Getting Inside the Heads of the GOP Base: Tea Party, Evangelical and Moderate

Inside the GOP: Report on focus groups with Evangelical, Tea Party, and moderate Republicans

By Stan Greenberg, James Carville, and Erica Seifert

Democracy Corps / Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research

If you want to understand the government shutdown and crisis in Washington, you need to get inside the base of the Republican Party.  That is what we are doing in the Republican Party Project and these focus groups with Evangelicals, Tea Party, and moderate Republicans. All the passion, nuances and divisions found expression when we conducted this work in the summer.

Over the last two months, we have been releasing initial findings from the first phase of research for Democracy Corps' new Republican Party Project.  This report details findings from six focus groups among Republican partisans-divided into Evangelicals, Tea Party adherents, and moderates.  All participants indicated that they voted only or mostly for Republican candidates and were screened on a battery of ideological and political indicators.  The groups were conducted in Raleigh, North Carolina (moderate and Tea Party), Roanoke, Virginia (Tea Party and Evangelical), and Colorado Springs, Colorado (moderate and Evangelical.)

Understand that the base thinks they are losing politically and losing control of the country - and their starting reaction is "worried," "discouraged," "scared," and "concerned" about the direction of the country - and a little powerless to change course.  They think Obama has imposed his agenda, while Republicans in DC let him get away with it. 

We know that Evangelicals are the largest bloc in the base, with the Tea Party very strong as well.  For them, President Obama is a "liar" and "manipulator" who has fooled the country.  It is hard to miss the deep disdain-they say the president is a socialist, the "worst president in history," and "anti-American."

For all that, this is a deeply divided base.  Moderates are a quarter of those who identify Re-publican, and they are very conscious of their discomfort with other parts of the party base.  Their distance begins with social issues, like gay marriage and homosexuality, but it is also evident on immigration and climate change.  Fiscal conservatives feel isolated in the party. 

Evangelicals who feel most threatened by trends embrace the Tea Party because they are the ones who are fighting back.  They are very in tune politically, but the Tea Party base is very libertarian and not very interested in fighting gay marriage. 

Republicans shutdown the government to defund or delay Obamacare.  This goes to the heart of Republican base thinking about the essential political battle. They think they face a victorious Democratic Party that is intent on expanding government to increase dependency and therefore electoral support.  It starts with food stamps and unemployment benefits; expands further if you legalize the illegals; but insuring the uninsured dramatically grows those de-pendent on government.  They believe this is an electoral strategy-not just a political ideology or economic philosophy.  If Obamacare happens, the Republican Party may be lost, in their view. 

And while few explicitly talk about Obama in racial terms, the base supporters are very conscious of being white in a country with growing minorities.  Their party is losing to a Democratic Party of big government whose goal is to expand programs that mainly benefit minorities. Race remains very much alive in the politics of the Republican Party.

These are strong common currents in the Republican base, but the thinking and passions are very distinct and telling among the key blocs - and those have consequences for those who seek to lead. We selected these three groups (Evangelicals, non-Evangelical Tea Party adherents, and moderates) because combined they represent almost all of today's Republican partisans. The focus group locations, demographic characteristics, and participants' ideological characteristics were all selected based on statistical analysis of our first survey for this project.  While these are focus groups, and not statistically representative, this analysis gives a real, robust, and serious snapshot of who these Republicans are, how they think, and what matters to them.

--Evangelicals.  Social issues are central for Evangelicals and they feel a deep sense of cultural and political loss.  They believe their towns, communities, and schools are suffering from a deep "culture rot" that has invaded from the outside.  The central focus here is homosexuality, but also the decline of homogenous small towns.  They like the Tea Party because they stand up to the Democrats.

--Tea Party.  Big government, Obama, the loss of liberty, and decline of responsibility are central to the Tea Party worldview.  Obama's America is an unmitigated evil based on big government, regulations, and dependency.  They are not focused on social issues at all.  They like the Tea Party because it is getting "back to basics" and believe it has the potential to reshape the GOP.

