From 1932 to 1980, liberalism of one form or another was the consensus, or at least the default, position in American politics. The partisan divide was not exactly an ideogical, liberal-conservative one: Republicans were in and out of office, but the “Rockefeller Republicans” – socially liberal, pro-business but not entirely hostile to a moderate welfare state – were the dominant wing of the party, and the Democratic party with its Southern racists was by no means solidly liberal. In practice most national elections were between various liberal-centrist factions. In the 1950s, ideological conservatives like William Buckley and Russell Kirk and free-market ideologues like Ayn Rand were marginalized cranks and knew it; and religious conservatives tended to stay out of worldly politics on principle. Goldwater, the first true ideological conservative to win a presidential nomination since Herbert Hoover, was ingloriously trounced in 1964. But after Goldwater, and throughout the social upheavals of the '60s and '70s that (deceptively) appeared at times to threaten an actual leftist revolution of some kind, and throughout the very real social revolutions in race relations, gender relations and cultural and even religious values – throughout all that, conservatives of various stripes, generously financed and backed by a few very wealthy donors, joined forces and formed a new mass-based conservative movement with its own nonpartisan (or extrapartisan) organizations and think-tanks. Eventually they won control of the Republican Party; at the same time, the Democrats became more solidly liberal – Southern white conservatives migrated from the Dems to the Pubs (in some cases by way of Wallace’s short-lived American Independent Party). In 1980, at long last, the conservatives won victory, in the person of Ronald Reagan. (You can read the story in The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America, by Adrian Wooldridge and John Micklethwait; and The World Turned Right Side Up, by Godrey Hodgson.)
It seemed to them at the time, and increasingly throughout the Reagan Revolution, that they had won total and permanent victory, that they were on the Right Side of History, that they had finally justified themselves and laid to rest the legacy of Roosevelt’s New Deal, the '60s New Left and counterculture, the whole package, for good and all. The collapse of Soviet Communism seemed to seal the deal.
After all of that, the 1992 victory of a Democrat – even a centrist false-flag DLC DINO like Clinton (a pot-puffing draft dodger, yet!) – seemed to them an impossible, abominable reversal of America’s redemption. They’ve never gotten over it. And now it’s personal.
I believe they used the same conspirators who later decided that as long as they were blowing up the World Trade Center buildings they might as well crash planes into them.
Lets see now…my friends Brooke and Karen died in a mysterious small plane crash last fall, my friend and mentor Mark died of a heroin overdose a few years back, my buddy Kurt died in an electrical fire where the room exits were blocked…I must be consolidating power for my own evil purposes! Fear me, America!
What always intrigues me about this sort of theory is the ‘how’ of it. If one were a US president bent on killing one’s sign language interpreter (and some other friends and relations), there would seem to be several obvious approaches:
Do it yourself - Strap on a sidearm, elude the Secret Service, get on a plane (surprise! Its the president- no, don’t tell the tower I’m here, its secret- bang!) kill a few people, crash the plane, D.B. Cooper-esquely parachute to earth and sneak home without anyone knowing. Then off to Starbucks with a mask and 9 mm.
Get somebody else to do it. Create a web of murder to cover up the web of sneaky business deals and sexual improprieties you’ve generated. Of course, since the coverup is bigger and more illegal than the crime, you’re going to need meta-hitmen to kill the hitmen, then meta-meta-hitmen, forever. Soon everyone on the planet is dead. Plus democrats can’t keep secrets anyway.
Hi Opal
You could sell your soul to the Devil and have a vengeful spirit kill them all. Probably the most efficient and deniable, and since you’re an evil liberal anti-family, pro-Sodom and Gomorah president, Satan may be pleased with you and willing to do it again and again. Other than that, I don’t see how it’s gonna work.
NB: Please note that the opinions expressed above are for the purposes of entertainment only and do not reflect my political views. Bill, please don’t kill me.
Ask any pilot what they think of the odds of survival for a low time pilot transporting family members to a fixed schedual event, flying at night, over water. Answer: It would be about equally suspicious if he DIDN’T crash.
I for one think that the list is missing a few cases. For example, Bill Clinton met President Kennedy in a Rose Garden ceremony for Boy’s Life in the early 1960s. Bill shook hands with JFK and looked him right in the eye. Several months later, President Kennedy had his brains blown out in Dallas, TX, which as we all know, IS RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO ARKANSAS! Bill Clinton has yet to provide a clear alibi as to where he was that day. The liberal media is probably still covering for him.
This is why I desperately need Obama to get the nom – so there will be different absurd characters assassination mudslinging hoo-hah from the depths of the Right for the rest of the year. I swear, if I keep hearing Whitewater and Vince Foster and Rose Law Firm billing records over and over I’m moving into a fricking cave.
I’m starting to wonder if maybe Jim Carroll controls the universe.
Sorry I was grouchy, not realizing you had “missed” the anti-Clinton hysteria of the 1990’s here in the USA. (Now, I envy you.)
Bush ran on a policy of “bringing Dignity back to the White House.” Of course, if anybody had gone through his past with a fine-toothed comb, plenty of lice would have jumped out.
