative than he does…folks who weren’t even around when the GOP blitzed HRC have this view of her, yet serious question how many young people REALLY have any idea of HRC beyond what they heard growing up?

@satby: four (or more) decades of neglecting education will do that to an electorate.

Has anyone done any sosh research on whether advanced degrees swing graduates left or right depending on what advanced degree is sought? Once one gets past secondary education, what SLANT one wants to learn is as selectable as what MATERIAL one wants to learn.

@FlipYrWhig: OK,

Aside from racism, I am not certain what other people thought republican conservatism was. I knew some of them thought it was religous. I have a cousin who is religion identity centered. She also sends me annoying racist stuff since Obama was elected which I finally got her to stop. The anti abortion lies started way back. she is notably anti science which I attribute to the fact she was not good in school, especially in science and resented it.
another cousin is upset at Trump. I had not even realized she considered herself conservative. I am going to have to ask her what she thinks it is because she has quite a few friends who are POC going back to childhood and I just don’t get it. I think it might be her father’s influence. His thing is gun rights…..but he is a Vietnam vet who voted Obama and may have voted Kerry even though I think he hadn’t voted Democrat in decades but he saw the parallels. It sort of surprises me how weird the paths people think of. Habit may be part of it. I can remember when I thought the important difference was that the Democrats were better on environmental issues and tended to be better for teachers. Republicans weren’t being as blatant on the racism then and the video proof wasn’t happening yet.
I have seen for a long time that the GOP was in a dead in trap but I thought they would figure some way out. The trap is they have made nice promises to be better on race before and then reneged so especially blacks correctly don’t trust them. When the demographic end of the line happens, they can see they need to change but if they do, they will lose some voters, as the Democrats did when we changed from racism to supporting civil rights. The catch is they have to promise, lose voters, carry out the promise for awhile anyway in order to gain trust, and then the blacks may consider their other policies and some may vote for them. At the same time, there is no reason for the democrats to not remain the same so why would the blacks change? I am specifically saying black not all minority because that particular group has been double crossed more than others, and until recently I was expecting some other minorities to actually “become considered white” like say Italians and Irish in the past. Now the GOP has gone hate them all on all groups, but not to long ago they weren’t.
The only way out is if something else was going on that was damaging the Democrats like say our economic preferred policies were screwing everybody or we had started a dumb bloody war we had no purpose for and wouldn’t get out. A secondary problem for them is their economic policies are actually bad for the economy.
Parties have died before. Another one will happen. I am really sick of this one.
Libertarians are just as infected by racism as the GOP so they won’t be a help.

@Barbara: Some excellent whitesplaining. Well done.

@MattF: Yes, I read his story, but its difficult to feel the tiniest smidgen of sympathy for someone who is completely okay with a party that basically discriminates against the poor and disadvantaged to the point where their health and well being is threatened, and then be outraged when that same party then targets non-whites and non-Christians. Shocking.

The article makes me think of the scene in Band of Brothers where the US soldier starts yelling at a defeated German army, “What did you *THINK* would happen?!?!?!”

Without racial/ethnic/religious nationalism (“social conservatism”) there is no Republican party.
Building a true mass movement around fiscal conservatism is impossible at this point.

@Betty Cracker:

They might be dead party walking, but they’ve got a lot of statehouses locked up and will continue to have a huge national constituency that will be okay with the white supremacy framework for years to come, either because they agree with it outright or because IGMFY.

For years, the IGMFU Republicans were the “establishment” who viewed themselves as not-racists – the evidence needed to convince themselves being that the did willingly accept like-minded POC such as Avik Roy (or Denish d’Souza or Clarence Thomas) among their ranks. The most prominent contemporary example is in the original Confederate state, South Carolina, which has Nikki Haley (governor) and Tim Scott (US Senator) -both elected by quite comfortable margins. The problem of course is that beginning with Nixon’s 1968 campaign, the GOP decided to cater just-enough to white racial resentment to incorporate enough of them as useful idiots to create the numbers needed for the long-term winning coalition needed to begin restructuring government more to their ideological aims. And so they did with evangelicals on cultural issues, even while being social libertarians themselves. Mr. Roy’s awakening amounts to a realization that the inmates have taken over the asylum, and the traditional establishment has been forced to seek shelter from the angry crowds they had formally been able to placate and control. They are like a wildcat-tamer act where the big cats have turned on their tamers, without benefit of any backup able to kill or tranquilize the angry cats.

I’m sorry, “ferret head” is offensive. Ferrets have beautiful, smooth, soft fur.

I’m going with Comrade Trumpsky (h/t Baud).

