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Several years ago, I had an epiphany: the core of conservatism is identity politics, not ideology or issues. Oh, sure, there are ideological differences between conservatives and liberals, but those differences are substantially smaller than the gaps between who they vote for, as I discussed in my Dec, 2007 diary, "Collapsing The Ideological Overlap: The Gulf Between Issues and Candidates". But if that's so, you might ask, why say that it's conservatives who are responsible for the gap? The reason is simple: conservatives are more likely to hold liberal policy positions and more likely to vote for candidates opposed to what they say they believe.
One way they deal with this is by denying what the politicians they support believe. A classic example of this was illustrated in 2004, when the Project on Policy Alternatives (PIPA) found that despite Bush's reputation for strong, decisive leadership, and the importance that foreign policy had in the 2004 election, his supporters were generally clueless about where he stood on a broad range of foreign policy positions. I excerpted key passages in my contemporaneous DKos diary, "PIPA: Bush Supporters Misread His Foreign Policy".
The other side of this phenomena is believing lies about the politicians they oppose. Swiftboat veterans, anyone? Kenyan birth certificates? A couple of things in the news this week re-emphasized the salience of conservative identity politics. First, on Monday, Rachel Maddow highlighted the fact that Republicans Senators were turning against long-held positions, rather than voting to support President Obama's proposals. Their positions on the issues were less important to them than maintaining their identities, now largely defined by opposition to Obama. Then the next day, Markos released a Dkos/Research 2000 poll of 2000 Republicans that helped explain why.
Maddow cited the deficit commission:
Six Republican senators who originally cosponsored forming a deficit commission voted against it once President Obama signed up for the idea. Sam Brownback, Mike Crapo, John Ensign, Kay Bailey Hutchison, James Inhofe, and John McCain, profiles in courage against their own policies.
PayGo (pay-as-you-go budgeting):
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Despite supporting PAYGO before, now that President Obama is for it, John McCain, George Voinovich, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe all voted against it when it came up for a vote last week. You're noticing a trend here?
Cap-and-trade:
And it's not just economic issues. Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, once sponsors and major supporters of cap-and-trade climate legislation, now say they oppose it.
Trying accused terrorists in federal courts:
On national security, Republicans had no problem with the Bush administration trying terrorism suspects in federal courts. Now that President Obama is doing that same thing, they've decided they're against that too.
Even taxes:
MADDOW: ... even on taxes, Republicans are now opposed to the one thing we thought for sure they were definitely for.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: We cut taxes. We cut taxes for 95 percent of working families. We cut taxes for small businesses.
We cut taxes for first-time home buyers. We cut taxes for parents trying to care for their children. We cut taxes for 8 million Americans paying for college.
(APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: I thought I'd get some applause on that one.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: Not this year, Republicans not in favor of tax cuts anymore. Not if they're Obama tax cuts.
And she concluded:
Let this serve as a standing rebuttal to anyone still arguing that this president just needs to support more Republican-friendly policies and then he'll get some Republican votes. This president is not just supporting Republican-friendly policies, he is supporting actual Republican's actual policies, and the Republicans are voting no, against their own ideas, just to stick it to him.
This is clearly the case, and has been the case since the very beginning of the Obama presidency. The only thing new is that Obama finally seems to have noticed. He thought he was going to get 20+ GOP votes for the stimulus plan just because he loaded it up with poor-performing GOP-style tax cuts. He got 3-and that was the high-water mark. On health care reform, he excluded even considering the single-payer alternative favored by his base-which, incidentally, would actually save far more money than any alternative-and instead steered things toward a Mitt Romney-style package...and still didn't get one single Republican vote.
On issue after issue, Obama naively believed that incorporating GOP ideas into his initial proposals-and systematically excluding ideas strongly supported by his base, so as not to make Republicans mad-was a sure-fired way to foster a spirit of bipartisanship. On issue after issue he was wrong... for a very simple reason: When push comes to shove, conservatives don't care about policy, they only really care about identity-and winning. Indeed, for conservatives, identity is winning, since conservatism is all about maintaining social hierarchy, elite rule, and conventional morality that keeps the lower orders in line, and virtuous conservatives on top.
For conservatives, a liberal proposing conservative ideas is simply acknowledging the natural order of things-and if he really acknowledges the natural order of things, then he ought to acknowledge that conservatives should be running the show. So, if he doesn't acknowledge that, then he's not really serious--indeed, he's downright deceitful, and everything Glen Beck says is true. He's really a socialist fascist Nazi out to destroy America.
In psychological terms, it's very simple: The more he moves towards them, the more he threatens their identities as not-him, and the more hysterically they have to oppose him. It's a strategy doomed to failure from the start.
Evidence supporting this view is abundantly evident in the new Dkos/R2000 poll of Republicans that Markos summarized here. The first section is particularly telling:
OBAMA and AMERICA
Should Barack Obama be impeached, or not?
Yes 39
No 32
Not Sure 29
For what? Who the heck knows. Who needs high crimes or misdemeanors when...
Do you think Barack Obama is a socialist?
Yes 63
No 21
Not Sure 16
That's the power of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, after one year of relentlessly claiming Obama is the second coming of Lenin ... and Hitler!
Do you believe Barack Obama was born in the United States, or not?
Yes 42
No 36
Not Sure 22
We still have over a half of Republicans who don't think Obama was born in the US or think it's a matter open to debate.
Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to win?
Yes 24
No 43
Not Sure 33
Not just a quarter of Republicans believe this ludicrous premise, but another third think it's a matter open to debate. How do you negotiate with a party whose rank and file are that divorced from reality? And speaking of divorced from reality...
Do you believe ACORN stole the 2008 election?
Yes 21
No 24
Not Sure 55
One in five Republicans think ACORN is so powerful as to magically make 10 million votes appear. Another 55 are open to the theory. In other words, just 24 percent of Republicans have an even passing relationship with reality.
Do you believe Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President than Barack Obama?
Yes 53
No 14
Not Sure 33
Sigh...
Do you believe Barack Obama is a racist who hates White people?
Yes 31
No 36
Not Sure 33
I bet more people think Obama is racist, but were too afraid to tell a live operator the truth.
Do you believe your state should secede from the United States?
Yes 23
No 58
Not Sure 19
42 percent of Republicans aren't really patriotic. They pretend to love America only when they approve of the president. These traitors don't believe in democracy, in our nation's founding ideals, or in our flag. To them, those colors run. They are cowards.
Note, secession sentiment is MUCH stronger in the South than elsewhere -- 33 percent want out, compared to just 52 percent who want to stay. In the Northeast, "just" 10 percent want out, in the Midwest, its 18 percent, and in the West, it's 16 percent. |
None of this is all that surprising, when you remember the Civil War. Or as I like to call it, "The War of Southern Aggression."
For Democrats, the problem is that their ultra-ideological Versailles leadership refuses to face reality. The DKos/R2000 poll ought to tell them quite clearly that the strategy they have been pursuing simply can't work. Conservatives aren't just liberals with a different set of policy ideas. In fact, conservatism isn't about policy ideas at all.
Fiscal conservatism? Like this?
Conservatives don't believe in "fiscal conservatism" at all. Conservatives believe that conservatives are "fiscal conservatives".
That's identity politics, pure and simple. It's also a ludicrous lie, as the chart above clearly shows. |
