This is the trait I think conservatives and genuine moderates have this year, that they have not had for a very long time. Even in the Reagan era, after the disastrous failures of Carter, and even those under Ford facilitated by the Imperial Congress which had hog-tied him, Democrats continued to own Congress. They continued in large measure to own many of the narratives, particularly the farcical claim that they were in fact the best protectors of the interests of the poor, minorities, and the working classes.
I am presently reading a good summary of the history of political policy in the New Deal era, and it is frankly distressing to see how many obvious, unmistakeable similarities there are between the literally Fascist policies enacted then–and the rationales that enabled them–and those under Obama.
One sees, for example, a tension between “reform”, and “recovery”. Time and again, the latter is sacrificed for the former. To take one egregious example, FDR quite literally intended his direct control over the agricultural sector to contineu forever. To be clear, this was the power of the President to appoint people to tell farmers how much they could produce, and what it could be sold for. To belabor the obvious, this is a Command/Planned/socialist/Fascist conception of the role of the government. Adn to be clear, when I say Fascist, there were many then who admired Benito Mussollini and longed to be able to end economic freedom in the United States. And for some number of years they were successful.
To the point, though, what we have today that we did not have then was the evidence of the past, and the capacity to get messages out across wide populations quickly, and accurately.
I would submit there is an informational equivalent to Gresham’s Law, which stipulates that bad money drives out good money. Given a choice between gold coins–which have worth both from the printing on them, and from the gold in them–and paper money which could be doubled easily in a week or two, most people opt to keep the coins, and circulate the paper.
Likewise, I believe that good information, when allowed to circulate, will drive out bad information. Stupidity loses to intelligence, in the end, if intelligence is allowed into the system. To the extent conservatives–which I prefer to call Liberals, but which seems to confuse people who don’t read history–are right, then, the advantage is to us.
Most people can readily grasp the basic facts, if allowed to. As Dave Ramsey roughly put it, we are a household making $58,000, spending $75,000, and $325,000 in debt. It does not take much brainpower to grasp this is an unsustainable condition, that Obamacare will make it worse, not better, and that no Democrats and too few Republicans possess the intestinal fortitude to confront this problem with sober calculation and decisiveness that is needed to prevent a wholesale disaster, which will hurt the poor and middle classes the worst, by far.
Black people fared horribly under FDR in the New Deal. Sharecroppers saw NO benefit from his policies. On the contrary, they were hurt. When a farmer is being paid to idle his land, there is no work for them to do. If they don’t work, they don’t get paid. The states in the South where they disproportionately lived got one third or less of the money parcelled out, simple because they always voted Democrat, and FDR didn’t need to pay them off to get their votes.
In the current climate, it is interesting to note that most trade unions back then refused to accept black people. If you add to this that FDR made unionization compulsory in many projects, and made it impossible for people to offer competitive labor bids at lower rates of pay, you can readily see that most blacks were in effect forced out of the New Deal entirely. Most Democrats back then were blatant racists, though, so that is scarcely surprising.
Given the recent lionization of Robert Byrd, one wonders why we shouldn’t continue to view that as the case. As the party of machine politics, Democrats are fine with buying votes, but they seem not to care who they hurt doing it, provided they can duck the responsibility they bear.
Bottom line: I see reason to think that many of the new class of Republicans will have the confidence to stick to their guns (this is a metaphor, folks, referring to the tendencies of cowards to abandon their posts when under both figurative and literal assualt).
They can count on high profile backing from nationally syndicated professional talkers, and the organizing capabilities the internet enables. This will prove, I think, an important source of comfort, and hopefully following courage.
Edit: the book is “FDR’s Folly”. I find his analysis somewhat deficient, but his detailing of the people and policies immensely useful. It is yeoman work.