← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Stanley
Thread ID: 16008 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2004-12-17
2004-12-17 20:31 | User Profile
*I think Fleming's conclusions are bitter but realistic: The neocons have triumphed. There is no popular support for paleoconservatism. All the paleocons can do is work with the Republican party for whatever small victories or mitigated defeats it might bring them, or abandon politics altogether.
This article came to mind as I was reading Fade the Butcher's political goals, but I think it goes for members of this forum as well. How do you plan to achieve your objectives? Do you think Fleming is wrong?*
[url=http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/cgi-bin/hardright.cgi/2004/11/03/GOP_DEFEATS_DEMS,_C]Chronicles On-Line[/url] November 4, 2004
GOP DEFEATS DEMS, CONSERVATIVES
Another political Olympiad has been endured, and the Republican triumph is more or less complete. President Bush’s victory seems assured, and the GOP has actually increased its strength in both houses of Congress. George Bush, as I have been saying for months, was bound to win the popular vote by 2-3 percentage points, but in addition to knocking off the Democrats’ king, their presidential candidate, the Republicans can enjoy the sweet victory of taking the enemy’s queen: the Senate minority leader, Tom Daschle.
What, if anything, does this Republican victory mean? I think several lessons can be drawn. First and most obvious, it is better to trust to one’s political instincts than to listen to the self-deluded experts. At about 5:00 PM EST, Zogby was giving John Kerry a roughly 100 point lead in the electoral vote. I simply did not believe it, and I have to say I enjoyed the spectacle of Zogby eating crow about four hours later.
“All politics is local,” is an old saying that is mostly true, and there are specific reasons why the Republicans picked up seats in Texas and South Dakota and took most of the battleground states. But there are also national reasons for their victory. First and most obvious is Mr. Kerry himself. The President’s message since the end of the second debate was simple: Kerry, while voting consistently against military appropriations, wanted Americans to believe he was for a strong defense; on the other hand, he supported the Iraq war and accepted the President’s arguments for war but then, seeing Howard Dean’s success in turning out the Democratic Party faithful, tried to position himself as a critic of the war.
The fact that most sound conservatives were critical of the war from the beginning and that many would have agreed with some, at least, of Kerry’s votes against unneeded weapons systems, should not blind us to reality. Kerry was a known leftist before the campaign, and by Election Day he had proved himself a dishonest leftist. Americans who were thinking about Osama’s threats to disrupt our elections must have seen his virtual endorsement of Kerry as proof of this and other Democrats’ unfitness to take charge of the national defense.
Both parties worked hard to turn out their base, and both were remarkably successful, but Mr. Rove and his colleagues proved to be shrewder strategists. By making “gay marriage” a ballot issue in 11 states, the Republicans succeeded in exposing the Democrats as the party of perversion. Watching the returns with a group of friends—local newspaper Democrats—I could not help laughing at their pathetic attempt to claim that, while the GOP was the party of the rich, the Democrats represented normal Americans. Normal Americans? In that case, the American norm is now defined by baby-killers, illegal immigrants, welfare dependents, and ghouls who want to become immortal by consuming dead babies.
This is one point we must concede to Rush Limbaugh. The Democratic Party is a party for the weird, and while as a conservative I deplore the victory of the Republican left, I can only join other Americans in breathing a sigh of relief that a hypocritical incompetent will not be replaced by an apostle of evil who, even in the midst of championing federal support for women who want to murder their own children, claims to be a good Catholic. I have many friends who are loyal Republicans, and I can remain on very friendly terms with independent leftists, but when I spend time with real Democrats—and I don’t mean the poor deluded people who think they are supporting the people against the arrogance of the super-rich—I want to take a bath.