--Moderates.  Moderates are deeply concerned with the direction of the country and believe Obama has taken it down the wrong path economically.  They are centrally focused on market-based economics, small government, and eliminating waste and inefficiency.  They are largely open to progressive social policies, including on gay marriage and immigration.  They disdain the Tea Party and have a hard time taking Fox News seriously.

1. Focus groups as real life

When a Macomb County focus group participant shot back, "No wonder they killed him" after I read a statement by Robert Kennedy, that stopped me and led to a whole new analysis of Reagan Democrats - and what were the core blockages to working whites voting Democratic again.  These groups with core Republican voters had similar moments - but more important, these emerged as affinity groups where the participants worked through their alienation and isolation, not just from politically correct-liberal dominated media, but other Republicans, family members, and neighbors.  If you want to know why Republicans are at war internally, start with their voters who are in turmoil.

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Original Sin: Why the GOP Is and Will Continue To Be the Party of White People

 

BY SAM TANENHAUS
Progressive America Rising via The New Republic

Feb 10, 2013 - With Barack Obama sworn in for a second term—the first president in either party since Ronald Reagan to be elected twice with popular majorities—the GOP is in jeopardy, the gravest since 1964, of ceasing to be a national party. The civil rights pageantry of the inauguration—Abraham Lincoln's Bible and Martin Luther King's, Justice Sonia Sotomayor's swearing in of Joe Biden, Beyoncé's slinky glamor, the verses read by the gay Cuban poet Richard Blanco—seemed not just an assertion of Democratic solidarity, but also a reminder of the GOP's ever-narrowing identity and of how long it has been in the making.

"Who needs Manhattan when we can get the electoral votes of eleven Southern states?" Kevin Phillips, the prophet of "the emerging Republican majority," asked in 1968, when he was piecing together Richard Nixon's electoral map. The eleven states, he meant, of the Old Confederacy. "Put those together with the Farm Belt and the Rocky Mountains, and we don't need the big cities. We don't even want them. Sure, Hubert [Humphrey] will carry Riverside Drive in November. La-de-dah. What will he do in Oklahoma?"

Forty-five years later, the GOP safely has Oklahoma, and Dixie, too. But Phillips's Sunbelt strategy was built for a different time, and a different America. Many have noted Mitt Romney's failure to collect a single vote in 91 precincts in New York City and 59 precincts in Philadelphia. More telling is his defeat in eleven more of the nation's 15 largest cities. Not just Chicago and Columbus, but also Indianapolis, San Diego, Houston, even Dallas—this last a reason the GOP fears that, within a generation Texas will become a swing state. Remove Texas from the vast, lightly populated Republican expanse west of the Mississippi, and the remaining 13 states yield fewer electoral votes than the West Coast triad of California, Oregon, and Washington. If those trends continue, the GOP could find itself unable to count on a single state that has as many as 20 electoral votes.

It won't do to blame it all on Romney. No doubt he was a weak candidate, but he was the best the party could muster, as the GOP's leaders insisted till the end, many of them convinced he would win, possibly in a landslide. Neither can Romney be blamed for the party's whiter-shade-of-pale legislative Rotary Club: the four Republicans among the record 20 women in the Senate, the absence of Republicans among the 42 African Americans in the House (and the GOP's absence as well among the six new members who are openly gay or lesbian). These are remarkable totals in a two-party system, and they reflect not only a failure of strategy or "outreach," but also a history of long-standing indifference, at times outright hostility, to the nation's diverse constituencies—blacks, women, Latinos, Asians, gays.

But that history, with its repeated instances of racialist political strategy dating back many decades, only partially accounts for the party's electoral woes.

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Warning on ‘Santorum Derangement Syndrome’

Believe It or Not, Santorum's Surge is Scary

By Tony Norman
Progressive America Rising via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Feb. 21, 2012 - I've been told that it is way too early to begin showing signs of Rick Santorum derangement syndrome.

A well-meaning reader suggested that even if the Republicans were suicidal enough to hand the former Pennsylvania senator the nomination, his defeat in the general election would dwarf the blowout Barry Goldwater suffered at the hands of Lyndon Baines Johnson.

