zed!

BADA BING! x2…

Welcome, Greg!

Hi Digby!

Hi everyone! Thanks to Jane for having me. And thanks to Digby for suggesting that we do this salon–and for writing such a wonderful introduction. I’m all strapped in, ready to go, and very much looking forward to this discussion.

Welcome Greg, and thank you for that fine introduction Digby. Since it’s book salon please stick to the topic, and if you want to go OT feel free to do so here.

Welcome! Any thoughts on what we can do to counter their continuing fact-free BS (other than what we’re already doing)? I continue to find the continued life of ideas like “tax cuts always increase revenue” and “the private sector can do anything better and cheaper than government” pretty amazing, when they started out as patently ludicrous and there’s now extensive proof of how wrong they are.

Greg how do you think conservatives move forward? We’ve seen them abandon the Bush/Rove attempts to enfranchise Hispanics in order to play the furious bigot card, but how else?

Greg – I sometimes feel that the Conservatives see this as war – do we need to take on the position as The Resistance?

Welcome to the Lake both Digby and Greg!

Greg, I am currently reading The Conservatives Have No Clothes and thank you for pulling all the info together.

My first question is how can the Left counter the Heritage Foundations and Cato Institutes when the supposedly Left leaning “think tanks” like Brookings have people like Micahel Hanlon writing tripe that supports the admin and the Heritage folks on the Iraq occupation?

Redshift @ 5

Welcome! Any thoughts on what we can do to counter their continuing fact-free BS (other than what we’re already doing)? I continue to find the continued life of ideas like “tax cuts always increase revenue” and “the private sector can do anything better and cheaper than government” pretty amazing, when they started out as patently ludicrous and there’s now extensive proof of how wrong they are.

Redshift, One of the main arguments of my book is that progressives need to relentlessly equate conservatism with government failure. Just as the right quite effectively, over the course of many years, made the label “liberal” toxic for politicians to use, we have far greater justification for making the label conservative even more toxic. The failures of Bush are the failures of right-wing ideology, not merely the incompetence of individuals. My book tries to systematically show how that is so.

welcome greg and digby….

Welcome, Greg. I look forward to reading your book. It is one of my frustrations that the failure of conservatism as a political philosophy is rarely being discussed in electoral politics. Do you think it should be and what recommendations do you have for how it that conversation can be jump-started?

Jane Hamsher @ 6

Greg how do you think conservatives move forward? We’ve seen them abandon the Bush/Rove attempts to enfranchise Hispanics in order to play the furious bigot card, but how else?

Jane, I’ve been struck at how the leading presidential candidates, while distancing themselves from Bush, have nonetheless embraced pretty much his exact same agenda. They are all touting more tax cuts for the rich. They are all saber rattling with respect to Iran, as though the lesson of Iraq is that we need to be even more belligerent. They are all trying to one-up each other on the importance of executive power and the use of torture. So it seems like full speed ahead.

That really ought to make it easier for the Dems to say: they are saying they’ll follow Bush’s game plan, and so they will get the same failed results.

How does conservatism define itself these days? Is it just to follow Bush over the cliff? I think they have gotten away from any practical definition.

Oh, I see others have asked similar questions; sorry to be repetitive.

Greg Anrig @ 12

Jane Hamsher @ 6

Greg how do you think conservatives move forward? We’ve seen them abandon the Bush/Rove attempts to enfranchise Hispanics in order to play the furious bigot card, but how else?

Jane, I’ve been struck at how the leading presidential candidates, while distancing themselves from Bush, have nonetheless embraced pretty much his exact same agenda. They are all touting more tax cuts for the rich. They are all saber rattling with respect to Iran, as though the lesson of Iraq is that we need to be even more belligerent. They are all trying to one-up each other on the importance of executive power and the use of torture. So it seems like full speed ahead.

That really ought to make it easier for the Dems to say: they are saying they’ll follow Bush’s game plan, and so they will get the same failed results.

I wish I thought this was true — the Democrats campaigned in 06 on “everything will be different with us,” and then little was.

I worry that Repubilicans will be able to use this to good effect in the upcoming elections.

Isn’t it amazing how impervious to the failure of conservatism the congressional dems are? Sometimes it is almost like they are trying to preserve it themselves.

dakine01 @ 8

Welcome to the Lake both Digby and Greg!

Greg, I am currently reading The Conservatives Have No Clothes and thank you for pulling all the info together.

My first question is how can the Left counter the Heritage Foundations and Cato Institutes when the supposedly Left leaning “think tanks” like Brookings have people like Micahel Hanlon writing tripe that supports the admin and the Heritage folks on the Iraq occupation?

Dakine, Journalists remain utterly, utterly clueless about the fact that the “think tanks” created by the right are fundamentally different from places like Brookings. They have always been institutions that are primarily in the business of selling a product, whether the product is Social Security privatization, tax cuts, program cuts, or war. Traditional think tanks are more like research institutions and universities in whch the people working there mainly advocate policies based on actual research. O’hanlon I’m not going to defend. But Brookings still has lots of people who do good research and have good ideas. The media is the real problem. They don’t understand the difference between institutions in the sales business and institutions in the research business.

Hi Greg. It’s great to have you here. I very much enjoyed your book. They are all stark naked — and it isn’t pretty!

One of the most challenging things that popped out to me while reading this book is how to deal with the fact that so many of these discredited ideas have been deeply internalized by the body politic after years of relentless marketing.

It almost seems to me that the Republicans have decided to assume power for short bursts, make a lot of money, run up the debt (thereby restricting the Democrats’ ability to try new things) and then get out of Dodge to count their ill-gotten gains and leave the clean-up to the earnest Democrats. All the blather about philosophy and ideology sometimes looks to be just an cover for the Big Money Boyz to make a killing. (That’s a bit simplistic, but it’s hard to deny that it seems to be the way things ultimately turn out.)

In the book you have some ideas about how the Democrats might deal with changing this pattern. Care to discuss that a little bit?

Mr Anrig: what do you have to say about faux-dems such as Fienstein, Liberman, and all the others who cave to the Conservatives? What are they thinking, what is their real goal?

Maggie @ 16

Isn’t it amazing how impervious to the failure of conservatism the congressional dems are? Sometimes it is almost like they are trying to preserve it themselves.

Maggie, Yes, I have been very discouraged about things like the Dems squishiness and capitulations re things like the war, the bankruptcy bill, taxing hedge fund managers, domestic surveillance, and now waterboarding. You would think they would have learned that their one moment of success and clarity was opposing SS privatization. That helped to clarify for the public what they believe in and what they are willing to stand up for. These other issues make if very difficult to discern how they are fundamentally different from conservatives.

I am so glad you’re talking about this. I think it is so important to recognize that it’s not just Bush – it’s conservatism itself that is at fault for the destruction of our democracy. I believe that conservatism, followed to its logical conclusion, is anti-democratic. Do you think we can get people to call themselves ‘liberal’ again? It was made into a pejorative by conservatives, and, frankly, I’d like to see us get that word back and be proud about it.

Liberalism has brought us every human rights advance we’ve made as a democracy. Do you see taking liberalism back as something that’s doable?

NYBri asks a very good question.

Thanks for joining us, Greg.

In the course of creating their argument about conservatism, conservatives had to tell many lies about liberals and liberalism.

Can you comment on the major narratives and themes conservatives have used to distort the national conversation by, shall we say, defining liberalism down?

Thanks again.

Did Buckley believe that him and his fellow blue blood Yalemen future Oligarchs were philosopher kings?
Did he believe that putting the intrests of the privledged over the masses and humoring them that Democracy is the best form of government was a good idea.
How would undercutting both Democracy and our society make things better?
How does a Yaleie sq Bill’s economy and the Dows performance with Bush’s in his own mind. When Bush has listened to him as much or more than Regean did.
Or is he just ignoring/lying about the data?

Thanks Greg.

Is there any way we can shake up TradMed and get them to report on how Conservatives have to mask their true intention using Orwellian framing and wordsmithing – “No child Left Behind” Clean Skies Act” etc?

Welcome, Greg, I am so interested in your comments and look forward to reading your book. Assuming a Dem is elected prez, how soon do you think Americans will forget what a mess the conservative ideas were?

In your research, Greg, I’m just curious about how much you think conservatives, esp. southern conservatives, hate government simply because they’re chaffing against their perception of “authority figures.”

Personally, I think that is a big part of it.

Isn’t media de-consolidation a critical part of getting the right-wing thoroughly discredited? It seems to me that the right’s failed prescriptions for society will be resurrected over and over again by the media titans, since they share a class with the ruling overlords.

Oh, and welcome, Greg! Thanks for hosting this, Digby!

Welcome Greg — and thanks, Digby, for the great intro. Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Out Of Africa: “When God wants to punish you, he gives you what you ask for.” Buckley sure got that in spades, didn’t he? And is consistently disrespected by today’s “conservative” mouthpieces, his hard work to get them to this point all but trampled into the dust of yesteryear.

Digby @ 18

Hi Greg. It’s great to have you here. I very much enjoyed your book. They are all stark naked — and it isn’t pretty!

One of the most challenging things that popped out to me while reading this book is how to deal with the fact that so many of these discredited ideas have been deeply internalized by the body politic after years of relentless marketing.

It almost seems to me that the Republicans have decided to assume power for short bursts, make a lot of money, run up the debt (thereby restricting the Democrats’ ability to try new things) and then get out of Dodge to count their ill-gotten gains and leave the clean-up to the earnest Democrats. All the blather about philosophy and ideology sometimes looks to be just an cover for the Big Money Boyz to make a killing. (That’s a bit simplistic, but it’s hard to deny that it seems to be the way things ultimately turn out.)

In the book you have some ideas about how the Democrats might deal with changing this pattern. Care to discuss that a little bit?

