Right -- substantively, the current Republican party has done an awful lot more for business interests than social conservatives. On the other hand, there are an awful lot more socially conservative voters than genuinely rich people. If the social conservatives ever really wake up to the fact that they aren't getting much out of the deal, the Republicans have problems.
Gay marriage is an attempt to throw a bone to the Christian right, without actually doing anything for them.
And speaking of strained coalitions, I REALLY want Mitt Romney to run for President. What a fun little bloodbath that would be. An early glimpse of the intra party Republican blood letting to be found in Mike Adam's recent columns on Townhall here and here.
The first graf is gold.
"The fact that Joseph Smith roamed about in upstate New York as a young man searching for the lost treasures of Captain Kidd should have been enough to warn people that he was a few fries short of a happy meal. But his later claims to have received a set of Golden Plates from the Angel Moroni spared him from being seen merely as a quack. Instead, they ensured that he will go down in history as both a fraud and a heretic."
"their fairly unlikely coalition -- white, non-urban, working class voters who vote on social issues, and business interests: wealthy people voting on policies that advantage them economically."
This is wrong -- no demographic group of appreciable size can be described as mostly wealthy if 'wealthy' means advantaged by current Republican economic policy. They may be wealthier than the average, but that's different. (Hell, I'm a BigLaw associate, and I'm pretty sure that the more redistributive tax policies I'd favor would leave me, net, better off. I could be wrong, and I'd favor them anyway, but that's my guess.)
Now, I'd believe that social conservatives vote for Republican economic policies either because they're confused about how they'll work out and think that they are going to be economically advantageous even at a middle-class economic level, or, more charitably, because they somehow believe that Republican economic policies are more just, despite the fact that those policies are not in their own interest.
The unkillable meme that republican voters are mostly or to a great extent working class social conservatives is an interesting sociological phenomenon.
You, on the other hand, weren't so egregriously wrong. I don't mean to pick on you.
I don't think that this is an unkillable meme. I think of fundies as suburban and exurban middle-class megachurch attenders, in addition to trailer-park-living rural factory workers who watch Jerry Falwell.
The unkillable meme that republican voters are mostly or to a great extent working class social conservatives is an interesting sociological phenomenon.
Erm... working or middle class, that's right. Most people in the US are working or middle class, and the Rebulicans get about half the vote: there's nowhere else for it to come from. While I'll agree with you that the plutocrats have coopted the policy arm of the party, they really do get a lot of votes from middle class people they're screwing.
(Now, it's true that they tend richer than Democrats -- the coalition is the well off + social conservatives, and anyone who falls into both categories. But they do get a real chunk of middle class votes, and the ones they get seem to mostly be on the socially conservative issues.)
I think we need some clarification on 'middle class'. How high does it go, income-wise? I'd guess that people who are in the 80th percentile of income will call themselves middle-class, will be pretty far removed from some but not all middle-class economic concerns, and won't get that much benefit from Republican fiscal policy (Drum occasionally links to stats that show that it's only the top quintile, and especially the top 1%, that really benefits).
I think that a lot of the social conservatives are economically stable--perhaps simply as a function of geography--and are fine with that. The only way that they can be paid off is on cultural issues. The rich/elite don't give a fuck, as social rules don't apply in the least to them. So Republican rich/elites will happily take the tax cuts and continue doing precisely the things the social conservatives most abhor.
That actually seems like a pretty stable coalition. It's not ideologically stable, but the two groups don't conflict so much.
I assumed that by coalition you meant electoral coalition, and that theefore you meant someting like upper middle clas when yu said wealthy. The truly wealthy are of course an important part of the conservative movement despitenot being an important part of the electorate.
People who vote against what they perceive their class interest isn't a unimportant group when elections are so close, but it's a relatively small group. The GOP coalition consist mainly of upper middle class people.
I think that a lot of the social conservatives are economically stable--perhaps simply as a function of geography
I'm not so sure. Lubbock isn't too prosperous (at least some of the area economy depends on agriculture, which I'd guess equals guaranteed instability), and Utah consistently leads the country in personal bankruptcy rates.
Lubbock isn't too prosperous (at least some of the area economy depends on agriculture, which I'd guess equals guaranteed instability), and Utah consistently leads the country in personal bankruptcy rates.
I meant more that if you live in certain places, the chances that you are going to dramatically improve your economic circumstances are small. You expect the annual raise and to stay with one company (or one system of companies) for your working life. The actual effect of various government policies on your life is pretty muted. (This is all ex recta (lovely, whoever started that).)
People who vote against what they perceive their class interest isn't a unimportant group when elections are so close
I think the key here is 'perceive their class interest'. As I said in 15, Republican economic policy isn't particularly serving even the upper middle class. Upper middle class voters who vote Republican on economic issues are either confused about their self interest, or are voting on principle (economics as a branch of social conservatism, sort of) rather than self interest.
One can be personally socially conservative while also distrusting the government's attempts to foist social conservativism on its citizens. That describes, I'd say, a lot of the Western quasi-liberatarians who've allowed themselves to get swept up in the Republicans Will Protect You campaign. Democrats used to be seen as the ones who wanted to monitor your home and take away your money and children, but the Republicans haven't shown themselves to be any real protectors of liberty in this age...
I think we need some clarification on 'middle class'. How high does it go, income-wise? I'd guess that people who are in the 80th percentile of income will call themselves middle-class, will be pretty far removed from some but not all middle-class economic concerns
And it alos pays to keep in mind just how much this can be affected by geographic area because of housing costs. I'm not in love with Sandy, Utah, but up here I have a house in a middle to upper middle class neighborhood, whereas back home in L.A. I couldn't touch a thing on my current income.
There's also a neat 'responsibility' overlap. We're the party of fiscal responsibility! We expect people to manage their own money, not have the government do it for them. We don't mollycoddle people! Personal responsibility (and here's the neat twist as we switch from freedom to control) -- if you don't want to have a baby, don't have sex! Take responsibility for your actions. A responsible gun owner will never shoot his gun needlessly. (I'm liking the shooting gun-getting pregnant implication, so I'm not editing.) Reduce welfare for lazy people. You are responsible and work hard! Why would you want the government to take YOUR money for WELFARE.
It works. No one thinks they're lazy or irresponsible. Everyone hopes to be rich someday (why vote against your eventual aspiration?) And if you're undecided on the economic question, vote for the party of responsibility.
I'll eat my hat if the averge fundie isn't wealthier than the average american.
Best get your hat-eating suit on, if North Carolina is at all representative of the country. The religion gets more prevalent the further you move into the poor areas. The wealthier areas are centered around the universities and the tech/science industries.
As for the coalition, most of the libertarians I know have 1) abandoned the Libertarian Party as hopeless and 2) come to view the Republicans as the repository of authoritarian thought in the US. They aren't particularly pleased with the Democrats, but they have largely jettisoned the notion that there isn't any difference between the two major parties and see the Dems as clearly the lesser of two evils.
Whether they have comprised any significant chunk of the GOP coalition isn't a question I can answer, but as close as the last two elections have been, it wouldn't really take much.
Apo, but the question is, is there a distinction between fundamentalism as religion, and fundamentalism as political litmus test? I would wager that most right-wing Christian Coalition types are pretty well off: my stereotype is the smug megachurchgoer. (I.e., my uncle and his family.) But that's different, isn't it, from genuinely religious fundamentalists who may even find the Republican party's appropriation of their belief offensively political?
The distinction may not fall neatly along class lines, and I'm probably being kind of an asshole in implying it does. But my sense is that the politically active religious right leadership is *not* some grassroots movement; it's mostly well-off assholes who are using religion as a tool to advance a political agenda. And I'd imagine that the poor religious are capable of realizing that while, say, abortion might be a really bad thing, poverty isn't entirely the result of simple laziness.
(Though as I write, a particular blogger who is poor, undereducated, and defensively right-wing comes to mind.)
I still think you may be getting crossed up between "Most UMC voters vote Republican" and "Most Republicans are UMC". I'm sure the first is true, but I don't think the second is -- the numbers just aren't big enough.
You're right about the perception that Democrats are a richer, more elitist, party than Repulicans. That is both false and harmful.
There's a literal 'richer' component to the image, though - limousine liberal? - and that hurts us. I remember talking with Idealist about a partner at our old firm, and my saying that I was kind of surprised she was a Democrat because she's clearly Yankee old-money, and his response was that her upper-class social status was something that he thought of as making it more, rather than less, likely that she'd be a Democrat. (Sorry if I've misquoted you, Ideal.)
