More than a decade ago, before the post-9/11 national
fervor set in, Walter Russell Mead published an insightful essay on the
persistent "Jacksonian tradition" in American society. Jacksonians,
he argued, embrace a distinctive code, whose key tenets include self-reliance,
individualism, loyalty and courage.
Jacksonians care as passionately about the Second
Amendment as Jeffersonians do about the First.
* A NICE LINE... BUT I WOULD CLARIFY BY NOTING THAT BOTH
TRUE JEFFERSONIANS AND TRUE JACKSONIANS REVERE THE CONSTITUTION - PERIOD. THE
CONSTITUTION... THE BILL OF RIGHTS... AND EVERY SUBSEQUENT AMENDMENT (WHETHER
PERSONALLY AGREEING WITH IT OR NOT).
* IT'S NOT AN "EITHER/OR" THING EXCEPT IN THE SENSE THAT EITHER ONE IS
A CONSTITUTIONIST OR ONE IS NOT. I AM.
They are suspicious of federal power, skeptical about
do-gooding at home and abroad; they oppose federal taxes but favor benefits
such as Social Security and Medicare that they regard as earned.
* AGAIN... WAY TOO SIMPLISTIC FOR MY TASTE. (I'LL TRY TO
PUT OUT A STAND-ALONE POST REITERATING MY VIEWS ON TAXATION AND SOCIAL PROGRAMS
SOMETIME OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS.)
Jacksonians are anti-elitist; they believe that the
political and moral instincts of ordinary people are usually wiser than those
of the experts and that, as Mr. Mead wrote, "while problems are complicated,
solutions are simple."
* YES AND NO. IT DEPENDS UPON WHAT IS MEANT BY
"ELITE" - EARNED STATUS? INHERITED STATUS? STATUS WITH OR WITHOUT
SUBSTANCE BACKING IT UP?
* AS TO "THE PEOPLE..." YES. I BELIEVE IN THE
INVISIBLE HAND OF THE MARKETPLACE AND THE ABILITY OF THE MASSES COLLECTIVELY TO
MAKE CERTAIN DECISIONS BASED UPON CIRCUMSTANCES AND SITUATION. ON THE OTHER
HAND, WHEN "THE GAME" IS SKEWED BY GOVERNMENT ACTIONS... BY REGULATIONS
AND THE TAX CODE... BY THE CARROT AND STICK OF THE AUTHORITIES... FREE AND
NATURAL WILL IS INTERRUPTED - PERHAPS OVERCOME - AT THE VERY LEAST
ARTIFICIALLY INFLUENCED.
That is why the Jacksonian hero defies the experts and
entrenched elites and "dares to say what the people feel" without
caring in the least what the liberal media will say about him. (Think Ted Cruz.)
The tea party is Jacksonian America, aroused, angry and
above all fearful, in full revolt against a new elite—backed by the new
American demography that threatens its interests and scorns its values.
* NO... THIS IS FAR FROM "FULL REVOLT." THIS IS
AT MOST "PUSHBACK."
This is more than a columnist's speculation. Stan
Greenberg, a Democratic survey researcher whose focus groups with Macomb County
Reagan Democrats in Michigan transformed political discourse in the 1980s, has
recently released a similar study of the tea party.
Supporters of the tea party, he finds, see President
Obama as anti-Christian, and the president's expansive use of executive
authority evokes charges of "tyranny."
* YEP.
Mr. Obama, they believe, is pursuing a conscious strategy
of building political support by increasing Americans' dependence on
government. A vast expansion of food stamps and disability programs and the
push for immigration reform are key steps down that road.
* YEP.
But ObamaCare is the tipping point, the tea party
believes. Unless the law is defunded, the land of limited government,
individual liberty and personal responsibility will be gone forever, and the
new America, dominated by dependent minorities who assert their "rights"
without accepting their responsibilities, will have no place for people like
them.
* EXACTLY.
For the tea party, ObamaCare is much more than a policy
dispute; it is an existential struggle.
* I CONCUR!
According to two benchmark surveys by the New York Times
NYT and the Public Religion Research Institute, tea-party supporters espouse an
ensemble of conservative beliefs with special intensity. Fifty-eight percent
think that minorities get too much attention from government...
* TOO MUCH "SPECIAL" TREATMENT... UNDESERVED "SPECIAL"
TREATMENT... AND WORST OF ALL "SPECIAL" TREATMENT THAT HAS ACTUALLY
HURT MINORITIES!
...and 65% view immigrants as a burden on the country.
* JUST PLAN "IMMIGRANTS" OR "ILLEGAL
IMMIGRANTS?" I'M GUESSING HOW THE QUESTION WAS PHRASED AND HOW IT WAS
PERCEIVED WOULD MAKE A HUGE DIFFERENCE IN HOW THE QUESTION WAS ANSWERD. IN ANY
CASE... YEAH... IN SHEER NUMBERS... PERCENTAGE WISE... YES. (AND THE NUMBERS
TELL THE TALE!) BUT ON THE OTHER HAND WE LOVE A HARD-WORKING IMMIGRANT WHO
SHARES OUR VALUES AND WHO WANTS TO BECOME AN AMERICAN. WE WANT NOTHING BUT THE BEST
FOR SUCH IMMIGRANTS.
