Here's a key part of David's argument:
First and foremost, as said above, most of these conservative targets of our ire are absolutely irrelevant - indeed, the only way they remain relevant is because we're attacking them. The way to keep these extremists down is, more often than not, to ignore them.
Second, we have other more important battles to fight. Some readers ask me why I spend so much time trying to pressure, cajole, and criticize the Obama administration and congressional Democrats. The answer is based in empirical math: The Obama administration and congressional Democrats - not Republicans or the right - have the vast majority of power to actually change laws. They control the presidency and have huge majorities in Congress. Sure, Republicans still have that one extra Senate vote to filibuster stuff, but by and large, if we win the battle over progressive policies inside the Democratic Party, we're most of the way there in the battle to see those policies pass into law.
I give Rachel a lot of credit - she's one of the only people on television to understand this latter point. She's one of the only voices on television who doesn't just carry water for Democrats, but actually explicitly goes after what she calls "conservadems." I also give her a lot of credit for acknowledging publicly that she thinks about this strategic question of whether she's helping the Right, more than hurting it.
I hope all of us - including, I might add, me - can think hard about this as we move forward in our work. I hope, for instance, President Obama thinks twice before ever using his platform and his presidency to build up the relevance of the legislatively irrelevant House Republican Caucus again.
While I think David's argument is an important one--and I particularly think we always need to question whether or not we're doing what we're doing out of comfort and inertia--I think there are two important reasons why I have to disagree. In saying so, I don't mean to invalidate his argument, though. We should be much more thoughtful about how and why we engage in criticizing conservatives and Republicans at this point in time. I'm just saying that we shouldn't stop, for two basic reasons.
The first reason is that we ignored them before as irrelevant, only to have them come back and bite us in the ass. It happened after Goldwater got blown out in the 1964 election. And it happened when Newt Gingrich was a back-bencher using C-SPAN as a national soapbox, giving speeches to an empty chamber, which Tip O'Neil thought to counter by occasionally panning the cameras to show that there was no one in Congress listening to Newt. The point is, they are not going away if we don't pay attention to them, or under-estimate their power to come back. I'm older than David, and I remember the complacency that Democrats felt then. I know that's far from our #1 problem today, but it would be devastatingly ironic to have it play any role in allowing a conservative comeback once again, today.
The second reason I disagree is that I believe that highlighting the sort of absurdity that Rachel has focused on can be used to make it harder for Obama and the rest of the Versailles Dems to keep collaborating with and empowering the Republicans. And this is what we need to give a lot more thought to.
As an illustration, here's some of what Rachel had to say in her other segment on "tea-bagging" yesterday, which played off against a video of a Cleveland, February 27th 'tea-bagging' event (transcription is mine):
"A few themes emerge: down with Obama"...
That's theme #1, Obama's not actually President. He's not even American. Down with Obama.
Second discernible theme, oddly, a dislike of the federal reserve.... You see a lot of Ron Paul signage.... Let's just have private banks, like Citigroup, That will be much more stable.
Third discernible theme, taxes. Not like the Boston Tea Party, the whole taxation without representation thing, just 'no' to taxes, full stop. This is 'taxation with representation ain't so hot either' [sign onscreen] and the other one [also onscreen] taxation with representation sucks too!
This is the message that's being sold most aggressively about what the great conservative tea-bagging protest of 2009. the idea is that they're against taxes, that's mostly what they're for. You can also buy lawn signs that say 'taxed enough already' Get it? T-E-A [sign onscreen] tea? There are t-shirts, bumper-stickers, 'Taxed enough aleady!' The outrage! 'Our taxes are outrageous. We will evoke the spirit of the American colonists who seceded, who seceded from the tyranical government that taxed them so unjustly! These Obama tax policies are just unconscionable.'
You know what Obama's done to taxes in the less than three months he's been in office? He's, he's, he has passed the biggest middle class tax cut in American history. Honestly, these protests are organized around the principle of taxed enough already, and they're protesting now? Right after taxes just got cut for everyone making less than a quarter million dollars a year? Maybe all these people are outraged because the tax rate for people making more than a quarter million dollars a yer is going to go back to what it was during Bill Clinton. That's the outrage? Remember how much the rich suffered under Clinton? Never again!
Really? Maybe it's the outrage that the debt and deficit are high. But, then, wouldn't you have protested when George W. Bush turned hundreds of billions of dollars of surplus into a trillion dollar deficit? And then the economy collapsed before he left office? Maybe it's outrage that Obama won the election?
'Tea-bagging' is an embarrassing word. The idea of tea-bagging the White House is even more embarrassing. This guy's sign says 'Pork DC.' Conservative writer Anderw Sulivan suggested today that in the absence of any clear motive for protesting, the 'tea-parties' should be seen as 'tea tantrums' instead. Awaiting any signs of rational motivation, I am inclined to agree.
Holding these people up to ridicule is a necessary and patriotic act. Because they are ridiculous, and they are the very antithesis of patriots.
Is this the best thing that could be done? No. Far, far better if the political leaders they backed, who broke scores of laws under color of law were put on trial and held to account for what they did. If our Democratic leaders would simply uphold the rule of law, there would be an open and public repudiation of conservatism that would last at least as long as the period after the Great Depression, and it would be utterly justified.
But in the absence of anything like that, what Rachel is doing on cable TV, and what many others are doing in the blogosphere is utterly and completely necessary. We need to make it virtually impossible for the wingnut conservatives who have captured the GOP to be taken seriously in any way, shape or form. They are not within a country mile of being rational creatures. They're entire "logic" consists of us/them thinking. This is what drives their insistence that Obama isn't even an American. It's totally and completely nuts. And pretending anything less than that makes us a little bit nuts as well. Because that's how insanity works. You either recognize it, and stand against it. Or you empower it, one way or another.
Ignoring it is not an option. |