Right. The "Democrats are elitists" perception depends on resenting people who are educated. It works because education is a class marker, as well as (indeed, more than) an intelligence marker, and there are plenty of undereducated folks who feel that they are as good as, or as intelligent as, those of us who've had a lot of formal education. Hell, we engage in the resentment of the class-marked education ourselves, when we bitch about our lazy, entitled, middle-class students.
If it's destructive stereotypes of Democrats you want, always go to Kaus. As a commenter says, "It's an amazing testimony to Republican propaganda that Kaus translates from 'affluent' to 'not conservative' and expects no one to notice."
It depends on the source of the wealth, too. My ex recto opinion: born into serious wealth ('everyone I know went to private school!!!') means a pretty serious liberal; born into comfortable-but-not-wealthy on down but through work and luck ends up wealthy, more likely to be conservative.
I would wager that most right-wing Christian Coalition types are pretty well off
I'd take that wager.
the politically active religious right leadership is *not* some grassroots movement; it's mostly well-off assholes
Well, sure. But the leadership isn't the "average fundie." The average fundie is sitting in the pews, not lobbying Congress. Maybe NC doesn't map well onto the country at large, and I haven't spent much time looking elsewhere, but the well-off folks tend to be mainline Protestant (and Catholic and Jewish, though both populations are smaller here).
But the average fundie, in that case, is following the leadership; it's the leadership, not the average fundie, that's setting up the religion=politics idea. I mean, I guess what I'm saying is that I don't think it's the average fundie whose political ideas are so offensive; it's the assholes who are mobilizing the average fundie's religion into a specific political goal. I don't give a rat's ass if people dislike abortion, don't believe in evolution, whatever. I do give a rat's ass when that kind of shit gets used to create fucked-up policies, and even more so when it's used to create fucked-up policies as masks for really vile energy policy, foreign policy, civil liberties stuff, etc.--things that aren't in any way actually religious issues, and that people wouldn't vote for or support unless the religious crap were being drummed up in order to advance the other stuff.
I guess what I'm saying is that if there were a genuine fundamentalislt party, I'd object to it (obviously); but I don't think it would be a political threat, and it might actually have policies about things like war and economics that I'd be able to approve of.
One can be personally socially conservative while also distrusting the government's attempts to foist social conservativism on its citizens. That describes, I'd say, a lot of the Western quasi-liberatarians who've allowed themselves to get swept up in the Republicans Will Protect You campaign.
Western quasi-libertarians and religious conservatives also perceive themselves as having a common enemy in urban elitists who don't respect their values and way of life. Neither group perceives the other as being a serious threat because both think it's the urban types who are the real danger. It looks like an unstable coalition, but the shared experience of threatened identity is pretty powerful.
Or possibly I'm over-generalizing from my own parents.
56: We're all over-generalizing wildly; but then, so are the pros.
I don't think it's the average fundie whose political ideas are so offensive
You and I know different fundies. I know more than a couple whom I personally like, and whom I think of as much better, much more decent people than I am, but whose deep political beliefs are anathma to me.
I have to agree with apo on 40. I have twice cancelled a comment that consisted largely of "Y'ain't from around here, are ya?"
Maybe we're talking about different things when we say fundie. When I say it, I think of people who are using religion as a social tool to supress respect for others and try to replace it with fear of a spiritual retribution they can claim, to themselves and others, to have already avoided by their faith. It tries to cancel the physical realities of poverty and widening economic gaps by introducing an opposing spiritual wealth that's just one death away from here. And those people, in my experience, have been almost universally decidedly other than upper middle class.
Bphd, I can see the megachurch stereotype, but where I grew up we didn't have megachurches, so that one's not really marked on my mental topology. What we had were cement-block churches and barns decorated with hubcaps. I think you're quite right when you say that the people in charge of the 'grassroots' religious right are in fact wealthy elitists (Pat Robertson's blood diamonds, for example). But their followers are not, and it's their followers who do most of the voting.
So, when I think 'fundie,' I think of the people who have signed into the whole pie-in-the-sky attitude that the here and now doesn't matter at all in light of the there and then, the sort of people who think it totally reasonable for James Watt to suggest policy on the basis that conservation is unimportant because the Rapture is due any day now, anyway, so why bother? And I don't think most of the people for whom those sorts of ethereal concerns are primary are the people who closely monitor their stock portfolios as part of their long-term planning.
Okay. But if the here and now doesn't matter, why vote at all?
(I'm perfectly willing to believe that there's a difference between, say, South Carolina and southern Cali in terms of who the right-voting fundies are. But I hate the megachurch people more.)
AWB had at least one post lately about the infection of regular churches by a mega-church mentality, so the distinctions may be hard to sustain. It's a lot of places now.
I don't think the results of the last presidential election was really a victory of the right wing movement, even though it may have been a victory for them. I think it was a sense on the part of many people that we were protected better from terrorists by a more militant, agressive and beligerent government, and that there was no attractive alternative. And it was still damn close.
I'd love to think that the attenuation, if we can't hope for collapse, of the WOT as a ruling idea will tip the balance. My local papers are screaming this morning about plots to behead Stephen Harper, so they're still working terra for all it's worth, but we'll have to see.
The poor fundies, like George W. Bush, may be too ignorant and insubstantial to be worthy of full-on hatred, but some of them do manage that same arrogant, aggressive ignorance that I do deeply despise.
Yeah, but they somehow aren't as smug. There's something about the smug, comfortable, condescending, self-satisfied nature of the rich megachurch fundies that makes me want to claw their eyes out and push them into a septic tank.
Except that while the East Coast Jews types vote Democrat, the fundamentalist base has reclaimed Jewish as part of an alleged Judeo-Christian Worldview: support of Israel, seeing America as fulfilling a promise made to Abraham, seeing tensions in the mid-East as threatening the Jews.
Who are, for these purposes, just like Christians.
I totally can see that angle of the megachurchers as you describe them, so I'm not trying to say that isn't true. That said, if you think the redneck fundies aren't smug, dude, have I ever got some cousins to show you.
Well, I didn't say it was *good* fundie support. But there's a lot of God's-chosen-people-so-Jews-are-sort-of-saved-too-so-let's-bomb Palestine out there.
71: I agree. I was thinking of those weird late-night ads that solicit funds to send Jews HOME(!) to the JEWLANDS(!). Creepy, and, as far as I know, based on an eschatological notion of all the Jews rounding themselves up in Israel as a precondition to the apocalypse.
73: Ah, shoot, I can't find any links, but it's often a poor Jewish girl from Russia or Eastern Europe, and for $0.14 a day you can send her back to the homeland in Israel [cue imagery of Israel and eerie, new-age-y music]. Seriously freaky if you realize they're really trying to rush along the Final Judgment.
I'd just like to endorse what David Weman said way up above. A lot of fundamentalists are prosperous and educated, though usually with a tech or business education. I think of them as the people who wanted to skip the "liberal arts bullshit" and get to the useful stuff.
Many fundamentalist churches are quite indulgent of their parishioners as long as they're not gay or drug-addicted. There can be a lot of MF hanky-panky, as long as it's not too obvious. Some churches teach charity, and some really don't. Some don't touch on business ethics more than minimally necessary.
Republican populism is fake, but Democratic elitism is real. The identification of the Democrats with the university-educated and with the professorial / managerial / professional / media elites is too tight. There's a certain condescending way of speaking there which isn't just a speech pattern. Kerry projected that.
The Vietnam War destroyed the effectiveness of the wise, urbane, witty college professor (Galbraith, Schlesinger, et al.)
A substantial proportion of students hate their professors, but they don't tell them so.
but Democratic elitism is real. The identification of the Democrats with the university-educated and with the professorial / managerial / professional / media elites is too tight.
I think that's probably right; I catch myself doing it on occasion. I think Sommersby has written scathing posts about this tendency of some us, one of which regarded the way we treat the religious. Which is to say, I'm pretty much responsible for this second term. Sorry about that.
The coming GOP crack-up is something of a hardy perennial in political debates. And I agree, it is difficult to see how the Republicans can continue to unite married people, church goers, white people, and those with incomes over 50,000. Or maybe it isn’t. Almost all political coalitions seem insane on close observation, and it’s not clear to me that the Republican party differs much from the Democratic party in this regard.
On the substance of the crack-up, I know it’s often said that social conservatives have been screwed by Bush in comparison to “the rich” - but I really don’t know that this is true. Alito and Roberts are just what the doctor ordered from the social conservative perspective. The fact is, social conservatives really can’t enact most of their agenda legislatively absent a change in the composition of the judicial branch, so two solid supreme court picks mean a lot to them. (This also explains the great ire evoked by the Myers nomination). This isn’t rocket science political analysis, mind you, just the basics of how the GOP works.
