Comments on: Conservative Cultural Engineering

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 11:40:52 +0000

“Privatisation is un-roll-back-able. ” Not entirely. Railtrack has been effectively renationalised and there is strong public support for a complete renationalisation of railways. Welsh Water moved to a kind of halfway house and this was also the fallback position for British Energy if it hadn’t managed to settle with its creditors. In all these cases there was a figleaf to hide the reality, but it’s now apparent that renationalisation of one kind or another is the likely outcome where privatisation fails – and over time it will fail in most natural monopoly infrastructure services.

By: dave heasman

dave heasman — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 09:02:28 +0000

“Thatcher’s ideas and policies have ruled Britain for the last 20 years, and I think they will for the next 10 at least. Pretty impressive. And something the Republicans might aspire to: who cares about losing your party if you win the war?” But if you lose your party, you lose a voice on the distribution of pork. This is practically the raison d’etre of both US political parties, isn’t it?

By: Martin Wisse

Martin Wisse — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 07:10:16 +0000

Actually, I think Lexington is right in that the Republican party is busy trying to create a one party state in the US, not so much on that this is a good idea… The most troubling aspect about this attempt is that whether or not the Republicans are successful, the damage done to US democracy will have happened. Furthermore, there’s a real risk this attempt will suck the Democratic Party in the same direction, as the Tories did to Labour.

By: joel turnipseed

joel turnipseed — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 06:54:30 +0000

hmmm… thinking back to last time in history there was a large, disillusioned underclass, major world financial crisis, failed wars, and uncertainty over empire stretched to its limits: what year shall we tag it? 1933? 1973? That’s pretty fucking promising. Buckle yer seatbelts folks: I don’t care if Kerry OR Bush wins (I care, actually, and proudly don my Veterans for Kerry button everywhere I go), we’re headed for some turbulence (note especially comments on dependence on both foreign oil and capital for US economy, not to mention looming healthcare/social security crises—which we’ll share w/Europe)—and that underclass may just as well vote w/the brownshirts: if you haven’t noticed, many of them already are.

By: Don Quijote

Don Quijote — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 04:10:48 +0000

So basically, you’re an underachiever. ;)

By: rps

rps — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 03:40:23 +0000

If anything, the Republicans will create a new underclass which will vote Democratic. They also have the problem that their main constituency, white people, aren’t making babies, and will soon become a minority, while many Republicans are still campaigning on divisive English-first and anti-immigration policies.

By: Keith M Ellis

Keith M Ellis — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 03:22:17 +0000

I think that Ruy Teixeira’s and John Judis’s point of view about political trends in the US is far more persuasive than Lexington’s. For demographic reasons alone, it’s far more likely the Republicans will be marginalized than the Democrats. But let’s just look at the political trends. On cultural issues, liberalism long ago won the day and the cultural conservatives are taking what isolated victories they can and otherwise cocooning themselves. The trend is not toward conservatism. On economic issues, the long term trend has been conservative but at this point the two parties are not terribly far apart anymore. If anything, the neoliberal cautious embrace of markets is closer to majority American sentiment than is the big corporatism of the Republicans. True, Americans dislike taxation, but that’s nothing new. I think Lexington has this exactly backwards. In truth, either a Bush win or a Bush defeat probably means long-term bad news for the Republicans. if Bush wins, he will not be able to avoid the fallout of his various failed policies and of the continuing investigations and tell-alls of his administration. The bloom is long off the rose, it’s only going to get worse. Bush is doing a damn good job of marginalizing the Republicans in the long-term, not helping them. If Bush loses, on the other hand, it will be the second one-term Republican President in a row and can’t be seen as anything other than a repudiation of the Bush admin and the party that supported him. Really, the GOP probably has a better chance at disentangling themselves from the disaster that is BushCo if Bush loses than if he wins. Either way, though, things don’t look good in the long term for the Republicans.

By: roger

roger — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 02:45:39 +0000

Projections like Lexington’s bracket, like some mad Husserlian, the economic reality that Bush has created: not only deficits that will continue to increase, but a dependence on Chinese and Japanese banks to buy dollars that is, in the long run, unsustainable, and a geopolitics that almost guarantees gas shortages soon. Rather than Thatcher, Bush looks much more like a faith based Lyndon Johnson—whose econonmic, social and foreign policies reverberated, with party destroying resonance, ten years after he was gone. Except for one thing—Johnson, on the positive side, did push through Civil Rights bills. Bush. a moral cretin, has done nothing to parallel that feat.