If the Democrats are smart they will persuade John Kerry not to imitate Al Gore’s pathetic and dishonorable challenge to the 2000 election, and they will find someone less obstructionist than Tom Daschle to lead their depleted troops in the Senate. They will also, if they are wise, turn away from Hollywood celebrities and the social pathologies they espouse and become once again the party of working men. When John Edwards tried to raise the trade issue in the primaries, the party slapped him down. If they joined forces with reformed Republicans like our own Don Manzullo, they might have a shot at rebuilding their party.
The Republicans will probably be too elated to make any constructive change in their party apparatus, but if they have a lick of sense they will understand how narrowly they have escaped the disaster prepared for them by Mr. Rumsfeld and his sour-faced band of disloyal neoconservatives. If the Democrats had found even half a man as candidate, Mr. Bush would be reading the want ads this morning. In putting up a French-speaking freak with a spoiled harridan for a second wife, the Democrats could not have expected to defeat a man married to a dignified wife who has born two daughters on whom half the middle-class men in America seem to have a crush. In politics, perception is reality, and this contest was between the family of Father Knows Best and refugees from Dawn of the Dead.
If Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rove are willing to face reality, they will realize that it is time for Don Rumsfeld to start feeling his age, and, when he retires on doctor’s orders, make it clear that his pragmatic successor will be choosing his own deputies. Such a move would do much to heal the wounds within the party. If Wolfowitz, Feith, and Perle—and their boss Mr. Sharon—continue to undermine the security of the United States, even the stupid patriots who drape trees in ribbons will repudiate the GOP as the party of treason.
Many of my conservative colleagues and friends were hoping that a Kerry victory would revivify the paleoconservative political cause, but Mr. Buchanan, as a politician, is even more dead than the late Ralph Nader who committed political suicide by running in 2004. It is time to wake up and smell the enemy’s napalm. There is no paleoconservative political movement of any size; there is no middle American revolution; the left wing of the Republican party, calling itself conservative, has triumphed because Republican leftism is the American mainstream.
If paleoconservatives wish to play a constructive role in politics, they are going to have to drop some of their (and my) apocalyptic rhetoric, denying all legitimacy to the state and insisting on a simon-pure anti-abortion litmus test. There are important issues on which we have something to say, but so long as we content ourselves with repudiating the income tax as unconstitutional (which it is) and rhetorically opposing all abortion as murder (which it is), we shall be unable to play a part in reforming the tax system or giving the American people the abortion law they actually want—a ban on all abortions except in cases of rape, incest, and a threat to the mother’s life.
This is not Plato’s Republic or the New Jerusalem we live in, but socialist America, and those who want to enter the political arena had better strip off their prophetic robes and pick up the net and trident of the gladiator. If that means working within the Republican Party as a disciplined faction, then let their be no illusions about the virtues of the party hacks who run the GOP. They listen only to the jingle of coins and the hum of the voting machines. The conservatives who supported Reagan and the two Bushes have little to show for their money and effort. In the future, let them demand some very specific rewards: Cabinet positions, the directorship of the NEH and the NEA, and a hardball approach to the issues that most trouble all conservatives. All the smoke-and-mirrors proposals for constitutional amendments on “gay marriage” and abortion should be swept away and replaced by moderate and pragmatic proposals that would win the support of the American people and justify a President in defying Congress. If nothing is possible, then stay out of politics and pay more attention to your grandchildren and your church parish.
Conservatives who abstained from voting or supported Peroutka or Nader should be generous in congratulating their Republican friends on the success of their party. Whining about the Bush victory—which some of us saw as inevitable even before the Kerry nomination—will put us in the same category with the Democrats who are still complaining of how they were robbed of the White House in 2000. In politics, you have to fish or cut bait, and if you are going to fish for the next four years it will probably have to be on a boat owned by the Republicans.
2004-12-18 07:47 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Stanley]*I think Fleming's conclusions are bitter but realistic: The neocons have triumphed. There is no popular support for paleoconservatism. All the paleocons can do is work with the Republican party for whatever small victories or mitigated defeats it might bring them, or abandon politics altogether.