Yes, I was relieved when the publisher didn’t come up with a cover showing Cheney’s ass or whatever. The first thing I think progressives need to do is get on the offensive rather than continuing to be reactive. In the presidential debate in Philly last week, no Dem even mention the word “conservative” or “conservatism.” (Edwards did connect Hillary briefly to neocons, but I’m talking about attacking the right head on rather than one of our own.) Clarifying what we are opposed to is essential to clarifying what we are for and what we want to do.

Then, I think the basic theme we should emphasize is that progressives want to strengthen security and opportunity for Americans by building on past successes (like SS, environmental and public health and safety protections, etc. that have been decimated in line with the right’s ageda). In contrast to repeating the same failed ideas of conservatism–which ignores what happens in the real world– we want to do things like universal health coverage (drawing from the strengths of more successful systems in other countries).

Greg Anrig @ 9

Redshift @ 5

Welcome! Any thoughts on what we can do to counter their continuing fact-free BS (other than what we’re already doing)? I continue to find the continued life of ideas like “tax cuts always increase revenue” and “the private sector can do anything better and cheaper than government” pretty amazing, when they started out as patently ludicrous and there’s now extensive proof of how wrong they are.

Redshift, One of the main arguments of my book is that progressives need to relentlessly equate conservatism with government failure. Just as the right quite effectively, over the course of many years, made the label “liberal” toxic for politicians to use, we have far greater justification for making the label conservative even more toxic. The failures of Bush are the failures of right-wing ideology, not merely the incompetence of individuals. My book tries to systematically show how that is so.

Great! We have done that, Bush and Republicans = Bad News

But the other side of that coin is that Progressives need to have a vision for the future.

What is it other than ‘we hate conservatives’. Smart democrats and liberals should be planning their own form of shock doctrine to deal with the next disaster that speaks loudly, clearly and resoundingly to solving problems with organized progressive values at work.

The beltway Village continues to see these people as deeply mature and responsible despite their record of abject failure. (It’s a triumph of public relations and social marketing that they manage keep these people drinking the poison long after the effects are known.)

I know these are Digby’s words but they sum up a major problem…(and I’m sorry I haven’t read the book), but do you discuss any ideas of how to get the facts out to the masses against the tidal wave of the enabling Villagers that continue to not only act as megaphones for conservative’s narratives, but even at times assist in the creation of conservative friendly narratives.

NYBri @ 13

How does conservatism define itself these days? Is it just to follow Bush over the cliff? I think they have gotten away from any practical definition.

Great question. Conservatism used to mean opposing change. Goldwater defined it as “social, economic, and political practices based on the successes of the past.” But movement conservatism is really the opposite. On the domestic front, it is all about weakening and underming government’s capabilities. That most especially includes realms in which government has been successful (like SS and Clitnon’s FEMA, which was viewed as a model agency). So it’s actually quite a radical philosophy as it has evolved. I wish progressive politicians would emphasze more the radicalism of the right, because a lot of people who think of themselves as conservative are using the old and outdated definition of adhering to past successes and resisting change.

Greg, Digby,

Would y’all please, please, stop referring to the Bushniks as “conservatives?” They aren’t, and I continue to be frustrated that the MSM and too many smart bloggers continue to impart the ‘conservative’ label to a movement that is radical and has very little to do with traditional conservatism.

I don’t think this is an inconsequential issue of semantics; we empower the radical right and concede mainstream respectability to them every time we let them masquerade as conservatives.

Greg and Jane at 12 — The GOP candidates have been pretty much cookie cutter Bush-bots on every issue down the pike. I’ve been struck by how much most of them have been trying to style themselves as Bush-Plus. Giuiliani is Bush-plus-more crazy-assed foreign policy/security. McCain is Bush-plus-more military everywhere. Huckabee is Bush-plus-more hallalujah.

You’d think given where things are with a LOT of conservatives that I know who are so disgusted they may not even bother voting at all this year, they’d be skewing back toward sanity. But instead, they are still chasing the dream of that crazy 15 percent back down the loopy rabbit hole.

What has come to bother me is the idea that ‘liberal’ is the antithesis of ‘conservative’. The earliest Liberal movement I have run across (though I haven’t gone digging) was in Sweden, and they were opposed by the Absolutists; called it the ‘caps vs. hats’ campaign. This ought to feel familiar, because what we have is their situation all over again: power of the people (that is, the notion on which our country was founded) as opposed to power of an absolute ruler (a ‘Decider’, in present-day parlance).

This is the question: do The People have liberty? Or not?

Christy Hardin Smith @ 35

You’d think given where things are with a LOT of conservatives that I know who are so disgusted they may not even bother voting at all this year, they’d be skewing back toward sanity. But instead, they are still chasing the dream of that crazy 15 percent back down the loopy rabbit hole.

Unfortunately, I suspect a lot of them are counting on the fact that once they have the nomination, they can stop out-crazying each other to chase the base, and the media won’t remind anyone that they ever did it.

Trying to run toward Bush in the primary and away in the general should be a problem for them. But as long as our political press considers playing to the conservative base to be “of course he has to do that, but he doesn’t really mean it” and playing (however slightly) to the liberal base to be “pandering,” it probably won’t be.

Christy Hardin Smith @ 35

Greg and Jane at 12 — The GOP candidates have been pretty much cookie cutter Bush-bots on every issue down the pike. I’ve been struck by how much most of them have been trying to style themselves as Bush-Plus. Giuiliani is Bush-plus-more crazy-assed foreign policy/security. McCain is Bush-plus-more military everywhere. Huckabee is Bush-plus-more hallalujah.

You’d think given where things are with a LOT of conservatives that I know who are so disgusted they may not even bother voting at all this year, they’d be skewing back toward sanity. But instead, they are still chasing the dream of that crazy 15 percent back down the loopy rabbit hole.

Christy,
I saw a headline over at HuffPo where Rudy was bragging about his PD having used “advanced interrogation techniques” while he was mayor.

I’d guess Abner Louima could speak to that.

dakine at 38 — That is appalling. And could subject some police officers to internal investigation while Rudy keeps on strutting. But hey, if it gets a torture-loving cheeto eater out to vote…

Pachacutec @ 22

NYBri asks a very good question.

Thanks for joining us, Greg.

In the course of creating their argument about conservatism, conservatives had to tell many lies about liberals and liberalism.

Can you comment on the major narratives and themes conservatives have used to distort the national conversation by, shall we say, defining liberalism down?

Thanks again.

The right has been so immensely successful as a marketing enterprise becuase it sticks to a few tried and true tactics that liberals don’t generally use, for good reason. One is that they redefine whatever the actual policy problem might be in a way so that the only logical conclusion as a response would be to weaken government. So SS is going bankrupt, environmental and health and safety regulations are killing the economy and jobs, all public schools are a disaster (not just urban ones, etc..) And they hammer home those themes relentlessly, to the point where they become conventional wisdom in the media.

The other thing they always do is latch onto scapegoats for those purported problems. The lazy civil servants, the teacher’s unions,the education bureaucrats, the UN, whatever. Those strategies are good at firing up people. But they make it impossible to solve the actual problems. That’s why I think our side needs to say the biggest problem facing this country is conservatism. And the only group that stands in the way of solving our problems is the conservative movement. We take of that and them, we have proven in the past that we can accomplish amazing things.

global yokel @ 34

Greg, Digby,

Would y’all please, please, stop referring to the Bushniks as “conservatives?” They aren’t, and I continue to be frustrated that the MSM and too many smart bloggers continue to impart the ‘conservative’ label to a movement that is radical and has very little to do with traditional conservatism.

I don’t think this is an inconsequential issue of semantics; we empower the radical right and concede mainstream respectability to them every time we let them masquerade as conservatives.

Actually, at the heart of the conservative movement — old and new — is an agenda to preserve aristocracy. I honestly don’t have much use for that whether it’s wrapped in Burke or Gingrich. So, I have no problem repudiating the notion of conservatism in general.

Having said that, I do think there’s utility in making a distinction between the “traditional conservatives” and the modern “radical conservatives,” if only because the oxymoronic nature of that phrase so accurately reflects the dissonance of their movement.

Redshift @ 37

Christy Hardin Smith @ 35

You’d think given where things are with a LOT of conservatives that I know who are so disgusted they may not even bother voting at all this year, they’d be skewing back toward sanity. But instead, they are still chasing the dream of that crazy 15 percent back down the loopy rabbit hole.

Unfortunately, I suspect a lot of them are counting on the fact that once they have the nomination, they can stop out-crazying each other to chase the base, and the media won’t remind anyone that they ever did it.

Trying to run toward Bush in the primary and away in the general should be a problem for them. But as long as our political press considers playing to the conservative base to be “of course he has to do that, but he doesn’t really mean it” and playing (however slightly) to the liberal base to be “pandering,” it probably won’t be.

Proof, then, that they have forgotten macaca. Not sure these fellahs are ready for the new primetime.

NYBri @ 13

How does conservatism define itself these days? Is it just to follow Bush over the cliff? I think they have gotten away from any practical definition.

Cliff

Christy Hardin Smith @ 39

dakine at 38 — That is appalling. And could subject some police officers to internal investigation while Rudy keeps on strutting. But hey, if it gets a torture-loving cheeto eater out to vote…

My mistake intensive questioning from an interview with Al Hunt for Bloomberg

Sounds like a great book!!