By: harry

harry — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 00:08:50 +0000

I am absolutely mortified to learn that I am above the median age for an Economist reader. In fact, discovering that casts doubt, for me, on the figures. I am way below the median income. Bugger.

By: Gary Farber

Gary Farber — Tue, 19 Oct 2004 00:07:45 +0000

I’m much more pessimistic. I see no reason not to think that if Bush does get back into office, whether with a blow-out popular vote and Electoral College, or in something as by-hook-or-crook as 2000, he won’t proceed precisely as he did in 2001: to steam-roller almost all opposition, ram through extremist bills of every imaginable type (this assumes the Republicans retain control of House and Senate, to be sure) as rapidly as possible, and simply put the thumb down and ignore the screaming and squawking of the rest of us precisely as he’s been doing for four years. Why would things change if we (Democrats) don’t get control of at least one body of Congress? Would this genuinely kill long-term chances of Democratic power? No, not necessarily. But they could successfully diminish it Just Enough to keep the Presidency in their hands for yet another term or two or possibly three. And who the hell knows how wrecked the system will be then? What does it matter that perhaps a majority of the country will object, if we don’t have our hands on the levers of power. What did it matter to Thatcher during her reign? Apres Thatcher and Bush, le deluge, but small comfort to having to live through it, innit?

By: Tobias

Tobias — Mon, 18 Oct 2004 23:30:31 +0000

I suppose much of the confusion about the Economist’s position with respect to Bush and the GOP can be understood with these readership figures (media info for the online economist.com) • Average household income US$136,000 (I think print is 154,000 USD) • One in eight is a dollar millionaire • Average age 38 years 56% of these readers live in North America. Any other questions? http://ads.economist.com/web/images/03ReadersSurvey.pdf

By: praktike

praktike — Mon, 18 Oct 2004 22:20:37 +0000

The ability for one party to “dominate” is long past. With sophisticated polling and messaging techniques, the median voter theorem has become a reality. If Republicans “defund” the Democrats, the Democrats will find some alternate source of power. It’s pretty much a zero sum game at this point.

By: la

la — Mon, 18 Oct 2004 21:37:37 +0000

What Patrick said. Spot on and I see it coming like a freight train, as Betty said, “fasten your seatbelts.”

By: Patrick

Patrick — Mon, 18 Oct 2004 21:06:33 +0000

I think Harry makes a good point about wider transformation versus political transformation, something I didn’t consider in my earlier comment. Drawing this back to a contemporary American political analogy, how might that play out? If we get another four years of Bush and his Grovertastic domestic policies, how might that play out down the road for the Democrats? If the administration is allowed to railroad through more privatization legislation, particularly getting their filthy paws on Social Security, then I think we’ll see a reverse image of what happened in Britain: Whereas Thatcher’s policies allowed Blair to wrest Labour away from “Old Labour” and take it in a more centrist, market-friendly direction, I think we’ll see a demand for a Democratic Party (or a more New Deal-minded third party) that returns to its New Deal past. I just don’t see how enabling everyone and their dog to suddenly become part of the “investor class” with their retirements hanging in the balance of the market is going to end well. With our economy creaking along on a bottomless sea of credit, no solution in sight for increasing our refining capacity, and the government not lifting a finger to offer tax incentives to corporations who are outsourcing America, just how good of an investment is the market going to be for peoples’ retirements? Not a good one, in my opinion. If privatization continues and the bottom falls out of the market, there will be hell to pay for the Republicans and the Clintonian market-friendly Democrats. A New-New Deal, anyone?

By: Giles

Giles — Mon, 18 Oct 2004 20:39:01 +0000

“This is plain wrong – the successful 527s’ “single issue” is dislodging Republicans from power.” Doesnt that prove how “They’re out of ideas,”. By the way didnt Lexington write and article saying that there would be some inevitable spitl between the libertarian and reglisou republicans at some time after the election? and doesnt that issue somewhat mirror the euroscpetic vs europhile arguments that split the conservatives? I think that some people are reading Lexinton piece by piece as opposed to sequentially. He’s not predicting a thousand year riech, but rather pointing out that without a unifying ideology the Democrats could be out of effective power for a long time given how seldom the majority in the senate and congress change.