Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [122]
Some Democrats welcome the Republican heretic hunts, reassuring themselves that ultraconservatives like Rand Paul and Sharon Angle might win in the primaries, but they’re too extreme to win general elections. This optimism has some basis. Doug Hoffman’s candidacy in New York alienated moderates, so the Democratic candidate won in a Republican district. The same thing may happen in November 2010.
But even if Republican extremism hurts the party in the short run, history suggests that the long run is another matter. When the New Right purged Rockefeller Republican incumbents in 1978, Democrats captured Senate seats in Massachusetts and New Jersey. Nonetheless, in other parts of the country, ultraconservative ideology combined with the persecution narrative attracted voters, and by 1994 conservatives swept into power. Today’s GOP now includes people like Michele Bachmann, Paul Broun, Steve King, Louie Gohmert, and Ron Paul. Even GOP “mavericks” like John McCain have turned right to insulate themselves from purges, endorsing positions that they might secretly detest and refusing to compromise with Democrats for fear of being labeled RINOs.
In short, as the Republican Party became more extreme, it became more powerful, and as it became more powerful, it became more extreme. The Democratic wins of 2006 and 2008 had much to do with unhappiness over the Iraq war, the collapsing economy, and Republican political scandals. When the wheel of American politics turns again, as it invariably does, the most conservative and paranoia-prone GOP in recent history may well come to power with a popular mandate to “take back the country.”
The fact of the matter is that right-wing persecution mythology is extraordinarily compelling to many Americans, as has been repeatedly demonstrated by Paul Weyrich, Richard Viguerie, Jerry Falwell, Pat Buchanan, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin, to name a few. It has seduced millions into embracing right-wing ideology by convincing them that only the right appreciates them and defends their interests. It has mobilized the most fanatical voters in the country to turn out for elections in order to destroy imaginary enemies. It has obliterated the possibility of bipartisanship by pretending that compromise is treason and by punishing the “traitors.” It has encouraged America’s most violent to fulfill their fantasies of armed insurrection.
It has accomplished these ends by breaking the nation in half. In persecution politics, there is no America, one nation indivisible. There is Red America versus Blue America, Real America versus Berkeley and Washington, DC, Christians versus Secularists, Freedom-loving Patriots versus Despotic Marxists, Moose Burger Appreciators versus Arugula Munchers, Regular Schmos versus Liberal Elites, Black Radicals, Militant Homosexuals, and Subversive Illegals.
Once upon a time in America, there were genuine radical progressives who fomented class warfare by pitting the working class against the “robber barons.” Such people are hard to find these days. Radical conservatives have supplanted them. For almost forty years, the right wing has been studiously developing a new class-consciousness. The new class is not delineated by income. It is vaguely circumscribed