In my last piece, I considered a very interesting post by the author Richard Perlstein about the juxtaposition of the GOP
1. Publicly taking down the Confederate flag
2. Embracing the Mexican baiting candidacy of Donald Trump.
Perlstein argues that unlike number 1, number 2 is a private act-whether telling a pollster or in a voting booth.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-conservatives-are-so-bitter-and.html
By the way, I would recommend his books if you're interested.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=rick+perlstein
So the conservative two step is public profession-in this case taking down the CF-followed by a private confession-voting for Trump in opinion polls.
"This helps explain why the Trump business finds Republicans in such political disarray. Soon after Trump’s immigration utterances, Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona (95 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union, 99 percent from the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity), called for the Maricopa County Republican Party to pull its sponsorship of last weekend’s Trump campaign rally: “I don’t think that [Trump’s] views are reflective of the party, particularly in Arizona, a border state.” He also called Donald Trump “coarse.” That was the old way to play it."
"Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, on the other hand, was thrilled to read the political cues differently. She said, “I believe that Mr. Trump is telling it like it really, truly is.” Arizona’s Republican rank-and-filers, ecstatic to finally find someone to say what they know in their hearts to be true, plainly agreed: thousands of them turned out to the Phoenix Convention Center to hear Trump cry, “The silent majority is back, and we’re going to take our country back.”
"All these figures, the censorious Flake, the welcoming Brewer, and, of course, The Donald Himself, pose as daring truth tellers. The real truth-teller in this business, however, was Lindsey Graham. He’s harvested praise for being the only Republican contender willing to call Donald Trump out. But note how Graham hardly criticized the substance of what Trump wants to achieve. Graham, too, thinks we need to “secure the border” (he wants to triple the number of drones), in abject denial of the fact that the border is more “secure” by any objective measure than it’s been in a generation. He blamed 9/11 on undocumented immigration. Instead his moral objections took a back seat to utilitarian ones: “We have to reject this demagoguery. If we don’t, we will lose, and we will deserve to lose.” That gives the game away."
"I’ve never seen anything that lays bare the core lineaments of conservatism so neatly: there is our tribe, which is good, true, and pure; and there are those other tribes, who are existential threats to you and me (Reagan’s favorite phrase), and must be suppressed in order for good to be preserved. “We” all know this, even if “they” don’t allow us to say this. If anything, the lowering of the Confederate flag in South Carolina opens space for this particular new longing to air this other silent truth more freely.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/donald-trump-confederate-flag
Perlstein then says something that strikes me as very provocative-this is the inspiration for the question in my title.
"This is important: conservatism is like bigotry whack-a-mole. The quantity of hatred, best I can tell from 17 years of close study of 60 years of right-wing history, remains the same. Removing the flag of the Confederacy, raising the flag of immigrant hating: the former doesn’t spell some new Jerusalem of tolerance; the latter doesn’t mean that conservatism’s racism has finally been revealed for all to see. The push-me-pull-me of private sentiment and public profession will always remain in motion, and in tension."
This is something I've argued about conservatives for a long time: they don't believe in learning as such. Which is why it's so hard for them to change the party substantively to appeal to Latinos-from a conservative's standpoint changing is a betrayal of the conservative cause.
Think about it. What conservatism is at bottom is that your father was right and closer to the truth than you are while his father was smarter than he-and then your grandfather's father was wiser still all the way back throughout history.
In this sense history isn't a forward looking enterprise where humanity learns from its mistakes and improves but rather a tragic enterprise where the wisdom of our fathers becomes ever more distant and forgotten. History is then a forgetting of First Truths.
They have a completely different understanding of history. And Trump brings this tension of public profession and private confession into terrible tension.
"Liberals of a strategic bent should pay close attention for those moments in which the tension between them becomes most palpable. They reveal potential offensive wedges—opportunities to sow just the sort of confusion we see between Jeff Flake’s utterances and Jan Brewer’s. This is the way the operational trust among Republican politicians can be degraded, the better to make their unity come fall of 2016 that much harder."
"Smart Democratic politicians now have a useful script. Ask: Are you for Donald Trump or against him? Politically, that opportunity is precious. You might, say, ask Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois: Donald Trump’s name hangs conspicuously on his tower along a gorgeous vista on the Chicago River. As with the Confederate flag, would you support taking it down?"
1. Publicly taking down the Confederate flag
2. Embracing the Mexican baiting candidacy of Donald Trump.
Perlstein argues that unlike number 1, number 2 is a private act-whether telling a pollster or in a voting booth.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-conservatives-are-so-bitter-and.html
By the way, I would recommend his books if you're interested.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=rick+perlstein
So the conservative two step is public profession-in this case taking down the CF-followed by a private confession-voting for Trump in opinion polls.
