Tonight's Republican speeches reveal quite a bit about how the rest of the election will play out. McCain began this election beloved by the press and expected to compensate for the lack of right-wing base enthusiasm by going hard for independents and swing voters, using his appeal as a straight-talking maverick.
That strategy is in tatters. Tonight was a full-throated reversion to what has become the default posture for the right: resentment, tribalism, nationalism, and fear. After Carly Fiorina's bland and widely ignored remarks, the rest of the night was pure red meat. I was somewhat surprised -- I thought they'd use Palin as a hook to bring in mild-mannered soccer moms, but her speech was just as hyperpartisan as the rest. Instead of taking her appeal to the center, they are using her to elevate the culture wars.
Obviously I'm not a disinterested observer, and no more able to say what "real Americans" thought than any other media gasbag, but to me it all came off as tinny and almost surreal. It wasn't exactly a policy-filled message in previous years either, but this time around the lack of policy specifics has become conspicuous. It's purely gestural, one shopworn trope after another with all details stripped. (See Chris Hayes' sharp post on this.)
There's Romney railing against "liberal Washington," as though six years of unrestricted Republican rule never happened. Railing against government spending, which has ballooned under his party's watch. Talking about restoring Constitutional freedoms, when his president has repeatedly abrogated them. And always, the final refuge of the conservative scoundrel: a sense of aggrievement and persecution at the hands of media elites.
Is there anything stranger than a room full of affluent, privileged white people who have run the country for almost a decade cheering wildly for a provincial small-town girl who promises to shake up Washington?
As strange as the populism has become, nowhere is it more bizarre than on the subject of energy. Somehow drilling -- offering historically profitable oil companies access to protected American ecosystems so that they can make more money by selling our oil on the world market -- has become a crie du coeur for the Little Guy. Somehow building nuclear plants, the greatest example of corporate welfare in the last half century, is something They won't let us do, another baleful result of political correctness.
At one point during Giuliani's speech, the entire auditorium, thousands and thousands of people, began chanting in unison, "drill baby drill! Drill baby drill!" Giuliani smiled at first but then tried to tamp it down and eventually started talking over it. He's not exactly the most judicious politician, but even he could sense that there was something deeply, deeply weird about it. (Perhaps the only weirder moment of the night was when Palin castigated the media and delegates on the floor, en masse, started shouting and gesturing angrily up toward the media booth -- I felt a brief twinge of fear that I was about to witness actual violence.)
The policies of the economic royalists are still being packaged as populism, despite the grim evidence of the last eight years -- and the base is now chanting about it. What's next? Will the base take up arms about a tax that only affects people making more than $2 million? Oh, right.
To be fair, the speeches by Giuliani and Palin were masterful examples of the art form. Giuliani knows how to use mockery and contempt like few other speakers, and Palin clearly relished playing the "pit bull with make-up." They got in some great lines and put the crowd in a frenzy. I bet if you polled Republicans right now more of them would support Palin than McCain.
But do they think this is going to win it for them in a year of economic downturn and Democratic ascendancy? More tax cuts and foreign policy belligerence? More oil company populism? The base rallying strategy, again? I'm not sure what else they've got in their quiver, but some part of me thought they'd try something new. Seems not. It's going to be a long, ugly 60 days.
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Comments
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Russ Posted 6:30 pm
03 Sep 2008
They know they've destroyed the country, that from here it's only "the downward path" as Jeffers called it. All they have left is atavistic nihilism, to revel in the destruction, and to dream of violence.
I don't know if David was exaggerating when he said he briefly felt real fear, but it's no joke. By now the Reps have mobilized whatever level of baseline fascist scum there is in America (using that term here simply to mean belligerent, aggressive stupidity).
Yet this is more visible than the far more ominous massive expansion of the private paramilitary/repression-industrial complex, Blackwater et.al.
(This expansion and its domestic ensconcement was one of the goals of the Iraq war.)
You can bet, when things really begin to bite, when the Republican-set charges detonate in earnest and the economic system comes crashing down, that's when this cadre, bolstered by all this yahoo vermin, will try to impose a de jure police state (whereas so far the admin has only been able to move in increments toward a de facto authoritarian state).
It will be the final, most all-encompassing play by disaster capitalism.
The time to understand this is now, and the question to ask now is, what kind of forces can be mobilized to prevent this?
Unfortunately, so far there's little consciousness, and little organization.
Something to think about.
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ce1907 Posted 7:00 pm
03 Sep 2008
and that is good; liberal elites are bad
liberal elites say the world is coming to the end, and you cannot have cheap coal industry or drive your car with cheap gasoline
but liberal elites are wrong; you are good and can have anything you want
demogoguery
"You have nothing to fear but fear itself"
FDR saw the danger
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Pangolin Posted 9:00 pm
03 Sep 2008
They are counting on their ability to rake in the suckers one last time with the promise of a big rock candy mountain and pie in the sky if you just vote with the rich one more time.