The argument goes like this: Rick Santorum is such an implacable foe of modernity that casting a vote for him is only possible if one shares his nostalgia for the chauvinism, authoritarianism and unbearable whiteness of the 1950s.

According to this argument, Mr. Santorum is a protest vote writ large across the Republican firmament by grass-roots conservatives repulsed by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's malleability and phoniness. It isn't a vote for Mr. Santorum's political theology as much as it is a rejection of the likely apostasy of the Republican frontrunner.

This also happens to be the prevailing view of the pundits toiling daily in newspapers and the cable news commissariat. The assumption that Rick Santorum can't be elected president is axiomatic in the circles I frequent, too. He was a punch line long before he lost his Senate race by 18 points in 2006.

Yet, a mere half dozen years after what should have ended his dreams of ever holding elected office again, Mr. Santorum is poised to steal the Michigan primary from Mr. Romney, although the polls have tightened in recent days.

Many Democrats are salivating over the prospect of an Obama/Santorum showdown in November. The only contest that could possibly make a Democrat happier would be one in which Newt Gingrich or Donald Trump were the Republican nominee.

Ironically, Mitt Romney, the gelatinous Gibraltar of Republican politics, stands the best chance of making the race for the White House competitive among independent voters he has alienated in recent months. After a hard tack to the right, Mr. Romney wouldn't lose an ounce of sleep embracing the middle to beat Mr. Obama in November. It's that kind of mercenary pragmatism that enrages conservatives who value principle over short-term electoral victory.

Because Mr. Romney has residual appeal with independents, Democrats would rather Mr. Obama faced someone with more extremist views -- someone like Rick Santorum. I understand the logic. I just don't buy it.

I think it is irresponsible to underestimate the appeal of a demagogue when so many Americans are suffering and the public mood is so mercurial. All it would take would be a few weeks of $5 a gallon gas and a Democratic electorate demoralized because of some administration misstep to put even the strangest protest candidacy into play.

Mr. Santorum is a principled culture warrior who doesn't believe in evolution, man-made global warming, sex for purposes other than having children, separation of church and state, tax-financed public education (except by Penn Hills of his home-schooled kids), a Constitutional right to privacy, contraception, some forms of prenatal testing, or freedom of conscience if it contradicts his church's edicts or his party platform.

Mr. Santorum would like to see doctors who perform abortions criminally prosecuted. He has said that war with Iran to thwart its nuclear ambitions is in America's best interests, despite the painful lessons of the past decade and the skepticism of our own generals.

If he is elected president, women should expect an administration openly hostile to their interests on a number of fronts. As for "blah people" -- union members and academics -- well, they can just forget it.

The former senator's comments about Mr. Obama's "theology" over the weekend make it clear that his version of environmental stewardship is more about exploiting the earth than respecting it. It is a mentality closer to that of a 19th-century robber baron than someone informed by modern science or concerns about environmental integrity.

So, how did Mr. Santorum make it this far? How is his candidacy even possible in the modern world? Some pundits refer to his "likability" compared to his rivals. What are they talking about? What has he said or done during his surge that paints him in any way as likable?

There's some Rick Santorum derangement syndrome going around all right, but it's not affecting me.

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Birth Control Rights Under Fire Again

 

When Men Are Deciding What Women

Are Entitled to, It's Time to Occupy

By Rebecca Sive
Progressive America Rising via Huffpost

No. 30, 2011 - So, what have we got in this latest reproductive rights crisis? The one where the Catholic bishops and the president are debating and deciding what rights we American women will have? Well, sadly, ad nauseum, and once again, what we've got is no woman sitting at the decision-making table.

What year is this? Oh, you say it's almost 2012? Yikes. If I were an ostrich, I'd bury my head in the sand. But I'm not. I'm an organizer. And, I never say "die." So, I'm thinking it's time to head for the hills with a group of girlfriends, and figure out the next occupy movement. Maybe it's OPA, Occupy Pennsylvania Avenue, or maybe it's OC, Occupy Churches. Whadaya you think, girlfriends?