My view is that those at the top of the Administration are fundamentally facist, and those at the bottom are confused, old-timey Goldwater-type Repubs. Sort of “trickle down facism”, and the actual Republicans are standing around wondering how the hell that happened…JMHO

Greg:
Why has the media been cowed? Why do guys like my nakesake worry about what their Republican/conservative brethern think of them? When a guy like Klein will get called a liberal by the Faux Noise types no matter what. I guess what I am asking is: Why, or how, did the Democrats and others let themselves get bullied by the Republicans/conservatives? have they still not caught on that they’ll get attacked by the Rove/Faux Noise Machine no matter what they do? It’s like they think the Tip O’Neill days still are in effect. Bipartisanship rarely exists anymore. They need to figure that out and soon.

dakine01 @ 38

Christy Hardin Smith @ 35

Greg and Jane at 12 — The GOP candidates have been pretty much cookie cutter Bush-bots on every issue down the pike. I’ve been struck by how much most of them have been trying to style themselves as Bush-Plus. Giuiliani is Bush-plus-more crazy-assed foreign policy/security. McCain is Bush-plus-more military everywhere. Huckabee is Bush-plus-more hallalujah.

You’d think given where things are with a LOT of conservatives that I know who are so disgusted they may not even bother voting at all this year, they’d be skewing back toward sanity. But instead, they are still chasing the dream of that crazy 15 percent back down the loopy rabbit hole.

Christy,
I saw a headline over at HuffPo where Rudy was bragging about his PD having used “advanced interrogation techniques” while he was mayor.

I’d guess Abner Louima could speak to that.

That…is exactly what happened.

global yokel @ 34

Greg, Digby,

Would y’all please, please, stop referring to the Bushniks as “conservatives?” They aren’t, and I continue to be frustrated that the MSM and too many smart bloggers continue to impart the ‘conservative’ label to a movement that is radical and has very little to do with traditional conservatism.

I don’t think this is an inconsequential issue of semantics; we empower the radical right and concede mainstream respectability to them every time we let them masquerade as conservatives.

This is a very important point, because so many on the right are now trying to distance themselves from Bush by saying he’s not a genuine conservative. But that word has provided a shield to the right because no one really knows what it means anymore. I think it’s absolutely essential that we use that very word, rather than allow the right to hide behind it, because the movement is what is dominating debates and its ideas are the ones that are failing. Tax cuts, “benevolent hegemoney,” the unitary executive, school vouchers, politicizing the government–these are all ideas advocated by the conservative movement that have failed over and over. Yes, they are radical ideas, which is one of the reason they have failed. But getting caught up in the semantical games that the right is doing is playing the game their way. Conservatism is failing as a philosophy for governing. Period end.

I’m a mom of three, ages 22, 20 and 18. We aren’t the best or the brightest but I’m doing my best to give them all a college education. We have had many discussions about what a rotten deal their generation is going to inherit, no health care, endless and costly war, and the phony SS is broken scare to steal our SS surplus. So, my kids are country shopping to look for a better deal. If my kids can figure this out how are we going to keep the best and brightest here?

Fear, Greed a hypocrites use of morality to justify taking from the poor to give to the rich, a pathetic need not to examine their lives, second guess themselves, admit wrong. A need to both belong to a group and have an enemy outgroup USSR, welfare moms, immigrants etc they can use as scapegoats, go to war with.
Sorry my question is what conditions produce William F Buckleys, Bushies and Cheneys?

Joe Klein’s conscience @ 46

Greg:
Why has the media been cowed? Why do guys like my nakesake worry about what their Republican/conservative brethern think of them? When a guy like Klein will get called a liberal by the Faux Noise types no matter what. I guess what I am asking is: Why, or how, did the Democrats and others let themselves get bullied by the Republicans/conservatives? have they still not caught on that they’ll get attacked by the Rove/Faux Noise Machine no matter what they do? It’s like they think the Tip O’Neill days still are in effect. Bipartisanship rarely exists anymore. They need to figure that out and soon.

Joe Klein’s Conscience (I love your posts on other sites as well, by the way). Klein himself was highly enamored with Bill Clinton’s Third Way politics, which was obviously quite effective and smart back in 1992 but now has a lot to do with why the Dems are desperately in search of an identity. In any case, the right was very effective at labelling their ideas as “new” and “fresh.” Which indeed they were. They were also stupid to begin with–not grounded in any research about how the real world works. But their newness is what attacted journalists, including people like Klein. Raising the cap on the payroll tax is dull–who wants to write about that? Privatizing the system, though, particularly when people got caught up in the whole “new economy” stuff, was exciting. Ditto vouchers. Ditto invading other countries to create a democratic Middle East — see Tom Friedman to feel the excitement. Again–radicalism sold by people who called themselves conservatives

One of the things Greg mentioned that I think is worth telegraphing is the notion that the Democrats really need to start running explicitly against not only Republican policies, but conservatism in general. I find myself a little bit depressed that the candidates aren’t hammering Bush and Cheney (for red meat reaction, if nothing else) the way the Republicans are going after Hillary. It’s allowing them to disappear him and their failures.

And it’s immensely frustrating to me that Democratic candidates believe the gasbags’ admonitions that they’ll be punished for “going negative” when it’s absolutely essential that they make their case in opposition to the Republicans. People make political decisions through contrast. If you don’t point out where the other guy went wrong, they can’t see why you are right.

It’s not immoral to take on your opponents — particularly when they have governed like Tony Soprano. Nobody likes Bush or the Republican congress. But the Village Elders have issued a decree that Democrats may not go negative and so they aren’t — even in the face of the most spectacular failure of governance since Hoover.

There are a lot of sensible critiques out there on the left.. from Lakoff to Greg… so how do we get the rain makers in the dem party to do their homework? They seem pretty immune to some of these good ideas and very susceptible to the influence of money.

Bad on them

Joe Klein’s conscience — Sometimes I wonder if it is a matter of being cowed, or simply a matter of buying into the narrative because it is easier than trying to buck the trend. (Sad, but having seen the herd mentality up close and personal a few times now with folks who want to be media personalities rather than journalists…)

I’m an ex-conservative and as such, it has often seemed to me that the conservatism of today, and indeed the last 20 years, isn’t the conservatism I was brought up with, which was fundamentally Burkean, thought that change should generally be slow and incremental and that tradition and precedent mattered greatly.

When I look at the US what I see is that the Republicans are fundamentally reactionary – they want to undo not just the New Deal (policies that are over 60 years old) but the Progressive Era as well.

The conservatives in the picture are the Democrats, who want to basically keep the New Deal around, but aren’t all that interested in new liberal or progressive programs or legislation.

Modern conservatives don’t believe in government because they don’t believe in large chunks of what the government does (except using force, in the military and the police). Since they don’t believe in it, they don’t run it well.

And ultimately, I suppose, I’m being a fogey. What I think of as conservative isn’t. Maybe it once was, but that was a long time ago, if ever. Today, conservatives are the Bushniks. And if they want to reclaim the word, they need to clean house and make it mean something worthy of respect.

As, in some ways, the old word “conservative”, long dead, once was.

Digby @ 41

global yokel @ 34

Greg, Digby,

Would y’all please, please, stop referring to the Bushniks as “conservatives?” They aren’t, and I continue to be frustrated that the MSM and too many smart bloggers continue to impart the ‘conservative’ label to a movement that is radical and has very little to do with traditional conservatism.

I don’t think this is an inconsequential issue of semantics; we empower the radical right and concede mainstream respectability to them every time we let them masquerade as conservatives.

Actually, at the heart of the conservative movement — old and new — is an agenda to preserve aristocracy. I honestly don’t have much use for that whether it’s wrapped in Burke or Gingrich. So, I have no problem repudiating the notion of conservatism in general.

Having said that, I do think there’s utility in making a distinction between the “traditional conservatives” and the modern “radical conservatives,” if only because the oxymoronic nature of that phrase so accurately reflects the dissonance of their movement.

The big financiers of movement conservatism–families with the names Scaife, Olin, Koch, Bradley, etc. — were motivated entirely by a deep hostility toward government. They particularly despised taxes and regulations. But when they began funding places like Heritage in 1973, they recognized that it would be a political non-starter to just advocate cutting taxes on the rich and rolling back environmental, health, safety, and anti-discrimination regulations. So they created these institutions to come up with politically sell-able ways of accomplishing the same goals. They were successful beyond their wildest dreams.

Digby @ 52

One of the things Greg mentioned that I think is worth telegraphing is the notion that the Democrats really need to start running explicitly against not only Republican policies, but conservatism in general. I find myself a little bit depressed that the candidates aren’t hammering Bush and Cheney (for red meat reaction, if nothing else) the way the Republicans are going after Hillary. It’s allowing them to disappear him and their failures.

And it’s immensely frustrating to me that Democratic candidates believe the gasbags’ admonitions that they’ll be punished for “going negative” when it’s absolutely essential that they make their case in opposition to the Republicans. People make political decisions through contrast. If you don’t point out where the other guy went wrong, they can’t see why you are right.

It’s not immoral to take on your opponents — particularly when they have governed like Tony Soprano. Nobody likes Bush or the Republican congress. But the Village Elders have issued a decree that Democrats may not go negative and so they aren’t — even in the face of the most spectacular failure of governance since Hoover.

A coupla times, I’ve heard John Edwards refer to President Cheney and quickly correct himself. This always gets the audience riled up — and telegraphs a worldview very quickly. We need more of these shorthand devices, particularly in the new lightning round debate format favored by MSGOP.

Sorry I’m late, I’ve read Greg responses. I believe in fighting back and going after the people who are PUSHING the ideas who constantly are on the tv and radio making their radical ideas seem normal. These people are the think tank “experts” and talk radio hosts and cable tv presenters

But one thing that I don’t have an answer for that must be addressed is funding. We have some brilliant people who could help knock down these “experts” but they are competing with a huge well funded group of people whose sole product is radical ideas. They don’t profit from selling their ideas but they make six figures a year. The companies and wealthy individual who fund them get ROI from it so they keep funding them.

Those people are the drivers of the ideas but the people who could be and should be fighting them are holding virtual paypal bake sales to keep themselves afloat.

How can this be addressed?