Also, I find myself entirely in agreement with Emerson (?!). Republicans lie to themselves when self-identifying as salt-of-the-earth, but democratic elitism is real. The press, the professoriate, and folks with post-grad degrees. How interesting is it that the GOP can win the votes of people making 100,000 plus a year (decisively) while losing (decisively) people with post-graduate degrees!
[[Is this an example of perplexing trolling? If so, my apologies. But briefly riffing off that earlier thread topic, is not more the truly inexplicable behavior hanging out on web sites that do little more than confirm one’s prejudices? Unfogged may not be an example of this type, but (the worst of) redstate and the huffingtonpost surely are. Why would any leftist read the huffington post? For me, it’s a fun glimpse inside the monkey house, but a for a left winger with anything on the ball, I don’t see the appeal]]
The Vietnam War destroyed the effectiveness of the wise, urbane, witty college professor (Galbraith, Schlesinger, et al.)
The irony in that of course being that Galbraith's counsel, on Vietnam most of all, really was wise, u & w. It was the pseudos, the assistant deans and whatnot who were what Halberstam called The Best And The Brightest, with irony intended, who did the damage.
What I honestly don't understand is why "the press, the professoriate, and folks with post-grad degrees" are considered elitists. Very few people in those categories are from especially privileged backgrounds.
Positionally they have power over students, and they just have this **attitude.**
Democratic class seems dependent of institutional connections and on credentials, whereas Republican class depends of $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. Rich people without education and connections hate smartypants intellectuals even though the intellectuals have less money and less power.
85: I'm not sure about that. As the influence of the GI Bill and the 1960s-70s expansion of teaching positions fades, more and more of the people whose post-grad degrees lead to teaching seem to be from privileged (relatively speaking) backgrounds. As for regular MAs and professional degrees, I don't know.
And weren't we just complaining about unpaid internships restricting access to journalism?
I think we may be considered elitists because um, well, we are. I know my gut responses to claims about evil scientists and evolution and feminist history scholars teaching about something other than which king beat what king in what war is roughly Not my fault you've got your head up your ass, I didn't put it there. and pulling out my hair.
But more sarcastically: we're not any more elitist than the libertarian lawyers in their Armani suits, or the i-banking Chets, it's just that Rove is a better operative than anyone on the Dem side and has millions of well-heeled, iPod-listening, God-fearing, gas-guzzling SUV driving wealthy white conservatives, who, by the way, control the most powerful military on the planet, convinced into thinking they're an oppressed minority.
Elitists, or an elite? Surely the press and academics perceive themselves as the latter. I doubt that's entirely wrong. They certainly tend to be read more and be better informed than the national average.
And on the former, if I may invoke the anecdote, I would note that in my experience academics are often exceptionally status conscious.
baa says well what I was trying to say back in #20. Except he says it with love where I would have said it with hate.
Very few people in those categories are from especially privileged backgrounds.
I don't think that it's the backgrounds that matter. Often enough it's the newbies who are most conscious of the various unspoken rules enforcing place, and who are the most conspicuous in making sure those rules are enforced; the only truly fucking annoying New Yorkers are the ones who moved there from Bumfuck and are now militant city-ites. Also, I'm not sure economic class is the critical issue--as Emerson says, for Dems, it's often the credentials.
Also, it was interesting to watch usually hardcore anti-elitists suddenly rediscover the distinction between elite and expertise during the Supreme Court nomination process.
Cala, as you may know, everyone is a frickin' underdog these days. It';s simply nauseating. As much as I dislike Nietzsche, the bastard wasn't half right on this one.
And on the former, if I may invoke the anecdote, I would note that in my experience academics are often exceptionally status conscious.
I won't deny that. But more status conscious, than, say, the average 22-year-old consulting firm type? That I'm not so sure.
You should be independently wealthy if you're doing an MA in the humanities (or if you're not, taken out and shot admonished as to why going into debt for an MA may seriously fuck up your life.)
I was thinking of the exception of people doing humanities MAs for teaching reasons (salary increase, for one thing). A fair amount of people do them part-time/night, at public schools, or through programs that give teachers some amount of support (though all of these paths could still lead to some debt).
I had a friend who went from a no-count HS to a third rank U (Portland State) to a near-elite grad school (one of the good depts. at Texas). He felt that the faculty figured out who the top students would be very early in the term, based on their undergrad school and connections. He got less than no feeling that they valued him as a self-made guy (almost trailer trash growing up).
They say that the best day care centers lead sequentially to the best primary schools, middle schools, highschools, colleges, and jobs. I pretty much believe it my now.
The identification of the Democrats with the university-educated and with the professorial / managerial / professional / media elites is too tight. There's a certain condescending way of speaking there which isn't just a speech pattern.
No doubt true in some cases, but it's also true that people who are insecure about their place in the pecking order commonly see condescension that isn't there. Communication is hard, especially between strangers with little or no common experience, and especially when a lot of money is being spent to make it hard. There's some truth to the "elitist Democrat" idea, but as a political force it's mostly manufactured. Take a few real slights, add a goodly dollop of status anxiety, and mix with vast amounts of cash and you end up convincing a whole lot of people that all Democrats are just like the people they resented in high school.
But the hatred has other causes than just remembered classroom humiliation. And social pretence is and ought to be just laughable, especially from somebody with frayed chinos in a second-hand Volvo. There seems to be real fear, fear of outsiders and experts, and their ability to set in motion forces that threaten lives. Who gave us affirmative action and Title 9 and speech codes and all sorts of things that can reach out and frustrate expectations. Remember that ad Jesse Helms ran a few years ago, where the white male hand crumples up the rejection, remembering the job "they had to give to a minority?" It's the power of intellectuals to set these forces in motion, as I say, that causes the fear. That, and the fear that superior people might be laughing at them.
Which contradicts the disdain they ought to be able to feel for academia's pathetic, petty snobberies. Nobody said it was consistent.
Rove is a better operative than anyone on the Dem side and has millions of well-heeled, iPod-listening, God-fearing, gas-guzzling SUV driving wealthy white conservatives, who, by the way, control the most powerful military on the planet, convinced into thinking they're an oppressed minority.
That may be partially right, but IMHO in the Republican perception of things, the bigger problem is the elitist problem. SCMT hit pretty close upthread when he noted that the perceived contempt in which the Democratic Party holds the various unwashed classes, such as fundamentalists, causes them to band together. Without getting into an argument over whether it is accurate or fair or deserved or anything else, I think it noneless true that a good part of what keeps the Republican coalition together is the feeling that they are very unwelcome in the Democratic Party. People wonder why a homosexual would be a Republican, because there is (shamefully, in my view) a wing of the Republican Party which views them with disgust. But one could ask exactly the same thing of a fundamentalist or many other groups with respect to the Democratic Party. So basically, what holds us together is you.
In my experience academics are often exceptionally status conscious.
Agreed. But being status conscious is hardly exclusive to, or even particularly characteristic of, elite groups. And most of the kids who are resented in high school are *not* the ones that go on to graduate school; the grad students are the ones who were invisible in high school.
American anti-intellectualism is hardly a new idea. And surely that's part of it. But I suspect that the suspicion of the chattering classes has to do with the fact that we are *not* elites in most senses--but we do seem to have some kind of status that's incommensurate with income and most social status markers. Academics and journalists certainly have cultural capital. But that doesn't make us elites (or elitists)--it just makes us a bit discomfiting in terms of the usual status markers, and I suspect that's why the "academic elites" meme works so well.
Idealist's #98 has a lot of truth to it, but it doesn't seem to me the whole story. To try the reduction, pro-life people aren't GOP mainly because of Democratics contempt (although that contempt surely exists). No, they vote GOP because they (correctly) perceive that the GOP is closer to their values. No doubt casual bigotry against "fundies" doesn't help, but there's a rationale behind that particular adversary culture.
* * *
SCMT, I thought you were *always* about the love...
There seems to be real fear, fear of outsiders and experts, and their ability to set in motion forces that threaten lives.
True, but the interesting question is why that translates into a strong political/tribal response against intellectuals/Democrats but not against big employers, health insurers, credit card companies, etc.
While we're pulling out anecdotes, there's a fair amount of people I know that lean Democratic on social policies but have been voting consistently Republican due to abortion. As in, it comes down to two candidates driving as hard to the center as they can ('I'm like him, but wearing the blue tie, not the red one') except one is pro-choice, and one is pro-life.
Sure SCMT, abortion is just one example. But the point being that it isn't just (or even primarily) elite contumely that makes social conservative vote Republican. It's also a rational calculation of interest.
Now wait. How elite is 90% of the black population,labor unions, and hippies? Corporate America, which clearly trends Republican, is as much the elite as the professoriate and certainly richer, vastly more influential, and far more numerous.