This situation is patently ridiculous. Really.

You want proof? Just consider the alternate scenario: Say, all the bishops were women, and the president were a woman. Would that group be conjuring up ways to limit the ability of their sisters to control the number of children they have, or when they have them, or with whom? Nope. Not a chance: In fact, this alternate scenario is impossible to imagine as anything but a spoof.

Speaking of spoofs, here's who those bishops really are: Thugs. (No one explained it better than Monty Python.)

Yes, I know, movies about thugs can be good, and, sometimes, they can even be funny (like this Monty Python one). But politics by thugs is an all together different thing; a thing that's never funny, for thugs aren't supposed to get to make the decisions in a democracy.

Thoughtful people of goodwill are.

But denying women birth control is no kind of goodwill. Not by a long shot. No matter how it's couched. No matter if the male who makes that decision (trying to cover up his true feelings about women's equality -- not) talks about "conscience," or "morality," or "ethics," say. Nope, not hardly.

Girlfriends: Grab your pocketbook when you hear those words; the thugs are about to hit you over the head with their scepters (see above), and you'll need your pocketbook to hit them back.

I'm fond of the phrase, "all politics is local," because I think bearing it in mind helps us to understand policy discussions and decision-making and develop strategies that defeat efforts to hold us girls back. At the same time, I always bear in mind a corollary mantra, "all politics is personal."

Of course, this latter truth can cut both ways. It cuts badly when the personal experiences and knowledge of women aren't at hand and taken into account. It cuts well when our presence and experience (are accounted for).

How do I know this? Well, let me count the ways of four decades and counting.

For instance, it's no coincidence that anti-rape and anti-domestic violence laws were first (and only) proposed (and passed) when women achieved meaningful numbers in state legislatures. Because these women knew personally about rape and domestic violence, they did something about it, to end it.

Another proof point is the actions of the U.S. Senate. When push comes to shove there, when it comes to protecting women's health, it's the women senators (and only they) who stand-up, and say what needs to be said; wonderfully, sometimes led by a Catholic member of the group, Senator Barbara Mikulski.

Senator Mikulski's website notes her "...lifetime commitment to women's health." To prove it, she lists numerous accomplishments. But, my favorite is this one: "Ending gender discrimination by insurance companies, so being a woman is not considered a pre-existing condition."

I like that one the best because it states so clearly what's going on with the bishops right now: It's being a woman that's the problem for them, too.

Two centuries of American political annals ago, Abigail Adams said it first, about not forgetting the women, and what we need and deserve. But the bishops and their co-conspirators have, and continue to, these men sitting behind closed doors making life and death decisions about our lives.

Yes, it really is only when women are the decision makers that things go well for women. It really is only when the politics is personal to us and by us, meaning it includes us sitting at the decision-making table.

I'm hoping that Sen. Mikulski and her colleagues will call out the bishops sometime soon, and demand that the President ignore them, and do the right thing. Meanwhile, however, it's up to the rest of us girls. For, know this: as surely as we are sitting around wishing that the next few weeks could be nothing but fun and games, the bishops are having big fun, but they are playing a game we can't abide: Scheming how to keep us barefoot and pregnant, back in those hills with no way to escape. That's not a game we can allow them to win. So, let's remind this president not to forget the women either, even if the bishops would.

Follow Rebecca Sive on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RebeccaSive

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Youth Culture: From One Generation to the Next

The Wall Street Occupations and the

Making of a Global Counter Culture

Mark Naison
Fordham University

Yesterday, October 3, I spent about an hour in Liberty Plaza sitting, walking around and talking to people before the event I had come for- a Grade In organized by teacher activists- finally began, and was stunned by how different the occupation was from any demonstration I had attended recently.

First of all, in contrast to the last two protests I had participated in – a Wisconsin Solidarity rally at City Hall, and the Save Our Schools March on Washington-I saw few people my own age and no one I recognized- at least until the “Grade In” started. 