Ian at 55 — I was just thinking the other day that Burke must be rolling in his grave at what has been wrought in his name…

SanderO @ 53

There are a lot of sensible critiques out there on the left.. from Lakoff to Greg… so how do we get the rain makers in the dem party to do their homework? They seem pretty immune to some of these good ideas and very susceptible to the influence of money.

Bad on them

We have some very bad framemakers and extremelt hesitant public speakers at the head of both legislative branches right now, in my view. Reid and Pelosi seem quite unable to speak angrily and with conviction about this President’s lawbreaking and the conservatives’ radicalism.

Part of the problem with the Dems is that they are wearing blinders…just look at the history of this Administration…it doesn’t take rocket science. Envision the worst possible justification for everything they’ve done so far, and then take a good look at it…all of it.

The Dems say, oh they couldn’t possibly be that bad, you’re exaggerating, they’re too incompetent, etc., oh yeah? Lay it all out there, and there it is, in plain sight.

Digby @ 52

One of the things Greg mentioned that I think is worth telegraphing is the notion that the Democrats really need to start running explicitly against not only Republican policies, but conservatism in general. I find myself a little bit depressed that the candidates aren’t hammering Bush and Cheney (for red meat reaction, if nothing else) the way the Republicans are going after Hillary. It’s allowing them to disappear him and their failures.

And it’s immensely frustrating to me that Democratic candidates believe the gasbags’ admonitions that they’ll be punished for “going negative” when it’s absolutely essential that they make their case in opposition to the Republicans. People make political decisions through contrast. If you don’t point out where the other guy went wrong, they can’t see why you are right.

It’s not immoral to take on your opponents — particularly when they have governed like Tony Soprano. Nobody likes Bush or the Republican congress. But the Village Elders have issued a decree that Democrats may not go negative and so they aren’t — even in the face of the most spectacular failure of governance since Hoover.

This has to be done with care, I think. For example, I saw today that Obama described Cheney as “the crazy uncle in the attack.” That’s a good laugh line but with no payoff. In a way, it actually plays into the hands of the right. What he should be saying is that Cheney is the face of movement conservatism. They used to love, love, love Cheney at Heritage lunches. And the current crop of Republican candidates have the exact same right-wing policy agenda as Bush and Cheney. THAT’S what should scare people. Cheney going to be gone in a year anyway. Having someone like him in charge for another four years is what we want people to get worried about.

Greg, I wonder if you’d comment on the differences between reason and force and the appeal each has, and to whom, as a means for protecting us from danger and for getting things done, whether in the world or at home. While I’d like to debate stuff, and think things through, and get all mealy mouthed, it just seems to me there’s such urgency and such danger that the only people who seem to “get it” are people often called conservatives, who know the importance of not messing around. They are successful in making fun of liberals because of this. Who wants to be laughed at? I mean, what’s wrong with being tough? Isn’t that what’s needed these days? Instead of hand-wringing? You’ve seen the bumper sticker, right, that says something like “My 12 year old can beat up your honor student.” To me that says it all. What do you say to that person, who has that bumper sticker?

Americans may not be old style conservatives or even this new style, but they hardly seem progressive. Americans seem to want comfort in their lives. How do you organize people who listen to music all day, watch sports, look at porn on the internet and watch the boob tube? We’ve become a nation of idiots.

Something else kinda awful going on is that a lot of progressives, especially young people, get insight and “newsiness” from Jon Stewart, Colbert, etc., well now they are just going to be in re-run mode due to the writers’ strike…that is not good. While I support the strike if they need it, the timing could not be worse. What about Olbermann…I wonder if his shows will just be sanitized re-runs??

spocko @ 58

Sorry I’m late, I’ve read Greg responses. I believe in fighting back and going after the people who are PUSHING the ideas who constantly are on the tv and radio making their radical ideas seem normal. These people are the think tank “experts” and talk radio hosts and cable tv presenters

But one thing that I don’t have an answer for that must be addressed is funding. We have some brilliant people who could help knock down these “experts” but they are competing with a huge well funded group of people whose sole product is radical ideas. They don’t profit from selling their ideas but they make six figures a year. The companies and wealthy individual who fund them get ROI from it so they keep funding them.

Those people are the drivers of the ideas but the people who could be and should be fighting them are holding virtual paypal bake sales to keep themselves afloat.

How can this be addressed?

I personally think money isn’t that much of a problem any more–the Center for American Progress has plenty of it, for example. I really think at this stage, now that conservative ideas have been implemented to disastrous effect, it’s really a strategic issue. We have to start doing to them what they did to liberals. Pound away at their failures rather than babbling in squishy academic jargon. These guys are very very poor at defending themselves. They are classic bullies who love to throw wild punches all the time, but when you hit them back once they scurry away.

I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know if you have addressed this or not. What we keep labeling “failure” on the part of the conservatives is in fact pretty much what they set out to do. It’s not just that they cannot govern well. They have set out to make it harder – if not flat-out impossible – for anyone to govern well. No matter the will, there simply will not be a way — or a treasury.

What happened in New Orleans, for example, was a stunning success. For 25 years (at least), the “conservatives” have been laboring to put in place a government that addresses the needs of its people precisely as ours did two years ago — that is, not at all.

To my untutored eye, the fact that this nation has been so profoundly hurt by success is much more damning than having our problems rooted in failure.

I don’t see the conservatives as having failed. Although they talk a lot about reducing government, for example, that is not their real aim. The philosophizing was never about the ideas themselves, but rather about the propaganda value of those ideas.

In the 1950s, the question was, how can we get rid of the New Deal, and how can we convince Americans that it was a bad idea.

The conservatives have not failed, they’ve succeeded beyond their wildest hopes.

The best evidence is the amazing Bush/Cheney Junta. It began when the right-wing convinced Americans that counting the votes was wrong. It continues to this week when a president whose every major move has had bad results can still bully the putative opposition into submission.

The progressive forces in the United States are like the Confederates after Antietam, or the Germans after Stalingrad. They can still manage a tactical victory, but the war is over. The good guys lost. The corporate ruling class now runs everything with no restraint or countervailing powers.

Unless and until the people of the United States undergo a revolutionary transformation, there will be no change.

“There has never been a more fertile time for any political movement to solidify its gains and create a long lasting political consensus.”

The conservatives have built a powerful political consensus. The one on the left?

It’s also my belief:

Social Conservatives fear the future, looking and wishing for the mythical golden era of the past.

Liberals & progressives look toward the unknown future, in order to better the past.

Ian Welsh @ 55

I’m an ex-conservative and as such, it has often seemed to me that the conservatism of today, and indeed the last 20 years, isn’t the conservatism I was brought up with, which was fundamentally Burkean, thought that change should generally be slow and incremental and that tradition and precedent mattered greatly.

When I look at the US what I see is that the Republicans are fundamentally reactionary – they want to undo not just the New Deal (policies that are over 60 years old) but the Progressive Era as well.

The conservatives in the picture are the Democrats, who want to basically keep the New Deal around, but aren’t all that interested in new liberal or progressive programs or legislation.

Modern conservatives don’t believe in government because they don’t believe in large chunks of what the government does (except using force, in the military and the police). Since they don’t believe in it, they don’t run it well.

And ultimately, I suppose, I’m being a fogey. What I think of as conservative isn’t. Maybe it once was, but that was a long time ago, if ever. Today, conservatives are the Bushniks. And if they want to reclaim the word, they need to clean house and make it mean something worthy of respect.

As, in some ways, the old word “conservative”, long dead, once was.

Ian, As I was writing my book, I had in mind every step of the way my father-in-law, who is an old-style Eisenhower Republican. He was a businessman who is annoyingly hostile to labor unions, for example, but also believes in good government. I wanted to make a case like a prosecuter who would convince someone like my father-in-law that the conservative movement, by way of the Republican Party, had done enormous damage to the government and the country in the process. So there’s a lot of detail conveyed to really try to build case after case about the damage done, so that people like him would get it. Because, you and Jane are right, movement conservatism is the inverse of what Burke wrote about, and more people need to understand that.

Greg Anrig @ 66

spocko @ 58

Sorry I’m late, I’ve read Greg responses. I believe in fighting back and going after the people who are PUSHING the ideas who constantly are on the tv and radio making their radical ideas seem normal. These people are the think tank “experts” and talk radio hosts and cable tv presenters

But one thing that I don’t have an answer for that must be addressed is funding. We have some brilliant people who could help knock down these “experts” but they are competing with a huge well funded group of people whose sole product is radical ideas. They don’t profit from selling their ideas but they make six figures a year. The companies and wealthy individual who fund them get ROI from it so they keep funding them.

Those people are the drivers of the ideas but the people who could be and should be fighting them are holding virtual paypal bake sales to keep themselves afloat.

How can this be addressed?

I personally think money isn’t that much of a problem any more–the Center for American Progress has plenty of it, for example. I really think at this stage, now that conservative ideas have been implemented to disastrous effect, it’s really a strategic issue. We have to start doing to them what they did to liberals. Pound away at their failures rather than babbling in squishy academic jargon. These guys are very very poor at defending themselves. They are classic bullies who love to throw wild punches all the time, but when you hit them back once they scurry away.

Greg, I agree with your last point: hit them back once (smash ‘em hard) and then, after they back up and off a little

Act like respectable adults.
Don’t act like Rove.
Expose Rove.
Don’t act like Rove.
Find ways to expose them.
Use the full extent of the law to prosecute them.
And be respectable adults who use government to help their country.

Greg Anrig @ 56

Digby @ 41

Actually, at the heart of the conservative movement — old and new — is an agenda to preserve aristocracy. I honestly don’t have much use for that whether it’s wrapped in Burke or Gingrich. So, I have no problem repudiating the notion of conservatism in general.

