A few days ago, I started writing about the uncharacteristically public repolarization on the Right - and then I had a brief conversation with a friend on whether or not the Libertarian takeover had or had not been completed, and realized it is probably worth while to put us all on a bullet train to Crazytown so we can at least say we've seen the place before we describe the ways in which it is on fire.
It is worth noting the Republican Party was not always bat crap crazy, nor were they always so far to the right. Once upon a time the Democrats really were on the Left, and the Republicans were the moderate party. Liberals wanted an energy policy and women's liberation and peace and free love and a peanut farmer in the White House, and that's the agenda they pursued. The old GOP, the classical conservatives who wanted nothing more than to hang onto what they viewed as "traditional America" sought to do nothing more than what Conservatives always do - stand athwart the path of history and attempt to stop it. Now, this vision of America is not the same thing that side preaches today as "traditional America". We're talking a vision of a nation comprised of very big towns and small cities, and a whole lot of rural countryside. This is a republic that is decidedly a republic, with a notably weak central government, strong states, and cities that are free to organize (or not organize) themselves as they see fit. This is a very grassroots vision of the power structure. It is also a vision that, for a myriad of reasons, did very badly at the ballot box up until Carter's election.
Carter, however, was a bit of a failure as a President. If the Right wanted a weakling to pillory, they got one in poor Jimmy. From the energy crisis to the hostage crisis, Carter's presidency would ultimately end with him appearing to lead a weakened nation with an economy circling the drain. Enter Ronald Reagan and the Neoconservatives. The Neocons made a very, very, simple argument - wasn't the nation better off before these damn Liberals got ahold of it? Gee whiz but wasn't that boom after the war great? We had a great big military and all these suburbs and June and Ward and the Beav had their white picket fence and damn it June stayed home and Wally and Julie get together in the end, not Wally and Jack. What the Neocons did, which was and remains unthinkable to Liberal and Progressive alike, was to select a leader that was a mouthpiece and little more. Ronald Reagan, outside the Iran-Contra mess, was not the brains of the operation. He was a small time movie star who looked and sounded good on the talking picture box. In light of what was widely viewed as an overly soft and unsuccessful foreign policy on Carter's part, Reagan's promise to create this massive, behemoth military and usher in a new era of Pax Americana played extremely well - 489 to 44 well, to be exact.
Reagan made good on that promise, too. He grew government faster than any administration of any party before or since, but he painted this defense spending as being somehow special and set apart from other government spending. The world was a super duper scary place, but the almighty American military would keep us safe. All of that military spending and excess did indeed make the nation seem secure and powerful, and created one hell of a bubble, which exploded on the watch of Bush 41. Clinton booted him out of office on a moderate platform of tax reform and balancing the budget as a cure to the nation's fiscal woes - which it was, and it worked. More on the moderation of Clinton later, but for now, what you need to know is Clinton successfully stopped the Neocons from being the new singular principle of the GOP.
Enter Newt Gingrich.
Newt Gingrich's entrance gets its own whole paragraph. Let me make this clear: You cannot understand the state of modern American politics without understanding the impact this one man had on his party. This is the man who wove together the Religious Right, the Neoconservatives and the Libertarian wing of the party into a singular unholy alliance. This fractious caucus was damned to failure from its inception, but Gingrich beat it into a parliamentarian opposition the likes of which America had not previously known. As long as there was a strong enough, charismatic enough leader beating the drum, his orcish army would march. And march it did. Welfare reform, a balanced budget, tort reform - Gingrich did in fact bring the whole damn Contract with America to the floor, though much of it failed. More importantly, Gingrich's Republican Revolution won elections. Republicans took the US House for the first time in forty years, as well as a majority of state legislatures for the first time in fifty years. From Pennsylvania to Arizona, Republicans did not wage a war so much as an electoral blitzkrieg, and the names from those races are still familiar - Santorum, Kyl, and Dubya all turfed Democrats out of their seats on this huge insurgent wave in 1994.