Most of the respondents see President Obama as someone
who doesn't understand them and doesn't share their values.
(*NOD*)
In their eyes, he's an extreme liberal whose policies
consistently favor the poor.
* AGAIN... SIMPLISTIC! IF ONE FEELS THAT POLICIES WHICH
SPREAD AND ARGUABLY EVEN ENCOURAGE DEPENDENCY (OR AT THE VERY LEAST DIRECTLY
CHALLEGE THE LONG-TERM AMERICAN VALUE OF SELF-RELIANCE) ACTUALLY HURT THE POOR
IN THE LONG RUN, THEN WHICH SIDE CAN BE SAID TO "FAVOR" THE POOR?
In fact, 92% believe that he is moving the country toward
socialism.
* AND HE IS! (RIGHT NOW THE ROUTE IS VIA CRONY
CAPITALISM, BUT EUROPEAN-STYLE "SOCIAL DEMOCRACY" IS DEFINITELY HIS
GOAL... IF NOT BY THE END OF HIS SECOND TERM, THEN BY HIS DEATH TWENTY, THIRTY,
OR FORTY YEARS DOWN THE ROAD.)
Many frustrated liberals, and not a few pundits, think
that people who share these beliefs must be downscale and poorly educated. The
New York Times survey found the opposite.
* ONE MORE TIME...
The New York Times survey found the opposite.
Only 26% of tea-party supporters regard themselves as
working class, versus 34% of the general population; 50% identify as middle
class (versus 40% nationally); and 15% consider themselves upper-middle class
(versus 10% nationally). Twenty-three percent are college graduates, and an
additional 14% have post-graduate training, versus 15% and 10%, respectively,
for the overall population. Conversely, only 29% of tea-party supporters have
just a high-school education or less, versus 47% for all adults.
Although some tea-party supporters are libertarian, most
are not.
* THIS, ALAS, IS TRUE AS WELL.
The Public Religion Research Institute found that fully
47% regard themselves as members of the Christian right, and 55% believe that
America is a Christian nation today — not just in the past.
* AS DO I IN THE LIMITED SOCIAL SENSE THEY'RE SPEAKING
OF. (A JUDEO-CHRISTIAN NATION.)
On hot-button social issues such as abortion and same-sex
marriage, tea partiers are aligned with social conservatives.
* MOST ARE. (I'M NOT; BUT NEITHER DO I VIEW THE CHRISTIAN
RIGHT AS AN ADVERSARY.)
Seventy-one percent of tea-party supporters regard
themselves as conservatives.
* BECAUSE THAT'S THE WORD THEY WERE - WE WERE - BROUGHT
UP TO IDENTIFY OURSELVES AS. IN SO MANY WAYS THE WORD SIMPLY NO LONGER SUFFICES
TO GIVE ONE A CLEAR PICTURE OF ONE'S POLTIICAL/SOCIAL LEANINGS.
Nor, finally, is the tea party an independent outside
force putting pressure on Republicans, according to the survey.
* BUT IT'S ON THE BRINK. IF IT HAD A LEADER...
Fully 76% of its supporters either identify with or lean
toward the Republican Party.
* AS OPPOSED TO THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
(*SNORT*)
* RESPECTFULLY... THIS DOESN'T TELL US MUCH.
Rather, they are a dissident reform movement within the
party, determined to move it back toward true conservatism after what they see
as the apostasies of the Bush years and the outrages of the Obama
administration.
* BUT BECAUSE THEY HAVE PRINCIPLES IT'S HARD FOR THEM TO
WORK WITHIN THE POLITICAL SYSTEM FOR CHANGE. IT'S AN IRONIC CATCH-22.
Many tea-party supporters are small businessmen who see
taxes and regulations as direct threats to their livelihood.
* AND THEY ARE!
Unlike establishment Republicans who see potential gains
from government programs such as infrastructure funding, these tea partiers
regard most government spending as a deadweight loss.
* OVERALL... NO... NOT DEADWEIGHT LOSS. BUT A HUGE WASTE FACTOR.
PLUS... THIS BRINGS US BACK TO CRONY CAPITALISM AND ISSUES OF BASIC FAIRNESS.
Because many of them run low-wage businesses on narrow
margins, they believe that they have no choice but to fight measures, such as
ObamaCare, that reduce their flexibility and raise their costs — measures to
which large corporations with deeper pockets can adjust.
It's no coincidence that the strengthening influence of
the tea party is driving a wedge between corporate America and the Republican
Party. It's hard to see how the U.S. can govern itself unless corporate America
pushes the Republican establishment to fight back against the tea party — or
switches sides.
No comments:
Post a Comment