Conservative wistfulness over Obama

With half the party squarely behind Sarah Palin (or at least the Rove/Sarah Palin style of Republican politics,) which is marked by contempt for empiricism and liberals in equal measure, I think it may take more than one cycle to correct.

Funny, but I remember watching “Tony Brown’s Journal” as a teenager, I think (too many years ago to contemplate) and he had a special about blacks and the Republican Party. The thinking, then, was that Democrats had failed to fully live up to the promises of the Great Society, and that the GOP under Reagan’s watch might better serve the desires of African-American entrepreneurism and culture in general, I guess.Again, it was many years ago, and I’m about the whitest guy on earth, plus I was a kid at the time, so I’m not sure I fully absorbed the discussion. But I detect something of the same wistfullness, now.

Just want to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the NYT endorsement of McCain as the Republican nominee. It was the first tell of the MsM ingenious plan to boost and then bust him as Bob Dole II and relieve the Dems of that nasty negative campaigning stuff. Worked like a charm. It is about even money that Giuliani or Romney could have flipped the necessary 3.6% of the popular vote.

There’s a difference between driving away from, and not pandering to.

In this new post-racial era, [which Republicans rejected in favor of a variation on the southern strategy pioneered in ’60s by Nixon and replayed in the 80’s by Reagan which exploits the fear of the “other”, in this case, the muslim, the marxist, the terrorist or atleast he who pals around with. And in the 80’s it was the “welfare mother” (your image was single black women with children, wasn’t it? Right, that’s the welfare mother Reagan talked about. “It was the core principles that won election in 6 out of 10 elections” (2000 was not won by the ballot,it was won by the lawsuit that terminated recount.)I find your “iron chain” metaphor an unfortunate choice of words for three reasons, slaves were shackled, convicts are shackled, and people don’t shackle themselves, they are shackled by others to deprive them of their freedom. How do you argue that minorities are not free to choose between R + D?If minorities are choosing to vote Democratic by an overwhelming majority, its because they don’t consider Republican a viable alternative. If you think fiscal conservatism is the pivotol issue, you don’t get it. Beside the argument Republicans walk the walk on fiscal conservatism has no data to support if from 40 – 43. Check the numbers. If you want to hang the “All Are Welcome” sign you have to walk the walk, and I haven’t seen anything in the Republican playbook that says “All are welcome.” To the contrary.

William wrote: “Clarence Thomas for outreach? The man who goes entire Supreme Court sessions without asking a question?”–William, Barack Obama, more than anyone, proved that it’s not what you say or do at work, it’s merely being present (and voting present) that counts. The problem that Obama causes the Democrat party of the future is that now there’s no turning back to the politics of, as J.C. Watts said, the “race hustling poverty pimps” intent on keeping many blacks dependent on government handouts.–O’Reilly, if indeed Reagan talked about black single mothers on welfare, what is your problem with that? Just 13.5% of the population is black, but blacks make up about 37% of welfare recipients. For Reagan, to raise the issue and try to solve it seems like a good thing, unless you’d like to keep that disproportionate number of blacks dependent on the government.

I think what the Republicans will do is to re-emphasize fiscal restraint (I know, bold prediction on my part.) With Obama and the Democrats now primarily controlling the military and military spending, the Republicans can vote for various spending packages and play it as doing what’s best for the country (and being bipartisan in doing so.) And since they’re ultimately powerless to enact their own military agenda, they can’t be blamed for being soft. They can treat votes for stimulus packages or bail-outs similarly. To me, that’s their best chance of winning over the undecideds who will be up for grabs in coming elections without angering the quasi-Christian Right that they still need to stay afloat. The Republicans don’t need to win over the majority of the country, they need to win over the small portion of the electorate that isn’t staunchly in one camp or another. And pledging to cut spending and lower taxes is a pretty effective way of doing that.In many ways Obama’s victory will be a boon for Republicans, as it largely frees them from being saddled with the massive war spending that has undermined their fiscal conservative sales pitch the last 6 or 7 years.And let’s not forget, the Republicans ran a candidate who didn’t have strong support from the religious base (as opposed to Obama, who clearly energized the left to turn out in huge numbers), they had a laughable V.P. candidate (exacerbated by McCain’s age and questionable health), they were largely blamed for an extremely unpopular war, the economy was collapsing (not to mention that the overt villains of the collapse were the kind of corporate rich that Republicans are seen as being arm and arm with), and they were represented by a President who was just a tad unpopular. So I’m not sure the Republicans need to do a lot of reinventing.

if indeed Reagan talked about black single mothers on welfare, what is your problem with that? Just 13.5% of the population is black, but blacks make up about 37% of welfare recipients. For Reagan, to raise the issue and try to solve it seems like a good thing, unless you’d like to keep that disproportionate number of blacks dependent on the government.Reagan didn’t campaign on the issue because he wanted to fix 37% of the welfare system, he did it to exploit race for votes at the expense of black people. It is a divisive and polarizing strategy that works because it relies on racist beliefs held by the electorate. If Reagan talks about Welfare mothers (all, not just the black ones) and then pursues welfare reform, I give him credit for his integrity. If he talks about welfare mother as code for lazy black women with multiple children living on the dole, it’s race baiting. Your inability to appreciate the the difference explains a lot.

Republicans showed that what really bothered them during their years in the minority, was that what they really didn’t like what the budget was spent on and the fact that they didn’t have control over it, much less than how much money was being spent. Once they got tight control over Congress and the White House, they spent like proverbial drunken sailors. The big difference is that it was spent on things they liked. The concepts of smaller government and ‘tax and spend’ were just manifestations of their lack of control.

The link on that page to another, “Senate Republicans from states with Democratic governors,” contains even more ominous language. And I do wonder if the clutch of people who keep referring to President Obama’s middle name did likewise with previous presidents (e.g., William Jefferson Clinton, George Herbert Walker Bush, Ronald Wilson Reagan, James Earl Carter, etc.). Seems superfluous, unless, of course….