102: I have a problem with the idea that the left are hostile to pro-life voters. I'm pretty much as pro-choice as people get, and I'm hostile to pro-life voters because I see their political position as one that is about denying me a fundamental right to self-determination. The "Democrats are contemptuous" of pro-life or fundamentalist voters idea is, at least for Democrats like me, a maddening kind of blame-the-victim argument. I'm sure it's the same when gay people are accused of holding contempt for religous voters and so forth. And surely it works both ways: the Republican party seems to have done a lovely job of encouraging contempt as well--hell, even in this thread a fair number of us seem to be demonstrating contempt for folks with, or aspiring to, graduate degrees--i.e., ourselves.
That said, yes: folks who are strongly dedicated to particular non-economic issues, and vote accordingly, are not voting against their own sense of their self-interest, even if they're undermining their economic security.
How elite is 90% of the black population,labor unions, and hippies?
With the possible exception of unions,these people have close to no say in the present Democratic Party. And that's in part because we lost a lot of votes precisely because we constructed intellectual edifices that supported precisely those disfavored groups.
To connect to something Cala sort of said, part of the problem is that we (or really, some part of "we") were right about an awful lot of things for a very long time, and we weren't/aren't shy about pulling the moral high-horse out. I don't really know what we do about that, as we were right, and backing away from that is throwing some percentage of our coalition under a bus.
How elite is 90% of the black population,labor unions, and hippies?
My sense ois that they are to Republicans what fundies are to us: despised indeed, but also dupes of the other party's elite, whose votes are reliable even though they never get what they want, need and are promised.
To add to what baa says in 102, the fundamentalists I know aren't voting Republican because they feel slighted by the Democrats. They're voting Republican because they're pro-life, anti-gay, etc. I don't think making nice to fundamentalists without compromising our core values will lure them to the Democratic party in droves.
If you're, say, an evangelical Christian, elitism (real or perceived) isn't even on the list of priorities.
And to continue tacking on comments to those of my betters, I wonder along with Dr. B in 108 what the practical difference is between "disagreement" and "contempt." Whether Democrats hold pro-lifers in contempt really isn't the issue; it's that Democrats vote pro-choice. Should they do it more politely?
I wonder along with Dr. B in 108 what the practical difference is between "disagreement" and "contempt." Whether Democrats hold pro-lifers in contempt really isn't the issue; it's that Democrats vote pro-choice. Should they do it more politely?
This is completely wrong. The difference between disagreement and contempt is real and important. It's the difference between "I think you're wrong" and "I don't think you're entitled to an opinion." The practical difference is that when there are a whole lot of issues on the table, you can hope to win the support of people who disagree with you strongly on some of those issues, but you can't hope to win the support of people who think you're out to deny them a seat at the table.
In a sense, yes, if they want to win elections. For example (this is an example, not saying you said it, the Democratic party said it (exactly), just an example) if you say "to be a Democrat, you must be pro-choice, and if you are not pro-choice, you are misogynist scum (but you can still vote for us if you want to)," it sure limits the number of people you bring into your party. The Republican political apparatus has done a pretty good job convincing a number of people who sit on the margins that this is the way the Democratic Party is. baa is of course right (as always; that is the essential baa-nature) in 102, this does not tell the whole story, but it is a part of it. And it explans Bill Clinton's success--he made enough people on the margins feel like he was for them and wanted their vote and would take care of many of their interests, even if he could not support all of them.
Republican anti-elitism is in part the resentment of the monied elite against the credentialed / cultural / institutional elite. Bill Buckley isn't a son of the soil, but he's a semi-educated guy who hated his professors.
But some of the things he doesn't like about intellectuals (religious skepticism, irony / cynicism, anti-conventionalism) are also disliked by many who are in neither elite, and he can recruit that way.
Buckley isn't the best example, because he drips condescension. He hasn't bothered to learn a common-man schtick the way the other millionnaires have.
While on average older Evangelicals tend to lag slightly behind the average U.S. resident in education and income, there is a "continuing trend toward the GOP, as younger, better-educated, and wealthier Evangelicals replace an older, less upscale Democratic political generation."[10] Evangelicals who are politically or socially active, especially conservatives, seem to be increasingly upwardly mobile, suburban, highly-educated, and with above-average incomes, contrary to many popular stereotypes.[11] One group of scholars found that between 1978 and 1988, "Christian Right activism occurred predominantly in rapidly growing—and relatively prosperous—suburban areas of the South, Southwest, and Midwest."[12] Conservative Evangelicals also do a better job at rallying their own forces to vote. In 2000, 79 percent of Evangelicals who voted for Bush had been contacted at least once by a politicized religious group or individual, as compared to 36 percent of Gore voters.[13]
For example (this is an example, not saying you said it, the Democratic party said it (exactly), just an example) if you say "to be a Democrat, you must be pro-choice, and if you are not pro-choice, you are misogynist scum (but you can still vote for us if you want to)," it sure limits the number of people you bring into your party.
And yet the Republicans have been pretty successful at hanging onto people whom their party establishment brands as blood-soaked baby killers. I'm not disagreeing with you, just marvelling at the contrast.
John Emerson's 118 has a lot of truth in it, I think. Slights or perceived slights during one's formative years can cut deep. I had a very interesting conversation with my dad last summer that left me with the strong impression that a goodly part of his worldview on religion and politics had its roots in a long-ago confrontation with a stereotypical liberal nitwit over something totally inconsequential. But he was young, in a new environment, and unsure of himself, and he perceived her as much more powerful and much more typical than she was. The feelings and the intensity of that seemingly trivial experience became part of his framework for interpreting other conflicts over religion in public life, with results that often seem strange to me.
I have to roll my eyes a little bit at this. We get to dislike people for their beliefs; that's not bigotry. I have extensive personal experience with fundies to undergird my exceedingly poor opinion of them. I've mostly known the prosperous suburban type though.
We get to dislike people for their beliefs; that's not bigotry.
I took the point to be that while we are allowed to dislike people for any reason at all, and even to express that dislike vehemently, such expression is not useful in getting them, or people losely affiliated with them, to vote for us. This is probably better said by the article you cited above:
"While we unequivocally defend reproductive rights, women’s rights, and gay rights, we have to leave some space in the public square for those who disagree with us. Veteran organizer Suzanne Pharr, director of the Highlander Center in Tennessee, urges progressives to find ways to challenge the ideas of the Christian Right while agreeing to disagree with individual followers in a respectful manner that would allow us to trade a cup of sugar with them if we shared a backyard fence as neighbors."
It seems like reasonable advice. I am terrible about following it, though.
All I'm objecting to is the use of the term "bigotry" to describe hostility to fundamentalist Christians, when really the hostility has more to do with an accurate perception of what they stand for. I wasn't addressing the larger point. I've had two fundamentalist Christian best friends named Melissa; I traded cups of sugar back in Jr. high because exile in exurbia demanded it. I think I can usually manage it in real life political conversations, too.
The Dems could potentially get a lot of mileage out of demonizing fundamentalists to much greater extent. It would be hard to pull it off without alienating evangelicals, and to a lesser extent other devout groups. You'd need to craft a new narrative and change their knee jerk reactions. I don't think the current class of politicians and consultants could pull it off. Maybe no one can as long as the media enviroment is so favorable to wingnut narratives. Evangelicals have a bit of a presecution complex, and won't be so open when the attacks from secular politicians. Attacking specific preachers might help. Falwell, etc.
Tlking up dominionism, as a few pundits have begun doing, might possibly mobilize the anti-fundie vote without alinating evanelicals. (To educate the electorate about them would be commendable in other ways too).
Should they do it more politely? In a sense, yes, if they want to win elections.
But this can't be universally true, because it's not as if pro-life Republicans disagree with the pro-choice Democrats politely. Maybe contempt for those who disagree is a luxury that only a majority party can afford.
I'm all for comity in the political sphere, I just have a hard time believing that "contempt" is a cause rather than a symptom.
But he was young, in a new environment, and unsure of himself, and he perceived her as much more powerful and much more typical than she was. The feelings and the intensity of that seemingly trivial experience became part of his framework for interpreting other conflicts over religion in public life
My wife is amazed and appalled at the long shadow encounters I had when young with young women whose names I never knew hold over me. When you are young, sensitive, and hoping to assert yourself and be accepted, the power even nitwit young women have over you is actually enormous. Of course it shouldn't be so, and once you achieve acceptance — yes, from other women — it's no longer so, but still.
In my dad's case, I don't think it had anything in particular to do with his antagonist being female. He just perceived her as being the insider/establishment/powerful player and himself as being the outsider who was there on sufferance. And this feeling persisted even after he retired from the top end of the institution after a long and lauded career there.
