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The GOP's Feigned Outrage
It takes chutzpah to protest what you've created.
And yet, in a television interview last month, we find no less a representative of the late administration than former Vice President Dick Cheney endorsing the protesters' accusations with what is, for him, considerable enthusiasm. "I thought the tea parties were great," he told Fox News's Sean Hannity. "It's basically a very healthy development."
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, one of the Republican Party's few remaining stars, has also cheered the public's willingness to "fight back against Wall Street and Washington insiders."
A Republican who wants to fight Wall Street! A Bush official who thinks protesting Bush policies is "great"! Contemplating these curiosities, we begin to realize how easy it has been for conservatives to swing back into full-throated opposition only months after their cataclysmic defeat. And also to understand why the obituaries for the GOP might be just a tad premature.
After all, there's something about conservatives' ferocious "No" that precisely fits the temper of the times. For all the past year's Democratic victories, the GOP still owns outrage, still has an enormous capacity to summon up offense, to elevate every perceived slight into an unprecedented imposition upon both the hard-working citizen and freedom itself.
What really dazzles the observer, though, is conservatives' fury over things for which they are themselves responsible.
As an example of this habit of mind, consider the essay that Mr. Gingrich published in Human Events last week. "The current liberal bloodlust over interrogations," he wrote, referring to the Nancy Pelosi-CIA flap, is merely "the Left's attempt to hunt down and purge its political opponents." And yet, in a different essay he published on the very same day (this one in the Washington Times), Mr. Gingrich regretted that, in all the years of Republican rule, "there was a strategic failure to root out the left and the special interests of the left."
Mr. Gingrich's side failed to "root out" and destroy their opponents; now he imagines that this is what is being done to his team.
Psychotherapists might call this "projection," and something similar pervades the essay the remarkable Mr. Gingrich published only two days later in the Washington Post. Here the former speaker can be found calling for a populist revolt in the "great tradition of political movements rising against arrogant, corrupt elites."
A healthy sentiment, to be sure, except for the fact that "elites" are exactly what decades of conservative rule gave us by unleashing the banks, smashing the unions, and funneling the economy's gains into the hands of the rich.
Then there are the "lobbyists" whom Mr. Gingrich accuses of running state governments here and there. By this he means "lobbyists for the various unions" who get their way "through bureaucracies seeking to impose the values of a militant left."
Even so, rule by lobbyists is a subject Mr. Gingrich should know well. It was while he was House speaker, for example, that his No. 3, Tom DeLay, launched the famous "K Street Strategy," which sought to make Gucci Gulch the exclusive preserve of the Republican Party.
It was Mr. Gingrich's own beloved House freshmen of 1994, the last bunch of conservative populists to come down the pike, who made the Republican Revolution into a fundraising bonanza. And it was public outrage over the conspicuous purchase of government favors by the moneyed that led to the Democratic triumphs of 2006 and 2008.
Turning to the government of New York state, Mr. Gingrich declares that it has "impoverished the Upstate region to the point where it is a vast zone of no jobs and no opportunities." Oddly, Mr. Gingrich appears to believe that deindustrialization is the direct result of governance by a political machine in Albany.
In fact, deindustrialization also occurred all across the Midwest. As it ground on through the Reagan years and the '90s, it was the investor class who called the shots, not the hirelings of organized labor.
And as our factories and steel mills were shuttered an army of politicians and management theorists assured us that the waning of industrial America was the next stage in human development, the coming of the glorious age of information. The most ecstatic and even otherworldly of these was, of course, Newt Gingrich.
In his much-discussed speech last Thursday, Mr. Cheney intoned, "We hear from some quarters nothing but feigned outrage based on a false narrative." And so we do: A form of protest that persistently misses the point, a type of populism that only empowers the elite, and a brand of idealism that cohabits comfortably with corruption.
23 Comments so far
Show AllI think those who have predicted the GOP's demise have failed to account for several things.
1) Their complete lack of honor. This frees them up to tell any damn lie they choose, over and over and over.
2) The People's desire to be lied to. They've had over a decade of training that teaches them anything liberal is akin to poison. Many don't want to let that go, any more than they want to give up their loyalty to their favorite sports team.
3) The vast stupidity of the human race.
To comment on point 3. Everywhere you browse on the internet you find people without jobs, without health care, without any resources carry the water of the conservatives. Example, out rage that we are turning into a 'socialist' nation, and these people have no clue that failed capitalism has them literally living on the streets. Stupidity is not strong enough.
The Wall Street Journal's opinion page has long been the domain of conservative Republicans. This was an excellent alternative piece for the Journal's readers.
The currrent GOP 'No' campaign, and their predicted outrage over any progressive program, no matter how minor, reminds me of a friend's father. The man lived his life continually steamed by something or other and subjected his family to lengthy rants regarding subjects from the petty to the great. Eventually his kids grew up and learned, as their mother had long before, to ignore Dad's outrage, especially since he was proven wrong most of the time. I see a similar thing happening to the country now -- what the right-wing will fume about is predictable, and I think many people are tuning them out, particularly those under 30.