"This helps explain why the Trump business finds Republicans in such political disarray. Soon after Trump’s immigration utterances, Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona (95 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union, 99 percent from the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity), called for the Maricopa County Republican Party to pull its sponsorship of last weekend’s Trump campaign rally: “I don’t think that [Trump’s] views are reflective of the party, particularly in Arizona, a border state.” He also called Donald Trump “coarse.” That was the old way to play it."
"Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, on the other hand, was thrilled to read the political cues differently. She said, “I believe that Mr. Trump is telling it like it really, truly is.” Arizona’s Republican rank-and-filers, ecstatic to finally find someone to say what they know in their hearts to be true, plainly agreed: thousands of them turned out to the Phoenix Convention Center to hear Trump cry, “The silent majority is back, and we’re going to take our country back.”
"All these figures, the censorious Flake, the welcoming Brewer, and, of course, The Donald Himself, pose as daring truth tellers. The real truth-teller in this business, however, was Lindsey Graham. He’s harvested praise for being the only Republican contender willing to call Donald Trump out. But note how Graham hardly criticized the substance of what Trump wants to achieve. Graham, too, thinks we need to “secure the border” (he wants to triple the number of drones), in abject denial of the fact that the border is more “secure” by any objective measure than it’s been in a generation. He blamed 9/11 on undocumented immigration. Instead his moral objections took a back seat to utilitarian ones: “We have to reject this demagoguery. If we don’t, we will lose, and we will deserve to lose.” That gives the game away."
"I’ve never seen anything that lays bare the core lineaments of conservatism so neatly: there is our tribe, which is good, true, and pure; and there are those other tribes, who are existential threats to you and me (Reagan’s favorite phrase), and must be suppressed in order for good to be preserved. “We” all know this, even if “they” don’t allow us to say this. If anything, the lowering of the Confederate flag in South Carolina opens space for this particular new longing to air this other silent truth more freely.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/donald-trump-confederate-flag
Perlstein then says something that strikes me as very provocative-this is the inspiration for the question in my title.
"This is important: conservatism is like bigotry whack-a-mole. The quantity of hatred, best I can tell from 17 years of close study of 60 years of right-wing history, remains the same. Removing the flag of the Confederacy, raising the flag of immigrant hating: the former doesn’t spell some new Jerusalem of tolerance; the latter doesn’t mean that conservatism’s racism has finally been revealed for all to see. The push-me-pull-me of private sentiment and public profession will always remain in motion, and in tension."
This is something I've argued about conservatives for a long time: they don't believe in learning as such. Which is why it's so hard for them to change the party substantively to appeal to Latinos-from a conservative's standpoint changing is a betrayal of the conservative cause.
Think about it. What conservatism is at bottom is that your father was right and closer to the truth than you are while his father was smarter than he-and then your grandfather's father was wiser still all the way back throughout history.
In this sense history isn't a forward looking enterprise where humanity learns from its mistakes and improves but rather a tragic enterprise where the wisdom of our fathers becomes ever more distant and forgotten. History is then a forgetting of First Truths.
They have a completely different understanding of history. And Trump brings this tension of public profession and private confession into terrible tension.
"Liberals of a strategic bent should pay close attention for those moments in which the tension between them becomes most palpable. They reveal potential offensive wedges—opportunities to sow just the sort of confusion we see between Jeff Flake’s utterances and Jan Brewer’s. This is the way the operational trust among Republican politicians can be degraded, the better to make their unity come fall of 2016 that much harder."
"Smart Democratic politicians now have a useful script. Ask: Are you for Donald Trump or against him? Politically, that opportunity is precious. You might, say, ask Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois: Donald Trump’s name hangs conspicuously on his tower along a gorgeous vista on the Chicago River. As with the Confederate flag, would you support taking it down?"
In this sense we can speak of the 2016 GOPs Trump problem. This is why I have mixed feelings about Huff Post confinding his coverage to the Entertainment section.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/07/huffington-post-banishes-trump-to.html
When the hype over his campaign started, I found it so annoying I would have agreed completely with Huff Post. However, I've since reconsidered a little: Trump is the GOP's dirty little secret and I thin the more he's talked about the better it is.
So the more Trump the better. He wont' win-though I'd love it if he did take the primary-but the longer he's out and about leading in the polls the better it is.
P.S. As Zizek would put it, Trump Is the symptom of the 2015 Republican party.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/778667?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
P.S. As Zizek would put it, Trump Is the symptom of the 2015 Republican party.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/778667?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
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