The 49-48 vote on the FMA.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 1:18 PM
LB, your link is broken.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 1:21 PM
Fixed.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 1:25 PM
You think Rudy Guiliani gets a hard time from his buddies about what the Republicans say about gays? I bet he does.
The jokes just write themselves.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 1:26 PM
Hey, I planted that low hanging fruit.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 1:30 PM
And could the gay issue be why "we're starting to see some cracks..."? You just might be on to something.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 1:32 PM
No, the causation is wrong. Seeing cracks is what led to the prioritization of the gay issue.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 1:36 PM
Right -- substantively, the current Republican party has done an awful lot more for business interests than social conservatives. On the other hand, there are an awful lot more socially conservative voters than genuinely rich people. If the social conservatives ever really wake up to the fact that they aren't getting much out of the deal, the Republicans have problems.
Gay marriage is an attempt to throw a bone to the Christian right, without actually doing anything for them.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 1:40 PM
And speaking of strained coalitions, I REALLY want Mitt Romney to run for President. What a fun little bloodbath that would be. An early glimpse of the intra party Republican blood letting to be found in Mike Adam's recent columns on Townhall here and here.
The first graf is gold.
"The fact that Joseph Smith roamed about in upstate New York as a young man searching for the lost treasures of Captain Kidd should have been enough to warn people that he was a few fries short of a happy meal. But his later claims to have received a set of Golden Plates from the Angel Moroni spared him from being seen merely as a quack. Instead, they ensured that he will go down in history as both a fraud and a heretic."
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 1:41 PM
"their fairly unlikely coalition -- white, non-urban, working class voters who vote on social issues, and business interests: wealthy people voting on policies that advantage them economically."
That isn't in fact the republican coalition.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 1:43 PM
Elucidate? I'm not wedded to anything in this post -- I was mostly feeling guilty about not posting, and hacked something together.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 1:46 PM
A majority of republican voters are both waelhty and socially conservative. Fundies are mostly wealthy.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 1:48 PM
Remember this study, for example.
http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=949
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 1:51 PM
#12
It's hard to see how that's possible. The wealthy are a rather small percentage of the population, and Bush got what, 62 million votes?
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 1:55 PM
Fundies are mostly wealthy.
This is wrong -- no demographic group of appreciable size can be described as mostly wealthy if 'wealthy' means advantaged by current Republican economic policy. They may be wealthier than the average, but that's different. (Hell, I'm a BigLaw associate, and I'm pretty sure that the more redistributive tax policies I'd favor would leave me, net, better off. I could be wrong, and I'd favor them anyway, but that's my guess.)
Now, I'd believe that social conservatives vote for Republican economic policies either because they're confused about how they'll work out and think that they are going to be economically advantageous even at a middle-class economic level, or, more charitably, because they somehow believe that Republican economic policies are more just, despite the fact that those policies are not in their own interest.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 1:55 PM
It remains quite fascinating.
The unkillable meme that republican voters are mostly or to a great extent working class social conservatives is an interesting sociological phenomenon.
You, on the other hand, weren't so egregriously wrong. I don't mean to pick on you.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 1:58 PM
I don't think that this is an unkillable meme. I think of fundies as suburban and exurban middle-class megachurch attenders, in addition to trailer-park-living rural factory workers who watch Jerry Falwell.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 2:02 PM
The unkillable meme that republican voters are mostly or to a great extent working class social conservatives is an interesting sociological phenomenon.
Erm... working or middle class, that's right. Most people in the US are working or middle class, and the Rebulicans get about half the vote: there's nowhere else for it to come from. While I'll agree with you that the plutocrats have coopted the policy arm of the party, they really do get a lot of votes from middle class people they're screwing.
(Now, it's true that they tend richer than Democrats -- the coalition is the well off + social conservatives, and anyone who falls into both categories. But they do get a real chunk of middle class votes, and the ones they get seem to mostly be on the socially conservative issues.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 2:03 PM
I think we need some clarification on 'middle class'. How high does it go, income-wise? I'd guess that people who are in the 80th percentile of income will call themselves middle-class, will be pretty far removed from some but not all middle-class economic concerns, and won't get that much benefit from Republican fiscal policy (Drum occasionally links to stats that show that it's only the top quintile, and especially the top 1%, that really benefits).
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 2:06 PM
I think that a lot of the social conservatives are economically stable--perhaps simply as a function of geography--and are fine with that. The only way that they can be paid off is on cultural issues. The rich/elite don't give a fuck, as social rules don't apply in the least to them. So Republican rich/elites will happily take the tax cuts and continue doing precisely the things the social conservatives most abhor.
That actually seems like a pretty stable coalition. It's not ideologically stable, but the two groups don't conflict so much.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 2:07 PM
I assumed that by coalition you meant electoral coalition, and that theefore you meant someting like upper middle clas when yu said wealthy. The truly wealthy are of course an important part of the conservative movement despitenot being an important part of the electorate.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 2:07 PM
I would run that up to the 90th/95th percentile of income (with 'middle class' sliding to an embarrassed 'upper middle class').
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 2:08 PM
People who vote against what they perceive their class interest isn't a unimportant group when elections are so close, but it's a relatively small group. The GOP coalition consist mainly of upper middle class people.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 2:14 PM
I think that a lot of the social conservatives are economically stable--perhaps simply as a function of geography
I'm not so sure. Lubbock isn't too prosperous (at least some of the area economy depends on agriculture, which I'd guess equals guaranteed instability), and Utah consistently leads the country in personal bankruptcy rates.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 2:14 PM
Lubbock isn't too prosperous (at least some of the area economy depends on agriculture, which I'd guess equals guaranteed instability), and Utah consistently leads the country in personal bankruptcy rates.
I meant more that if you live in certain places, the chances that you are going to dramatically improve your economic circumstances are small. You expect the annual raise and to stay with one company (or one system of companies) for your working life. The actual effect of various government policies on your life is pretty muted. (This is all ex recta (lovely, whoever started that).)
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 2:18 PM
I'll eat my hat if the averge fundie isn't wealthier than the average american.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 2:19 PM
People who vote against what they perceive their class interest isn't a unimportant group when elections are so close
I think the key here is 'perceive their class interest'. As I said in 15, Republican economic policy isn't particularly serving even the upper middle class. Upper middle class voters who vote Republican on economic issues are either confused about their self interest, or are voting on principle (economics as a branch of social conservatism, sort of) rather than self interest.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 2:20 PM
I'll eat my socks if the median GOP-voting social conservative isn't wealthier than the median american, (or even the median US voter).
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 2:21 PM
And 26: There's a huge difference between 'wealthier than the average American' and 'wealthy enough to be benefited by Republican economic policy.'
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 2:21 PM
29: Sure, but that's equally true of socially moderate GOP voters.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 2:24 PM
One can be personally socially conservative while also distrusting the government's attempts to foist social conservativism on its citizens. That describes, I'd say, a lot of the Western quasi-liberatarians who've allowed themselves to get swept up in the Republicans Will Protect You campaign. Democrats used to be seen as the ones who wanted to monitor your home and take away your money and children, but the Republicans haven't shown themselves to be any real protectors of liberty in this age...
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 2:31 PM
"liberty" s/b "privacy"
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 2:32 PM
I think we need some clarification on 'middle class'. How high does it go, income-wise? I'd guess that people who are in the 80th percentile of income will call themselves middle-class, will be pretty far removed from some but not all middle-class economic concerns
And it alos pays to keep in mind just how much this can be affected by geographic area because of housing costs. I'm not in love with Sandy, Utah, but up here I have a house in a middle to upper middle class neighborhood, whereas back home in L.A. I couldn't touch a thing on my current income.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 2:34 PM
There's also a neat 'responsibility' overlap. We're the party of fiscal responsibility! We expect people to manage their own money, not have the government do it for them. We don't mollycoddle people! Personal responsibility (and here's the neat twist as we switch from freedom to control) -- if you don't want to have a baby, don't have sex! Take responsibility for your actions. A responsible gun owner will never shoot his gun needlessly. (I'm liking the shooting gun-getting pregnant implication, so I'm not editing.) Reduce welfare for lazy people. You are responsible and work hard! Why would you want the government to take YOUR money for WELFARE.
It works. No one thinks they're lazy or irresponsible. Everyone hopes to be rich someday (why vote against your eventual aspiration?) And if you're undecided on the economic question, vote for the party of responsibility.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 2:41 PM
no-one thinks they're lazy or irresponsible
[raises hand]
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 2:45 PM
Yeah, but yer a librul.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 2:47 PM
Coalition Breakdown
It's always the same
Having a nervous breakdown
Drive me insane
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 2:47 PM
Sorry for the off topic, but hey! Fafblog is back!
