The Fall of Conservatism (The New Yorker)

[kpete]

The Political Scene
The Fall of Conservatism
Have the Republicans run out of ideas?
by George Packer



The era of American politics that has been dying before our eyes was born in 1966. That January, a twenty-seven-year-old editorial writer for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat named Patrick Buchanan went to work for Richard Nixon, who was just beginning the most improbable political comeback in American history. Having served as Vice-President in the Eisenhower Administration, Nixon had lost the Presidency by a whisker to John F. Kennedy, in 1960, and had been humiliated in a 1962 bid for the California governorship. But he saw that he could propel himself back to power on the strength of a new feeling among Americans who, appalled by the chaos of the cities, the moral heedlessness of the young, and the insults to national pride in Vietnam, were ready to blame it all on the liberalism of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Right-wing populism was bubbling up from below; it needed to be guided by a leader who understood its resentments because he felt them, too.

Buchanan gave me a copy of a seven-page confidential memorandum—"A little raw for today," he warned—that he had written for Nixon in 1971, under the heading "Dividing the Democrats." Drawn up with an acute understanding of the fragilities and fault lines in "the Old Roosevelt Coalition," it recommended that the White House "exacerbate the ideological division" between the Old and New Left by praising Democrats who supported any of Nixon’s policies; highlight "the elitism and quasi-anti-Americanism of the National Democratic Party"; nominate for the Supreme Court a Southern strict constructionist who would divide Democrats regionally; use abortion and parochial-school aid to deepen the split between Catholics and social liberals; elicit white working-class support with tax relief and denunciations of welfare. Finally, the memo recommended exploiting racial tensions among Democrats. "Bumper stickers calling for black Presidential and especially Vice-Presidential candidates should be spread out in the ghettoes of the country," Buchanan wrote. "We should do what is within our power to have a black nominated for Number Two, at least at the Democratic National Convention." Such gambits, he added, could "cut the Democratic Party and country in half; my view is that we would have far the larger half."

..................

Thousands of people won’t publicly say it, but they won’t vote for a black man—on both sides, Democrat and Republican. It won’t show up in the polls, because they won’t admit it. The elephant’s in the room, but nobody will say it. Sad to say it, but it’s true.” Later, I spoke with half a dozen men eating lunch at the Pigeon Roost Dairy Bar outside town, and none of them had any trouble saying it. They announced their refusal to vote for a black man, without hesitation or apology. “He’s a Muslim, isn’t he?” an aging mine electrician asked. “I won’t vote for a colored man. He’ll put too many coloreds in jobs. Colored are O.K.—they’ve done well, good for them, look where they came from. But radical coloreds, no—like that Farrakhan, or that senator from New York, Rangel. There’d be riots in the streets, like the sixties.” No speech, on race or élitism or anything else, would move them. Here was one part of the white working class—maybe not representative, but at least significant—and in an Obama-McCain race they would never be the swing vote. It is a brutal fact, and Obama probably shouldn’t even mention it.

more at:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/26/080526fa_fact_packer

[BlooInBloo]

1. Not the fall - it's just in remission. .As long as so many Americans are fundamentally assholes...

it'll never be the *fall*, properly so-called.

[whatchamacallit]

2. republicans = vermin - they'll be back

[izquierdista]

3. Bubbling up from below

I like that description -- conservatism as uncontrollable flatulence.

[UTUSN]

4. It was IDEAS they had?!1 n/t

[SpiralHawk]

9. It was 'resentments' they had

That's the 'subliminable' motive for republicons: fear, greed, resentment - if you scratch beneath the surface. The republicon leadership knows this well, and exploits it...

[Aragorn]

5. "Race"

As we so often define it, is only a political term. As W Clinton tried to point out in a wussy way, Humans are all of the same race.

Yesterday, I was let off jury duty. I know for sure that this is now "why" but in TX I had jury duty and was not called.

"according to state law" I had to identify my "race" and I accurately answered "HUMAN".

Please, people, that is the only valid/correct answer.

If I can I will return and post the scientific and accepted "reason" for different levels of skin pigmentation, but trust me it is not due ANY difference in "race".

Please, USA, grow up!

[supernova]

6. "Running out of ideas" implies they had ideas in the first place.

:puke:

You don't have and can't make a governing pholsophy if your central, unifying theme is that government IS the problem.

[alfredo]

7. This is a great quote

"The fact that the least conservative, least divisive Republican in the 2008 race is the last one standing—despite being despised by significant voices on the right—shows how little life is left in the movement that Goldwater began, Nixon brought into power, Ronald Reagan gave mass appeal, Newt Gingrich radicalized, Tom DeLay criminalized, and Bush allowed to break into pieces." -- George Packer

[KG]

8. maybe a minor retreat to rest and refit. but conservatism aint going away.

heck, i don't even have to leave DU to find all kinds of conservative values expressed.