Paul Krugman: Emerging Republican Minority

[Danascot]

Hey, I like the sound of this:

Remember how the 2004 election was supposed to have demonstrated, once and for all, that conservatism was the future of American politics? I do: early in 2005, some colleagues in the news media urged me, in effect, to give up. “The election settled some things,” I was told.

But at this point 2004 looks like an aberration, an election won with fear-and-smear tactics that have passed their sell-by date. Republicans no longer have a perceived edge over Democrats on national security — and without that edge, they stand revealed as ideologues out of step with an increasingly liberal American public.

Right now the talk of the political chattering classes is a report from the Pew Research Center showing a precipitous decline in Republican support. In 2002 equal numbers of Americans identified themselves as Republicans and Democrats, but since then the Democrats have opened up a 15-point advantage.

Part of the Republican collapse surely reflects public disgust with the Bush administration. The gap between the parties will probably get even wider when — not if — more and worse tales of corruption and abuse of power emerge.

But polling data on the issues, from Pew and elsewhere, suggest that the G.O.P.’s problems lie as much with its ideology as with one man’s disastrous reign.

http://wealthyfrenchman.blogspot.com/2007/03/emerging-republican-minority.html

[morningglory]

1. Hoo boy! N/T

[eppur_se_muova]

2. "G.O.P.’s problems lie as much with its ideology...." NEVER FORGET IT !! nt

[skooooo]

3. Republicans have turned "conservativism" into the new 'dirty word'

Who'd of thunk it???

[The Count]

4. SOME DAY, EVEN KRUGMAN WILL LEARN THAT 2004 WAS NOT AN ABERRATION, BUT A THEFT

I am shocked that he is still under that illusion fed by the acquiescence of our elected candidates.

[glitch]

6. It's weird, because he's written about election fraud before.

And all the news coming out about it coinciding with the USA purging only makes it even more obvious and you'd think less risky to discuss.

[starroute]

5. There's conservatism and then there's "conservatism"

When I was a kid, it was assumed that liberals were eager for change, always having their eyes on a brighter tomorrow, while conservatives were either wary of change or nostalgic for an idealized past. But I was also taught that there was a certain natural rhythm to it. Liberals were willing to experiment and try new things -- but sometimes they screwed up. Conservatives would slow down the pace, winnow out the useful from the counter-productive, give people time to get used to innovation.

All that changed with the New Right -- or movement conservatives as they're more often called these days. Coming along in the 60's, they were jealous of the New Left -- the anti-war movement and hippie radicals. (In no small part because the lefties were a lot sexier and always got the girls.) So they decided they were going to have their own revolution -- but a radical right-wing revolution, devoted to free trade, untrammeled competition, and rugged individualism. Give or take a few compromises with the religious right, that's where they've been ever since.

Trouble is, left-wing revolution was always basically utopian. It dreamed of a better life for everyone -- of freedom from war and poverty and disease. There have been issues over how to get there, and even whether it's ultimately possible, but the dream remains attractive to most people. Right-wing revolution, in contrast, is anti-utopian. It's a vision of pure social Darwinism, the law of the jungle, with great rewards for the lucky few and everyone else left in the mud. That's a vision for plutocrats and bullies, but not for much of anyone else.

Reagan enacted the trick of enacting a right-wing revolution while passing it off as a left-wing revolution -- or, at least, promising to attain the goals of the left by pursuing the methods of the right. That was never more than a shell game, but it worked for a while, because it seemed easy and flattered people's egos.

But as it becomes apparent that it can't work -- that you can't have more for everyone while simultaneously having much, much more for a few, and that you just crap up the planet by trying -- people are becoming awfully bitter and cynical about it. There's no way that sort of "conservatism" is going to be able to continue passing itself off as the wave of the future.

At the same time, though, the more old-fashioned kind of conservatism is in trouble as well. It doesn't have the answers we need. There *are* no liberal gains for it to consolidate. We've been stuck for so long that we need to move ahead by leaps and bounds to have even a chance of resolving the massive problems that confront us. We need to try not merely a few new ideas, but every new idea we can conceive of -- and all at once. That's our only hope of getting out of the hole we're in.

At this point, the Democrats are only minimally better attuned to the new conditions of the 21st century than the Republicans are. But the Democrats at least have an openness to change -- while the Republicans are wedded to the past, wedded to a failed ideology, wedded to "solutions" that invariably make things worse rather than better and that destroy more than they create.

There are a few items in the traditional conservative bag that do seem to have a place in the new set of experiments -- small-scale entrepreneurship, local control, an organic and human level of organization. But even those are going to have to be pried loose from the death-grip of corporatism and xenophobia in order to make them work. And that's a job that most conservatives are unable or unwilling to do.

[Danascot]

7. Nicely put

You should post this as it's own thread.