Posted by jms | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 2:55 PM
Yay!
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 2:57 PM
I'll eat my hat if the averge fundie isn't wealthier than the average american.
Best get your hat-eating suit on, if North Carolina is at all representative of the country. The religion gets more prevalent the further you move into the poor areas. The wealthier areas are centered around the universities and the tech/science industries.
As for the coalition, most of the libertarians I know have 1) abandoned the Libertarian Party as hopeless and 2) come to view the Republicans as the repository of authoritarian thought in the US. They aren't particularly pleased with the Democrats, but they have largely jettisoned the notion that there isn't any difference between the two major parties and see the Dems as clearly the lesser of two evils.
Whether they have comprised any significant chunk of the GOP coalition isn't a question I can answer, but as close as the last two elections have been, it wouldn't really take much.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 3:00 PM
40: I think you have to distinguish between "libertarians" and "propertarians." The propertarians are still Republicans.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 3:04 PM
Sigh. My parents both voted Libertarian in 2004. They usually go Republican, but I just couldn't get them to vote Dem.
(Then again, they live in the Bay Area, so their votes went howling unheard into the gerrymandered storm, but still.)
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 3:05 PM
Fundamentalist proper is different from religious, though.
Maybe I am wrong, though. Happened before.
I know for a fact that 23 is right though, and not unimortant. The perception that dems is the party of the elite is hurting them.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 3:05 PM
Apo, but the question is, is there a distinction between fundamentalism as religion, and fundamentalism as political litmus test? I would wager that most right-wing Christian Coalition types are pretty well off: my stereotype is the smug megachurchgoer. (I.e., my uncle and his family.) But that's different, isn't it, from genuinely religious fundamentalists who may even find the Republican party's appropriation of their belief offensively political?
The distinction may not fall neatly along class lines, and I'm probably being kind of an asshole in implying it does. But my sense is that the politically active religious right leadership is *not* some grassroots movement; it's mostly well-off assholes who are using religion as a tool to advance a political agenda. And I'd imagine that the poor religious are capable of realizing that while, say, abortion might be a really bad thing, poverty isn't entirely the result of simple laziness.
(Though as I write, a particular blogger who is poor, undereducated, and defensively right-wing comes to mind.)
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 3:09 PM
I still think you may be getting crossed up between "Most UMC voters vote Republican" and "Most Republicans are UMC". I'm sure the first is true, but I don't think the second is -- the numbers just aren't big enough.
You're right about the perception that Democrats are a richer, more elitist, party than Repulicans. That is both false and harmful.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 3:09 PM
You're right about the perception that Democrats are a richer, more elitist, party than Repulicans.
I don't know if that's the right "elite" charge, though--I thought it was that we, through the media and universities, "controlled the discourse."
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 3:11 PM
There's a literal 'richer' component to the image, though - limousine liberal? - and that hurts us. I remember talking with Idealist about a partner at our old firm, and my saying that I was kind of surprised she was a Democrat because she's clearly Yankee old-money, and his response was that her upper-class social status was something that he thought of as making it more, rather than less, likely that she'd be a Democrat. (Sorry if I've misquoted you, Ideal.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 3:15 PM
Right. The "Democrats are elitists" perception depends on resenting people who are educated. It works because education is a class marker, as well as (indeed, more than) an intelligence marker, and there are plenty of undereducated folks who feel that they are as good as, or as intelligent as, those of us who've had a lot of formal education. Hell, we engage in the resentment of the class-marked education ourselves, when we bitch about our lazy, entitled, middle-class students.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 3:18 PM
If it's destructive stereotypes of Democrats you want, always go to Kaus. As a commenter says, "It's an amazing testimony to Republican propaganda that Kaus translates from 'affluent' to 'not conservative' and expects no one to notice."
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 3:19 PM
It depends on the source of the wealth, too. My ex recto opinion: born into serious wealth ('everyone I know went to private school!!!') means a pretty serious liberal; born into comfortable-but-not-wealthy on down but through work and luck ends up wealthy, more likely to be conservative.
Libertarians were beat up on the playground.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 3:24 PM
I should clarify that my ex recto opinion is of the popular perception, except for the libertarian part.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 3:26 PM
I would wager that most right-wing Christian Coalition types are pretty well off
I'd take that wager.
the politically active religious right leadership is *not* some grassroots movement; it's mostly well-off assholes
Well, sure. But the leadership isn't the "average fundie." The average fundie is sitting in the pews, not lobbying Congress. Maybe NC doesn't map well onto the country at large, and I haven't spent much time looking elsewhere, but the well-off folks tend to be mainline Protestant (and Catholic and Jewish, though both populations are smaller here).
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 3:26 PM
mainline Protestant (and Catholic and Jewish
Not simultaneously, though.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 3:31 PM
But the average fundie, in that case, is following the leadership; it's the leadership, not the average fundie, that's setting up the religion=politics idea. I mean, I guess what I'm saying is that I don't think it's the average fundie whose political ideas are so offensive; it's the assholes who are mobilizing the average fundie's religion into a specific political goal. I don't give a rat's ass if people dislike abortion, don't believe in evolution, whatever. I do give a rat's ass when that kind of shit gets used to create fucked-up policies, and even more so when it's used to create fucked-up policies as masks for really vile energy policy, foreign policy, civil liberties stuff, etc.--things that aren't in any way actually religious issues, and that people wouldn't vote for or support unless the religious crap were being drummed up in order to advance the other stuff.
I guess what I'm saying is that if there were a genuine fundamentalislt party, I'd object to it (obviously); but I don't think it would be a political threat, and it might actually have policies about things like war and economics that I'd be able to approve of.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 3:33 PM
Okay, but the wager was that the average fundie is richer than the average American.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 3:35 PM
One can be personally socially conservative while also distrusting the government's attempts to foist social conservativism on its citizens. That describes, I'd say, a lot of the Western quasi-liberatarians who've allowed themselves to get swept up in the Republicans Will Protect You campaign.
Western quasi-libertarians and religious conservatives also perceive themselves as having a common enemy in urban elitists who don't respect their values and way of life. Neither group perceives the other as being a serious threat because both think it's the urban types who are the real danger. It looks like an unstable coalition, but the shared experience of threatened identity is pretty powerful.
Or possibly I'm over-generalizing from my own parents.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 3:46 PM
56: We're all over-generalizing wildly; but then, so are the pros.
I don't think it's the average fundie whose political ideas are so offensive
You and I know different fundies. I know more than a couple whom I personally like, and whom I think of as much better, much more decent people than I am, but whose deep political beliefs are anathma to me.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 3:48 PM
whom I think of as much better, much more decent people than I am
I don't know anybody who fits that description. Than me, that is. I do know people who are better and more decent than Tim.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 3:53 PM
I have to agree with apo on 40. I have twice cancelled a comment that consisted largely of "Y'ain't from around here, are ya?"
Maybe we're talking about different things when we say fundie. When I say it, I think of people who are using religion as a social tool to supress respect for others and try to replace it with fear of a spiritual retribution they can claim, to themselves and others, to have already avoided by their faith. It tries to cancel the physical realities of poverty and widening economic gaps by introducing an opposing spiritual wealth that's just one death away from here. And those people, in my experience, have been almost universally decidedly other than upper middle class.
Bphd, I can see the megachurch stereotype, but where I grew up we didn't have megachurches, so that one's not really marked on my mental topology. What we had were cement-block churches and barns decorated with hubcaps. I think you're quite right when you say that the people in charge of the 'grassroots' religious right are in fact wealthy elitists (Pat Robertson's blood diamonds, for example). But their followers are not, and it's their followers who do most of the voting.
So, when I think 'fundie,' I think of the people who have signed into the whole pie-in-the-sky attitude that the here and now doesn't matter at all in light of the there and then, the sort of people who think it totally reasonable for James Watt to suggest policy on the basis that conservation is unimportant because the Rapture is due any day now, anyway, so why bother? And I don't think most of the people for whom those sorts of ethereal concerns are primary are the people who closely monitor their stock portfolios as part of their long-term planning.
Posted by Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 3:54 PM
Okay. But if the here and now doesn't matter, why vote at all?
(I'm perfectly willing to believe that there's a difference between, say, South Carolina and southern Cali in terms of who the right-voting fundies are. But I hate the megachurch people more.)
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 4:01 PM
AWB had at least one post lately about the infection of regular churches by a mega-church mentality, so the distinctions may be hard to sustain. It's a lot of places now.
I don't think the results of the last presidential election was really a victory of the right wing movement, even though it may have been a victory for them. I think it was a sense on the part of many people that we were protected better from terrorists by a more militant, agressive and beligerent government, and that there was no attractive alternative. And it was still damn close.