When I arrived, at 11 AM, most of the people in Liberty Plaza were the ones who had slept their overnight, and the vast majority were in their 20’s and 30’s- a half to a third my age.  They were drumming, sweeping the sidewalk, talking to curious visitors- whom were still few in number- eating or chilling with one another and their relaxed demeanor blew me away given the tumultuous events of the day before when more than 700 protesters had been arrested by the NYPD after marching onto the Brooklyn Bridge.

They were also, to my surprise, thoroughly international. Many of the people I met at the information desk, or who spontaneously started conversations with me, had accents which indicated they had been born in, or had recently come from, countries outside the United States. 

I felt like I was in Berlin or Barcelona, where you could always count on meeting young people from all over the world at any music performance or cultural event, only this was a political action in the heart of New York’s financial district.  I felt like I was in the midst of a
global youth community I had certainly seen emerging during my travels and teaching- after all, I had helped organize a “Bronx Berlin Youth Exchange”- but I had not expected to see at this particular protest.

But it was there, no doubt. And definitely made the discipline, determination and camaraderie of the protesters that more impressive But as much as the age cohort and global character of the occupation seemed strange, it also seemed oddly familiar, though it took a while for that familiarity to sink in.  The longer I stayed at Liberty Plaza, the more it felt like the countercultural communities I had spent time in during the late 60’s, from Maine to Madison to Portland Oregon, where discontent with war and a corrupt social system had bred a communal
spirit marked by incredible generosity and openness to strangers.

During the years when I traveled the country regularly as a political organizer and revolutionary- 1968 to 1971- I never had to stay in a hotel or pay for a meal in the more than 20 cities I visited.  Every one of these cities had a countercultural community and I was always
able to “crash” with people I knew or with people whose names I had been given by friends.  And I did the same for people in NYC. My apartment on West 99th Street was a crash pad for people around the country who had come to NY for demonstrations, or for revolutionaries
from other countries who had somehow gotten my name. I still remember making huge pots of chili for anyone who showed up with Goya chili beans, canned tomatoes, chop mean, bay leaves and chili powder. And it was not unusual for 20 or 30 to show up.

I had feared those days would never return- erased by decades of consumerism, materialism and cheap electronic devices— but when I visited Liberty Plaza, I realized that the global economic crisis had recreated something which I often thought of as an artifact of my own
nostalgia. Because right here in New York were hundreds of representatives of a whole generation of educated young people around the world, numbering tens if not hundreds millions of young people, who might never land in the secure professional jobs they had been promised or experience the cornucopia of material goods that came with them.

Described as a “lost generation” by economists, a critical mass of these young people, in cities throughout Europe and Latin America- and now right here in the United States-- had decided to build community in the midst of scarcity, challenge consumerism and the profit motive, and call out the powerful financial interests whose speculation and greed had helped put them in the economic predicament they were in.

Serious questions remain about the long term significance of this global movement. Would these middle class( or ex middle class)protesters connect with the even larger group of people in their own countries- workers, immigrants, minorities- who had been living in
poverty well before the current crash? Would their community survive even a modest revival of the world economy, sending them back into a lifestyle of acquisitive individualism which the global consumer market depends on to yield profits? Could they connect with people in poor or
working class neighborhoods who were already practicing communalism and mutual aid to create a truly multiracial, multiclass movement?

The jury is still out on all of those issues. But there are some promising signs. The chants of “We are all Troy Davis” during several of the movement’s marches. The increasing participation of labor unions in the protest. The involvement of more and more activists from the city’s Black and Latino neighborhoods in support for the Occupation.

And those who lived through the 60’s should remember this. Oppositional cultures of all kinds-ranging from hippie communities to the Black arts movement-represented the soil in which political protest
flourished during those heady years.

And the same is true in this era.  The emergence of a global youth counterculture should be be seen as a powerful complement to, if not an actual component of, a global movement for freedom, democracy, and economic justice

October 3, 2011

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Big Bucks in the Right's Radicalization

 

Uneasy Marriage

Between Tea Partiers

and the GOP

By Ed Kilgore
January 14, 2010

Recent polls show their movement is thought of more favorably [1] by Americans than either the Democratic or Republican Parties. Political independents are said to be attracted more each day. Progressive dissenters against the “pro-corporate” policies of the Obama administration pine for alliances [2] with them.