Having said that, I do think there’s utility in making a distinction between the “traditional conservatives” and the modern “radical conservatives,” if only because the oxymoronic nature of that phrase so accurately reflects the dissonance of their movement.

The big financiers of movement conservatism–families with the names Scaife, Olin, Koch, Bradley, etc. — were motivated entirely by a deep hostility toward government. They particularly despised taxes and regulations. But when they began funding places like Heritage in 1973, they recognized that it would be a political non-starter to just advocate cutting taxes on the rich and rolling back environmental, health, safety, and anti-discrimination regulations. So they created these institutions to come up with politically sell-able ways of accomplishing the same goals. They were successful beyond their wildest dreams.

It had it’s roots in The Powell Memorandum and another other paper that’s escaping my memory, but, yes, this whole ideology has been shaped and perfected over decades, and the Beltway Dems seem not to be averse to going to the same corporate trough.

I just wonder how we get through to them? And how to get them to understand that liberalism is what this country is founded on? Which is what will save the middle class from these neo-econo-parasitic-robber-barons

On a treo, hards to tell if this has already been asked: Do you think California’s Prop 13 is an example of con governance gone bad? What approach will fix it, if anything?

I’m enjoying the book, you are a very engaging writer.

Roddy McCorley @ 67

I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know if you have addressed this or not. What we keep labeling “failure” on the part of the conservatives is in fact pretty much what they set out to do. It’s not just that they cannot govern well. They have set out to make it harder – if not flat-out impossible – for anyone to govern well. No matter the will, there simply will not be a way — or a treasury.

What happened in New Orleans, for example, was a stunning success. For 25 years (at least), the “conservatives” have been laboring to put in place a government that addresses the needs of its people precisely as ours did two years ago — that is, not at all.

To my untutored eye, the fact that this nation has been so profoundly hurt by success is much more damning than having our problems rooted in failure.

Yes indeed. Two weeks after Katrina, both David Brooks and the Cato Institute’s David Boaz wrote pieces saying in effect, “See, we told you that big government can’t do anything right.” That was actually the catalyst for my writing the book. Because FEMA, which had been a turkey farm under Reagan and Bush I, became a model agency after James Lee Witt did things like cut back on the number of political appointees and elevate to management civil servants with lots of experience in disaster response. Then Allbaugh came in, politicized the agency again, and followed the right’s agenda of privatizing, devolving and cutting. That’s why FEMA unravelled–not because government is inherently flawed.

Greg,

One of the areas in your book that was most illuminating to me was your chapter on “sophisticated sabotage,” which essentially showed that the executive branch has pretty much systematically, and very cleverly, found ways to fundamentally alter the way we calculate the efficiency of government, (among other dangerous “reforms”)

How hard do you think it’s going to be to roll that stuff back if a Democrat wins the presidency? It seems to me that the Republicans in congress are likely to stage ongoing hissy fits if they try, projecting madly that the Democrats are trying to rig the system, and I’ve seen no evidence that Democrats have an adequate response — particularly since they aren’t (so far) running for a mandate to roll back the radical changes that took place during the Bush years.

Wanting to use taxes to manage society efficently is what defines us and Bush opposes.
There has been another free market is more efficent meat recall today. Which I’m sure will convince a few people to try being vegans.
Bush’s mismanaged war for oil is helping convince people to buy hybrid cars. Plus Merille Lynch and Citibank have both lost their CEOs due to losses steming from the Bush/Greenspan subprime mess. I thought the GOP was good for business.
Conservative philosophy seems to be destroying itself at this moment in history is it and or is Bush just inheirntly self destructive?

Greg:
Thanks. Funny thing is, since Swampland went to a sign up format, I think they banned me there(but I just changed my name there to JK’s guilty conscience). One other question I have is: What can we do to counter the Heritage Foundation or AEI? Why can’t progressives have things like that? Is it because Conservatives/Republicans are more of a group think type group? Is it because progressives aren’t interested in being part of a top-down group?

mommybrain @ 73

On a treo, hards to tell if this has already been asked: Do you think California’s Prop 13 is an example of con governance gone bad? What approach will fix it, if anything?

I’m enjoying the book, you are a very engaging writer.

Thanks Mommybrain! My personal favorite chapter of the book focuses on Colorado’s experience under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, which Grover Norquist refers to as the holy grail. Basically, it describes what it looks like when government drowns in a bathtub. The 10th richest state saw its rankings plummet to Mississippi levels in virtually every realm you can measure related to heath care and education. They have the highest rate of whooping cough because they couldn’t afford vaccinations during a shortage. Their premature birth levels are among the worst in the country, in part because they can’t afford clinics for low-income women. But Grover and his network are still pushing TABOR in other states around the country, as though it was a big success–to him, it was. (The voters their finally voted to suspend it for 5 years in 2005).

Jane Hamsher @ 15

Greg Anrig @ 12

Jane, I’ve been struck at how the leading presidential candidates, while distancing themselves from Bush, have nonetheless embraced pretty much his exact same agenda. They are all touting more tax cuts for the rich. They are all saber rattling with respect to Iran, as though the lesson of Iraq is that we need to be even more belligerent. They are all trying to one-up each other on the importance of executive power and the use of torture. So it seems like full speed ahead.

That really ought to make it easier for the Dems to say: they are saying they’ll follow Bush’s game plan, and so they will get the same failed results.

I wish I thought this was true — the Democrats campaigned in 06 on “everything will be different with us,” and then little was.

I worry that Repubilicans will be able to use this to good effect in the upcoming elections.

They most likely will. We need to make it clear to the Dem ‘leadership’ that we will refuse to fight for an agenda which ignores our concerns. Simple politics that.

That may mean 2008 is not a ‘change election’ but I will not support the likes of Rahm and his Bush Dogs. Let them take a kicking and they’ll be more likely to give us a place at the table.

I personally think money isn’t that much of a problem any more–the Center for American Progress has plenty of it, for example. I really think at this stage, now that conservative ideas have been implemented to disastrous effect, it’s really a strategic issue. We have to start doing to them what they did to liberals. Pound away at their failures rather than babbling in squishy academic jargon. These guys are very very poor at defending themselves. They are classic bullies who love to throw wild punches all the time, but when you hit them back once they scurry away.

Well I’m going to disagree with you there, maybe because you have money. At the Yearly Kos convention this was a very real question for a lot of people. And how many times have you seen Center for American Progress people on cable shows, talk radio, in OpEd? How many books have they cranked out? How many books did they by 100,000 copies of to hand out for free at conventions so that the books go to the best seller lists?

I heard Tom Delay (!) talking about how George Soros was buying this election. Yeah crazy right, but out here in the sticks we know that Soros ain’t sending us checks.

But Scaife is funding people. AEI, Heritage, CEI, EIEIO and the lot are working the phones booking the radio and TV shows and placing the articles all over the country. Their experts get called to comment on the war. The experts on our side? They call up TV stars. Remember that? Now why was that?
All experts who go on the shows are not created equal. And when we get a good expert they don’t get invited back.

I had to stop and pull back on my activities because ABC Radio Disney threatened to sue my ass and take me for everything I had. Why? Because I was effective and I kicked their ass. I and the blogosphere cost KSFO 28 advertisers and about 1/2 million in revenue, but they didn’t stop. They are now owned by Citadel Broadcasting that just hired Don Imus.

They don’t have any problem being bullies and yes you can stand up to them, but they are willing to bring out the big guns and crush the fighters in the way that really hurts, financially.

The next thing that they will use? Physically intimidation. And Digby and others have talked about this. I’m not kidding when I worry about who has the guns and what happens when they decide that the liberals are the enemy and that they are going to ‘fight back’ at the liberals.

I was working with Code Pink on the Berkeley Protest at the Marine recruiting center and it was fortunate that nobody got hurt, but it was because the Berkeley police separated the Gathering of Eagles and Move American Forward people from the peaceful Code Pink protesters.

Which one of those groups is more likely to beat up the other? Which one loves their 2nd amendment?

Joe Klein’s conscience @ 77

Greg:
Thanks. Funny thing is, since Swampland went to a sign up format, I think they banned me there(but I just changed my name there to JK’s guilty conscience). One other question I have is: What can we do to counter the Heritage Foundation or AEI? Why can’t progressives have things like that? Is it because Conservatives/Republicans are more of a group think type group? Is it because progressives aren’t interested in being part of a top-down group?

Progressives are, for the most part, critical thinkers.
There can be a top, and there can be a down. But that isn’t going to stop independent, critical thinking.

Greg Anrig @ 78

mommybrain @ 73

On a treo, hards to tell if this has already been asked: Do you think California’s Prop 13 is an example of con governance gone bad? What approach will fix it, if anything?

I’m enjoying the book, you are a very engaging writer.

Thanks Mommybrain! My personal favorite chapter of the book focuses on Colorado’s experience under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, which Grover Norquist refers to as the holy grail. Basically, it describes what it looks like when government drowns in a bathtub. The 10th richest state saw its rankings plummet to Mississippi levels in virtually every realm you can measure related to heath care and education. They have the highest rate of whooping cough because they couldn’t afford vaccinations during a shortage. Their premature birth levels are among the worst in the country, in part because they can’t afford clinics for low-income women. But Grover and his network are still pushing TABOR in other states around the country, as though it was a big success–to him, it was. (The voters their finally voted to suspend it for 5 years in 2005).

As I understand it CO is turning Blue bigtime and that this is a result of the government failures you allude to. In my opinion the voters will never go back to pre-FDR.

How do you see this Greg?

While it’s very important to point out what is wrong with the modern conservative movement, I hope you or somebody else will soon write a helpful critique on our second big problem which is “what’s wrong with the Democrats?”

