Understanding the Clowns
Playing Shabbes goy for Eric Alterman, Charles Pierce responds (the link isn’t permanent because MSNBC sucks) to Peter Beinart’s review of Paul Krugman’s new book. Beinart wrote:
But guest lists that cross ideological lines can help liberals understand the conservatives they write about. And many Washington conservatives genuinely don’t see the Bush administration as radical: they see it as having ratified a big-spending, culturally liberal status quo. Krugman assumes a revolutionary consciousness that may not actually exist on the ground.
… and Pierce responded:
Peter Beinart is one of those liberals for whom I wish we still had some use….. It isn’t like the conservative agenda is hard to discern; when Grover Norquist says he wants to strangle government in his bathtub, he isn’t speaking metaphorically. He means it….
First of all, I don’t like when commentators are referred to in terms of “usefulness". The expression brings to mind totalitarian regimes where one’s fate rests on whether or not one serves the regime’s purpose. No, I don’t think Pierce wants to execute Beinart and others of “those liberals", but it’s still ugly language.
Second, Pierce is shaky on the definition of “metaphorically", unless he knows some way of putting the actual government of the United States into an actual bathtub and somehow drowning it there. Does the government need air to breathe? For all I know, it has gills and can breathe underwater.
Pierce continues:
And the fact that a lot of them haven’t yet gotten everything they wanted is hardly proof that the administration doesn’t want all the same stuff, too. It’s evidence that some Republicans — and even some Democrats — would rather not see the Republic taken all the way over a cliff. If it pains Mr. Beinart to know that some of his dinner pals want to demolish everything in which he believes, and that they are halfway there already, I am truly sorry, but the Krug is right and he’s wrong on this one.
Does Pierce truly believe there is no legitimate conservative gripe against the Bush Administration? Not the tariffs on steel, lumber, and, for the love of G-d, catfish? (Hey, it’s Rosh Hashanah - I’m not Jewish but I’m hedging my bets.) Not the farm bill? Not the campaign “reform” bill? Not the fact that government spending - even excluding the military and homeland security - has grown faster under Bush than it did under Clinton? Would the alternative to all this bloat really be “the Republic taken all the way over a cliff"?
Finally:
I don’t want these clowns understood. I want them defeated — permanently, the way the Whigs were — and the earth salted so they do not rise again.
But it is precisely BECAUSE people like Pierce and Krugman don’t care about understanding these clowns that they won’t be able to defeat these clowns.
As many have written better than I can, there are three forces at work in the Bush administration. First and foremost, there are Karl Rove and the cynical finger-in-the-wind political advisers. This faction is responsible for the idiotic tariffs, and, in all likelihood, for the “burning” of Valerie Plame. Does Pierce understand that genuine ideological conservatives believe in free trade and respect CIA operations?
Second in command are the “national greatness” neoconservatives, best represented by the Kristol family and the Weekly Standard magazine. This group is responsible for Bush’s “Pax Americana” foreign policy, but they are not above using the government at home to accomplish any goal they feel is worthwhile.
Finally, after the first two factions have their say, is a vague idea that free market policy is a good idea. The ONLY major Bush administration initiatives to come from this faction have been the tax cuts, and even they can be opposed from the right, since they are plunging the nation into the kind of deficits conservatives used to oppose.
But Pierce doesn’t want to understand any of these ideas - he wants Paul Krugman to preach to the choir. I agree with the idea that Democrats won’t win by kissing up to Republicans, but that doesn’t mean spewing bile nonstop. It means using strong but well-reasoned arguments to prove the Republicans wrong.