Only a nation of idiots would buy this one more time.
Put the Carbon Back
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randino Posted 9:02 pm
03 Sep 2008
Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH
Randy Cunningham
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ce1907 Posted 9:58 pm
03 Sep 2008
much of Repub ideology since 1980 is based upon those cultural milestones
rednecks v hippies, army v vietcong, church v atheists, mothers v libbers, white v black
the nonsensical remark about Obama not mentioning "victory" in his speech is about the Vietnam War, and its re-incarnation in Iraq
the derision toward "community organizer" strikes a chord with those who resented the mobilization (and "manipulation") of the poor and the black in the 1960s
Repubs want the election to be about identity politics (most elections are), and want the "issues" to be vague identity-loyalties regarding general topics from the past. Old prejudices, near and dear to hearts historically
stay calm; talk about the last 8 years, and the situation now
don't call Republicans "scum"
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Bob Wallace Posted 12:36 am
04 Sep 2008
Stay positive. Unite, don't divide. Work to solve the problems that we and the entire world face.
The sort of attacks that I heard last night do nothing to move the country forward. They simply serve to get one specific set of candidates into power.
Obviously there is a lot to be done in both developing better answers to our problems and educating the greater public as to what can be done.
Why not turn our focus in a positive direction?
IMO, we need a major push to educate, to take what we current know can be done and make Americans aware of real world solutions.
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Sean Casten Posted 12:37 am
04 Sep 2008
Bizarre.
As always though, the Onion does a great job here, praising Fox News (and others) for their advancement of the national discourse so that a black man can now be portrayed as elitist and out of touch with the working man.
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setb Posted 12:38 am
04 Sep 2008
We should demand (if new drilling does happen) that any oil company profits made from drilling off our coasts go to a fund to protect new areas/fund clean-up-- Kind of a drilling Superfund? Or pay for clean energy R & D? Or fund public transportation?
This may take fire out of the oil companies efforts--and at the least offer some protection from the eventual environemntal impact or have something good come out of it.
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gzuckier Posted 12:41 am
04 Sep 2008
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gzuckier Posted 12:44 am
04 Sep 2008
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Jon Rynn Posted 12:55 am
04 Sep 2008
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:02 am
04 Sep 2008
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mihan Posted 4:19 am
04 Sep 2008
So it stands to reason that the Dems are also telling lies. But what are they? Do I just not notice them?
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mreinbold Posted 5:36 am
04 Sep 2008
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Baby Boomer Posted 3:38 am
05 Sep 2008
"What's the difference between Dick Cheney and me? Lipstick!
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mreinbold Posted 7:10 am
05 Sep 2008
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saluki Posted 4:53 am
06 Sep 2008
"We'll have one fantastic VP right after another. I am totally psyched! I have always been a little indifferent to McCain until now. He made a great decision."
I'm still somewhat indifferent to McCain. I was more of a Romney supporter. But, I must say, his speech at the convention was so poor that I may have had the wrong choice. The Huckabee speech was decent. Giuliani's speech was good. And of course Palin hit it out of the park. It'd be nice if Palin was the top of the ticket, but interestingly people are drawing comparisons between her and Mr. "Hope, Dreams, Change, Social Justice". While Obama was selling snake oil for a year without getting to specifics, Palin got to them immediately.
Nobody wants to bother to make comparisons with Biden. I mean here is a guy whose only achievement is that he has mastered putting his foot in his mouth more quickly than any other politician. The guy that graduated 76th out of a class of 85 and then started telling everyone that he had graduated in the top half of his class. The guy that got kicked out of one of his courses for plagerism. Why bother comparing to him. He is a complete idiot. And you have to question Obama's intelligence in choosing him. Of course Obama has never run anything or been responsible for anything in his life. So there is no reason to believe that he is capable of making a reasoned decision. When you consider his choice for mentors and freinds, you have another very strong clue that Obama is clueless.
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Pangolin Posted 9:19 pm
06 Sep 2008
How a middie graduating that low was ever allowed to pilot an aircraft is beyond me. After crashing the second plane he should have been cashiered.
Sara Palin attended six colleges in six years to get a B.A. in journalism. It is noted that she doesn't seem to have published a single article in her school paper. We're not talking a shining light here but some seriously low wattage.
Given that Ronald Reagan had alzhiemers disease during his last term in office and the disaster that George W. Bush has been it might have been prudent for the GOP to nominate some of their brighter lights.
When pigs fly that will happen.
Put the Carbon Back
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setb Posted 2:19 am
30 Sep 2008
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