This is the inaugural edition of a new P-Fix feature entitled “Wingnut Watch,” which will appear each Wednesday. I’d like to take a few moments to explain why we are doing this.
It’s our belief that the conservative movement, and through it, the Republican Party, is on an ideological bender at the moment that has become one of the primary obstacles to any sort of bipartisan effort to address the country’s most pressing problems. It’s hard to say exactly when this bender began. There has always been a hard-core conservative faction in the GOP that opposes any cooperation with the partisan “enemy,” that deplores most of the bipartisan domestic policy accomplishments that have occurred since the Great Depression, and that counsels Republicans to seek political victory by polarizing the electorate as much as possible.
Not since the 1964 presidential campaign, however, has the conservative movement been so radicalized, or so dominant in the GOP. The wingnut right’s rise to power is in part attributable to an ideological sorting out of the two parties over the last thirty years, but also to the persistent belief—crystallized by the policy failures and corruption of George W. Bush’s administration—that lack of strict fidelity to “conservative principles” and complicity in “big government” were preventing the GOP from consolidating a majority coalition in the electorate. This faith in a “hidden majority” favoring extremism is common to ideologues of all stripes, but has gone viral among conservatives since 2008, thanks to the virtual conquest of the GOP by the Tea Party Movement (the latest incarnation of the party’s conservative “base”) followed by a smashing midterm election victory.
At this point, a vast array of issue positions and perspectives considered exotic until very recently have become common among conservative opinion-leaders and Republican pols alike: economic troubles are always the result of “big government” and excessive taxation and regulation; global climate change is a hoax designed to create a rationale for government takeovers of businesses; centrist market-based approaches to universal health coverage once associated with moderate Republicans are “socialist” efforts to destroy private-sector medicine; the Second Amendment is designed to enable “patriots” to prepare for armed resistance to “big government;” the constitutional jurisprudence of the last seventy-five years should be overturned in favor of Gilded Age limitations on the federal government; states should be able to nullify federal legislation; treaties, alliances and international law threaten U.S. sovereignty; safety net programs represent an immoral “redistribution” of income; progressive taxation and/or taxation of income is incompatible with economic growth; a return to the gold standard is advisable—it goes on and on.
A superficially confusing feature of contemporary radical conservatism is the projection of extremism onto the opposition, which has led not only conservatives but many “neutral” commentators in the mainstream media to blame ideologues and partisans on both sides of the barricades equally for polarization and gridlock. Without question, there are “moonbats” on the left who can rival the “wingnuts” of the right in terms of policy extremism, ferocious opposition to bipartisanship, subscription to conspiracy theories, and policing of politicians according to ideological litmus tests. But at present, there is no comparison between the political power of the radical left and right. There is no “triangulation” permitted by Republicans against the hard right, and rarely any public grousing in question of the wisdom and values of the Tea Party Movement. Those who identify with the GOP orthodoxy of just a few years ago are ruthlessly attacked and systematically exposed to primary challenges, regardless of the impact on Republican general election prospects.
While some on the Democratic left are bitterly angry with the policies and political strategies of the Obama administration, they’ve had remarkably little impact on rank-and-file voters, much less elected officials, and there is nothing remotely like Fox News as a propagator and enforcer of ideological and partisan unity. Moreover, the radical left’s claim that the political center is a dead end for Democrats has been heavily dependent on the wingnut right’s efforts to undermine bipartisanship and paint all Democrats as leftist.
So those who favor pragmatic progressivism have a special interest in understanding, and if possible, bringing to an end, the current extremist trend on the right. This column will pursue the former in hopes that it will encourage the latter.
But I’m not interested in conducting a carnival sideshow that cherry-picks and mocks radical conservatives who do not have any actual political power. I won’t follow the birthers and the white supremacists, won’t indulge in Nazi analogies, and won’t assume that every raving from the lips of Glenn Beck has been internalized as marching orders by Republican politicians. The degree of craziness in the conservative mainstream right now is large enough that exaggeration is unnecessary as well as unfair. And where conservatives do try to exert some control over their more delusional comrades, I’ll give credit where credit’s due.
Next week’s column will include, among other things, a preview of the Conservative Political Action Committee conference in Washington, which used to be one of the primary vehicles for hard-right vetting of Republican pols (particularly presidential candidates), but which has now, in a revealing sign of the times, become suspect as insufficiently intolerant of diversity and dissent. Stay tuned.
