In today’s column, Richard Cohen laments Sarah Palin’s proud ignorance, dishonesty, and general unfitness to hold high office — and speculates that her influence is going to migrate out of the Republican Party eventually:
So far, the Palin effect has been limited to the GOP. Surely, though, there lurks in the Democratic Party potential candidates who have seen Palin and taken note. Experience, knowledge, accomplishment — these no longer may matter. They will come roaring out of the left proclaiming a hatred of all things Washington, including compromise. The movie had it right. Sarah Palin changed the game.
Betty Cracker thinks this won’t happen because Democrats are better than that:
While the left has its share of dunderheads, I’m afraid the Republicans have pretty much cornered the market on prideful ignorance. When was the last time a Democrat on the national stage appealed to the base via anti-intellectualism? William Jennings Bryant maybe? We ceded the Know-Nothing vote for good when the Dixiecrats finally got over Reconstruction and switched party allegiance to the GOP a few generations ago.
I think it won’t happen for another reason: Democrats aren’t really allowed to be like that, at least on the national political stage. After decades of Democrat- and liberal-bashing propaganda from the right (going back to Spiro Agnew at least), America may agree with liberal ideas on many issues, but America only lets actual Democrats run things when Republicans have royally screwed up, or when the country is sick and tired of the GOP (1976, 1992, 2006, 2008). Even then, Democrats have to reassure the public that they won’t really act like, y’know, Democrats — mustn’t frighten anyone by being remotely ideological! So Carter ran as a healer and holy man, Clinton as a Sister Souljah-bashing New Democrat, the congressional class of 2006 as a group big enough to include the likes of Jim Webb and Heath Schuler (and exclude the likes of Ned Lamont), and Obama as a post-partisan.
Angry demagoguery that inflames the ignorant masses? That’s allowed in national politics if you’re, say, Palin or Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich or Michele Bachmann or Steve King or Allen West or James Inhofe. If you’re Alan Grayson or Anthony Weiner? Watch your back. (And they’re not even ignorant — just intemperate.)
(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)
Grayson is probably my favorite bomb-thrower – I really hope he wins in the fall.
This would have struck me as extremism maybe, I dunno, before the Bush II years, but after 4 years of wanting to pull my hair out watching PBHO repeatedly bending over backwards to court GOP cooperation and getting spat on at every turn, the two dirtiest words in my political lexicon are “bipartisan” and “compromise.” I would stand up and cheer until I needed a tracheotomy if a capable Democrat came along bearing the message that the GOP has completely unfitted itself for a seat at the adults’ table.
I don’t think that’s the Palin effect filtering down to me; I think it’s a rational response to what the Republican party has become in the wake of her national debut. I hope the GOP continues to devour itself until only the crazies are left–if we can’t lance it, this boil needs to burst before it turns into a tumor.
In any event, I don’t see any danger of us becoming like them, no matter how heated our internal debate gets, or how weird the conspiracy theories become, or whatever. Taking pride in ignorance is just not what we do. We may occasionally (as individuals and small blocs) bestow intellectual authority upon the wrong people, but we don’t have a deep-seated fear and loathing of those who use big words, or worry secretly because someone out there is smarter than we are. To put it briefly.
I’m having a hard time updating the William Jennings Bryan or Huey Long models of progressive populism to 21st Century America – not because there can’t be anti-intellectual demagogues on the left, but because on virtually every topic of political and social importance in our country, the right has already staked out the stupidist, most societally counter-productive position.
The pendulum has swung so far in that direction that populist slogans that, in other eras, might be parodyable extremism – TAX THE RICH! STOP ALL WARS! – are at this point sensible correctives.
Not to mention that people like Eugene Debs must be screaming like hell from The Great Beyond when idiot Pukes call the President a Socialist.
Comment of the hour from The Young Turks exit poller talking to a Mississipian man “Waaalll it’s just stopid to vote for someone who’s gonna lose so I voted for Ron Paul”
Reading this piece after hearing that interview I’m reminded that sometimes you just have to remember who these guys are talking to.
I think that probably qualifies as a Yogi Berra-ism, a statement that is reasonable or true expressed in such a way that it becomes a non sequitur.
The idea is that it doesn’t make any sense to cast a primary vote on the basis of electability if you don’t think even the electable candidate has much of a chance in the general election. In such a case, you should vote for the one you believe in instead.
In covering the South, the media love to pick out the most stereotypical (to them) white Southerner. It not only feeds the stereotype, it by being on the media legitimizes it. Just once, I would like to see them happen on a white Southern socialist (they exist, quiet but they exist) on live coverage (do they have that anymore?) to hear the newsmodel doing the interview sputter.
And of course, the Young Turks would put on this guy in their coverage.
Acknowledging that there are other types of white Southerners is the first step to winning in the South.
And BTW, there are some conservative Southerners who just love to bullshit reporters from outside the South by putting on the “I’m stupid and ignorant” role. Just don’t deal with them in business or play poker with them.
And of course whenever Democrats into power, we’re expected to become serious about the deficit and long term financial solvency of the nation., These subjects of course become completely unimportant when Republicans regain power, just in time for tax cuts for the rich and maybe a few wars.
Bryan was a better progressive than Betty Cracker. And better than Wilson.
Headline: “For Democrats, Angry Stupidity is Not an Option.”
Body: “mustn’t frighten anyone by being remotely ideological!”
This explains so much.
Angry, stupid demagoguery can only be used to destroy, not create. Democrats can’t be angry and stupid, because the more anger and stupidity there is in our politics, the less progress.
People who view politics as a means to accomplishing progress, and people who view politics as an opportunity hoot and holler and feel righteous, have very different views of demagoguery.
It’s supposed to be about governance, not primal scream therapy.
Angry, stupid demagoguery, and the elevation of ritualistic denunciation of political differences to the pinnacle of one’s political being, is Sauron’s Ring.
It will destroy your soul, turn you into your enemy, and for all your good intentions in seizing it, you will end up only making the shadow grow larger.