Republicans and the Politics of Fear

He raised some $400 million to help alarmed multimillionaires spread the message that America was going to Hell. It’s little wonder that Karl Rove chose to say dark and angry things when Obama was re-elected on Tuesday night.

He got his numbers wrong; rather than “suppress turnout,” Obama’s campaign got out far more votes than most observers expected. Nevertheless, Rove’s complaint that Obama brutally engaged in the Politics of Fear was on the money.

This is no laughing matter, but coming from Karl Rove, it’s still very funny. His party and his career have relied on the artful, unrelenting, and just occasionally sincere use of fear on the campaign trail.

Republicans are conservatives and, so, are natural worriers. The modern Republican Party, however, raises its millions and wins elections as America’s pre-eminent fear monger. The Red Menace, European socialism, mind-altering drugs, sex, moral relativism, the free lunch, Greek-sized debt, and Ayn Rand’s behemoth have all been used to brand their opponents and explain why Republican gentlemen and ladies feel obliged to participate in the vulgar business of asking for our votes.

Yet in 2012, they lost at their own favorite game to a Democrat who they believed was a wimp, who couldn’t throw a punch.

Certainly, Obama isn’t the boyish social worker they thought. However, Obama won’t be back for another round with Rove and, in any event, the Republican Party’s failing grip on the Politics of Fear isn’t automatically going to go away with Obama.

Republicans don’t connect with the 47%-plus who backed Obama, above all, because they don’t understand people’s fears.

Republican commentators like Charles Krauthammer now imagine that if they go along with the Dream Act and are more restrained in the way they talk about social issues and morality, they’ll appeal to Hispanics and other American minorities with their core anti-government, free enterprise message.

They believe a majority of Americans are also anti-government because they agree with Pew Research’s question: Sure, government does too much.

Skepticism toward the disproportionate responsibilities that have accumulated at the center of the US federation is healthy—and is something prudent liberals are also starting to worry about. However, it’s ridiculously naïve to say that new Americans, poor Americans, Americans with disadvantages in the labor market, and Americans who continue to live, in effect, in ghettos worry about the proper size of the federal government or that their bosses have to fill out too many forms.

Ryan and Romney and their platform would make government relatively weaker. They said: Set aside your fears and try to live like us. But Joe Biden’s little guy just isn’t that gutsy—he’s a bit of a conservative, but without Paul Ryan’s Coles Notes. It just doesn’t make sense to be told that everything he counts on will be there after cutting taxes again, in an aging society undergoing an unprecedented economic transformation.

Democracy, not wealth, is America’s great equalizer. Why would those with little financial power want to shrink the power of their votes by shrinking the power of their government to help them out?

Wikileaks and spinning America

Along with the Ground Zero mosque and Glenn Beck’s righteous march on Washington, Wikileaks offers fantasists a fresh chance to unfurl their gaudiest ideas about America.

On the right, Charles Krauthammer, Sarah Palin, and Newt Gingrich are irresistible; it’s like watching a train of high explosives heading for no-man’s land. The US administration, they complain, is playing things down. Hell, they haven’t even hinted that they’d like to kill someone. Espionage and treason have consequences. “This is a country where a good prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich,” Krauthammer boasts. With a wistful reference to the tactics of the KGB, he concluded, “. . . it would be nice if people like Assange were made to worry every time they go out in the rain.”

He made no reference to the US army private who has been arrested and who actually leaked the documents. Also, he didn’t bother to explain what should be done about the distinguished newspapers that published the stuff. It appears that neo-cons believe that the Johns should go free.

Knowing that Obama is a bit vain about the rule of law, his critics know they have a stationary target. They’ll cast him as Jimmy Carter and prey that he dawns Carter’s sad severe mantle in the 2012 campaign. It is of no concern to them that America’s critics feast on their violent rhetoric. Hard power is the only power that seems to arouse them.

The more pervasive and disappointing response, however, comes from the left. Two century-old liberal institutions—The Globe and Mail in Canada and the Guardian in London—ran columns of unctuous contempt for the United States. The leaks read like a sick diary of a deranged, flailing bully.

Judith Timson in The Globe assumes a bored air in complaining about the seeming triviality of much of what was reported. That a few of the leaders who were exposed might react brutally, whether the sources were witty or not, doesn’t seem to prick her concern as a reporter who once had sources to protect. More significantly, she appropriates Hannah Arendt’s haunting description of the Holocaust, with the complaint—“talk about the banality of evil.” Diplomacy isn’t for saints or those who need their own by-lines. The diplomats and soldiers outed by Wikileaks, however, are not doing the work of the devil. (It was an heir to the British Crown, not an American diplomat, who wore an SS uniform for fun.)

