Overstate

There are a lot of questions about who is a real conservative, who is a neocon, who is a corporatist, etc. etc.

The angriest people I know are people who consider themselves mainstream conservatives and who absolutely despise George Bush.

(Why did Ron Paul raise 4 mill. from 40,000 individual contributors in a single day? Obviously he’s still polling at the traditional, libertarian 1%. But there’s something a bit more going on, surely.)

I’ve been wrestling with this question for a while now. The weird part about Paul’s supporters is, they don’t come form the traditional Libertarian or Conservative demographics. I’ve heard a lot of otherwise smart, liberal type people talking about how great Ron Paul would be, as if suddenly returning to the gold standard and repealing the Civil Rights Act is a sensible, progressive idea.

Part of me is like, WTF? The other part of me is scared to realize that this many Americans really just might be this selfish and crazy.

Keith, it’s probably frustration with the current system. When the Democratic leadership in Congress acts like it *lost* the 2006 election, and the pretty-much-already-crowned Democratic presidential nominee endorses keeping up the war in Iraq, people legitimately feel disenfranchised.

“Conspiracy theories are nuts, whether written by anti-semites in the 19th Century or by pseudo-academics in the 21st.”

They’re nuts only if there’s no evidence for them. Here there is evidence for, for example, a bunch of specific rich folks funding a campaign to get the estate tax (which affects very few) re-labelled the “death tax” and nearly eliminated. That’s not theory, that’s fact.

I would wager that much of Paul’s appeal is not coming so much from the issues (see post 4), but from his tone. He is the only Republican candidate who is taking a truly adverserial stance towards the Beltway, particularly on the war. If you’re Republican, or Republican leaning, and want change then he’s basically the only game in town.

As for Democrats or those on the left who view him favorably: it’s probably a similar thing. The top candidates for the Dem nomination, while proposing change in various areas, are certainly not posing a full throated challenge to Beltway CV on American foreign policy, for instance. It’s that type of adversarial stance that liberal are liking; and, since they probably only hear about him tangentially and aren’t investigating fully his views on other issues, he can be a safe ally. [Glenn Greenwald also makes the case over at Salon that despite many of Paul’s crazier policy positions, he’s at least proposing a rather coherent ideological position. When he says he’s against X for constitutional reasons, he really means it, outside of any consideration of whether it would actually be a good policy. So there is perhaps also that in play.)

[What’s more puzzling, for me, is why Dennis Kucinich isn’t doing the same thing as Ron Paul. Or someone else for that matter. It’s probably a mix, I’ve concluded, that the top three have essentially co-opted most of his social policy, to some extent, and contingent factors concerning Kucinich himself.]

This shouldn’t overlook the appeal Paul has on the issues to many of his supporters, however. Just an explanation, a possible one, for why people who might not be hard core libertarians are supporting him.

Paul appeals to nativists, anti-war people, anti-tax people, libertarians, and small-town populists. He’s strongly anti-abortion and has a nuanced position of gay marriage.

I think that the real story is that a lot of wingers who’ve been bandwagoning Bush even though they don’t like him on every issue have figured out that he’s a loser (mostly because he didn’t win the war). So they’re willing to vote their hearts.

I don’t think there’s any doubt that most of Paul’s popularity in this cycle is due to his anti-war position. Nobody cares about his gold standard stuff. But also, the concept of weak federal government/strong state autonomy is not exactly a madman’s fantasy. In fact, it seems more attractive every day.

John, Thanks for reading and commenting on my book!
I used the phrase “difficult to overstate” because I was trying to convey that the right-wing’s institutions have been hugely important but in ways that are difficult, if not impossible, to quantify or otherwise capture with precision in one fell swoop.
I left it at that because I think that as the book unfolds, readers will see for themselves how and why those institutions have been so successful. The details are more effective at clarifying their impact than any kind of broad generalizations.
Also, I think you’ll see as you go along that the book is not really making any kind of “false consciousness” argument.

I’ll keep my eyes open for any future posts you may have about the book to respond, if I have something useful to add. Thanks again for reading it. –Greg

Just to be clear: I disagree with much of Paul’s libertarian economic agenda at the Federal level, but I think that may be less significant at this time than the foreign policy one. At a certain point, the level of government spending involved in “defense” becomes so vast that cutting back on it could redistribute money more effectively than Federal transfer programs.

The maintenance of the ability of each state to structure their own economic programs is also important — many basic public services takes place at the state level. The problems come with health care financing / retirement / environmental protection / financial system regulation, much of which is better done at the Federal level.

For anyone who wants further evidence on how Paul differs from your typical “shmibertarian” — look at this speech in favor of prescription drug reimportation:

http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2003/cr072403.htm

He’s calling patent monopolies on drugs interference with the free market! That’s a radical left position in contemporary U.S. politics.

Brett:
Could you detail Pew’s “astroturf” efforts?
And how can you equate the self serving actions of a Scaife or Olin with (I’m guessing) the Ford Foundation.