Now, say what you will about Gingrich's politics, that is not the conversation we're having here anyway, but when the establishment of any given party looks at a tactic that works this well, they're going to wrap their arms around it, cuddle up to it, and whisper sweet nothings in its ear. So, too, with Gingrich's revolutionary hot mess. Never mind that the three sects welded together by Speaker Gingrich had deep-seated irreconcilable differences, this machination worked. It won elections. It raised money. And above all else, it crashed through what used to be an unstoppable Democratic juggernaut. So the GOP Establishment cast aside the old ways, the party of Eisenhower was effectively dead, and this new creation rose up to take its place.
Therein lies the problem. The party of Eisenhower was a self-sustaining thing. Eisenhower did not create it, it already existed. It had core values it had organized itself around. It did not require a leader to hold the pieces in place. The new GOP had no such singular core, it had three cores competing for dominance, and they would not be sated by the promise of power sharing. They would need a ruler - the Uruk-hai must have their Saruman. When Gingrich fell, that role fell to Dubya. With Dubya gone, we have a problem. There is no more Saruman. The 2008 election produced the ever so lackluster nominee of John McCain. Poor John is clearly going a bit wing nutty in his old age, but he was simply too moderate for the GOP orcs. Instead, they coalesced around Sarah Palin. It was Palin, not McCain, who co-opted the Tea Party moniker from the Libertarians. That movement originally sought to eschew the perceived bad policies of the Neocons and the Religious Right. Palin, whether consciously or not, recognized the message of small government and lower taxes as part of the insane Republican tripartate message from Hell and muscled her way in. She used the name. She held her own Tea Party events. She showed up at Tea Party events. She effectively muted Libertarian dissent by screaming right up over top of them and rather than organizing them into her movement, she just plopped her movement on them like Dorothy's house gone horridly wrong.
Of course, Sarah Palin lost her race because John McCain lost his. This, again, leaves the little orcs with no leader. They did the only rational thing for a blood thirsty race of small minded peons who lust for fresh kill. They began to kill the weakest of their own kind. During the 2010 cycle, the GOP Establishment very much - and very obviously - lost control of its foot soldiers. The establishment did not want Sharron Angle. They absolutely did not what Christine "I Am Not A Witch" O'Donnell. But the Tea Party would not have anyone else. They would only accept the purest of the pure. Only the very orciest of orcs would be chosen to lead the marauding horde. This insane mob mentality drove them clear through the 2012 primary cycle, too. The Establishment tore down more than a few Tea Party favorites - like Herman Cain. Some self destructed - like Michele Bachmann. One saw the writing on the wall and bailed early before his bones could be gnawed - and hopefully Mr Huntsman comes back once the crazy in his party has burned itself out. But one man wanted the job so badly he was willing to try to control this horde. He fired up what can only be described as a low orbit ion cannon of dark money to pulverize his only real competition - the original Saruman, Newt Gingrich. But the Massachusetts Moderate moniker stuck. He was forced to run too far to the right, forced to pick a VP too far to the right, in order to keep the horde in line. He barely managed to keep control of that twisted army, but it cost him the election. This renders the intended super weapon of the original alliance, this bastard child of three incompatible ideologies we know today as the Tea Party, irrevocably on a path to its own demise.
Yes, the Tea Party still has its strongest orcs in office - the likes of Eric Cantor, for example. That movement is not dead, and the Republican Party as a thing in the world is not going to die. But already the old Establishment is pushing back, the Neoconservatives are paying the price for 11 years of warfare, the Religious Right is literally dying off, and a very real revolt among the Libertarians is under way. All this in the midst of fallout from a historic election (which had some serious ramifications within the party's primary, to say nothing of the general), and an economic crisis that they created and they are being largely held responsible for by the voting public. The internecine warfare that must play out next is already underway, and merits discussion in and of itself, but this, in short, has been the path from moderation to chaos. This has been the creation of our modern enemy.