Seumas Milne in the Guardian wholeheartedly upholds the motives of Wikileaks: shrink the American empire’s influence, reputation, friendships, and ability to act globally. America is not merely the most influential liberal market economy in the world. It operates an “overstretched imperial system” that has arrogated onto itself the role of world leader and police officer. The leaks reveal that the “empire” is beginning to flounder as “independent regional powers” such as China start to make their global presence felt. Click on: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-embassy-cables-us-global-power

Milne skips over the heart of the American machine: an unruly, largely amateurish electoral democracy that settles in church basements and town halls, as well as in boardrooms—exactly who will make the big and the smallest decisions in Washington. (Within the week, the Guardian will run another story about an American leviathan that can’t govern itself, let alone its puniest allies.) 

On good days, the US is a force for stability and organized progress—an ancient liberal Anglo-American dream. Assange, however, is an anarchist. And for a well-fed anarchist, weakening and shrinking the US internationally is the biggest prize of all. But surely that cannot be the biggest prize of all for a liberal of any stripe. Certainly not in a world in which at least three of the rising “independent regional powers” are aggrieved authoritarian machines that see the machinery of state as their clique’s trough or God’s handmaiden.

When a cartoon of reality becomes a joke

Two of America’s best-known Republican intellectuals may have reached the outer reaches of their credibility. If they keep it up, we’ll start hearing branches falling off the GOP. Peggy Noonan whispered to Obama to hire a “special assistant for reality.” Saying:

“What a president should ideally have, and what I think we all agree Mr. Obama badly needs, is an assistant whose sole job it is to explain and interpret the American people to him. Presidents already have special assistants for domestic policy, for congressional relations and national security. Why not a special assistant for reality? Someone to translate the views of the people, and explain how they think. An advocate for the average, a representative for the normal, to the extent America does normal.”

Rehearsing for the job of second-guessing 536 elected representatives of the American people, she proceeds to explain the fuss at the airport. It’s that inner John Wayne, the muse of her speech-writing career for President Reagan. Savour this:

“John Wayne removes his boots and hat and puts his six-shooter on the belt, he gets through the scanner, and now he’s standing there and sees what’s being done to other people. A TSA guy is walking toward him, snapping his rubber gloves. Guy gets up close to Wayne, starts feeling his waist and hips. Wayne says, “Touch the jewels, Pilgrim, and I’ll knock you into tomorrow.”

Click on:http://peggynoonan.com/ 

Do normal Americans check in with their John Wayne fantasy when waiting at airports? Do frustrated, tired voters put their X compulsively beside the hardest ass on the ballot?
Are traditional American characteristics of practicality and respect for the complexity of modern life only alive amongst elites?
Charles Krauthammer, the Mars of conservative polemicists, probably doesn’t really care. His antagonism toward Obama seems existential; in serving it, he feels better. However, his screed, “The irrelevance of START,” baldy appeals to those who think telling Obama to “man up” is wit. Dismissing a treaty that would further shrink nuclear arsenals and resume mutual verification, he asserted:

“A nuclear exchange between Washington and Moscow is inconceivable. What difference does it make how many nukes Russia builds? If they want to spend themselves into penury creating a bloated nuclear arsenal, be our guest. …Moreover, Obama's idea that the great powers must reduce their weapons to set a moral example for the rest of the world to disarm is simply childish.”

Click on: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/25/AR2010112502232.html
Was it only the clash of ideas that kept us up during the Cold War? Have Russian generals stopped drinking vodka? Can American military strategists never have nervous breakdown? Can the world be assured that the two powers that hold over 90% of the world nuclear weapons are fail-safe? Not a single former Republican or Democratic Secretary of State agrees. They see substantive merit in reducing nuclear weapons now and increasing respectful, reliable relations with Russia.
Krauthammer sees Obama’s efforts to get the Senate to ratify the New Start treaty as a distraction. It is a distraction to him because he’s not interested in joint Russia, US, and UN Security Council measures to dissuade Iran, or in joint China, US, and South Korean measures to dissuade North Korea. His inner John Wayne is still on his horse: diplomacy, economic boycotts, and alliances with others are for children and dwarfs.
The Russian defense machine could spend Russia into penury, but America can afford to keep its growing forever. Apparently, America can tame Iran without the cooperation of her neighbours, including Russia. And can handle North Korea that way too.
Presumably, Krauthammer’s America can afford to act unilaterally and violently on another two fronts. Inside the bubble of responsibility, however, Obama and his advisors have chosen a different approach. Along with reality, they may end up with politics on their side as well.