Taki's Magazine is not too impressed: "People seem to be missing the fact that this is a classic, Rovian appease-the-base choice."
Well, I sincerely hope that either party in America still has a base which, like Buchanan, sees the neocons for what they are (old Trots, simply going about it by different means), and says so.
A base which, like Buchanan, is right about family values (strongly shared by Obama's black base, and by the rural and blue-collar whites who rallied to Clinton), right about strictly limited and strictly legal immigration (strongly shared by Obama's black base, and by the rural and blue-collar whites who rallied to Clinton), right about "free" trade (strongly shared by Obama's black base, and by the rural and blue-collar whites who rallied to Clinton), right about constitutional checks and balances (strongly shared by Obama's black base), right about real national security (strongly shared by the rural and blue-collar whites who rallied to Clinton), right about energy independence (strongly shared by the rural and blue-collar whites who rallied to Clinton), right about real environmental responsibility, right about Second Amendment rights and responsibilities (strongly shared by the rural and blue-collar whites who rallied to Clinton), right about Civil Rights (not "affirmative action", and in those terms (strongly shared by the rural and blue-collar whites who rallied to Clinton, as well as by a growing number of blacks who see the Hispanics getting AA these days), right about America as an English-speaking country (very, very strongly shared by Obama's black base, and by the rural and blue-collar whites who rallied to Clinton), right about foreign policy realism, and at least open to the Biblico-Patristic critique of Americanism itself.
But not a base which, like Buchanan, is wrong about the protection of workers and consumers (although he is not terribly badly wrong on that one these days), wrong about fair tax (likewise), wrong about universal health care, wrong about Social Security, and wrong about Civil Rights (in the sense that he still makes occasional rhetorical flourishes towards the remaining George Wallace Tendency, not they are ever going to get anywhere now). Still, you can't be a "fiscal conservative" in Alaska. It's Alaska. Where Palin has also been a good friend of the indigenous peoples.
I'm still backing Obama, but Palin, though certainly not McCain, is looking better and better, not least for the Democratic Party in the long run: it needs to become once again the party that reaches out to, and represents, those who will be and are being attracted to Palin.
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The Republican base, correctly identified by President Bush in person, consists of "the Rich - and the Super-Rich" - a.k.a. "the Haves - and the Have-Mores". Mrs Palin is there plain and simple to reach out to the soccer-moms (who voted for Chelsea Clinton twice). The Republicans, unlike the Dems, have not yet deserted their base (though McCain is certainly crazy enough to try it). The Dems' base used to consist of the poor survivors of the War of Northern Agression - but the party of MLK and LBJ gave up on them a long time ago.
ReplyDeleteIn 2006, the Democrats gained in the Senate a majority of one in the person of Jim Webb, economically populist opponent of the Iraq War – and Ronald Reagan's culturally conservative old Navy Secretary from Virginia.
ReplyDeleteThis year, is perfectly possible that Obama could just scrape in on the votes of those whites in South Carolina, where he will of course clean up among the large number of black voters, who vote the ticket that has on it Bob Conley, traditional Catholic (with all that that entails on life and family issues), Ron Paul activist (with all that that entails on trade, immigration and foreign policy), and Democratic candidate for United States Senator. For that matter, the black votes for that same ticket, because it has Obama on it, also make it Conley's ticket to Capitol Hill.
Conley's moral views are in any case closer than Obama's to those of most African-Americans. And the black churches are key to getting out Obama's vote nationwide.
Who are the black churches? Baptists, Pentecostals, like-minded tendencies within other denominations, Catholics who don't like the Modern Rite because it sounds too much like how their white bosses and landlords speak whereas the Latin Mass didn't, and pockets of extremely traditional Anglo-Catholicism. The grandaddy of Civil Rights in Obama's own Chicago is Squire Lance, a very active member of Opus Dei.
All is far, far, far from lost.