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".
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.
A Paul Rosenberg Golden Oldie
From Sat Jul 25, 2009. Original HERE.
In early 2006, I began working on a book project that never really worked out. (Got a spare $20k? I'm willing to give it another shot!) I wanted to address the extreme disconnect between the conservative political climate in Washington (remember, this was about six months before the 2006 midterms) and the political attitudes of the American people, which, according to the best social science, had only changed modestly overall since the early Nixon era. During the course of researching and drafting an introductory chapter, the importance of conservative identity politics became blindingly clear as the result of a series of number-driven arguments.
As I've been wrestling with recent manifestations of conservative identity politics that I planned to blog about this weekend--the Birthers, The Family, etc.--I remembered this earlier work, and the hard foundations of data on which it rested. I thought it would make a good companion piece to my contemporary observations to go back and resurrect that argument. So I took a draft chapter, whittled it down a bit, and I'm presenting it after the jump.
There are two overarching points that I hope will clearly emerge from this. The first is that my contemporary focus on conservative identity politics is not just some arbitrary whim. It emerges out of an inquiry that was not originally concerned with it at all. In fact, I was taken by surprise as the logic of it virtually ambushed me. The second point--closely related--is that conservative identity politics cannot simply be ignored, or factored out of other discussions. It lies at the very heart of understanding conservative hostility to liberals, which is the main driving force polarizing our politics today, and interfering with the important work of solving major problems that confront us as a society--such as meeting the challenge of climate change.
This is a long diary, over 4000 words, so feel free to skim the parts that may seem tangential to you. I wanted to preserve enough of the original to accurately reflect the range of factors that I had considered. And I hope that even if this is a bit long for you to read online all at one go, you'll want to bookmark it and return to it again. Heck, maybe even as soon as my next diary posts.
In early 2006, I began working on a book project that never really worked out. (Got a spare $20k? I'm willing to give it another shot!) I wanted to address the extreme disconnect between the conservative political climate in Washington (remember, this was about six months before the 2006 midterms) and the political attitudes of the American people, which, according to the best social science, had only changed modestly overall since the early Nixon era. During the course of researching and drafting an introductory chapter, the importance of conservative identity politics became blindingly clear as the result of a series of number-driven arguments.
As I've been wrestling with recent manifestations of conservative identity politics that I planned to blog about this weekend--the Birthers, The Family, etc.--I remembered this earlier work, and the hard foundations of data on which it rested. I thought it would make a good companion piece to my contemporary observations to go back and resurrect that argument. So I took a draft chapter, whittled it down a bit, and I'm presenting it after the jump.
There are two overarching points that I hope will clearly emerge from this. The first is that my contemporary focus on conservative identity politics is not just some arbitrary whim. It emerges out of an inquiry that was not originally concerned with it at all. In fact, I was taken by surprise as the logic of it virtually ambushed me. The second point--closely related--is that conservative identity politics cannot simply be ignored, or factored out of other discussions. It lies at the very heart of understanding conservative hostility to liberals, which is the main driving force polarizing our politics today, and interfering with the important work of solving major problems that confront us as a society--such as meeting the challenge of climate change.
This is a long diary, over 4000 words, so feel free to skim the parts that may seem tangential to you. I wanted to preserve enough of the original to accurately reflect the range of factors that I had considered. And I hope that even if this is a bit long for you to read online all at one go, you'll want to bookmark it and return to it again. Heck, maybe even as soon as my next diary posts.
In Part One, I presented the argument for viewing conservatism as a form of identity politics, showed how differences on issues between liberals and conservatives are much smaller than differences on candidates, and showed that conservatives--even self-identified extreme conservatives--support welfare state spending. In Part Two, I examined two cognitive models that distinguish liberalism and conservatism., both of which show reasons why conservatism is associated with a constricted notion of identity, while liberalism is more diffuse.
Now, in Part 3, I address how to construct a diverse liberal identity. The key to doing so lies in weaving together issues, values and narratives, and doing so with a diversified messaging and organizing strategy. To bring things solidly down to earth, I will focus on two key concepts that I believe have tremendous potential for liberal politics, both in 2008, and for decades to come. These concepts can be expressed in a simple pairing: "dignity and security for all."
As I will explain, there is more than just a rhetorical echo of another famous liberal formulation, "liberty and justice for all." In a very real sense, dignity is the lived foundation for justice, just as security is the lived foundation for liberty (this is a key aspect of Locke's social contract theory). What's more, when these concepts are presented together, they represent a fuller and more robust expression of Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" --freedom of speech and expression, freedom of every person to worship in his own way, freedom from want and freedom from fear.
Thus, what I am arguing for is a new articulation of core liberal values in a form that pro-actively responds to 40+ years of rightwing slander, as well as the realworld challenges of the 21st Century. To accomplish a lasting political realignment--along the lines seen in 1930/1932--we will need to change the basic contours of the politically possible, which means the politically imaginable. Fortunately, we've done it before. We can do it again.
[Note: Ooops! I lied! There's going to be more than two parts to this....]
In Part One, I presented the argument for viewing conservatism as a form of identity politics, showed how differences on issues between liberals and conservatives are much smaller than differences on candidates, and showed that conservatives-even self-identified extreme conservatives-support welfare state spending.
In this part, I will begin to address the task of creating a countervailing liberal identity politics by developing a clearer picture of liberal and conservative identity. I will look at two different models from cognitive science, and what they tell us about the differences between liberalism and conservatism.
In his post-2004 election analysis, Chris Bowers concluded in "Conservatism Is Our Enemy" that the parties had become ideological coalitions, and the preponderance of conservative self-identifiers was a key factor in Republican victories. Conservatism had grown faster than liberalism between 2000 and 2004, and that had been the difference in the 2004 elections.
Since then, the tides have turned, creating an opening for us ("Democratic Party is growing more liberal" [McClatchy/Pew]). But the underlying problem remains--even with a recent shift toward liberalism, far more people self-identify as conservatives. Here, I want to present the core of an idea about how to radically change the structure of the political universe in a few short years--precisely the sort of restructuring that typically accompanies classic realigning elections such as 1860, 1896 and 1932.
I begin with the observation that liberal/conservative split in candidate support is wildly out of line with attitudes on specific issues, and proceed from there to the idea of conservative identity politics as the core of what we are up against. I then ask what it would take to create a counter, liberal (or progressive) identity politics, which naturally engages us in diversity issues as well as questions of unifying narratives and defining values.
Because of length, I'm splitting this into two parts. Part one is the setup, ending with conservative identity politics. Part two starts with what the challenge of creating a liberal identity politics.
