From Slate editor Jacob Weisberg’s slam of the latest Kevin Phillips book:
…While Karl Rove’s pander-to-the base strategy got Bush narrowly re-elected, the entente hasn’t truly served Bush or the religious right. The appearance of extremism on issues of church-state separation and stem-cell research has helped dig a deep hole for the president and his party, alienating secular and libertarian Republicans uncomfortable with the revival-tent atmosphere. And evangelical power appears to have peaked. Since the Terri Schiavo debacle, the religious right has mainly embarrassed itself by battling evolutionary theory.
Oh, is that all the religious right has done? Silly me. I thought they were pushing for dozens of new anti-queer laws, many of which will pass (have already passed); and attacking reproductive rights throughout the country with a degree of success never before seen; not to mention vetting the President’s Supreme Court choices.
Queers and women really are invisible to many liberal guys, aren’t they? It’s like a superpower or something. I bet a pregnant lesbian could walk right into Weisberg’s home, while he was home, open up his wallet and take all the cash and cards while he was standing right there, and he wouldn’t see a blessed thing.
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As someone who’s gay, but not female, I agree with this guy. He’s clearly not talking about the Republican Party in every individual state, but about the national Republican Party and the Bush Administration. Bush has not, iirc, succeeded in pushing through much by way of restrictions on abortion (although his people have held up Plan B). He made a lot of noise about the FMA at election time, but never made much of an effort to get it passed. He wasn’t willing to fight to put someone known to oppose Roe on the Supreme Court. Compare what he’s done on those issues with the significant political capital he invested and risked in Iraq, Social Security, the nomination of a personal friend to the Supreme Court, and aggrandizing the power of the “unitary executive.”
Ultimately, I don’t think Bush has done very much to push the Religious Right’s agenda forwards.
Tony, I think the last two sentences I quoted – which are the ones I was objecting to – are fairly clearly referring to the religious right as a whole, not just their influence over Bush.
Let’s not compare “many liberal guys” with people who edit major media publications, especially not publications focusing on politics. I get the impression that most magazine editors tend to be no more liberal than, say, Andrew Sullivan.
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I don’t think that the concessions to the Religious Right have hurt the Republican party – the business interests are happy enough with these tradeoffs, and the secular Republican voters are mostly wealthy folks whose #1 concern is tax cuts. Clearly, until the Religious Right gives up on the Republicans and starts staying home on Election Day, throwing them occasional bones is the winning move for the Republicans. I don’t see a rebellion against Republicans based on “sex” issues starting until Roe v. Wade is overturned and the currently unconstitutional state bans go into effect and new ones enacted by existing Republican-majority state legislatures. If the Republicans lose, it will be on the public exhaustion with the war, the health care issue, etc.
NancyP:
That’s a strange way of putting it. The RR base doesn’t stay home precisely because their stated and demonstrable willingness to do just that is what keeps the bones coming.
Liberals en masse don’t have enough self-respect to threaten a mass walkout and acutually follow through on it. Their supposed representatives know this and behave accordingly. Then liberal blogger after liberal blogger gripes about how the mean old Democrats don’t respect them.
Ummm… hello ? Why should they, exactly– when you yourself constantly beat the defeatist drum of what a tiny minority of citizens you are, how there is nothing you can do to break the endless cycle of corruption other than constantly re-electing the oligarchs who perpetuate and profit from that corruption, how they are your perpetual last best hope even though they largely stink on ice, blah blah blah…
Gevalt. You know, I have no idea what I am politically, but this sort of self-defeating, self-loathing crap is one of the main reasons why I haven’t called myself a liberal in years.