 |
 |
GOP wolves attack their own From the New Dem Daily, an e-newsletter:
Experts: Economy is slowing despite October hired related mostly to hurricane cleanup Bloomberg News is reporting that U.S. retail sales barely rose in October and higher oil prices kept the nations trade deficit near a record a month earlier. (From amNew York) 33% conservative; 21% liberal. Liberals lose. Of voters on November 2, 2004, 33% identified themselves as conservatives; only 21% as liberals. Liberals in America need 5, 10 & 20+ year plans if those proportions of conservatives and liberals in the electorate are going to change to favor the liberals. However, the defeat of John Kerry is clearly helping the Left wake up up to the reality (that some of us knowledgeable about the Religious Right have warned about for more than a decade), that liberals are dangerously close to losing American hearts and minds for a long time. Liberals have as much work to do, if they are going to have any long-term political success and influence, as the Religious Right (and conservatives in general) had 15 to 20+ years ago, when the Religious Right set goals such as "taking back" America by doing things like getting an evangelical elected President and overturning Roe v. Wade, and when intellectual conservatives set goals such as destroying Social Security and, to put it simplistically, avenging Goldwater and Nixon. In the period 15, 20 and even 30+ years ago, the Heritage Foundation and Moral Majority were founded (1973 and 1979), televangelist Pat Robertson created the Christian Coalition (1989), Rush Limbaugh began his syndicated political radio show (1988), and conservative evangelical Christians accelerated greatly their political involvement, in part inspired by Pat Robertson's run for President (1988). Conservative evangelical Christians began learning the political process, running for local offices, teambuilding, constructing communication operations, founding think tanks and publications, propping up or taking over those secular but conservative think tanks already in existence, like the American Enterprise Institute (1943), setting short-, intermediate, and long-term goals, and doing the necessary grunt work--leafleting, attending local governmental meetings (school boards, boards of county supervisors, etc.), stuffing and licking envelopes, and--perhaps most importantly--being daily evangelists no longer just for Christ, but for what they since the late 1960's increasingly had been told from the pulpit was "the" Christian political worldview for America. And they vowed to represent that worldview in workplace conversations, at the dinner table, on the athletic field, in schools as students and teachers, everywhere, at any time, to anyone. That was 10, 15, and 20+ years ago.... But look at the fruits that their efforts have borne: Liberals have a lot of work to do. And educating the next generation of voters and political leaders is paramount. Just because America is becoming more urbanized, just because young voters went for Kerry in big numbers, just because the nation is becoming "less white," is no guarantee of long-term victory. If liberals do not vigorously articulate a clear progressive message, using when helpful even the inherently irrational language of religion and understanding conservative religious worldviews--towards which they have been arrogantly dismissive--minds will turn away from the light of liberty, hypnotized by the fires of fear, militarism, intolerance, and provincialism. Gore Vidal said the four most beautiful words in the English language are, "I told you so." Four other great words, however, are also: "I have no idea." Both my best friend (a W. Bush classmate and vet of the fight to get women admitted into Yale) and a Democratic Party District Leader I know, today encouraged me to indulge in something I've really yet to do on this site: wax righteously indignant and skewer my often idiotic and certainly arrogant liberal allies. I'll do so. But, I'll also admit that I'm not sure exactly how to make a concrete reality out of the vision I have of a future for a national opposition to the Religious Right. The data is conclusive: "moral values" was the most important issue among voters on Nov. 2, and of voters identifying "moral values" as the most important issue, 80% voted for George W. Bush. For years, I've been saying and writing until hoarse and knuckle-sore that both the Democratic Party and more recently the very welcome Deaniac new blood of the progressive wing have been inexcusably clueless about the Religious Right--and in this post I mean the Christian Right, but cave to the reality that Religious Right is the more popular term. I know the Religious Right, which seized the nation's government in toto on Tuesday, and if people like me had been listened to much earlier, November 2nd's outcome might have been prevented. As a kid in Iowa, I went door-to-door handing out literature for Jack Kemp in 1988; I remember when my evangelical church's minister became the county chairman for a Republican presidential campaign; I pitched horseshoes with George H. W. Bush in the same week that I helped a friend burn his "Satanic" Billy Joel LPs. I was a witness to the Religious Right's take-over of the apparatus of the Republican Party. The American political left wing has wallowed in three key enduring errors now requiring immediate correction. Converts will come from the right? Yes! Some of them--most likely not fundementalists, but previously Republican-voting evangelicals--will "have eyes to see and the ears to hear." They will leave behind one glorious vision, albeit one rooted ultimately in fear, once they can be offered something equally glorious: a liberal worldview grounded not in intellectualism, wonkishness, or the technicalities of Constitutional law, but grounded in a vision of a better world and in a belief in redemptive labors and callings. *The above first and second errors are really just symptoms of a larger failing, the third and most terrible error: the failure to copy and improve on the Religious Right's inter-related mechanisms for political growth by creating our own... Instead, the left, liberal Democrats specifically, have been getting for years 1) McAuliffe-Kerry-Daschle defensive politics and messaging and 2) Deaniac money-raising but ultimately disorganized cheerleading that can't connect with middle and religious America (i.e. most of America). Worst of all, 1) and 2) waste huge amounts of energy being disdainful toward each other. The time to figure it out was yesterday. Let's get busy. |
E-PAMPHLETS
|
