The Politics of Extreme

I pulled this graphic from its original source at Rand. It came via Wonkblog at WaPo that shows an entire set of nifty graphs chosen by economic “experts” as their favorite charts of the year 2011. This was the graphic chosen by former Obama budget guru Peter Orzag who now works for Citigroup.  Here’s his explanation.

“If you want to understand the debt limit debate this year and the ongoing gridlock we are likely to experience for years, study this graph. In the late 1960s, the most conservative Democrats in the House and the most liberal Republicans voted together frequently enough (as shown by the overlap between the two distributions) to make centrist legislating successful. By the late 1980s, that overlap was dwindling. Today, it is largely gone.”

You can actually read the Rand study that begins by discussing the first of the US polarization debates:  Federalists vs. Anti-Federalists.  If you check out the graphics on voter demographics, you’ll see there’s still a split in party identification.   However, there seems to be an increasing tilt towards identification with the Democratic Party from about 1980 onward.  Still, you wouldn’t know it by the way congress gridlocks over the most simple business of the people.

There are several news items that have me thinking today about this in some detail.  First, is the seemingly endless policy hostage-taking coming out of the House of Representatives these days. Second, is this ad made by Romney as he tries to sell out the last vestige of common sense and education he ever demonstrated in search of the credibility that no right winger will ever give him. Romney’s disingenuous spiel  about the fairness frame is beyond any explanation other than crass politics. It continues to play into the Obama is a socialist meme.  You think it would get old hack for Republicans to exclaim socialist at every human attempt to actually level the playing field and remove the gross incentives these days to maintain the wealth and incomes of the very few.

Just a couple of weeks ago in Kansas, President Obama lectured us about Teddy Roosevelt’s philosophy of government.  But he failed to mention the important difference between Teddy Roosevelt and Barack Obama.  Roosevelt believed that government should level the playing field to create equal opportunities.  President Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes.

In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort, and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others. And the only people who truly enjoy any real rewards are those who do the redistributing—the government.

The truth is that everyone may get the same rewards, but virtually everyone will be worse off.

This last statement is a baldface lie.  The great income inequality that exists is bad for the entire country and that includes the very rich.   However, no amount of historical analysis of economies and finance seems to ever throttle the hysteria surrounding protecting the very wealthy these days.  Romney seems hell bent on attacking Obama on his Republican perceived “otherness” rather than the actual policies.  It’s just nasty code for secret Muslim Kenyan. This is undoubtedly because Obamacare really is Romneycare is DoleCare and most other things Obama has done are seriously no different than any Republican of Romney’s type–or for that matter of the earlier Gingrich incarnations–would’ve done.  Like a magician pulling some kind of slight of hand, Romney and Gingrich both need diversions from their past.

When you look at all the Big Lies Romney has told in recent months, you’ll see a common thread running through them all. They’re all about conveying a sense that you should find Obama’s intentions towards America vaguely suspect; that Obama harbors a deep seated indifference or even hostility towards the fundamentals that make America what it is; and that Obama is in some basic way undermining the foundation of American life as we know it.

Obama has been so good at maintaining the status quo that most liberals have turned on him including Matt Damon who says Obama “rolled over” to Wall Street.

So this leads me to the third thing that has me thinking about the current plight of governance in the US.  Robert Reich has written a shrill piece on “Why the Republican Crack up is bad for America”.  I’ve frequently accused Haley Barbour, Ron Paul and Rick Perry of being neoconfederates much to the chagrin of libertarians I know.  It really confuses me that a libertarian could support incredible intrusions into personal liberties and constitutional rights under the guise of state rights.  To me, these neoconfederates use this excuse in the same way that slave owners used it to maintain the right to own black people.  They use it to control who votes, what women do with their bodies, when stores can sell alcohol, who can get married in civil ceremonies, and all kinds of things. These are the very people that Romney and Gingrich are morphing, shucking, and dancing for.

Reich’s commentary on the recent power surge of the right wing’s John Birch Society/Neoconfederate wing in the Republican party is scathing.  The only problem that I can see is that Reich believes these folks artifacts from the Southern part of the US. All you have to do is listen to some of the stuff coming out of Republicans in Iowa to know that this mentality isn’t limited to the deep South or places where confederates migrated.   These folks have been with us a long time.  The Nixonian Southern Strategy captured them from the Dixiecrats although there are still a few of them floating around both parties.