I'd love to think that the attenuation, if we can't hope for collapse, of the WOT as a ruling idea will tip the balance. My local papers are screaming this morning about plots to behead Stephen Harper, so they're still working terra for all it's worth, but we'll have to see.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 4:12 PM
Oh, hell, beheading Harper wouldn't do anything.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 4:16 PM
But I hate the megachurch people more.
The poor fundies, like George W. Bush, may be too ignorant and insubstantial to be worthy of full-on hatred, but some of them do manage that same arrogant, aggressive ignorance that I do deeply despise.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 4:16 PM
Yeah, but they somehow aren't as smug. There's something about the smug, comfortable, condescending, self-satisfied nature of the rich megachurch fundies that makes me want to claw their eyes out and push them into a septic tank.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 4:44 PM
"The "Democrats are elitists" perception depends on resenting people who are educated."
It was, and still is, also a code word for Jew. The Jew bashing still appeals to a significant number of their base.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 5:00 PM
You know, this is true, and I always forget that "educated" or "elite" or "east coast" means "Jewish" to a lot of people. Good point.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 5:04 PM
Except that while the East Coast Jews types vote Democrat, the fundamentalist base has reclaimed Jewish as part of an alleged Judeo-Christian Worldview: support of Israel, seeing America as fulfilling a promise made to Abraham, seeing tensions in the mid-East as threatening the Jews.
Who are, for these purposes, just like Christians.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 5:14 PM
Yeah, but they somehow aren't as smug.
I totally can see that angle of the megachurchers as you describe them, so I'm not trying to say that isn't true. That said, if you think the redneck fundies aren't smug, dude, have I ever got some cousins to show you.
Posted by Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 5:22 PM
55: Okay, but the wager was that the average fundie is richer than the average American
Correct, but this wager ought to be modified: is the average fundie richer than the average voter?
I'm confident (but lacking the linkage to prove) that people who vote are richer (and whiter) than the broader pool of eligible voters.
67: Fundie support for the Jews is suspect. Don't the fundies just want the Jews to move back to Teh Holy Land in order to expedite the Second Coming?
Posted by Stanley | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 5:40 PM
Hey, let's plan a vacation later this summer where we go visit one another's obnoxious extended families.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 5:40 PM
Well, I didn't say it was *good* fundie support. But there's a lot of God's-chosen-people-so-Jews-are-sort-of-saved-too-so-let's-bomb Palestine out there.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 5:42 PM
71: I agree. I was thinking of those weird late-night ads that solicit funds to send Jews HOME(!) to the JEWLANDS(!). Creepy, and, as far as I know, based on an eschatological notion of all the Jews rounding themselves up in Israel as a precondition to the apocalypse.
Posted by Stanley | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 5:48 PM
70: You know, I would totally do this. OK, I'm lying, but that's such a fabulous response that I felt I had to say yes.
72: I watch some seriously random late-night TV, and have never seen this. Share more information, please. I have got to catch this sometime.
Posted by Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 6:22 PM
73: Ah, shoot, I can't find any links, but it's often a poor Jewish girl from Russia or Eastern Europe, and for $0.14 a day you can send her back to the homeland in Israel [cue imagery of Israel and eerie, new-age-y music]. Seriously freaky if you realize they're really trying to rush along the Final Judgment.
Or, take it from the horse's mouth.
Posted by Stanley | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 6:28 PM
73: But wouldn't it be interesting in an anthropological sort of way? We could write a screenplay and send it to John Waters.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 6:32 PM
If only Divine were still with us!
74: Great. Now I'm going to be up all night flipping channels to find commercial breaks.
Posted by Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 6:37 PM
I'd just like to endorse what David Weman said way up above. A lot of fundamentalists are prosperous and educated, though usually with a tech or business education. I think of them as the people who wanted to skip the "liberal arts bullshit" and get to the useful stuff.
Many fundamentalist churches are quite indulgent of their parishioners as long as they're not gay or drug-addicted. There can be a lot of MF hanky-panky, as long as it's not too obvious. Some churches teach charity, and some really don't. Some don't touch on business ethics more than minimally necessary.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 6:42 PM
Republican populism is fake, but Democratic elitism is real. The identification of the Democrats with the university-educated and with the professorial / managerial / professional / media elites is too tight. There's a certain condescending way of speaking there which isn't just a speech pattern. Kerry projected that.
The Vietnam War destroyed the effectiveness of the wise, urbane, witty college professor (Galbraith, Schlesinger, et al.)
A substantial proportion of students hate their professors, but they don't tell them so.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 6:54 PM
but Democratic elitism is real. The identification of the Democrats with the university-educated and with the professorial / managerial / professional / media elites is too tight.
I think that's probably right; I catch myself doing it on occasion. I think Sommersby has written scathing posts about this tendency of some us, one of which regarded the way we treat the religious. Which is to say, I'm pretty much responsible for this second term. Sorry about that.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:04 PM
A substantial proportion of students hate their professors, but they don't tell them so.
Well telling a professor I was shtupping that actually I hated her would just be rude.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:05 PM
Mitch, she didn't really love you. She had a pedagogical motive.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:15 PM
A substantial proportion of students hate their professors, but they don't tell them so.
Like it isn't obvious.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:15 PM
The coming GOP crack-up is something of a hardy perennial in political debates. And I agree, it is difficult to see how the Republicans can continue to unite married people, church goers, white people, and those with incomes over 50,000. Or maybe it isn’t. Almost all political coalitions seem insane on close observation, and it’s not clear to me that the Republican party differs much from the Democratic party in this regard.
On the substance of the crack-up, I know it’s often said that social conservatives have been screwed by Bush in comparison to “the rich” - but I really don’t know that this is true. Alito and Roberts are just what the doctor ordered from the social conservative perspective. The fact is, social conservatives really can’t enact most of their agenda legislatively absent a change in the composition of the judicial branch, so two solid supreme court picks mean a lot to them. (This also explains the great ire evoked by the Myers nomination). This isn’t rocket science political analysis, mind you, just the basics of how the GOP works.
Also, I find myself entirely in agreement with Emerson (?!). Republicans lie to themselves when self-identifying as salt-of-the-earth, but democratic elitism is real. The press, the professoriate, and folks with post-grad degrees. How interesting is it that the GOP can win the votes of people making 100,000 plus a year (decisively) while losing (decisively) people with post-graduate degrees!
[[Is this an example of perplexing trolling? If so, my apologies. But briefly riffing off that earlier thread topic, is not more the truly inexplicable behavior hanging out on web sites that do little more than confirm one’s prejudices? Unfogged may not be an example of this type, but (the worst of) redstate and the huffingtonpost surely are. Why would any leftist read the huffington post? For me, it’s a fun glimpse inside the monkey house, but a for a left winger with anything on the ball, I don’t see the appeal]]
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:16 PM
The Vietnam War destroyed the effectiveness of the wise, urbane, witty college professor (Galbraith, Schlesinger, et al.)
The irony in that of course being that Galbraith's counsel, on Vietnam most of all, really was wise, u & w. It was the pseudos, the assistant deans and whatnot who were what Halberstam called The Best And The Brightest, with irony intended, who did the damage.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:18 PM
What I honestly don't understand is why "the press, the professoriate, and folks with post-grad degrees" are considered elitists. Very few people in those categories are from especially privileged backgrounds.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:21 PM
Positionally they have power over students, and they just have this **attitude.**
Democratic class seems dependent of institutional connections and on credentials, whereas Republican class depends of $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. Rich people without education and connections hate smartypants intellectuals even though the intellectuals have less money and less power.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:25 PM
85: I'm not sure about that. As the influence of the GI Bill and the 1960s-70s expansion of teaching positions fades, more and more of the people whose post-grad degrees lead to teaching seem to be from privileged (relatively speaking) backgrounds. As for regular MAs and professional degrees, I don't know.
And weren't we just complaining about unpaid internships restricting access to journalism?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:30 PM
I think we may be considered elitists because um, well, we are. I know my gut responses to claims about evil scientists and evolution and feminist history scholars teaching about something other than which king beat what king in what war is roughly Not my fault you've got your head up your ass, I didn't put it there. and pulling out my hair.
But more sarcastically: we're not any more elitist than the libertarian lawyers in their Armani suits, or the i-banking Chets, it's just that Rove is a better operative than anyone on the Dem side and has millions of well-heeled, iPod-listening, God-fearing, gas-guzzling SUV driving wealthy white conservatives, who, by the way, control the most powerful military on the planet, convinced into thinking they're an oppressed minority.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:30 PM
Elitists, or an elite? Surely the press and academics perceive themselves as the latter. I doubt that's entirely wrong. They certainly tend to be read more and be better informed than the national average.
