Hope never dies for the advocates of the press conventional wisdom (no matter how braindead it may be)

George Packer at his Interesting Times blog gives us a couple of examples in Scenes from a Primary 01/08/08, about the New Hampshire primary. This sentence is very telling: "Dinner with two dozen Dartmouth students last night. They wanted to talk Iraq; I wanted to talk politics."

The Establishment press has decided the Iraq War is no longer an important issue, even though it consistently shows as such in the public opinion polls. That's a perfect illustration. Since our "press corps" has defined the Iraq War as unimportant in the Presidential campaign - however they came to that truly weird conclusion - by definition talking about the Iraq War is not something you do when you "talk politics." Amazing. (George Packer did a book on the Iraq War, so it's not really surprising that students would bring it up to him.)

Like the rest of the press crew, Packer just loo-ooves St. John McCain, that bold Maverick:

Eight years ago, McCain took on the Republican establishment and began to pry open cracks that are now gaping holes. This year, he’s brought the same appealing manner, but he’s made his peace with the Party: an independent in style, a Republican in substance. Back from the dead, he’s now talked about in New Hampshire as the likeliest Republican nominee. He’s also the only one with a good chance of winning in November.

But about those "gaping holes" that Packer detects in the facade of the authoritarian Republican Party, he writes about a conversation he had with a nurse in Salem, New Hampshire:

In conversations like these you can feel the old Republican coalition splitting at its seams. Whatever was the matter with Kansas no longer is. The nurse is a Christian populist—angry about the wages nurses make, resentful of Romney pouring his millions into an election. She has almost nothing in common with the party’s Wall Street establishment (other than their mutual suspicion of what she calls "social medicine"). The coalition that Reagan built outlasted its natural life by a generation—just like the New Deal coalition of urban ethnics, blacks, and Southerners did. It's hard to see how the Republicans will avoid the fate of the post-1968 Democratic Party: a decade or two of interest-group politics, litmus tests, infighting, and nostalgic appeals to dead Presidents and defunct movements. Pat Robertson will go the way of Lane Kirkland; Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney will follow in the footsteps of George McGovern and Walter Mondale.

Conventional political observers have been speculating since the Christian Right emerged in its current form during the Carter administration that there were unbearable tensions between the Wall Street and Main Street wings of the Party. But, funny thing, they always seem to coalesce around the Republican Presidential candidate.

Tom Edsall, who for some reason beyond my feeble imagination manages to be regarded as a "liberal" writer, decribed those Republican fault lines in "The Political Impasse" New York Review of Books 03/26/1987:

In 1980 and 1981 the ideological and economic conflicts within the Republican coalition had not yet emerged. Instead, the main forces behind that coalition—a unified business community, a nascent Christian right, a well-financed conservative movement that has been gathering political and intellectual momentum for a decade, and a growing number of white voters who no longer supported Democratic welfare policies—provided Reagan with a strong base of support. His administration could therefore have its way, particularly in lowering taxes, raising military spending, and cutting benefits for the poor. Three main factors created a favorable climate for Reagan's budget and tax cut legislation. The steeply graduated income tax rates that inflation was pushing onto working- and middle-class incomes; rising regressive Social Security taxes; and increasingly heavy state and local tax burdens.

In 1980 and 1981, then, it seemed that the combined economic, class, and social interests supporting Reagan could become the core of a new majority party. During the last few years, however, these elements have lost their cohesion, and the Republican drive to expand its base has, in fact, had the effect of dividing its supporters. The Administration's 1986 tax reform proposal, for example, clearly had an implicit political purpose: by lowering all tax rates, eliminating many tax breaks, and shifting a significant share of the tax burden from individuals to corporations, the tax plan was intended by party strategists to give a populist boost to Republican hopes of realigning the parties. Instead of being perceived as the instrument of the rich and of corporate America, the GOP would appear as the defender of the common man.

And he didn't ignore the Christianists' differences with the plutocrats, either:

Another Republican alliance coming under strain is that between the country-club Republicans who have controlled the party organizations in most states, and the increasingly restless conservative Christian political community. This alliance has been of prime importance to the GOP: between 1976 and 1984, white fundamentalist Christians accounted for a shift of at least eight million votes to Republican candidates, according to The New York Times–CBS polls. No other single group in those years did more to create a strong Republican coalition.