Now, say what you will about Gingrich's politics, that is not the conversation we're having here anyway, but when the establishment of any given party looks at a tactic that works this well, they're going to wrap their arms around it, cuddle up to it, and whisper sweet nothings in its ear. So, too, with Gingrich's revolutionary hot mess. Never mind that the three sects welded together by Speaker Gingrich had deep-seated irreconcilable differences, this machination worked. It won elections. It raised money. And above all else, it crashed through what used to be an unstoppable Democratic juggernaut. So the GOP Establishment cast aside the old ways, the party of Eisenhower was effectively dead, and this new creation rose up to take its place.
Therein lies the problem. The party of Eisenhower was a self-sustaining thing. Eisenhower did not create it, it already existed. It had core values it had organized itself around. It did not require a leader to hold the pieces in place. The new GOP had no such singular core, it had three cores competing for dominance, and they would not be sated by the promise of power sharing. They would need a ruler - the Uruk-hai must have their Saruman. When Gingrich fell, that role fell to Dubya. With Dubya gone, we have a problem. There is no more Saruman. The 2008 election produced the ever so lackluster nominee of John McCain. Poor John is clearly going a bit wing nutty in his old age, but he was simply too moderate for the GOP orcs. Instead, they coalesced around Sarah Palin. It was Palin, not McCain, who co-opted the Tea Party moniker from the Libertarians. That movement originally sought to eschew the perceived bad policies of the Neocons and the Religious Right. Palin, whether consciously or not, recognized the message of small government and lower taxes as part of the insane Republican tripartate message from Hell and muscled her way in. She used the name. She held her own Tea Party events. She showed up at Tea Party events. She effectively muted Libertarian dissent by screaming right up over top of them and rather than organizing them into her movement, she just plopped her movement on them like Dorothy's house gone horridly wrong.
Of course, Sarah Palin lost her race because John McCain lost his. This, again, leaves the little orcs with no leader. They did the only rational thing for a blood thirsty race of small minded peons who lust for fresh kill. They began to kill the weakest of their own kind. During the 2010 cycle, the GOP Establishment very much - and very obviously - lost control of its foot soldiers. The establishment did not want Sharron Angle. They absolutely did not what Christine "I Am Not A Witch" O'Donnell. But the Tea Party would not have anyone else. They would only accept the purest of the pure. Only the very orciest of orcs would be chosen to lead the marauding horde. This insane mob mentality drove them clear through the 2012 primary cycle, too. The Establishment tore down more than a few Tea Party favorites - like Herman Cain. Some self destructed - like Michele Bachmann. One saw the writing on the wall and bailed early before his bones could be gnawed - and hopefully Mr Huntsman comes back once the crazy in his party has burned itself out. But one man wanted the job so badly he was willing to try to control this horde. He fired up what can only be described as a low orbit ion cannon of dark money to pulverize his only real competition - the original Saruman, Newt Gingrich. But the Massachusetts Moderate moniker stuck. He was forced to run too far to the right, forced to pick a VP too far to the right, in order to keep the horde in line. He barely managed to keep control of that twisted army, but it cost him the election. This renders the intended super weapon of the original alliance, this bastard child of three incompatible ideologies we know today as the Tea Party, irrevocably on a path to its own demise.
Yes, the Tea Party still has its strongest orcs in office - the likes of Eric Cantor, for example. That movement is not dead, and the Republican Party as a thing in the world is not going to die. But already the old Establishment is pushing back, the Neoconservatives are paying the price for 11 years of warfare, the Religious Right is literally dying off, and a very real revolt among the Libertarians is under way. All this in the midst of fallout from a historic election (which had some serious ramifications within the party's primary, to say nothing of the general), and an economic crisis that they created and they are being largely held responsible for by the voting public. The internecine warfare that must play out next is already underway, and merits discussion in and of itself, but this, in short, has been the path from moderation to chaos. This has been the creation of our modern enemy.