Spocko2 80 Finding out the real numbers of bulk purchased vs indivudualy bought books and showing the real numbers would be entertaining

Digby @ 75

Greg,

One of the areas in your book that was most illuminating to me was your chapter on “sophisticated sabotage,” which essentially showed that the executive branch has pretty much systematically, and very cleverly, found ways to fundamentally alter the way we calculate the efficiency of government, (among other dangerous “reforms”)

How hard do you think it’s going to be to roll that stuff back if a Democrat wins the presidency? It seems to me that the Republicans in congress are likely to stage ongoing hissy fits if they try, projecting madly that the Democrats are trying to rig the system, and I’ve seen no evidence that Democrats have an adequate response — particularly since they aren’t (so far) running for a mandate to roll back the radical changes that took place during the Bush years.

Yes, I think the biggest success of the Bush administration from the standpoint of advancing the conservative agenda has been its utter decimation of the regulatory system. The recent stories in the news about the head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission saying she doesn’t want more money to be able to do the job the CPSC hasn’t been doing since Bush took office is just the latest example.

I think it will be difficult but not impossible to reverse course under a Democrat. Starting to do things again like imposing fines on polluters, which has all but stopped under Bush, doesn’t so much require new resources as a new attitude. But a lot of new barriers have been erected to implementing new regs that will most definitely be long lasting. And, unfortunately, it all really has occurred outside of the public’s view. Really insidious stuff, with demonstrably harmful consequences, as I tried to show.

Oh, I don’t think William F. Buckley has gotten everything he wanted. Molly Ivins used to talk about the divide between the country club Republicans and the polyester Republicans, and how the country-club Republicans held their noses when they had to deal with the tacky little people they had to pretend to have common ground with in order to get votes.

Buckley’s been writing more in sorrow than in anger pieces about the NOKD nature of the Republican revolution under Bush almost since he came into office. I think he imagined that the little people would realize that they weren’t really important.

I think they’ve failed because they’ve been pretending to be pretty much anything they thought would get them votes for years, and now they’re stuck with voters who expect them to pony up.

Sucks to be a fired up single-issue voter faced with the anti-gun, pro-choice, cross-dressing italian catholic mayor from New York. Sucks even worse to be an Opinion Leader trying to convince the people they’ve been pandering to that they’re, well, opinion leaders.

Things Come Undone @ 84

Spocko2 80 Finding out the real numbers of bulk purchased vs indivudualy bought books and showing the real numbers would be entertaining

I’ve tried that and the information is mostly proprietary which means you have to pay to get it and….

What you get might not be accurate.

Publishers don’t want you to know this information.

spocko, digby,
We’ve had chickens on our little farm, and by rights we can have a rifle.
Never owned a gun in my life.
But I would consider it…

William F Buckley did get one thing he wanted: a Connecticut Senator named Joe Lieberman acting as a kingpin in the conservative firmament.

A.Citizen @ 87

Things Come Undone @ 84

Spocko2 80 Finding out the real numbers of bulk purchased vs indivudualy bought books and showing the real numbers would be entertaining

I’ve tried that and the information is mostly proprietary which means you have to pay to get it and….

What you get might not be accurate.

Publishers don’t want you to know this information.

That in itself is hilarious. But do the corporations and foundations that give away these free books for educational purposes get charitable tax breaks. Is Ann Coulter a wingnut on corporate and chartitable welfare?

roberto @ 83

While it’s very important to point out what is wrong with the modern conservative movement, I hope you or somebody else will soon write a helpful critique on our second big problem which is “what’s wrong with the Democrats?”

I’d blame a few things:

1. I really think Dems fell into the habit always trying to meet Republicans at least half way on every issue, consistent with the Third Way mentality. And as the right gained more and more power, meeting them halfway really has come to amount to complicity with the conservative agenda. Many of them have forgotten how to take the offensive and stand for clear principles.

2. Closely related, the established political consultants, pollsters, etc. all come from that same basic Third Way perspective, and are very cautious about taking sharp stands. I can remember pollsters telling us that we have to concede that Social Security has a big financial problem, because that’s what polls show people believe. The idea of trying to change the public’s mind, given that the facts are clear that there is no immediate problem, was viewed as a non-starter in those meetings. There’s a lot of caution from that cluster of advisors.

3. Money, of course. Why would someone like Biden vote for the bankruptcy bill, and why would someone like Schumer oppose taxing hedge fund managers more? Principles have nothing to do with it.

spocko @ 80

I personally think money isn’t that much of a problem any more–the Center for American Progress has plenty of it, for example. I really think at this stage, now that conservative ideas have been implemented to disastrous effect, it’s really a strategic issue. We have to start doing to them what they did to liberals. Pound away at their failures rather than babbling in squishy academic jargon. These guys are very very poor at defending themselves. They are classic bullies who love to throw wild punches all the time, but when you hit them back once they scurry away.

Well I’m going to disagree with you there, maybe because you have money. At the Yearly Kos convention this was a very real question for a lot of people. And how many times have you seen Center for American Progress people on cable shows, talk radio, in OpEd? How many books have they cranked out? How many books did they by 100,000 copies of to hand out for free at conventions so that the books go to the best seller lists?

I heard Tom Delay (!) talking about how George Soros was buying this election. Yeah crazy right, but out here in the sticks we know that Soros ain’t sending us checks.

But Scaife is funding people. AEI, Heritage, CEI, EIEIO and the lot are working the phones booking the radio and TV shows and placing the articles all over the country. Their experts get called to comment on the war. The experts on our side? They call up TV stars. Remember that? Now why was that?
All experts who go on the shows are not created equal. And when we get a good expert they don’t get invited back.

I had to stop and pull back on my activities because ABC Radio Disney threatened to sue my ass and take me for everything I had. Why? Because I was effective and I kicked their ass. I and the blogosphere cost KSFO 28 advertisers and about 1/2 million in revenue, but they didn’t stop. They are now owned by Citadel Broadcasting that just hired Don Imus.

They don’t have any problem being bullies and yes you can stand up to them, but they are willing to bring out the big guns and crush the fighters in the way that really hurts, financially.

The next thing that they will use? Physically intimidation. And Digby and others have talked about this. I’m not kidding when I worry about who has the guns and what happens when they decide that the liberals are the enemy and that they are going to ‘fight back’ at the liberals.

I was working with Code Pink on the Berkeley Protest at the Marine recruiting center and it was fortunate that nobody got hurt, but it was because the Berkeley police separated the Gathering of Eagles and Move American Forward people from the peaceful Code Pink protesters.

Which one of those groups is more likely to beat up the other? Which one loves their 2nd amendment?

I hear you, and don’t disagree. Let me put it this way then, I think progressives could be getting a lot more bang for the bucks we have if we shifted more of the spending from defense to offense. The netroots, I think, gets this. But a lot of places like the big liberal foundations totally don’t. And they aren’t going to change, unfortunately.

They trashed the socialists and communist brands. Then they did the same to libral. SO what have the dems left? Anti conservative? Anything they advocate is trashed as socialist or liberal. Fageddabout communist.

Greg Anrig @ 85

…I think the biggest success of the Bush administration from the standpoint of advancing the conservative agenda has been its utter decimation of the regulatory system. The recent stories in the news about the head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission saying she doesn’t want more money to be able to do the job the CPSC hasn’t been doing since Bush took office is just the latest example.

I think it will be difficult but not impossible to reverse course under a Democrat. Starting to do things again like imposing fines on polluters, which has all but stopped under Bush, doesn’t so much require new resources as a new attitude. But a lot of new barriers have been erected to implementing new regs that will most definitely be long lasting. And, unfortunately, it all really has occurred outside of the public’s view. Really insidious stuff, with demonstrably harmful consequences, as I tried to show.

I think there’s going to be an awful lot of that in all areas of the government. We’ve already seen examples from the Pentagon to the Justice department. Those firings of US Attorney’s were clearly so sloppy because that kind of thing had become commonplace that it had filtered down to be entrusted to young, callow operatives who were padding their resumes. We have only seen peeks at the high level horrors that were handled by the big boys like Addington.

This is a huge problem.

Greg Anrig @ 91

roberto @ 83

While it’s very important to point out what is wrong with the modern conservative movement, I hope you or somebody else will soon write a helpful critique on our second big problem which is “what’s wrong with the Democrats?”

I’d blame a few things:

1. I really think Dems fell into the habit always trying to meet Republicans at least half way on every issue, consistent with the Third Way mentality. And as the right gained more and more power, meeting them halfway really has come to amount to complicity with the conservative agenda. Many of them have forgotten how to take the offensive and stand for clear principles.

2. Closely related, the established political consultants, pollsters, etc. all come from that same basic Third Way perspective, and are very cautious about taking sharp stands. I can remember pollsters telling us that we have to concede that Social Security has a big financial problem, because that’s what polls show people believe. The idea of trying to change the public’s mind, given that the facts are clear that there is no immediate problem, was viewed as a non-starter in those meetings. There’s a lot of caution from that cluster of advisors.

3. Money, of course. Why would someone like Biden vote for the bankruptcy bill, and why would someone like Schumer oppose taxing hedge fund managers more? Principles have nothing to do with it.

Right on point with this Greg. I was struck in reading histories of the Progressive Movements of the 1880s and early 1900s where the idea of pubic education was founded on the stategic goal of ecucating Americans so they would understand that they were being harmed by the Trusts and the Upper Ten, their name for the super-rich, so the ReichWing is absolutely correct when they single out public education as their enemy. It is. The ‘Democrat’ Party has abandoned the principle of ‘changing people’s minds’ in favor of….

Lining their pockets.

This is something that only very recently has started to be recognized in the blogosphere.

Democrats are corrupt.

Money ruined politics. You have to have too much of it to do anything and it is always corrupting. That’s what money = free speech did with the blessing of the chicago school of free market capitalism.

Poor populists are thought of as failures in this society regardless of their ideas.

