“For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”"
Hosea 8:7
Political parties often constitute uneasy alliances. The Republican Party has had to get the bulk of its votes from people voting against their economic interests. While the GOP has gotten these votes, they came at a price. A lot of ‘true believers’ feel abandoned, and others now see they were abused.
From E.J. Dionne today:
“For years, many of the elite conservatives were happy to harvest the votes of devout Christians and gun owners by waging a phony class war against ‘liberal elitists’ and ‘leftist intellectuals.’ Suddenly, the conservative writers are discovering that the very anti-intellectualism their side courted and encouraged has begun to consume their movement.
The cause of Edmund Burke, Leo Strauss, Robert Nisbet and William F. Buckley Jr. is now in the hands of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity - and Sarah Palin. Reason has been overwhelmed by propaganda, ideas by slogans, learned manifestoes by direct-mail hit pieces.
….
Conservatism has finally crashed on problems for which its doctrines offered no solutions (the economic crisis foremost among them…) and on its refusal to acknowledge that the ‘real America’ is more diverse, pragmatic and culturally moderate than the place described in Palin’s speeches or imagined by the right-wing talk show hosts.
Conservatives came to believe that if they repeated phrases such as ‘Joe the Plumber’ often enough, they could persuade working-class voters that policies tilted heavily in favor of the very privileged were actually designed with Joe in mind.
It isn’t working anymore. No wonder conservatives are turning on each other so ferociously.”
Post a Comment