As Michael Lind has noted, today’s Tea Party is less an ideological movement than the latest incarnation of an angry white minority — predominantly Southern, and mainly rural — that has repeatedly attacked American democracy in order to get its way.

It’s no mere coincidence that the states responsible for putting the most Tea Party representatives in the House are all former members of the Confederacy. Of the Tea Party caucus, twelve hail from Texas, seven from Florida, five from Louisiana, and five from Georgia, and three each from South Carolina, Tennessee, and border-state Missouri.

Others are from border states with significant Southern populations and Southern ties. The four Californians in the caucus are from the inland part of the state or Orange County, whose political culture has was shaped by Oklahomans and Southerners who migrated there during the Great Depression.

This isn’t to say all Tea Partiers are white, Southern or rural Republicans — only that these characteristics define the epicenter of Tea Party Land.

And the views separating these Republicans from Republicans elsewhere mirror the split between self-described Tea Partiers and other Republicans.

In a poll of Republicans conducted for CNN last September, nearly six in ten who identified themselves with the Tea Party say global warming isn’t a proven fact; most other Republicans say it is.

Six in ten Tea Partiers say evolution is wrong; other Republicans are split on the issue. Tea Party Republicans are twice as likely as other Republicans to say abortion should be illegal in all circumstances, and half as likely to support gay marriage.

Tea Partiers are more vehement advocates of states’ rights than other Republicans. Six in ten Tea Partiers want to abolish the Department of Education; only one in five other Republicans do. And Tea Party Republicans worry more about the federal deficit than jobs, while other Republicans say reducing unemployment is more important than reducing the deficit.

In other words, the radical right wing of today’s GOP isn’t that much different from the social conservatives who began asserting themselves in the Party during the 1990s, and, before them, the “Willie Horton” conservatives of the 1980s, and, before them, Richard Nixon’s “silent majority.”

Through most of these years, though, the GOP managed to contain these white, mainly rural and mostly Southern, radicals. After all, many of them were still Democrats. The conservative mantle of the GOP remained in the West and Midwest — with the libertarian legacies of Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft and Barry Goldwater, neither of whom was a barn-burner — while the epicenter of the Party remained in New York and the East.

But after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as the South began its long shift toward the Republican Party and New York and the East became ever more solidly Democratic, it was only a matter of time. The GOP’s dominant coalition of big business, Wall Street, and Midwest and Western libertarians was losing its grip.

So, this is the group that has Romney and Gingrich forgetting their earliest roots.  It’s also why Romney is so busy playing up the Obama as “other” meme and Gingrich is shouting about arresting judges that disagree with him.  The judiciary has consistently stopped the overreach of the neoconfederates in blocking the ability to vote, restricting women’s rights, segregating schools, and forcing fundamentalist christianity into public life.   Gingrich clearly knows who and what he’s playing to.  We definitely see their dynamic in Congress where there is that incredibly shrinking ability to produce policy that represents any kind of bipartisan overlap as show in the Rand chart above.

Clearly, all recent polls show utter frustration on the part of the majority of Americans–Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike–with these games.  Those of us that live in states that are now captured by these forces–up until the Katrina disaster Louisiana was a swing state–are experiencing a backslide towards the 19th century.  The deal is that gerrymandering has made many politicians safe.  Caucuses and limited primary voting continues to reinforce the patterns of polarization.  Campaigns that rely on the funds of select few donor bases exacerbates all of the above.

I continue to wonder if some third party will develop that can manage to capture the frustrated moderate voter. Until then, we may have to watch the polarization problem play out.  Reich thinks that the main vulnerability is within the Republican party, but I’m not so sure.  I think that polls show a major amount of dissatisfaction with what’s being produced by today’s political environment. That includes both establishment parties.  It’s only a matter of finding the correct vehicles for change and reform.  My personal thoughts are that the Tea Party permanents will be hung out to dry in 2012 in many places outside of the South.  I still have no idea where the rest of voter frustration will go.  There appears to be no beneficiary at this point.  I wonder how long this can continue without some of these cracks in the system becoming unrepairable.