Is modern conservatism is doomed because it is rooted in white supremacy?

[Dawson Leery]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/04/cliven-bundy-wants-to-tell-you-all-about-the-negro/361152/

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/24/1294278/-Ta-Nehisi-Coates-is-not-surprised

"A few days ago Jonathan Chait asserted that modern conservatism is "doomed" because it is "rooted in white supremacy." The first claim may or may not be true, but there's little doubt about the second. Whether it's the Senate minority leader claiming that America should have remained legally segregated, a beloved cultural figure fondly recalling how happy black people were living under lynch law, a presidential candidate calling Barack Obama a "food-stamp president" or a campaign surrogate calling Barack Obama "a subhuman mongrel," the preponderance of evidence shows that modern conservatism just can't quit white supremacy.

This is unsurprising. White Supremacy is one of the most dominant forces in the history of American politics. In a democracy, it would be silly to expect it to go unexpressed. Thus anyone with a sense of American history should be equally unsurprised to discover that rugged individualist Cliven Bundy is the bearer of some very interesting theories."

[HooptieWagon]

1. It may succeed because its rooted in ignorance.

By definition, half the population is below average IQ. Conservatives have no shortage of potential followers.

[2naSalit]

2. One can only hope

or help push them over the edge of the cliff!

[lovemydog]

4. hehe

Reminds me of an old cartoon. Some dude on the ground is looking up at someone who is falling from a building, as though he has asked him a question like 'How's it going?'

The guy in mid-flight down says 'So far so good!'

[Jamaal510]

8. +1

[lovemydog]

3. That's an interesting question - I don't think it will go away

but at the same time, many won't stop struggling against racism and making a better world. Political debates and our victories & defeats on the left are part of a constant struggle. I have an existential view. Sisyphus never got that rock entirely over the hill. Maybe, as Camus suggested, he was happy because he enjoyed the struggle. You meet some amazing people along the way. You get to laugh and cry with them. Martin Luther King looked over that mountaintop. What he saw was beautiful. When I'm down, I look over it too. I try and share that view with friends. It's a spectacularly beautiful sight to behold. My friends and acquaintances, women and men, black and white and all shades, straight and gay - we love that view, and share it as much as possible!

[arely staircase]

5. it must change or die

There are conservative models of mainstream american philosophy I could imagine being electorally viable in the increasingly pluralistic and multicultural and ethnic country America is rapidly becoming. I don't see the GOP embracing them anytime soon. The white supremacy strain is like electoral crack cocaine bin that they have to keep hitting that pipe more and more to get an ever diminishing result but putting it down right now is out of the question. Like any addict they have to hit rock bottom before they change.

[2naSalit]

6. Well Stated!

[Hekate]

7. The GOP base is shrinking due to age and demographic shifts; supremacists are a fringe group

So parse it out that way. The GOP, in pandering to the FOX bunch, is making itself irrelevant and must change or die. The GOP embraced too much ignorance and toxicity in an effort to gain more votes.

The GOP itself has become dangerous, not only because they gave us George W. Bush, but because in a last desperate effort to hang on to elected officialdom they have been and are engaging in the worst sort of gerrymandering, dirty tricks, voter suppression, and vote-counting fraud. They must be stopped.

White supremacists are and always have been a fringe hate group. Their numbers swell and shrink and swell again, but there are never vast numbers of them. What they lack in numbers they make up for in sheer rabid murderous hatefulness; they are dangerous and deserve to be treated as terrorists because that is what they are and always have been.

[Jamaal510]

9. What they're touting

is really not conservatism. True conservatism is about conserving and preserving things, and acting with common sense. Eisenhower was a conservative, for example. Rockefeller was a conservative. Even Colin Powell is a conservative. But people like Bundy, Nugent, the Kochs, Limbaugh, Jones, Hannity, Loesch, etc. are NOT conservatives. They are regressives, reactionaries, and extremists. They don't care about conserving things like money (unless it means dodging taxes), or preserving rights (unless it's the right of criminals to shoot up places), or the environment. They only care about acting on fear--and SPREADING fear.

[Dwayne Hicks]

10. Well said!!

[LuvNewcastle]

12. I completely agree.

[HughBeaumont]

13. This ^

Time is marching on and they patently refuse to.

[Exposethefrauds]

11. For course it is every Republican I have ever met at their core is a racist,

religious nut job, gun nutter, misogynist, neo confederate, or corporate whore.

Some Pubs are even all of the above.

Dying out, I doubt, they will just clean up their act for a while then get elected back into office or the smart ones, at least they think they are smart, some pubs will become Democrats, which we have been seeing happen over the last few years.

They are not going away America was founded upon White Supremacy and in in reality not much has changed.