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As I posted on some other thread yesterday, the notion that it was really a huge influx of fundamentalists that tipped the election to Bush is dubious, and, according to DailyKos, Republican insiders are furious with Ralph Reed for pushing the idea so heavily. However, the very reasons they don't like it (it undercuts the G.O.P. insider belief that the election was really decided by widespread support for Bush's economic and military leadership :eyes: , and may provoke a backlash among those who don't want the religious right running America) are the very reasons we need to push it as much as we can, and establish a new narrative wherein we're the last bulwark for freedom against fundamentalism. Now, further support for this viewpoint comes from Chris Bowers at MyDD.com. The entire article ( http://www.mydd.com/story/2004/11/5/154845/775#readmore) is "must" reading, but I'll just quote the closing paragraphs here (emphasis mine): ...While we should not hope to develop the same level of unifying message and religious appeal that Republicans have spent decades cultivating, we do have other options. Specifically, we do have the option of completely boxing them into their current worldview, while simultaneously tarnishing the public perception of that worldview. This is exactly what Republicans have done to our coalition for decades, by pumping up the anti-black, anti-gay, anti-secular, anti-jewish, and, most recently, anti-Muslin rhetoric that has tipped minority after minority into our coalition while simultaneously, and more rapidly, increasing their own share of the national ethnic and religious plurality. In 2000, Bush nearly won a super-majority among Muslims, but in 2004 he won less than 15%. However, Republicans managed to make up more ground than they lost in forfeiting the Muslim vote by fueling the fires of anti-Muslin bigotry among the national religious and ethnic plurality. In the sixties, when Nixon, in the "original Southern Strategy," began demonizing African-Americans, our coalition gained blacks but lost southern whites in droves. Republicans did the same thing with rural voters by developing a culture war narrative, accurately described by Thomas Frank, which is rife with anti-Semitism. They are now in the process of making up the ground they are rapidly losing among Secularist voters by bringing in devout Catholics. The only minority they stopped demonizing are Latinos because, well, Latinos tend to be devout Catholics.
What I am hinting at here, and it is certainly not the nicest or most progressive thing I have ever written, is engaging in a strategy to demonize the religious right in the same way Republicans have demonized liberalism. As a recent diary at Dailykos concerning the demographics of national religious belief points out, we can do this and get away with it. Less than one-quarter of the country is actually a part of the cultural warrior religious right. We label them theocrats. We label them homophobes (and yes, we can and should use the word homophobe). We label them anti-freedom. We label them out of touch with our values. We do this because they are these things. We could label them as terrorists, because as lot of them are. We could label them corporate socialists, because they are. We label them regional bigots, because they are. We should label them anti-American, because they are, and because they have done the same to us. We destroy conservatism itself by defining it as being a member of the reactionary religious right. We tarnish the notion of being conservative to the entire nation. We trap all conservatism inside the reactionary right-wing ideology of the Christian Coalition with a permanent campaign that seeks to define that ideology as negative to the vast majority of the country that does not hold that ideology (it doesn't). Thus, our amalgamation of minorities will become the mainstream, while their homogenized national plurality becomes fringe.
As they continue to solidify and homogenize their base (with the exception of Latinos), we attack them precisely for being homogeneous. That is our unifying theme: anti-reactionary religious right, but pro-freedom, pro-good works, and pro-American. We drive a wedge straight into their coalition, and watch in delight as every libertarian Republican in sight comes over to our side. We decrease their already small share of minorities even further and humiliate them for their bigoted homogeny. We define and tarnish conservatism, and make our natural unifying theme that we are not them.
Wow, I almost feel dirty just for writing that, but I think it is what has to be done. I can't wait to see the comments on this one. Here's my comment: :yourock: |
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