Perhaps you don’t like Ford’s policies, but the Ford family doesn’t profit from them as do the super wealthy when they get self-serving legislation passed on the back of their think tanks’s propaganda. In addition the major social foundations are pretty transparent about where they get their money from and where it gets spent. Try to find out the same thing from the think tanks funded by Scaife and company.

That there is any information available at all is solely due to the efforts of a few organizations which painfully try to track the source of the funds. If your organization is doing something for the public good why the need to hide it?

Sorry, Hillary was correct, there is a vast right wing conspiracy. It’s just that their objectives are self enrichment and not the promotion of business for its own efficiencies. The Walton family gets over $1 billion a year in stock dividends from its Walmart stock. Now look at how the stock has performed. They don’t care about outside investors since they have a controlling interest and no plans to sell their stock.

In other one of the world’s biggest firms is being run for the benefit of four people and their families. Wouldn’t you want to hide your involvement in obscuring this?

Is he for abolishing Public Education or is he for abolishing the federal role in public education?

I love Brett’s (and many conservatives’) idea that limiting money in politics is tantamount to a Stalinist crushing of political freedom. So, you’re criticizing the Ford Found. for unduly influencing politics in order to pass a bill that would, in turn, limit their own later influence in politics? The difference between that and getting things past to line your own pockets is the difference between having a genuine philosophical belief in something — even if it may not be the best thing for you personally — and engineering government for your benefit.

This is similar to conservatives’ arguing that Kerry and Edwards wanting to raise taxes on the rich was bad AND that their being rich was itself hypocritical, rather than seeing that the second made the first more profound, in a away. (That being said, I’d still rather not have a millionaire president of either party, though at least Edwards earned it himself.)

The WSJ Brett quotes is silly for so many reasons, most of which revolve around what I’ve said above, but a somewhat tangential point is also worth commenting on. According to the WSJ article:

“National Public Radio openly accepted $1.2 million from liberal foundations to provide such items as “coverage of financial influence in political decision-making.” Its campaign finance reporter, Peter Overby, is a former editor of the magazine put out by Common Cause, a major supporter of McCain-Feingold. No one suggests there was direct collusion between NPR and campaign finance lobbies. With the money and personnel available to NPR, there didn’t need to be. Sympathetic stories on the need for campaign finance reform flowed naturally. Sounds like the kind of “faux news” that liberals are complaining the Bush administration was guilty of engineering when it put out video press releases or provided conservative commentator Armstrong Williams with a grant.”

Putting aside the fact that this makes it seem like everyone who donates to NPR simply “buys” favorable coverage, which is silly, and then equates it to actual fake, bought editorials, why don’t liberals take conservatives up on this particular argument?

So, the solution would be to make sure that NPR is fully and generously funded by the government, allowing it to stop soliciting donations. Oh, wait, conservatives want to eliminate NPR…leaving us with media where advertisers influence coverage. What is comes down to, then, is that anything that conservatives’ disagree with is illegitimate, whereas corporations or wealthy conservatives lobbing for something conservative is fine.

27: why shouldn’t state governments get to decide democratically if they want to do something crazy?

The strong Federal system probably lowers the number of crazy experiments, but it makes all of us victim to them with no choice but to leave the country when they do happen.

If left to state level decisions, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and South Carolina would do away with public schools altogether…

I highly doubt it. Not just the excerpt above, but your whole comment.

But suppose (for the sake of argument) they do do away with public schools altogether – isn’t that what democracy is all about? If they want different kind of schools (like, say, the Amish), why shouldn’t they be able to have them?

Why is anyone wondering how Ron Paul was able to raise that money so quickly?

He is the ONLY Republican who is anti-war. He’s stridently, militantly anti-war.

Among Democrats, we have Kucinich, Dodd, and Gravel, as anti-war candidates, and I’d bet their fundraising success is similar to Paul’s or exceeds it.

Paul is running a single-issue campaign. Giuliani keeps saying “9/11, 9/11” all the time, and Paul keeps saying “Get out of Iraq” all the time. Most people don’t agree with Paul’s radical destroy-the-government policies, so he’s focussing on the anti-war aspect, and getting lots of support that way. Smart guy.

In comment 34 goatchowder wrote, “Among Democrats, we have Kucinich, Dodd, and Gravel, as anti-war candidates, and I’d bet their fundraising success is similar to Paul’s or exceeds it.”

You mean Kucinich, Dodd, and Gravel put together? Or individually? According to wikipedia, Paul has raised $7.5 million in the 3rd quarter of 2007, as compared to Gravel’s $131,000, Kucinich’s $1 million, and Dodd’s $1.5 million.

However, according to opensecrets.org, Dodd has raised $13.6 million, Paul $8.3 million, Kucinich $1.8, and Gravel $207,000.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/index.asp

Have we reason to think that that is a valild fear for today’s political climate in those states?

Not fear, but hope. And no.

or my all time favorite: “you can’t just throw money at the problem”