Surprising Critics

I’m not usually a reader of, or fan of Gail Collins and David Brooks, both staunch Republican Op-Ed Columnists for the New York Times, but even they have surprisingly strong criticism of Sarah Palin and the Republicans of today, in their columns for the past two days. They are worth reading. I know I was surprised by what they had to say, but I was particularly interested in Brooks’ column.

He began by talking about the fact that there have been substantial changes in the Republican Party over the years, changes that many Republicans are not particularly happy with. Apparently, according to Brooks, conservatives, driven by a need to engage elite opinion, tried to build an intellectual counterestablishment with think tanks and magazines. They disdained the ideas of the liberal professoriate, but they did not disdain the ideal of a cultivated mind.

But over the past few decades, the Republican Party has driven away people who live in cities, in highly educated regions and on the coasts. This expulsion has had, says Brooks, many causes, but the big one is this: Republican political tacticians decided to mobilize their coalition with a form of social class warfare. Democrats kept nominating coastal pointy-heads like Dukakis so Republicans attacked coastal pointy-heads.

He goes on to say that over the past 15 years, the same argument has been heard from thousands of politicians and hundreds of talk-radio jocks. Now the nation is divided between the “wholesome” Joe Sixpacks in the heartland and the oversophisticated, overeducated, oversecularized denizens of the coasts. Hmmm, well, I don't know about you, but I know who I would prefer.

What had been a disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole. The liberals had coastal condescension, so the conservatives developed their own anti-elitism, with mirror-image categories and mirror-image resentments, but with the same corrosive effect.

Brooks says that Republicans developed their own leadership style. If Democratic leaders prized deliberation and self-examination, then Republicans would govern from the gut.

According to Fred Barnes, who wrote in his book, “Rebel –in-Chief”, George Bush “reflects the political views and cultural tastes of the vast majority of Americans who don’t live along the East or West Coast. He’s not a sophisticate and doesn’t spend his discretionary time with sophisticates. As First Lady Laura once said, she and the president didn’t come to Washington to make new friends. And they haven’t.”

The Republicans have alienated whole professions. Lawyers now donate to the Democratic Party over the Republican Party at 4 to 1 rates. With doctors, it’s 2-to-1. With tech executives, it’s 5-to-1. With investment bankers, it’s 2-to-1. Brooks says, it took talent for Republicans to lose the banking community.

Conservatives are as rare in elite universities and the mainstream media as they were 30 years ago. The smartest young Americans are now educated in an overwhelmingly liberal environment.

This year could have changed things. The G.O.P. had three urbane presidential candidates. But the class-warfare clichés took control. Giuliani disdained cosmopolitans at the Republican Convention. Mitt Romney gave a speech attacking “eastern elites.” John McCain picked Sarah Palin.

Brooks says that while Palin is smart, politically skilled, courageous and likable – I have to question that description, but then I’m a Democrat – and her convention and debate performances were impressive -- his words, not mine. But no American politician plays the class-warfare card as constantly as Palin. Nobody so relentlessly divides the world between the “normal Joe Sixpack American” and the coastal elite. Now, on that we can agree!

So, politically, the G.O.P. is squeezed at both ends. The party is losing the working class by sins of omission – because it has not developed policies to address economic anxiety. It has lost the educated class by sins of commission – by telling members of that class to go away.

A pretty sad picture, at least for Republicans, but hopefully it means a brighter day for the Democrats and this country.

Time To Step Back -- Again

I know, I've said I was going to do this step back thing several days ago and I've truly tried to step back and look at things with a wide angle view, but I'm afraid I've failed miserably. All I can see is the mayhem and madness of politics in general and I know that the Republicans look at the Democrats and say the same things. And where does any of it get us. The protestors, the riots -- let's admit though, there are more protesting the Republicans than Democrats. But it all just brings back the nightmare of the 60s, when there was another unpopular war and an enormous upheaval in our society. Looking at both then and now from the perspective of my seventy-five years, I can see the similarities, but I can also see major differences.

Vietnam was an unpopular war, too, being fought for all the wrong reasons, just like this one and there were as many against it as there are against the war in Iraq. Our whole society was moving out and away from the slow moving days of the fifties and everything seemed to be changing. And yet there wasn't the problem with the economy then that there is today and that is what I see as adding a large helping of desperation to the mess we're facing now. The war in Iraq needs to end and our over-taxed military need to come home. But then what are they coming home to? Fewer jobs, lower pay, broken school systems, the economy in tatters, the infrastructure badly in need of repair, the reality of climate change and global warming. None of which the Republicans see as any kind of major problem. For them the only problem is their favorite prop -- terrorism! I'm sorry, but at this point, that is not the major problem in this country and looking for other wars to jump into is not going to make our country more stable or more safe.

I don't have the answers, maybe no one does, but I know for sure the Republicans don't have a workable plan to fix any of our problems and just a bandaid is not going to fix the massive wounds we are suffering right now. And for people to say that they don't care what happens as long as we're all pro-life! Do they want to bring more innocent children into this mess? What possible kind of thinking is that? Somewhere along the line our core values have been badly screwed.

I have no wise person to quote tonight, I'm not sure I believe in a new day tomorrow, but I do know for sure that more of the same is not going to work. All I can do is hope that people with courage and wisdom and the ability to see a broader horizon will win this election. Someone who can see the way to a new day for our country, for our people, for our place in the world as a leader. A leader that sets an example of how hopes and dreams can be realized, both here and around the world. I believe there is such a person and that person is Barack Obama.