Conservative Christian political leaders, including Pat Robertson, have, however, become increasingly intent on gaining direct political power. They are sponsoring campaigns to take over numerous state and local Republican party organizations, and running their own candidates in GOP primaries. For example, in Indiana in 1986, fundamentalist Christian candidates defeated candidates backed by the party for Republican nominations in two congressional districts, severely embarrassing one of the strongest state Republican parties in the country. Similarly, fights between Christian groups and party regulars occurred in Republican congressional contests in South Carolina and Tennessee. In three out of four of these districts, the Republican would normally have been favored to win. In fact, Democrats won all four districts. Republican party regulars, dismayed by such activities, are having increasing difficulty maintaining control over nominations. (my emphasis)

Today's Meet the Press was a festival of press hackery featuring Tim Russert hosting Doris Kearns Goodwin, Newsweek's Jon Meacham, Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal, Tom Brokaw of NBC and Michele Norris from NPR. Do I even need to say that they were all gaga over the bold Maverick McCain's brilliant success with his straight-shooting campaign?

Russert did read a quotation from Michael Gerson (who wasn't there) in which the word "Iraq" appeared. Godwin, whose son has served in Iraq, did mention the word a couple of time, though mainly to repeat the current press script that no one cares about the Iraq War in the election any more, e.g., "If foreign policy comes back or Iraq comes back in a bigger positive or negative way, that could change this whole thing." This is a truly amazing phenomenon. The pundits decide through whatever mystical process occurs in such things that nobody cares any more about the war and they just start talking about the election as if that's the case. It's an awe-inspiring case of groupthink.

They talked a lot of drivel about how the Republicans are trying to find the "soul" of their Party. If there is such a thing as a Party's "soul", the Republicans' soul is the idea that the wealthiest Americans should be liberated of the terrible burden of paying taxes to support their country.

Godwin did manage to say something sensible on this notion that the Wall Street/Main Street coalition in the Republican Party is shattering:

But I think for the Republican Party, the prospect of victory eventually may solve some of these divisions. I mean, clearly, each one of these primary candidates represents a particular piece of the Reagan coalition. Nobody has it all. My sense is, however, when we get closer to having a Democrat - suppose Hillary wins February 5, and they know who that opponent is, that that desire to win may somehow heal, if not the soul, the desire to look like the soul is healed.

Russert was desperately trying to find a racial angle to the Democratic contest. The guy is fixated on it.

Then there was this exchange:

MS. NORRIS: I mean, they [the Republicans] actually will talk openly about bringing Barack Obama down a few notches because they want to run against Hillary.

MR. MEACHAM: Because it's a known known, to give Secretary - former Secretary Rumsfeld his due. Hillary Clinton, they know what to do. Barack Obama, how do you run against the first African American nominee? It explodes all conventional campaign dogma in ways that completely will surprise and pleasantly and unpleasantly perhaps as they go forward. And I that that that's the - one of the things that's so scary about Obama to Republicans is they don't how to run against him. (my emphasis)

The Republicans won't know how to run against Obama? Say what? They've been running against black people since 1964! Good grief, what planet do these reporters live on?

How might they run against Obama? From the start of The Rush Limbaugh Show 01/14/08:

It is funny to watch -- and, ladies and gentlemen, a final observation here. Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton -- have you noticed, it's Obama versus the Clintons? Two against one. Obama campaigning against both of the Clintons. I wonder how well Mrs. Clinton would hold up if the shoe was on the other foot. That is, if she had to run against an ex-president and a senator. I think she'd cry and complain about the unfairness. For all of her BS about being a victim and piling on, Obama is holding his own against both of them, doing more than his share of the "spadework," maybe even gaining ground at the moment, using not only the spade, ladies and gentlemen. But when he finishes with the spade in the garden of corruption planted by the Clintons, he turns to the hoe. And so the spadework and his expertise, using a hoe. He's faring well. (my emphasis)

Short version: "Spade, yuh git it! Spade and ho! Yuck, yuck, makin' fun of black people is funny, ain't it?"

This, by the way, is typical segregationist humor. And it was followed by typical segregationist comma-dancing, in which Rush managed to use the word "spade" many more times and claim there's nothing wrong with it, as reported by Media Matters, Limbaugh twice used word "spade" during discussion of Obama 01/15/08.

Yes, I think the Christian Republican White People's Party will have some ideas about how they will campaign against Barack Obama. And heal that alleged split between "populist" theocrats and wealthy people who prefer not to pay taxes.

Tags: george packer, racism, rush limbaugh, thomas edsall