Greg at 92 — yes, the netroots does get it. But the people with the money don’t want to fund it…because they won’t fund something they can’t entirely control, apparently, and netroots folks aren’t willing to give up independence of thought and action, which is what makes them more effective. It’s a catch-22 which keeps the money in more complacent hands, and the ability to really sink in and do the needed work held back for lack of resources.

The right overcame that ages ago by realizing that people who do the work for you need a living wage. Would that people on the left would realize that as well — and bridge the gap. But unfortunately, what we have had for far too long on that front is stalemate. Spocko makes a great point…but how you remedy that, if ever, is by bridging a really wide intellectual and monetary gap.

A.Citizen @ 79

Jane Hamsher @ 15

We need to make it clear to the Dem ‘leadership’ that we will refuse to fight for an agenda which ignores our concerns. Simple politics that.

That may mean 2008 is not a ‘change election’ but I will not support the likes of Rahm and his Bush Dogs. Let them take a kicking and they’ll be more likely to give us a place at the table.

In the documentary “An Unreasonable Man”, Lawrence O’Donnell emphatically states that if you want move a major political party toward your own political views, you MUST make it known to them that you are entirely willing NOT to vote for them.

Greg Anrig @ 92

I hear you, and don’t disagree. Let me put it this way then, I think progressives could be getting a lot more bang for the bucks we have if we shifted more of the spending from defense to offense. The netroots, I think, gets this. But a lot of places like the big liberal foundations totally don’t. And they aren’t going to change, unfortunately.

Hell, they are NOT even defensive much less offensive. Maybe they don’t like spending their money. Could you go give them a talk? Like the DCCC for starters. How can we get rid of these centrist democrats.

Alicia @ 21

I am so glad you’re talking about this. I think it is so important to recognize that it’s not just Bush – it’s conservatism itself that is at fault for the destruction of our democracy. I believe that conservatism, followed to its logical conclusion, is anti-democratic. Do you think we can get people to call themselves ‘liberal’ again? It was made into a pejorative by conservatives, and, frankly, I’d like to see us get that word back and be proud about it.

Liberalism has brought us every human rights advance we’ve made as a democracy. Do you see taking liberalism back as something that’s doable?

It has to, or we’re all in big trouble. I am optimistic by nature, and think the odds are pretty good that a Democrat will win the presidency, and that good things will come of that no matter what. But I think there’s a real opportunity now that might be squandered to really put the right into a hole that it can never crawl out of. Hendrik Hertzberg, the New Yorker writer, likened my book to “shooting the battlefield wounded.” I really think failing to seize this opportunity to help people recognize that Bush’s failures are conservatism’s failures would amount to political negligence.

Or you simplyu demand that politics be a money free zone. All campaigns are publicly financed and MSM can stop seeing politics as a cash cow for one.

Then get the dems to support term limits so we get rid of political dynasties and nepotism. There’s plenty of talent around.

Finally we prohibit for profit interests from lobbying. PERIOD.

Digby @ 93

Greg Anrig @ 85

I think there’s going to be an awful lot of that in all areas of the government. We’ve already seen examples from the Pentagon to the Justice department. Those firings of US Attorney’s were clearly so sloppy because that kind of thing had become commonplace that it had filtered down to be entrusted to young, callow operatives who were padding their resumes. We have only seen peeks at the high level horrors that were handled by the big boys like Addington.

This is a huge problem.

I don’t remember who it was who suggested that all these people’s resumes need to be available in a public data base online and if there are horrible conflicts of interests in their backgrounds they need to be exposed — it really is the only way to start weeding out the depths.

76 comments and not one mention of the only dem candidate who has never identified him or herself as a ‘conservative’, Dennis Kucinich. All the rest have, at one time or another, fallen all over themselves to let everyone know they, too, were conservatives at heart. Even today, they can not say the ‘L’ word. Once in a while they will call themselves ‘progressives’ then remind everybody quickly that Teddy R. was a ‘progressive’, too.
Pa-f’in-thetic.
None of them invoke FDR.
And they all espouse politics that Richard Nixon never thought he could get away with.
I guess documenting the Conservative failure is useful, but now, and quickly, we need a something that ties the cans of conservative failure to the dem dog tails.

Greg Anrig @ 100

Alicia @ 21

I am so glad you’re talking about this. I think it is so important to recognize that it’s not just Bush – it’s conservatism itself that is at fault for the destruction of our democracy. I believe that conservatism, followed to its logical conclusion, is anti-democratic. Do you think we can get people to call themselves ‘liberal’ again? It was made into a pejorative by conservatives, and, frankly, I’d like to see us get that word back and be proud about it.

Liberalism has brought us every human rights advance we’ve made as a democracy. Do you see taking liberalism back as something that’s doable?

It has to, or we’re all in big trouble. I am optimistic by nature, and think the odds are pretty good that a Democrat will win the presidency, and that good things will come of that no matter what. But I think there’s a real opportunity now that might be squandered to really put the right into a hole that it can never crawl out of. Hendrik Hertzberg, the New Yorker writer, likened my book to “shooting the battlefield wounded.” I really think failing to seize this opportunity to help people recognize that Bush’s failures are conservatism’s failures would amount to political negligence.

Which is the reason our next Democratic President must not be a “bygones” President like Bill Clinton was in 1993. High prices must be paid, by the people who broke the law, just as the movement must be discredited long-time. Otherwise we will have Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Abrams proteges sneaking back into government service in the 2020s. Not a happy thought.

Digby @ 94

Greg Anrig @ 85

I think there’s going to be an awful lot of that in all areas of the government. We’ve already seen examples from the Pentagon to the Justice department. Those firings of US Attorney’s were clearly so sloppy because that kind of thing had become commonplace that it had filtered down to be entrusted to young, callow operatives who were padding their resumes. We have only seen peeks at the high level horrors that were handled by the big boys like Addington.

This is a huge problem.

You know how David Stockman talked about how Reagan’s tax cuts would put the government into huge deficits, making it harder for government to do anything after he left office? Well, that same principle applies not only to the dismantling of regulations but also to all the wingnuts who have been planted in civil service positions throughout the government. They really shouldn’t get another chance at running the country after all the damage they keep doing.

A.Citizen @ 95

Greg Anrig @ 91

I’d blame a few things:

1. I really think Dems fell into the habit always trying to meet Republicans at least half way on every issue, consistent with the Third Way mentality. And as the right gained more and more power, meeting them halfway really has come to amount to complicity with the conservative agenda. Many of them have forgotten how to take the offensive and stand for clear principles.

2. Closely related, the established political consultants, pollsters, etc. all come from that same basic Third Way perspective, and are very cautious about taking sharp stands. I can remember pollsters telling us that we have to concede that Social Security has a big financial problem, because that’s what polls show people believe. The idea of trying to change the public’s mind, given that the facts are clear that there is no immediate problem, was viewed as a non-starter in those meetings. There’s a lot of caution from that cluster of advisors.

3. Money, of course. Why would someone like Biden vote for the bankruptcy bill, and why would someone like Schumer oppose taxing hedge fund managers more? Principles have nothing to do with it.

Right on point with this Greg. I was struck in reading histories of the Progressive Movements of the 1880s and early 1900s where the idea of pubic education was founded on the stategic goal of ecucating Americans so they would understand that they were being harmed by the Trusts and the Upper Ten, their name for the super-rich, so the ReichWing is absolutely correct when they single out public education as their enemy. It is. The ‘Democrat’ Party has abandoned the principle of ‘changing people’s minds’ in favor of….

Lining their pockets.

This is something that only very recently has started to be recognized in the blogosphere.

Democrats are corrupt.

Not quite complete. In a speech that Woodrow Wilson gave in 1909, three years before he was elected President of the United States. He said: “[W]e want to do two things in modern society. We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” (The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 18, 1908-1909, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 1974, p. 597.)

None of the elite has ever wanted a fully educated population, a bit troublesome now that we bet our future on a knowledge based economy.

Even if the dems win the executive and control both houses there will be lots of efforts by the right to sabotage them and government including false flag gotcha events. The dems will inherit such a huge mess that the cures will be so painful that they will be very unpopular. Then the fascists will march in without the fig leaf of democracy. Why even bother?

john in california @ 103

76 comments and not one mention of the only dem candidate who has never identified him or herself as a ‘conservative’, Dennis Kucinich. All the rest have, at one time or another, fallen all over themselves to let everyone know they, too, were conservatives at heart. Even today, they can not say the ‘L’ word. Once in a while they will call themselves ‘progressives’ then remind everybody quickly that Teddy R. was a ‘progressive’, too.
Pa-f’in-thetic.
None of them invoke FDR.
And they all espouse politics that Richard Nixon never thought he could get away with.
I guess documenting the Conservative failure is useful, but now, and quickly, we need a something that ties the cans of conservative failure to the dem dog tails.

I take your point but it sadly assumes that the ‘conservatives’ are done. They are not as you can see from who’s on Hillary’s staff and who Obama relies upon for advice and cash. This isn’t about Republicans and Democrats. It’s about progressives and Fascists.

I hear you, and don’t disagree. Let me put it this way then, I think progressives could be getting a lot more bang for the bucks we have if we shifted more of the spending from defense to offense. The netroots, I think, gets this. But a lot of places like the big liberal foundations totally don’t. And they aren’t going to change, unfortunately.

Thanks Greg and I think this has a lot to do with it

the established political consultants, pollsters, etc. all come from that same basic Third Way perspective, and are very cautious about taking sharp stands.

Edwards reached out to a non-established political consultant for blogs and got smacked down hard by the right. The established political consultants had to be pleased that they will get to still keep their jobs advising people on blogs and elections. “I don’t know blogs, but I’m not controversial and won’t draw attention, hire me!”