But at the same time, Republican politicians constantly ape their rhetoric and seek to deploy them against their Democratic, and sometimes intraparty, enemies.

So the question persists: Is the Tea Party Movement an independent “third force” in American politics? Or is it essentially a right-wing faction aimed at the conquest of the Republican Party?

There are no snap answers to these questions. Tea Party activists unsurprisingly stress their independence [3] from both parties, and their hostility towards the “Republican establishment.” The grassroots and citizen-based nature [4] of the movement is constantly promoted as a bedrock principle. And even when tea-partiers operate in the conventional electoral setting of Republican primaries, their candidates are billed as insurgents, not as intraparty warriors.

But the fact remains that these candidates are almost invariably self-identified Republicans, campaigning on traditional conservative Republican themes, and cooperating with Republican politicians tactically and strategically on major issues. There is zero visible outreach to Democrats of any stripe. And to the extent there is a consensus Tea Party ideology, it is indistinguishable in any significant way from the longstanding agenda of the right wing of the GOP—particular the agenda of the most recent past, when conservatives have sought conspicuously to disassociate themselves from the record of the Bush administration.

Republican politicians are already very active in the movement itself. Former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, who appears to have a better than even chance of toppling popular Republican governor Charlie Crist in a Senate primary this year, is a major figure [5] in both the Tea Party Movement and more traditional conservative GOP circles. South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, generally known as the most conservative Republican U.S. senator, has said [6]: “We need to stop looking at the tea parties as separate from the Republican Party.” (For a look at the rise of Tea Partiers in the House, read Lydia DePillis’s excellent piece [7].)

What makes this sort of talk especially relevant politically is that it serves a very deep psychological need among contemporary conservative Republicans. They’ve largely succeeded in subduing those few voices in the GOP urging a old-fashioned “big tent” party that’s tolerant of ideological moderates. Now the Tea Party phenomenon offers conservative Republicans a talking point they badly need: evidence that there is a previously hidden conservative majority in the country that only a more sharply consistent conservative message can reach. In other words, electoral gold is to be found on the right, not in the center, of the ideological spectrum. But aside from a shared antipathy towards Barack Obama, “liberals,” taxes, and various other bugaboos, sealing the deal between a “reformed” GOP and Tea Party activists is a complicated proposition.

This much has been made clear by the calling of a National Tea Party Convention [8] in Nashville next month, by a for-profit group called Tea Party Nation. Aside from the questionable right of anyone in particular to “convene” this highly decentralized movement, a $549 registration fee has raised hackles in many circles, and it’s not clear how legitimate the Nashville gathering—denounced this week [9] by the highly influential RedState founder Erick Erickson as “scammy”—will turn out to be.

But interestingly enough, no one seems to be complaining about the speakers list put together for the National Tea Party Convention. The big keynote speaker is Sarah Palin [10]; other featured speakers include Republican House members Michelle Bachmann and Marsha Blackburn (the latter a member of the House GOP leadership). Aside from illustrating an unusual and admirable commitment to gender equity in speaking gigs, this lineup does not exactly show uneasiness about alliances with Republican pols.

The Nashville linup also would appear to rebut another commonly held argument that the Tea Party Movement’s independence is guaranteed by its fundamentally libertarian character, so incompatible with the GOP’s heavy reliance on cultural conservatives and foreign-policy neocons. Palin is, of course, the maximum heroine of cultural conservatives. Bachmann is famous for questioning the patriotism of any and all Democrats. Beyond that, Tea Party Convention panelists include the Christian Right warhorse Rick Scarborough of Vision America (notable, among other things, for his advocacy of global conflict with Muslims) and Judge Roy Moore, the famous “Ten Commandments Judge” who’s a favorite of theocrats everywhere. No genuine libertarian would embrace this crew.

Indeed, for all the talk about the Tea Party Movement as a potential “third force” in American politics, it’s just as easy to argue that it’s mainly composed of right-wing Republican activists who have been radicalized by the political and economic events of the last couple of years, and particularly by the election of Barack Obama.