If those under 30 want any kind of future they had better tune them out.
I am willing to bet that within a few years the GOPs, after a period in the political wilderness and some changes on the social/cultural issues, are going to have a new plan of attack that will be designed to appeal to those under 30 -- sell the idea that Social Security and Medicare are "expensive, wasteful, and unnecessary programs that benefit the greedy, selfish baby boomers who caused all the financial mess" and that need to be severely cut or eliminated. And maybe this is politically incorrect, but I find the youth of this country to be so politically unaware that I will be surprised if it is a hard sell.
"It takes chutzpah to protest what you've created."
Among the many, many failures of the democratic leadership is their refusal to keep harping on the point that all of the problems with which we're dealing are primarily the result of republican policies.
Granted, many of these folks (Biden, Pelosi, Reid, Rockefeller, etc.) are trying to avoid discussion of certain issues due to their own complicity. Apparently, their greatest shared weakness is their inability to articulate the fact that the GOP has been the prime mover in the destruction of the US economy.
Perhaps they can't do so because their corporate masters won't let them.
One current irony involves the republican determination to block every change that Obama proposes. So far, his porposals look more republican than democratic. What are they bitching about?
q
Good points, quickstepper May 28th, 2009 10:01 am, and the faint-of-heart Dem leadership will remain like that as long as Harry Reid thinks it's 1988 and he has to be as 'conservative tough' as his GOP opponent to get re-elected. (Perhaps he missed the headline -- Obama won Nevada's five electoral votes in 2008.)
I just hope some true progressive candidates will challenge Reid, Ben Nelson, Jay Rockefeller and the other ConservaDems in the Dem primaries -- I think they are ripe for defeat.
As Frank says, this entire ploy of the Republicans to blame "the Left" for all the horrors they themselves created, especially the repulsive Gingrich and Cheney, is a skill they mastered during the misrule years of Chimpy Bush. It's nothing more or less than standard projection.
When all the dire and irremediable consequences of your criminal behavior come to light and are unavoidable, blame someone else! Gingrich and Cheney truly believe they can continue to bamboozle the public with their phony populism simply because it worked for the past 12 years or so. They have their foot soldiers in congress to advance their lies, like Eric Cantor and Boehner, and these skillful devotees of the Big Lie will snarl like pit bulls to please the likes of Newt and Dick.
The tragedy is that corporate media will keep giving them all the microphones and cameras they need to project their venom, treating them like wise statesmen instead of the wrecking crew chiefs they really are. Bill Kristol openly admires the Darth Vader hiding in Cheney, and corporate media adores Kristol. Without the MSM, Gingrich, Cheney & Co. would have no forum to spread their destructive filth.
Excuse me? Blaming Bush is over. Its Obama's policies and new taxes that are the threat. Why wasn't GM and Chrysler allowed bankruptcy? Real bankruptcy? It certainly wasn't to save jobs.
The Republicans are gone, yes they greated the mess, but its been exaserbated by this corrupt bunch of incompetents. Lets put the tail on the right Donkey here.
If you can acknowledge that the GOP "greated" the mess (I believe the typo must be a Freudian slip for "created"), but you have "exaserbated" (perhaps another Freudian slip for "exacerbated," or perhaps just ignorance) then you should realize that less than six months is not a sufficient economic cycle to characterize Obama's staff as a "corrupt bunch of incompetents." I believe you are the right donkey here.
ClassAct
Aw heck, I can't spell nor type!
Six months is certainly long enough to see the direction taken.
You argue that his "stimulus pkg." is working or will work? Pay off's to the unions are beneficial to Americans as a whole? The his National energy tax coming out soon will benefit anyone but the folks behind it? Remember the photo ops at Caterpillar and the 25 cops I noted on another thread?
I believe I can show plenty of misdirection and more than enough examples of incompetence in his administration, broken promises to prove my point. You'd have to parse like crazy to defend this record.
Simply watch the job loss each month to find out who the Donkey is. Actions count to me....nice rhetoric is entertaining, but nothing but entertainment.
My point is that your voice adds to the chorus, the majority of whose members come from the right. Your righteous indignation for Obama's misdirection will be interpreted to mean that we should, once again, go with the GOP. We need to confront Obama with alternatives. This embarrasses Democrats while the GOP is beyond embarrassment.
you can't count either. from the end of january to the end of may is not six months.
Sioux Rose
Thomas, someone alleging to be you says he is not posting any longer and has been banned. I didn't get the "vibe" that it was "your voice" stating this. Can you please validate that you are still with us, as this posting today suggests?
Blaming the Bush crime family and his creepy GOP predecessors (Grandpa Caligula [Reagan] & Tricky Dicky Nixon, among others) is far from over...as the damage they wrought is so extensive as to warrant an effort that would make the Marshall Plan look like an afternoon tea in comparison.
BTW: who exactly made you the arbiter of decreeing that "blaming Bush is over"?
NateW
Simply for the fact that the damage they have done is done and is irrelevent to whats not being done in fixing it. Its like arguing if there were 150,000 Indians in 1790 or 3 million. The damage being done now is what is important. And the people doing the damage are to blame.
