Santorum on Citizenship

Santorum, at a NH townhall Saturday:

The job of a citizen is one that was essential--our founders believed was essential. They limited, as you know, initially, the rights of citizenship from the standpoint of voting to a small group of people because they were concerned that all Americans wouldn't take the responsibility seriously, wouldn't be educated enough to make an informed decision. Over time, though laws passed and amendments passe to the constitution, that opened up and more and more people. But with that freedom to be a participant in the electoral process comes responsibility.

That's right. The exclusion from the franchise of women, minorities, and poor dudes didn't have anything to do with a preponderance of influential 1700s politicians people believing they were classes of human being that didn't belong in public life, or in some cases, subhuman. Those infalliable Founders just didn't think they were "ready" yet, but boy would they have been pleased to learn that with a century or two of hard work they'd show they were worthy of getting a vote.

Why has a fetishization of the "founders" so characterized the current right-wing resurgence? What necessitates such an extreme whitewashing of history when surely there would be no face lost in claiming that these extraordinary men were nonetheless products of their time in some respects, or even, that their impeccable morality exists outside of space-time but they lived in a democracy after all and their co-generationalists forced these positions on them?

But of course, neither of these questions would get at the real objective here: rationalizing conservatives' deep discomfort with the principles of egalitarianism that liberals, and the modern society they have shaped, hold dear. That discomfort, a result of deep aesthetic and sentimental attachments to authority (be it the ancien regime or Christian white male privilege), can be suffocating to the emotionally and intellectually incurious who make up much of the conservative base. Santorum's bed-time stories at once absolve these folks of a responsibility they can't bring themselves to bear while reinforcing a truth they really do cherish deep down: that people "like them"--really know what's best for the country.

More Republican Problems

This is good:

I’d say the main reason wingnut mythology gets increasingly complex is that as each euphemism for an odious belief becomes denotative, they need to shift gears a little. Mere mortals can’t keep up. We, after all, aren’t being fed a daily diet of right wing talk radio to make the connections for us.

Conservatives are hitting a wall right now...the "we don't actually have real policies to endorse" wall. The mantra of low taxes, small government, get enemies, etc. aren't actually "policy proposals" in the sense of an actual plan, they are more pithy rallying cries which allow people that are part of the movement to demonstrate their fealty to the cause. Now that all those things are being called into question after 8 years of Bush souring the American people on them, the party is realizing that they don't actually have any policies enjoying broad based consensus which would actually, you know, suggest a course of action.



Democrats, by contrast, have a big book of real policy proposals that enjoy general consensus at any given moment. And they are actually legitimate propsoals. "Universal health care" and "Diplomacy" are real things backed up by reams of options for implementation. The challenge of course is figuring out the mix around which to build a coalition. But that's a far cry from the Republicans scrambling to get people to rally behind things that are really just words tied to a lot of cultural resentment and passion, but not so much to actual ideas ready to put into practice.

No More Fixing Social Security

Atrios calls out this line in the NYT coverage of the summit business:

But any solution, budget analysts said, must include a mix of both approaches, though current beneficiaries would see no change.

Seriously though. Instead of budget analysts it should say "centrist fetishists who think everything is better split down the middle regardless of the actual policy tradeoffs involved". That's a purely political opinion, no budget analysis about it.

Tea Parties

Nice sensible editorial about bank nationalization in the NYT today. It's hard to tell sometimes just how much the "fundamental abhorrence of nationalization" meme is actually felt or just generated by the press as the natural countervailing theme to the suggestion that the government is considering going down that road. In fact, this is where the whole "tea party" nonsense should really be directed. (Speaking of, 'tea party' sounds vaguely like it should be a euphemism for some kind of trendy sex party which only some people understand right? "Jamie is going to another tea party this weekend. He really needs to slow down." "Oh, yeah, sure, that's disturbing...I think")



But anyhow. While the outrage over the stimulus and the foreclosure stuff is pretty misguided, if a bit more for the former than the latter, the outrage over the bank bailouts is legitimate and should be felt by both conversatives and liberals alike. Conversatives claiming any sort of populist bearing SHOULD be pissed about sloppy turnovers of taxpayer money to megabanks which, if they weren't feeling the moral hazard before, almost CERTAINLY are in the brave new world of endless TARP. But we're not going to do nothing. Temporary nationalization should be held up as the way for taxpayers to punish the leadership of these institutions for their profligacy rather than feeding it.



Of course the cynical money might say that conservatives are using this as an opportunity to use the bank bailout to tarnish the stimulus bill, which clearly wasn't really succumbing to their critiques taken alone. Never you mind the past 8 years of stunning and unprecedented complicity between the Bush government and the country's elite financial interests, reject Obama's culture of bailout! Yeah, that sounds about right, actually. Crafty bastards, aren't they.

Strategizin'

Nate Silver points out the thinking behind the Obama administration's willingness to go after agenda critics, e.g. Rush Limbaugh, the crazy CNBC guy, directly in press conferences. As Silver says, it does provide a nice foil for the administration, but it also does something more: it aligns the craziness of the commentators with the similar craziness of actual elected Republicans, without going after the minority directly.

Crazysauce

If you thought Fox News was scary during the Bush years, you ain't seen nothing yet. I mean, if some guy started saying this shit to you on the subway, you would be freaked out, right? At least on Fox, Beck is clearly situated in the "hopeless bloody car crash that is sickly entertaining" section of the commentary landscape, as opposed to the "how are we ever going to fix dumb cable news" section, as before.

Pickin' Candidates

Kathryn Jean Lopez says she's not REALLY serious about this but you know she kind of is. Because conservatives (of the Corner sort, at least) just can't seem to get it out of their heads that garnering 15 minutes of fame in the political press is synonymous with fitness for national office. It's the same mentality drives their glee over partisan hackery competing on the level with legitimate journalism, i.e., it gets the collective liberal goat.