The usefulness of the Tea Party Movement in a full right-wing takeover of the Republican Party is obvious. What’s less obvious is why a close relationship with Republican politicians serves the purposes of truly independent citizen-activists disgusted by the political status quo. Republicans have swallowed a lot of Tea Party rhetoric, but they may be in the process of swallowing up the Tea Party Movement.

Ed Kilgore is Managing Editor of The Democratic Strategist [11] and a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute.

For more TNR, become a fan [12] on Facebook and follow us [13] on Twitter.

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From the Indian Wars to Avatar - Tom Hayden's Take on the Movie and Our Culture

Tom Hayden

 

January 6, 2010

On Avatar

Dear Patrick Goldstein,

I was very interested in your political analysis of the movie Avatar in the LA Times. My left-wing background tells me that culture doesn't change material conditions, but it sure changes consciousness and that's the cradle of new activism. Conservatives are right to be profoundly disturbed about James Cameron's movie. And the media sometimes has difficulty discerning when public attitudes move beyond narrow electoral noise.

Like other people I know, I was profoundly moved by two revelations in my life: the first came when reading Dee  Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee about 1970 in Berkeley, a time when the Vietnam war was raging and my conventional assumptions had been shaken to the root. I intuited in a flash that Vietnam was a continuation of the counter-insurgency wars on our Great Plains of the century before, and would be repeated over and over again.

Even the US instruments of war were named after the native tribes [Tomahawk missiles for example], the term "Vietcong" was a pejorative like "Sioux" and "Apache", which meant enemy]. The photos from My Lai were identical in an eerie way with those from Wounded Knee. Gold [and later, uranium] in the Black Hills was the equivalent of oil in Iraq. And of course the treaties all were unkept as Manifest Destiny expanded.

This sensibility underlies James Cameron's spectacle of the Nav'I facing extinction. The triumphant fighting back is therapeutic on many levels, and reveals the emergence of a new American national narrative that recognizes the shame of what happened to the native Americans at the very historical moment we celebrate as the birth of democracy. That both liberal and conservative narratives of the nation are in denial about this original sin is deeply troubling to many Americans who want to save democracy from the perpetuation of its past.

My second revelation came when I first read Thomas Berry's The Dream of the Earth in the 1980s, a theological work that strived to reveal the sacred nature of all creation, not simply the sacredness of human beings. A scholar, scientist and Catholic priest, Father Berry influenced the thought and lives of many people disillusioned with the arrogant utilitarianism that said the universe was created only for human use, a kind of storehouse of resources for exploitation and consumption. Thomas Berry called on his followers to explore the divine mode of the universe as long understood and practiced by many native people. He added that modern scientific inquiry itself pointed toward an unfathomable mystery at the origin of the universe, a mystery that he sometimes called God, though he believed that the mystery was beyond language.

I do not believe that these revelatory experiences were isolated or marginal, though they were rebuffed by the institutions they threatened. Millions of Americans, without leaving their mainstream roles and religions, became aware of a kinship with the natural world, and the debt we have to native traditions.

For example, according to a 1995 MIT survey, 78 percent believed that "because God created the natural world, it is wrong to abuse it," and "before Columbus came to this continent, the Indians were completely in balance with their environment."

I believe James Cameron simply has brought this pre-existing consciousness to the mainstream of orthodox life through a brilliant exercise of film-making.

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Rightist Populism: Hard Right, Culture, Real War

Photo: Palin in Kuwait

Palin's Tactics:
Cultural Symbols
Vs. Actual Policies

By Robert Kuttner
AlterNet.org

Sept. 4, 2008 - So now we understand what John McCain's handlers were up to: Intensify the culture wars, and once again use cultural symbols as substitutes for policies. In particular, use Hockey Mom Sarah Palin to change the subject from why regular Americans are hurting in the pocketbook to why Palin is a more regular American than Barack Obama. Will the Democrats change it back? Whether they do will decide the election.

