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Wrecking Crew Themes:
Goal: More business in government, less government in business, via deregulation, tax cuts and privatization
Big government as the chief domestic enemy, the best public servants are the worst ones.
Republicans viewed as permanent insurgents in Washington, as rebels, as outsiders (this is used to evade responsibility)
The call for quasi-military victory over the left.
Swaggering truculence, bullying, confrontational politics
“Hard America” aka real America versus soft “Parasitic America”
Defund the left, the enemy (by funding the right)
Removal of the liberals and moderates from power permanently via a “revolution”.
And it is the job of the “revolutionaries” to make their gains permanent.
Morbid obsession with betrayal and conspiracy (e.g. the Dartmouth review)
The liberal media. Liberal treason in high places
Liberals as servants of communism (or now, muslin terrorists)
Washington as hypnotic, siren-like, and leading to brainwashing
Conservatism as a business in and of itself, as “marketers of discontent”
Liberal helping to surrender, dismantle the country, giving things away, picking our pockets via grants, subsides, student loans, etc.
Guerilla politics, Support for “revolutionary freedom fighters” (e.g. the Contras)
Conservatives as the only “clear interpreters of the founder’s original intent”
It is freedom or government – there is no middle ground.
Government interference in the economy is socialism.
“The best minds are not in government, if they were, business would steal them away”-RReagan
A first criterion for a government job is commitment to conservatism.
Government can only meddle in the market, yet the market is a force of god-like omniscience.
Conservatives seek to make government impotent (e.g. Katrina)
Career public servants are irredeemably liberal and implacably hostile
To reform bureaucracies, it is necessary to destroy them.
It is now government by contractor, by outsourcing.
The result of conservative’s unrelenting faith in the badness of government is bad government – therefore a conservative triumph
Government jobs as a “networking boot camp for future private contractors dreaming of big paydays”.
The damage is worst to those departments who may inconvenience business (Labor, EPA, etc.)
Business as the primary constituent of government, industry as the client. The private sector is much more efficient.
The systems is corruption itself, ethics reform is futile.
And, of course, corruption is self-reinforcing. Reducing faith in government is what the conservatives want. This is vandalism. Conservatives want government to fail.
Politics has become more money-centered at the same time that the middle class has been reduced.
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As we watch the campaigns unfold we are sure to see these themes again and again from the right and to remember that the real goal of the right is bad government either achieved through today’s obstructionism or by future selling out to their own business interests.
… with What’s the Matter with Kansas? An analytical look at election data doesn’t seem to support his thesis. (pdf link)
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p>Of course Frank was describing a what he saw going on in 2000 and 2004. While the notion that he may have been wrong about the ‘force’ religion and social issues played in those elections may be comforting in the so called culture war, Bartels’ claims that the party flight based on racism and that “For church-goers as for non-church-goers, partisanship and voting behavior are primarily shaped by economic issues, not cultural issues.” are more explanatory than cultural certainly doesn’t bode well in the current climate either.