Arguably I’m one of the more effective bloggers working against some of the people promoting the neo-con agenda on talk radio but there haven’t been any liberal think tanks seeking me out for advice, hiring me or asking me to speak. Nobody wants help crafting messages that are proactive on the offense and not just defensive, after all I’m just a bloggers…

Some of you know what I do in the real world, so it’s not like I don’t have demonstrable communication skills that I could teach and consult on that could help lots of candidates and progressive groups.

We can show the established people how to do it and we can do it, but until the people that they are advising figure out that their inner circle is stuck in the past they will keep listening to people like six time loser Bob Shrum.

Christy Hardin Smith @ 97

Greg at 92 — yes, the netroots does get it. But the people with the money don’t want to fund it…because they won’t fund something they can’t entirely control, apparently, and netroots folks aren’t willing to give up independence of thought and action, which is what makes them more effective. It’s a catch-22 which keeps the money in more complacent hands, and the ability to really sink in and do the needed work held back for lack of resources.

The right overcame that ages ago by realizing that people who do the work for you need a living wage. Would that people on the left would realize that as well — and bridge the gap. But unfortunately, what we have had for far too long on that front is stalemate. Spocko makes a great point…but how you remedy that, if ever, is by bridging a really wide intellectual and monetary gap.

True, Christy, look at all the Reich-Wing welfare cases out there, virtually the entire neocon cabal that pushed us into Iraq is on the dole in some fashion or other!

It’s not a conservative vs libral struggle. It’s the rich vs the poor unwashed masses. It’s a class warfare and the rich have won and are winning more each day.

America is about wealth, making it, protecting it and fageddabout progressive social values. DOA.

crocodility @ 106

A.Citizen @ 95

Right on point with this Greg. I was struck in reading histories of the Progressive Movements of the 1880s and early 1900s where the idea of pubic education was founded on the stategic goal of ecucating Americans so they would understand that they were being harmed by the Trusts and the Upper Ten, their name for the super-rich, so the ReichWing is absolutely correct when they single out public education as their enemy. It is. The ‘Democrat’ Party has abandoned the principle of ‘changing people’s minds’ in favor of….

Lining their pockets.

This is something that only very recently has started to be recognized in the blogosphere.

Democrats are corrupt.

Not quite complete. In a speech that Woodrow Wilson gave in 1909, three years before he was elected President of the United States. He said: “[W]e want to do two things in modern society. We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” (The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 18, 1908-1909, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 1974, p. 597.)

None of the elite has ever wanted a fully educated population, a bit troublesome now that we bet our future on a knowledge based economy.

That would seem to be a problem for ‘conservatives’ but they don’t really worry about inconsistency of policy. They figure they’ll just hire the remnants of the middle class to run their computers.

They just don’t care about the good of the whole. As long as they’ve got their’s and BlackWater to protect it….

Fuck the economy.

I’s point out that the two Roosevelt’s, Teddy and Franklin, were members of the ‘elite’ who did not hew to their class.

Wilson was an idiot.

Greg,

Thanks so much for being here today. This was a lot of fun.

The book is extremely enjoyable, even as it lays out in horrifying detail what the conservatives have done. I highly recommend it.

I’m so glad you published it now rather than two years ago, when everything seemed so hopeless. There is some light, even if dim and flickering.

Thank you again for writing it.

cheers — digby

Everyone, I promised my wife (who is trying to hold off my increasingly boisterous three kids upstairs) that I would come up for dinner now. I can’t tell you what a pleasure it has been to be here taking all your excellent questions. And thanks especially to Digby, Jane, and Bev.

Cheers! Greg

Mahalo, Greg and Digby!

Roddy McCorley @ 67

I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know if you have addressed this or not. What we keep labeling “failure” on the part of the conservatives is in fact pretty much what they set out to do. It’s not just that they cannot govern well. They have set out to make it harder – if not flat-out impossible – for anyone to govern well. No matter the will, there simply will not be a way — or a treasury.

Yes, but that’s not what they told voters they were setting out to do. To undermine their support, the important thing is to demonstrate how they’ve failed at what they told the public they would do for them, regardless of any hidden agenda.

And in addition, I’m not convinced that all of the destruction was intentional — it was pretty much an article of faith even among movement conservatives that law enforcement and the military were “appropriate” functions even for their “small government,” and they’ve totally destroyed those as well. While they can try to escape paying a price with the “government doesn’t work” dodge, it argues that they believed their crackpot theories would work, not that they were nothing but cover for dismantling government.

Thanks so much Greg for coming by today to discuss the book. Great read — and great discussion as always, Digby.

New Thread…

http://www.firedoglake.com/200…..n-society/

FYI, new post upstairs.

Greg Anrig @ 100

But I think there’s a real opportunity now that might be squandered to really put the right into a hole that it can never crawl out of. Hendrik Hertzberg, the New Yorker writer, likened my book to “shooting the battlefield wounded.” I really think failing to seize this opportunity to help people recognize that Bush’s failures are conservatism’s failures would amount to political negligence.

I couldn’t agree more!

A progressive friend of mine, who almost took a run at Gordon Smith’s senatorial seat, started a blog focused on how we might take our country back. I was disappointed to see that his approach was a form of the aforementioned Third Way. I blogged to him that before reaching across the aisle, the first order of business was take advantage of the Bush debacle to once and for all discredit the failed ideas of movement conservatism and neo-conservatism.

Redshift @ 116

Roddy McCorley @ 67

I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know if you have addressed this or not. What we keep labeling “failure” on the part of the conservatives is in fact pretty much what they set out to do. It’s not just that they cannot govern well. They have set out to make it harder – if not flat-out impossible – for anyone to govern well. No matter the will, there simply will not be a way — or a treasury.

Yes, but that’s not what they told voters they were setting out to do. To undermine their support, the important thing is to demonstrate how they’ve failed at what they told the public they would do for them, regardless of any hidden agenda.

And in addition, I’m not convinced that all of the destruction was intentional — it was pretty much an article of faith even among movement conservatives that law enforcement and the military were “appropriate” functions even for their “small government,” and they’ve totally destroyed those as well. While they can try to escape paying a price with the “government doesn’t work” dodge, it argues that they believed their crackpot theories would work, not that they were nothing but cover for dismantling government.

Yes, I think there was also a huge element of FUBAR, especially in foreign policy and national security. They’ve managed to wreck their reputation in those areas and that couldn’t have been their plan.

The one thing you can count on with neocons is that they have always been wrong about everything. And now we know they also can’t do anything right, even on their own terms. This is a group that should be ostracized and shunned from any sort of power.

So naturally the GOP front runner has loaded his team with the biggest nuts among them.

Bye all — it’s been fun.

Thanks Jane, as always, for having me.

Thanks, Digby, and thank you, Greg. Another swell Book Salon!

Thanks Digby, Greg, and everbody at FDL.

What depresses me is that we have so many good thinkers on the left and their ideas are not embraced by the dems. What a crying shame.

Christy and Jane: Thank you and Digby and the author:

Important new info: where the Repub marketing strategies are hatched…. as few Dems in office recognize the insideous and subversive success of the Right wing’s marketing tsunami, involving Pavlovian responses overcoming rational thought.

“All Gods creatures have a place in the choir” so maybe the erudite firepups can brainstorm some new tunes… to overcome the steady beat of the Repub marching bands.

Hi Greg,

“How could they have possibly failed so miserably?’ I’d say they were manuevered into failure by Al Queada.

I don’t equate conservatism with govt failure, but I equate attacks on the Constitution with govt failure. If a foreign power wanted to ‘destroy America’, the only way is to break down our Constitution, triggering a cascade of foreign and domestic Iraq-style screw-ups. Americans will give up liberty for security. Will they give up American power for security?

Loss of freedom equals loss of American power. Do you think that idea (in the school system) could help to protect us from the Bush/Giuliani trajectory? We can always fight it out with Gingrichs/Reagans, but Rudy in wartime — that’s a quantum leap in danger.

I support invading Venezuela. Obviously one day they will have WMD’s.

I am curious as to how conservatism did prior to the last 6 years. As with anything so complex as our nation, one ideology alone will be judged a failure at some point. What we need is a balance between the best parts of conservative and liberal ideology. Most important is individual freedom because the human spirit produces the most good when free.

SanderO @ 124

What depresses me is that we have so many good thinkers on the left and their ideas are not embraced by the dems. What a crying shame.

Yes many great thinkers and many dopey doers.

The crying shame is that Libs think they have WORKABLE ideas. Their ideas are lofty, socially acceptable, well meaning, self congratulating dreams. Not a recipe for efficiency, individual freedom, or LONG TERM economic growth

cherry flavored @ 49

I’m a mom of three, ages 22, 20 and 18. We aren’t the best or the brightest but I’m doing my best to give them all a college education. We have had many discussions about what a rotten deal their generation is going to inherit, no health care, endless and costly war, and the phony SS is broken scare to steal our SS surplus. So, my kids are country shopping to look for a better deal. If my kids can figure this out how are we going to keep the best and brightest here?

I know what you mean. My daughter is getting a PhD in biomedical research and actively country shopping too. So are my son and I. I predict a huge brain drain if something isn’t done soon to reverse the disastrous course of this beleagured nation. The way I’m feeling about now is the 28%’ers can have it. I have options. I don’t have to put up with this sh*t.

Digby @ 52

I find myself a little bit depressed that the candidates aren’t hammering Bush and Cheney (for red meat reaction, if nothing else) the way the Republicans are going after Hillary.

I’m even more depressed that the Dem candidates are doing the same thing. What a travesty the last debate was. The candidates should have rebelled en masse at the way Russert set the whole thing up for a Hillary Clinton pile on. They should be ashamed…every one of them. They have the power to stop this sh*t cold, but instead play the role of gutless opportunists. It’s disgusting. I don’t care a lot for all the triangulation and corporatism. In fact, I hate it. But Clinton is the only one with any flipping dignity, IMHO.