@gogol’s wife: I think we should just call him Mr. Trump. All these nicknames sound too cutesy for the American Nazi.

How Michelle Obama wrote Donald Trump out of the American narrative

This was the rhetorical audacity of her speech: to turn around the attacks made on her and, 20 years ago, on the Clintons, and to turn them against Republicans.

Her critics caricatured her in 2008 as angry, unpatriotic, outside the mainstream — and she told Democrats that America was “the greatest country on Earth” and deserves “a leader who is worthy of that truth.”

Twenty years ago, Republicans attacked Bill Clinton by saying that character matters in presidents — and Obama argued that, yes, it does, and that Hillary Clinton is the one who has it.

This is partly just some very good rhetoric. Obama’s speech was packed with the kind of lines that dare anyone, no matter their political beliefs, not to applaud — paeans to police officers and parents, an affirmation of racial progress, an almost total absence of policy.

But it’s also striking how those universal applause lines, the reminders of unity rather than divisiveness that made Barack Obama’s 2004 speech so successful, were remarkably few and far between at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

Obama was able to fight on this ground in part because Trump abdicated it. She could argue for American greatness because his slogan is “Make America Great Again.” And she was able to put herself in the center because the Republican Party gave her a nominee she could show to be on the fringes.

@Barbara:

White is normal and white people are presumed to be competent, so by definition, you are not engaging in identity politics when you pander to white people.

This, this, this.

The normative cultural condition in this country is presumed to be straight, white, male.

Therefore, the members of the above group assume (falsely) that they are not speaking from a white racial, male gendered, or heterosexual perspective. They believe they are speaking from a broad, objective perspective. Pointing out that their perspective is no more objective than anyone else’s can elicit a response ranging from uncomfortable, to angry, to outright violent.

@catclub: Yes, I am hoping the long term outcome out of this election [at the least] is that all Trump related purchases/contracts will be cash up front required.

I would have absolutely zero sympathy for any “business person” who dealt with Trump in the future and got partially stiffed on the transaction. Too much information is out there about his dealings and theft.

@NorthLeft12: Forget where I saw it the other day, but some marketing firm recently found that the Trump “brand” has completely tanked with anyone who doesn’t drive around with a confederate flag decal on their truck. Who would want to admit they live in one of his buildings or golf at one of his courses?

Shorter Avik Roy: I looked at who was signing my paychecks, but never asked where the money was coming from.

That’s the story of the “wonkish” side of wingnut welfare.

@negative 1:
Actually, yes. There is nothing the white power movement hates more or screamed about louder during desegregation than their children attending schools with black people. They HATE public education.

@Elizabelle: The funny thing is, Brooks is (unintentionally) right: Dems are all about identity politics. Just not racial identity (or any other narrow kind of identity). It’s about a broad, sweeping sense of American identity – who we are as a whole people. Our ideals. Our honest history. Our march towards progress.

What was it last night…”when we are indivisible, we are invincible”? Spot-on

@Patricia Kayden: Andrew Sullivan is a Tory twit, without coolies and wogs to civilize there is no rationale for the Empire, most Tories worship as the greatest thing evah.

@PaulWartenberg2016: Nice article – I posted it to FB – altho’. of course, the people I wish would read it (ie, my Republican male relatives), won’t.

@Calouste: Oh, thank Goodess, you mean I only have to feel *somewhat* warm and fuzzy about him? //

@Cacti:

The normative cultural condition in this country is presumed to be straight, white, male.

Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President than Donald Trump. But rich, white and male goes a long way.

Jon Huntsman got the extra credit for being rich treatment.

George W Bush got the born to the aristocracy treatment.

Could you explain the meaning of this sentence?

At least it updates our priors to weight willfully blind if not stupid.

some marketing firm recently found that the Trump “brand” has completely tanked

But he may go on to make a new fortune with the new Trump Network, speaking fees, book sales, etc. catering to the haters as their standard bearer.

@Cacti: The ultimate example of this are people who think addressing gender status and equality is “pandering” to “special interests.” Women make up a majority of voters. How can their welfare be considered a “special” (as in “narrow”) interest? And yet people talk like this all the time without acknowledging that their own interest group cohort might be much, much narrower.

@Punchy:

It’s a metaphor for becoming aware of the conspiracy women are committed to as they avoid men who are players, attempting to use a manual of tactics to woo women, as pick-up artists. The red pill is what you need to swallow in order to become aware of the female conspiracy to refuse to provide sexual relief to these guys, who don’t actually like women, but desire their favor none-the-less.

Gamer Gate is related to the pick-up artist culture somehow as well.