This article came to mind as I was reading Fade the Butcher's political goals, but I think it goes for members of this forum as well. How do you plan to achieve your objectives? Do you think Fleming is wrong?*
Yes (1)and No. (2)
(1)Many of my conservative colleagues and friends were hoping that a Kerry victory would revivify the paleoconservative political cause, but Mr. Buchanan, as a politician, is even more dead than the late Ralph Nader who committed political suicide by running in 2004. It is time to wake up and smell the enemyââ¬â¢s napalm. There is no paleoconservative political movement of any size; there is no middle American revolution; the left wing of the Republican party, calling itself conservative, has triumphed because Republican leftism is the American mainstream.
True enough, from a strictly electioneering standpoint. Paleoconservatism, is (as befits a movement named for dinosars, coined by Fleming itself) is certainly unlikely to electorally revive itself. But let's look at what paleoconservatism really is, as defined by its Godfather itself.
(2)If paleoconservatives wish to play a constructive role in politics, they are going to have to drop some of their (and my) apocalyptic rhetoric, denying all legitimacy to the state and insisting on a simon-pure anti-abortion litmus test. There are important issues on which we have something to say, but so long as we content ourselves with repudiating the income tax as unconstitutional (which it is) and rhetorically opposing all abortion as murder (which it is), we shall be unable to play a part in reforming the tax system or giving the American people the abortion law they actually wantââ¬âa ban on all abortions except in cases of rape, incest, and a threat to the motherââ¬â¢s life.
This is not Platoââ¬â¢s Republic or the New Jerusalem we live in, but socialist America, and those who want to enter the political arena had better strip off their prophetic robes and pick up the net and trident of the gladiator. So he's shedding his antiqinarian/constitutionalist purity, and sounding more like his much more hard-nosed collegue Sam Francis. You'd think he'd deal more kindly with "kanny Sammy"
I think though he's right of sorts about socialism. It reminds me of Oswald Spengler "Our alternatives are socialism or destruction".
Basically that's all we have in this country after all. We have international socialism of one of two camps, one of the left-liberal/multicultural activists (Demo's) and one of the multinational corporations (Pubbies). America does not have a political ideology of its own right now, which is its right re: Moeeler van den Bruck "Every nation has a right to its own socialism".
If that means working within the Republican Party as a disciplined faction, then let their be no illusions about the virtues of the party hacks who run the GOP. They listen only to the jingle of coins and the hum of the voting machines. The conservatives who supported Reagan and the two Bushes have little to show for their money and effort. In the future, let them demand some very specific rewards: Cabinet positions, the directorship of the NEH and the NEA, and a hardball approach to the issues that most trouble all conservatives. All the smoke-and-mirrors proposals for constitutional amendments on ââ¬Ågay marriageââ¬Â and abortion should be swept away and replaced by moderate and pragmatic proposals that would win the support of the American people and justify a President in defying Congress. If nothing is possible, then stay out of politics and pay more attention to your grandchildren and your church parish.
Work within (a good faction) the GOP, or work with your Church, or your grandchildren. Well some of us undoubtedly will have no grandchildren, can't find to search high and low for a Church not ridden by multiculturalism, and can't afford to waste our time working for a treasonous GOP, especially in areas of the country where there is no "consrvative counter-faction".
Clearly a time is come for redefinition of our ideologies on the hard right, whether paleolibertarianism, paleoconservatism or "national communitarianism". People can't go on working for nothing.
Conservatives who abstained from voting or supported Peroutka or Nader should be generous in congratulating their Republican friends on the success of their party. Whining about the Bush victoryââ¬âwhich some of us saw as inevitable even before the Kerry nominationââ¬âwill put us in the same category with the Democrats who are still complaining of how they were robbed of the White House in 2000. In politics, you have to fish or cut bait, and if you are going to fish for the next four years it will probably have to be on a boat owned by the Republicans.[/QUOTE]Again, Fleming needs to look back at Francis. Not all of us like Fleming have the option of escaping in back into a world of literary antiquity.