Last night, we learned once again how Republicans keep managing to turn seemingly weak candidates and weaker economic circumstances into instruments of political victory: They are superb at creating master narratives that make Democrats, liberals, and "the media" into the cultural enemies of ordinary people.

Those who view this as an overly narrow and outmoded Rovian tactic of throwing raw (moose) meat at the conservative base miss the point. The strategy of energizing the base is leveraged into using cultural symbols to reach out to everyone else who is frustrated with how little they get back from the economy and the government--not just hard core right-to-life women in Missouri and Oklahoma, but downwardly mobile white men in Ohio and Pennsylvania.


In this strategy, every little Democratic misstep is inflated into a cultural parable, while gaping holes in the Republican story are neatly sidestepped. The master narrative of Obama as an unqualified elitist will be reinforced again and again this fall, as it was last night with Palin lines like these: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities." "I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening. We prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco." (If you think that Palin came up with these zingers herself, I have a bridge-to-nowhere to sell you.)

Republicans consistently play this kind of hardball. And, as effective as the Democratic convention was, it did not quite have as consistent a master narrative. Only at peak moments did the Democrats rise the necessary shaming of McCain, as in John Kerry's superbly indignant speech, Biden's talk of the kitchen-table frustrations of regular Americans, and a few of Obama's better lines.

If the Republican master strategists can use Sarah Palin as Everywoman, just as they successfully used George W. Bush as the aw-shucks champion of regular people, they could turn the trick with a trained monkey.

Will they succeed yet again? That depends on two factors.

One is whether Sarah Palin's faux-feminist machismo, Alaska style, is just a little too weird for the lower-48. Can she and her handlers succeed in using purely symbolic appeals to camouflage her actual record and the plain contradictions in her story? Only time will tell. As Tim Egan, who has covered Alaska for the Times, has observed, she may be the only vice presidential candidate since Teddy Roosevelt who "knows how to field dress a moose," in Fred Thompson's memorable words (note to SNL, how about a moose in a party dress), but how many other Americans have actually dressed a moose-or care?

In defending Palin, Republican spokesmen (emphasis on men) charmingly discovered a new word-"sexist." Rightwingers who have long urged a traditional division of labor in the family found it sexist that some bloggers and talking heads were wondering why a "traditional values" mother of a newborn special needs baby and a pregnant 17-year old would abruptly jump into national politics. One Republican mouthpiece indignantly asked an NPR interviewer why she wasn't criticizing Barack Obama for leaving his daughters at home. Rudy Giuliani, of all people, asked: "How dare they question whether Sarah Palin has enough time to spend with her children and be vice president. How dare they do that? When do they ever ask a man that question?"

But isn't the family-values story that moms are supposed to stay home (and that high school girls are supposed to be abstinent?) They question is whether the broad, non-base public notices the plain hypocrisy. Somehow, it's hard to imagine Hillary voters being impressed.

The more important factor, of course, is economic. For nearly a week, the Palin drama has diverted attention from the real issue in the campaign-the weak economy and its effect on regular Americans. This was the Republican gamble. McCain's handlers were willing to take the messy Palin details in exchange for the distraction. Indeed, the rich details served to amplify the distraction.

It's understandable that McCain and Palin want to change the subject, for they have so little to offer voters. Bloggers and talking heads have taken the bait. And it's legitimate that they should expose the holes in Palin's story. But the responsibility for changing the subject back to pocketbook issues belongs to the Democrats.

This morning in my emailbox, was a point by point rebuttal of Palin's speech, sent by Obama economic spokesman Jason Furman, in mind-numbing detail. (Palin as mayor increased the Wasilla sales tax from 2.0 to 2.5 percent, etc., etc.)

This will endear the Obama campaign to liberal policy wonks everywhere, but it is no substitute for a master narrative. Unless Obama and Biden use every opportunity to hammer home how the right has played working Americans for suckers, culture will trump economics yet again.

[Robert Kuttner is the author of Obama's Challenge: America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency, just released by Chelsea Green. He is the co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect magazine, as well as a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the think tank Demos.]

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/97593/

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