Thomas Frank in NYT: Amendment was a masterpiece of strategery

[Bozita]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/opinion/16FRAN.html

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July 16, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Failure Is Not an Option, It's Mandatory
By THOMAS FRANK

WASHINGTON

For three days this week the nation was transfixed by the spectacle of the United States Senate, in all its august majesty, doing precisely the opposite of statesmanlike deliberation. Instead, it was debating the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would not only have discriminated against a large group of citizens, but also was doomed to defeat from the get-go. Everyone knew this harebrained notion would never draw the two-thirds majority required for a constitutional amendment, and yet here were all these conservatives lining up to speak for it, wasting day after day with their meandering remarks about culture while more important business went unattended. What explains this folly?

Not simple bigotry, as some pundits declared, or even simple politics. While it is true that the amendment was a classic election-year ploy, it owes its power as much to a peculiar narrative of class hostility as it does to homophobia or ideology. And in this narrative, success comes by losing.

For more than three decades, the Republican Party has relied on the "culture war" to rescue their chances every four years, from Richard Nixon's campaign against the liberal news media to George H. W. Bush's campaign against the liberal flag-burners. In this culture war, the real divide is between "regular people" and an endlessly scheming "liberal elite." This strategy allows them to depict themselves as friends of the common people even as they gut workplace safety rules and lay plans to turn Social Security over to Wall Street. Most important, it has allowed Republicans to speak the language of populism.

The amendment may have failed as law, but as pseudopopulist theater it was a masterpiece. Each important element of the culture-war narrative was there. Consider first its choice of targets: while the Senate's culture warriors denied feeling any hostility to gay people, they made no secret of their disgust with liberal judges, a tiny, arrogant group that believes it knows best in all things and harbors an unfathomable determination to run down American culture and thus made this measure necessary.

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[Strawman]

1. Frank's ideas

I read Thomas Frank's book and I agreed with it mostly, but as I understand it he makes the basic argument that Republicans are giving working class social conservatives a poison pill of laizzez faire economics that wrapped in the candy of social conservatism. According to Frank they get lots of the laizssez faire economic change in return and little of the social change because in effect they can never turn back the cultural clock and the real source of power (rich socially liberal Republicans) don't actually want that to happen.

But I wonder what happens to Frank's theory when social conservatives actually do win some important battles? Are the red-staters assuaged and do they start looking toward their economic interests? Do they go Bob Riley on the Republican's asses and start raising taxes for Christian reasons? My guess is that they would always feel under siege from the "liberal elite" and there would be enough of a threat of a return to the liberal social order they so loathe that it would keep the Republican narrative credible to them. At least until Democrats started having some credibility as economic populists again to counter that.

Still I think Frank sometimes gives off the impression that the social agenda is all smoke and mirrors and the Repuiblicans will never deliver. The truth is they can deliver some pretty bad stuff, and we shouldn't minimize the harm that might come of that. A Supreme Court of with 2-3 more Scalia/Thomas clones could certainly deliver a reversal of Roe V. Wade and much more red meat to hungry social conservatives.

[Beetwasher]

3. Good Post!

I haven't read Frank's book so I can't really comment on that, but I do agree w/ your conclusions about the real danger the fundamental radicals on the right pose and how close they really are to acheiving the imposition of their ideology, especially when the "president" to all appearances does appear to be somewhat religiously insane as do some other prominent members of the cabal.

I wonder if w/ Clinton's obvious economic success and the failure of the neocons economic policies if some of that economic populist cred isn't coming the Dems way?

Oh, and welcome to DU!

[Strawman]

6. Thanks

The cred will come when Democrats forcefully advocate doing something designed to boost real wages and incomes for 4/5 of the population that have been flat for the past 34 years. But for the stock market bubble, things didn't get much better for ordinary people under Clinton either. Read the chapter on Clintonomics in Contours of Descent by Robert Pollin or After the New Economy by Doug Henwood. I'm voting for John Kerry and I voted for Al Gore, but I'm doubtful that Kerry won't succumb to Rubinomics or that his economic legacy will be all that positive other than reversing the tax cuts to the wealthy and stopping what Bush and the Republicans would do. If that's an achievement, it's a defensive achievement. Where's our offense?

There's a big difference between slowing the rate of increasing inequality relative to the other party's policies and actually decreasing it. That's why Democrats have no cred on economic issues and ordinary people are fatalistic about stopping the power of corporations no matter who is in power. At least working class social conservatives can reasonably think the Republicans might actually deliver on some social issues if they are patient enough and they see them fighting no matter how cynical those Republican politicians actually are.

Granted there's probably not much even the most well intentioned Democratic pol can do right now in this environment in terms of enacting policy once elected in the face of the certain Republican and corporate obstructionism that would face any economic reform that attempted to move toward economic fairness. But they certainly need to do a better job of making the case, forcing the issue, and giving working class Americans some honest hope that change for the better is possible and that someone is really fighting for that. Unfortunately, I think the legacy of Clinton is mostly alot of hot air and empty rhetoric and that of being beseiged and paralyzed by nutbags from the other party. We need to be bolder in our aims and wear our defeats fighting for ordinary Americans on fundamental economic issues like a badge of honor rather than trying to spin our compromises like they are actual achievements.

[ozymandius]

2. Wonderful read - shows how grand conspiracies operate.

It's a conspiracy among the Santorums, Hatches and Brownbacks of the world. Otherwise known as the "Illiterati".

[dumpster_baby]

4. Another tour-de-force dissection of American politics by Frank

This guy will have the American leftist movement in the palm of his hand if he keeps this up....

[pscot]

7. There are a lot worse places the left could be

since we are pretty much marginalized right now. Harry Truman said that if you give people a choice between a real Republican and an imitation republican they will likely vote for the real one. Unfortunately that's the DLC choice. Thomas advocates a vigorous response based on class distinctions. That's the FDR choice and it's better than the one offered by the DLC, where even when we win, we lose.

[phantom power]

5. corollary: the changes that they *really* want to make...

are done under the radar, in the dead of night.