I recall Rush Limbaugh’s short-lived TV show always opened with “Day X [of the Clinton Admin]: America Held Hostage!” In one sense that was just his typical ill-natured over-the-top rhetoric, but it also seemed to reflect an unspoken assumption widely shared among movement conservatives that somehow a Democrat could not legitimately be POTUS at that stage of history, whatever the voters might say.
BTW, Wildfire, as a foreigner you might not understand that in America “conservative” encompasses several very different factions (with some Boolean intersections between them, but still separate and distinct tendencies) that don’t always see eye-to-eye on everything:
Paleoconservatives: Nativist, anti-immigrant, economically protectionist, economically populist (hostile to Wall Street), socially/religiously conservative, foreign-policy/military isolationist. Acknowledged leader is Pat Buchanan, founder of the new America First Party.
Religious conservatives: Anti-abortion, pro-school-prayer, etc. Similar to paleocons (considerable overlap), mainly different in emphasis. Different on foreign policy – the religious conservative movement includes “Christian Zionists” who support Israel; paleocons are anti-Israel and anti- any military intervention abroad, including in Iraq. Also some religious and demographic differences – the religious-conservative movement is rooted in Evangelical Protestantism and Southern WASPs, while Buchanan is a conservative Catholic and appeals to white “ethnics.” Have their own Constitution Party. Used to be olitically marginal, even avoiding politics on principle as an occasion of sin, until Jerry Falwell organized the Moral Majority in the 1970s.
Neoconservatives: Foreign-policy imperialists/hawks, solidly pro-Iraq-War, solidly pro-Israel, economically neoliberal/pro-globalization. Essentially an intellectual/policy-wonk movement with no mass base as such but considerable mass appeal on their issues (and considerable influence in the Bush Admin). Ideologically committed to spreading “democracy” and free-market capitalism throughout the world, with very heavy influence on the latter, even at the expense of the former, as events in Iraq have demonstrated.
Libertarians: Socially liberal to the extent they want drugs legalized, abortion rights protected, etc. Hostile to biggummint in all forms, including the welfare state, a big military establishment and intervention abroad. Seem to be split on immigration – Ron Paul, current leader of the Lib faction within the Pubs (as distinct from the Libertarian Party), takes a hard line on immigration. Some Libs are committed to “open borders” as a form of “liberty.”
Business conservatives: Substantially bankroll the whole movement. Favor whatever is good for the corporations; distinguishable from the Libertarians, who are hostile to government regulation of business but equally hostile to government subsidization, bailouts, sweetheart contracts, and the military-industrial complex.
White supremacists/separatists/just plain racists: Marginal as such, but that just means most won’t publicly self-identify; hostile to welfare, which they see as mainly subsidizing the breeding of nonwhites; hostile to immigration; likely to support either paleocon or libertarian candidates if given the option.
Progressives: Not in the modern left-liberal sense of the word, but in the tradition of the early-20th-Century Progressive Era.John Anderson is a prominent modern Progressive. Anti-establishment, equally hostile to corrupt government and corrupt business interests. Traditionally favor a progressive, graduated income tax, hence their name. Not hostile to government as such, but to partisan-ideological government – “There is no Democratic or Republican way to pave a street.” Favor a technocratic-professional approach to government. They don’t want too much government regulation but they do want efficient, effective government service. Fiscal-conservative, very suspicious of deficit spending. Economically protectionist. The Reform Party was rather ideologically incoherent, and ultimately split up, because it was a coalition of Progressives and Paleocons. The Paleocons went on to form the America First Party (see above), the Progressives the Independence Party, which has had notable success only in Minnessota.
They do have some things in common. The following description, from Right Nation by Wooldridge and Micklethwait, applies to all of them to some degree (less to the Progressives than the others, IMO):
Up until recently, the conservative movement’s success has been based on all of these factions joining forces in a “no enemies to the right” strategy. But now, there are signs that the coalition is starting to fragment.
It has been argued by the Hillary camp (and I don’t have enough knowledge of American politics to assess its cogency) that Obama would suffer the same fate as they have (widely hated by the right) once he gets to face the Republican candidate one on one. How likely is this scenario? Sometimes the argument about vetting and being hated by the right begins to sound like “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know”. Does this argument have a leg to stand on?
He would come in for a lot of Swifboating but he would still fare better than HRC. The conservatives have a lot of emotional investment in Clinton-hatred, and Hillary herself has been catching it since her first year as First Lady. They hate her even worse than Bill – not because she’s perceptibly more liberal, I think, but because she’s a pushy brass-ovaried female. There is a long-standing cottage industry devoted to smearing her.
Thanks. But the Hillary camp will argue that since we anticipate Swiftboating of Obama we should discount current estimates of Obama’s strength (the devil you don’t know). They would argue that they can do no further in attacking the Clintons (the devil you know…). Does this change anything?
It is true that nothing will be said against HRC this year that has not already been said; she’s pretty much immune by inoculation to smears – at this point, everybody who hears them will uncritically either accept or reject them according to how they already feel about her. But it is also true that HRC will turn out the opposition vote in November to a far greater degree than Obama.
