We’re going to take a 5 day sabbatical to read and the like (Andrew Sullivan gave us the idea earlier on his blog). We’ll continue to check comments. Should something truly compelling break out we won’t be far away.
Archives for February 2010
Shorter Health Care Coverage
‘Heh’ (as someone used to blog, circa 2004).
On The Need For Concision
The Conservative Movement Elites Pine For Thermidor
How odd to see the Movement Establishment fragment so. Some dig in for their Stand against the tea bagger sans culottes. Just a year ago *they* were Jacobins. Now they are bewildered, revealed wearing Versailles finery, muttering about the divine right of Original Direct Mailers. Others want to throw down their handkerchiefs and join the ‘rabble’ (at the front, naturally).
CPAC 2010 — to switch revolutionary references — also reminds one of Stalin’s victory against his internal opposition 1924-1937. Recall he maneuvered first against Trotsky from the right and then against Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin from the left. How? Stalin was an organization man. He knew he had to destroy the Old Bolshevik Guard who controlled the Party. They remembered Lenin and more importantly knew the truth about Stalin and his marginal achievements before, during and after 1917. One of Stalin’s weapons? Open Party membership flood gates to the vast masses. He overwhelmed and diluted the Old Bolsheviks until they were nothing. And the new Party owed Stalin personally everything.
We know the analogy is a caricature. The Movement Establishment’s not there yet. And more importantly, there is no single malevolent will orchestrating events. The sua sponte dilution still wreaks havoc. Some ‘Left’ [sic] and progressive blogs noticed the unusually large youth contingent. It’s true. It’s also more than twenty somethings on a ‘most excellent’ road trip. This wave of new cohorts destabilized CPAC’s club psychology and sensibilities. We’ve attended CPAC on and off since Reagan’s early years. The Movement Establishment is rocked on its heels. Values wedge entrepreneurs suffered unheard of irrelevance and the indignity of an openly gay presence. The Movement Establishment’s gagged silence provoked bitter recriminations among many CPAC old timers. Only one obscure figure really ranted, and then unwisely before a Ron Paul audience. (Talk about not knowing his demographic).
Paul’s ‘f u’ straw poll win underscores the Movement Establishment’s dismay. CPAC hijacked from within. They may not quite feel Zinoviev and Kamenev’s bewilderment at their expulsion from the CPSU. After all, it’s still their institutions the party crashers want to join. But the uncertainty is real. Even as some like Newt try to ride the tiger for all it’s worth others want to put the rabble in their place.
Some conservatives we know point to the pre-CPAC ‘Mount Vernon’ kumbaya manifesto, seeking to paper over differences in the anti-Obama factions. The scrap of paper/html code refers in part to a more sane, rational conservatism. This, we are told, shows conservatives can be content to participate in liberal democratic pluralism. It’s doomed.
Upon reflection we think our earlier seemingly flippant comparison of the tea partiers to punk rock does apply. A Movement dedicated to nihilism and social destruction find themselves as out of touch, self-indulgent, insufficiently radical or nihilist. They are now, to quote Dr. Evil, ‘the Diet Coke of nihilsm.’ Spitting indeed. Amid all his incoherence, that was Beck’s clarion call. If the tea partiers are to be more than punk’s flash in the pan they will need that single will (or collectively single) to put their dilution to practical political effect.
Some famous Movement figures say to us quietly they wait for their own Thermidor. Even as they hedge bets and praise the new era. A time for ‘reaction’ to tamp down, er . . . Reaction. It’s a 360 degree firefight. All still despise the James Bakers, the GHWB’s ‘we have mortgages, not ideologies’ RINOs (and one supposes Carly’s FCINOs). If history is any guide, their Thermidor is still a ways off. Radicalism must overreach its climax. CPAC 2010 suggests we’re not even close. And who in the Movement Establishment has the spine to act in any event?
The Democrats deservedly face a political nightmare of their own making. Their problems are so much more pervasive and systemic than the Movement schism (so far). Americans are being treated to the spectacle of two disintegrating political forces grasping for power. But there is one difference. One of them is totally energized, consciously craving power for an admittedly incoherent, eliminationist, zero-sum Manichean agenda. The other? They’re playing badminton waiting for a third party referee.
‘How’s that bi-partisanshipy thing working out for ya, Mr. President?’
Bonfire Of The Inanities
What a difference a year makes.
Last CPAC, the colony had no queen. The Movement soldier ants wandered around the Shoreham hallways witless, or sat in the main foyer flashing their Mac Book Pros at each other, looking for ways to die. Confusion and fear reigned. They still thought of themselves as ‘Movement’ but most by now had worked in the White House, for leadership on the Hill or been appointed to SES perk slots. Still, after McCain’s crash, these former campaign veterans sought each other at the Shoreham and vigorously shook hands. Some even hugged. A lot like old soldiers remembering those harrowing minutes on Omaha.
Meanwhile, wealthy plutocrats dined on overpriced average food in the lobby restaurant. They had cheque books at the ready for anyone who could convincingly launch immediate political suicide bombers. The plutocrats asked blunt questions. Was the canon fodder pipeline real? Were the political bombs ready? And they looked for any sign of flinch, of conscience about sending 20 somethings out to die politically with no reward (Carrie Prejean didn’t happen until later in June, so no one thought of that paradise for the departed). Finally, and most importantly, what was the profit margin per attack?
Now in 2010, the colony still doesn’t have a queen. But Obama’s inexcusably weak presidency has galvanized undeservedly the Movement. Instead of a queen, the Movement offers a conch – the conch of experience. It rallies the old soldiers and waived as a talisman to cow their own insurgency. The Movement Establishment rightly has been exposed as just another D.C. nomenklatura, rich and bloated. ‘Rich and bloated’, with a new jingle and website graphics, is peddled to the febrile tea partiers as magic ‘Experience’. So far, it is not catching on. Instead, the tea party influence at CPAC outside the now very dated old school scheduled events has the potential to wash like purifying acid over the rotten edifice.
The feeling is London, 1976. Both for what is and its potential denouement. Recall how 1976 began. British kids suddenly walking down the street with t-shirts declaring ‘I Hate Pink Floyd’ ignited a mass social movement based on angry rejection. They would smash down the out of touch, self indulgent sellouts and reclaim youth culture. Back to basics. Jonathan RIchman and his two chord classic ‘Roadrunner’. From them, the Ramones and the NY Dolls, London punk emerged to kick to the curb dinosaurs like The Rolling Stones and Zepplin. You know the story re Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned et al. And they did take over for a while, mostly in London. Americans remained skeptical. Like our politics, we then as now prefer both to be processed and manufactured.
Punk failed, of course. And there’s the analogy. Without anything to offer beyond rejection, they lost their audience after 3 years. Labels and corporations jumped at the opening and packaged New Wave and more marketable, malleable product to sell. If you lived through the 80s you saw the wreckage. One famous rock figure who just played a major sporting event, speaking of punk, could just as well be talking to Grover Norquist. ‘Punk scared all of us alot at first, but if one just stood there and took it, the abuse and the spitting, one survived.’
Movement figures have no where else to go. They must endure the spittle. And wave that shiny magic conch ‘Experience’. They infected, rode then depleted the Republican Party parasite for power and personal wealth. They left the parasite party, country and government in tatters. As with all institutions their ideology infects. The Republican Party is a non-existent player in these conversations for a reason, beyond Michael Steele.
Perhaps the tea partiers will learn from history and side step her trap. So far, they seem to enjoy merely singing ‘Smash It Up.’ One hopes Grover has a lot of kleenex.
Who said Obama didn’t create anything his first year?