Nothing done so far has anything to do with fixing the damage they did. I should say very little. And if I can't trust a man to keep his word why would I continue to believe him?
Anyone can say what they like, but bashing Bush at this point is simply political cover for the actions being taken.
A liar is aliar, a racist is a racist, intolerance, bigotry and dishonesty are the same to me no matter who is doing it Nate. When I see it its not that hard to recognize. And I don't care from what direction it comes. (this is a general statement, not meant personally Nate)
You miss the point of this article, as you so often do. It's not about "blaming Bush", so keep your hat on. It's about creeps like Cheney and Gingrich who are keeping the Bush lies fully in motion and commanding full attention from MSM to project the failures of Repubicanism onto the present and failing Democratic regime. The fact that Obama is repeating most of the same mistakes and deliberate stupidities of his predecessors is a separate issue. Frank's point is that the rightwing still has the temerity to blame everyone else for all the messes it made. What the Right did from 2001-2008 is hardly "irrelevant" today. It is the background to everything going on. Ignoring all that and obsessing only about Obama's abysmal failure to correct the Bush catastrophes removes both from any historical context and delivers a basically ignorant set of demands to "fix" everything.
Thomas More May 28th, 2009 12:15 pm wrote: "The damage being done now is what is important. And the people doing the damage are to blame."
The damage being done now is a culmination of three decades of corporate-friendly administrations who have turned a blind eye to, or underfunded enforcement against abuses by Wall Street, the multi-national corporations and the banks. To say that this doesn't matter is precisely the same thinking that entangled us in the Middle East -- dismissing the fetid history of our involvement there and pretending that every problem just arose independently of the past. For example, the CIA's removing Mohammed Mossadegh, the democratically-elected president of Iran, and installing the hated Shah, Reza Pahlavi, in 1953 set the stage for the revolution in 1979 that brought Ayatollah Khomeini's Mullahs to power. Inability to appreciate that history will inevitably lead to failure in any dealings with Iran. I'm sure you can imagine how Americans would feel toward Iran were the situation reversed.
Thomas More May 28th, 2009 12:15 pm wrote: "Nothing done so far has anything to do with fixing the damage they did. I should say very little. And if I can't trust a man to keep his word why would I continue to believe him?"
If Obama had the imperial powers of, say, the Shah of Iran, he could rule by fiat, and then your criticism would be accurate. As it is, he's trying to get a recalcitrant Congress, with most Dems scared of their shadows and the GOP militantly against him, to pass laws that would improve the situation. BTW, what exactly would be your brilliant plan to fix all of the damage done by previous administrations in four months? Don't want to bail out the banks? Fine, but then everything from checking accounts to credit cards to business credit to pension plans would be affected as the economy collapses even further into a steaming heap. And how much money do you think it would cost to create a new banking system?
Thomas More May 28th, 2009 12:15 pm wrote: "Anyone can say what they like, but bashing Bush at this point is simply political cover for the actions being taken."
Bashing Bush, or more properly Cheney who was really in charge, can also be viewed as remembering history so that history can't repeat itself. Perhaps the Bush legacy of lying to start an unneccesary war without an act of war declared by Congress, state-sanctioned torture, illegal surveillance, canceling legal acts of Congress by presidential signing statements, the imperial 'Unitary Executive' presidency, and imprisoning American citizens without counsel or the right to a trial cuts no ice with you, but these are direct violations of our Constitution -- I know, another part of ancient history you probably want to forget. Of course, you're free to test your theory that recalling the history of a period is a useless exercise solely employed as 'political cover' -- I'd suggest you start at the Holocaust Museum. Inform them that bashing Nazi Germany is ridiculous at this point because it was, like, so long in the past.
Sioux Rose
NATE: I agree about the Marshall Plan. I wonder if the leaders will raise money by selling the Statue of Liberty back to the French as a starter?
The chutzpah comes from a formerly well oiled propaganda machine that has failed to adapt to the new mass media environment & still operates as if it is 1994. They are preaching to a graying choir whom have yet to come to terms with technological advances, and are stubbornly ignoring the segment of their congregation (Ron Paul, Megan McCain, & Colin Powell embody them) who could lead them out of the current path they are on: a slow decline to irrelevance a la their historical predecessors, the Whigs.
Now look here, Thomas More:
Our inability to actually learn history from the 1920s unquestionably caused this disaster. Libertarianism and laissez faire, while they look good on paper don't cut it. We need to actually learn from the past to make sure that this never happens again.
The article is trying to point out that the GOP is trying to cover its tracks and scapegoat the left when their own policies caused this mess. Obama may not be a good president (I consider him a huge disappointment and his continuing popularity is a testament to the ignorance of the general population), but he's downright tolerable compared to this crowd.
I think we all just need to accept the fact that the voices of the "right-wing" republican machine are all a bunch of loonies! Even they don't believe what they say and so they often contradict themsleves (sometimes in the same paragraph!). Look at these clowns: Limbaugh, Gingrich, Cheney, Steele, and Palin! If the issues facing this nation wern't so serious this would be funny!