And on the former, if I may invoke the anecdote, I would note that in my experience academics are often exceptionally status conscious.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:31 PM
baa says well what I was trying to say back in #20. Except he says it with love where I would have said it with hate.
Very few people in those categories are from especially privileged backgrounds.
I don't think that it's the backgrounds that matter. Often enough it's the newbies who are most conscious of the various unspoken rules enforcing place, and who are the most conspicuous in making sure those rules are enforced; the only truly fucking annoying New Yorkers are the ones who moved there from Bumfuck and are now militant city-ites. Also, I'm not sure economic class is the critical issue--as Emerson says, for Dems, it's often the credentials.
Also, Michael Hirsh is a golden god.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:35 PM
Also, it was interesting to watch usually hardcore anti-elitists suddenly rediscover the distinction between elite and expertise during the Supreme Court nomination process.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:38 PM
Cala, as you may know, everyone is a frickin' underdog these days. It';s simply nauseating. As much as I dislike Nietzsche, the bastard wasn't half right on this one.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:40 PM
And on the former, if I may invoke the anecdote, I would note that in my experience academics are often exceptionally status conscious.
I won't deny that. But more status conscious, than, say, the average 22-year-old consulting firm type? That I'm not so sure.
You should be independently wealthy if you're doing an MA in the humanities (or if you're not, taken out and
shotadmonished as to why going into debt for an MA may seriously fuck up your life.)Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:40 PM
I was thinking of the exception of people doing humanities MAs for teaching reasons (salary increase, for one thing). A fair amount of people do them part-time/night, at public schools, or through programs that give teachers some amount of support (though all of these paths could still lead to some debt).
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:44 PM
I had a friend who went from a no-count HS to a third rank U (Portland State) to a near-elite grad school (one of the good depts. at Texas). He felt that the faculty figured out who the top students would be very early in the term, based on their undergrad school and connections. He got less than no feeling that they valued him as a self-made guy (almost trailer trash growing up).
They say that the best day care centers lead sequentially to the best primary schools, middle schools, highschools, colleges, and jobs. I pretty much believe it my now.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:45 PM
The identification of the Democrats with the university-educated and with the professorial / managerial / professional / media elites is too tight. There's a certain condescending way of speaking there which isn't just a speech pattern.
No doubt true in some cases, but it's also true that people who are insecure about their place in the pecking order commonly see condescension that isn't there. Communication is hard, especially between strangers with little or no common experience, and especially when a lot of money is being spent to make it hard. There's some truth to the "elitist Democrat" idea, but as a political force it's mostly manufactured. Take a few real slights, add a goodly dollop of status anxiety, and mix with vast amounts of cash and you end up convincing a whole lot of people that all Democrats are just like the people they resented in high school.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:48 PM
But the hatred has other causes than just remembered classroom humiliation. And social pretence is and ought to be just laughable, especially from somebody with frayed chinos in a second-hand Volvo. There seems to be real fear, fear of outsiders and experts, and their ability to set in motion forces that threaten lives. Who gave us affirmative action and Title 9 and speech codes and all sorts of things that can reach out and frustrate expectations. Remember that ad Jesse Helms ran a few years ago, where the white male hand crumples up the rejection, remembering the job "they had to give to a minority?" It's the power of intellectuals to set these forces in motion, as I say, that causes the fear. That, and the fear that superior people might be laughing at them.
Which contradicts the disdain they ought to be able to feel for academia's pathetic, petty snobberies. Nobody said it was consistent.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:48 PM
Rove is a better operative than anyone on the Dem side and has millions of well-heeled, iPod-listening, God-fearing, gas-guzzling SUV driving wealthy white conservatives, who, by the way, control the most powerful military on the planet, convinced into thinking they're an oppressed minority.
That may be partially right, but IMHO in the Republican perception of things, the bigger problem is the elitist problem. SCMT hit pretty close upthread when he noted that the perceived contempt in which the Democratic Party holds the various unwashed classes, such as fundamentalists, causes them to band together. Without getting into an argument over whether it is accurate or fair or deserved or anything else, I think it noneless true that a good part of what keeps the Republican coalition together is the feeling that they are very unwelcome in the Democratic Party. People wonder why a homosexual would be a Republican, because there is (shamefully, in my view) a wing of the Republican Party which views them with disgust. But one could ask exactly the same thing of a fundamentalist or many other groups with respect to the Democratic Party. So basically, what holds us together is you.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:49 PM
Wasn't there a column (in Slate, maybe?) joking that what DeLay (I think) and his friends really wanted to hide was their love of opera?
(You can tell I don't remember is well, but that was the gist of it.)
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:51 PM
it, is, if - I know these are distinct words but my typing no longer seems to reflect that.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:55 PM
In my experience academics are often exceptionally status conscious.
Agreed. But being status conscious is hardly exclusive to, or even particularly characteristic of, elite groups. And most of the kids who are resented in high school are *not* the ones that go on to graduate school; the grad students are the ones who were invisible in high school.
American anti-intellectualism is hardly a new idea. And surely that's part of it. But I suspect that the suspicion of the chattering classes has to do with the fact that we are *not* elites in most senses--but we do seem to have some kind of status that's incommensurate with income and most social status markers. Academics and journalists certainly have cultural capital. But that doesn't make us elites (or elitists)--it just makes us a bit discomfiting in terms of the usual status markers, and I suspect that's why the "academic elites" meme works so well.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:55 PM
Idealist's #98 has a lot of truth to it, but it doesn't seem to me the whole story. To try the reduction, pro-life people aren't GOP mainly because of Democratics contempt (although that contempt surely exists). No, they vote GOP because they (correctly) perceive that the GOP is closer to their values. No doubt casual bigotry against "fundies" doesn't help, but there's a rationale behind that particular adversary culture.
* * *
SCMT, I thought you were *always* about the love...
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:57 PM
There seems to be real fear, fear of outsiders and experts, and their ability to set in motion forces that threaten lives.
True, but the interesting question is why that translates into a strong political/tribal response against intellectuals/Democrats but not against big employers, health insurers, credit card companies, etc.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 7:57 PM
102: Except that the number of single issue voters whose issue is abortion is not, IIRC, large.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:02 PM
While we're pulling out anecdotes, there's a fair amount of people I know that lean Democratic on social policies but have been voting consistently Republican due to abortion. As in, it comes down to two candidates driving as hard to the center as they can ('I'm like him, but wearing the blue tie, not the red one') except one is pro-choice, and one is pro-life.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:02 PM
Sure SCMT, abortion is just one example. But the point being that it isn't just (or even primarily) elite contumely that makes social conservative vote Republican. It's also a rational calculation of interest.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:05 PM
Now wait. How elite is 90% of the black population,labor unions, and hippies? Corporate America, which clearly trends Republican, is as much the elite as the professoriate and certainly richer, vastly more influential, and far more numerous.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:08 PM
102: I have a problem with the idea that the left are hostile to pro-life voters. I'm pretty much as pro-choice as people get, and I'm hostile to pro-life voters because I see their political position as one that is about denying me a fundamental right to self-determination. The "Democrats are contemptuous" of pro-life or fundamentalist voters idea is, at least for Democrats like me, a maddening kind of blame-the-victim argument. I'm sure it's the same when gay people are accused of holding contempt for religous voters and so forth. And surely it works both ways: the Republican party seems to have done a lovely job of encouraging contempt as well--hell, even in this thread a fair number of us seem to be demonstrating contempt for folks with, or aspiring to, graduate degrees--i.e., ourselves.
That said, yes: folks who are strongly dedicated to particular non-economic issues, and vote accordingly, are not voting against their own sense of their self-interest, even if they're undermining their economic security.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:14 PM
How elite is 90% of the black population,labor unions, and hippies?
With the possible exception of unions,these people have close to no say in the present Democratic Party. And that's in part because we lost a lot of votes precisely because we constructed intellectual edifices that supported precisely those disfavored groups.
To connect to something Cala sort of said, part of the problem is that we (or really, some part of "we") were right about an awful lot of things for a very long time, and we weren't/aren't shy about pulling the moral high-horse out. I don't really know what we do about that, as we were right, and backing away from that is throwing some percentage of our coalition under a bus.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:15 PM
How elite is 90% of the black population,labor unions, and hippies?
My sense ois that they are to Republicans what fundies are to us: despised indeed, but also dupes of the other party's elite, whose votes are reliable even though they never get what they want, need and are promised.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:26 PM
Good point, IDP.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:30 PM
To add to what baa says in 102, the fundamentalists I know aren't voting Republican because they feel slighted by the Democrats. They're voting Republican because they're pro-life, anti-gay, etc. I don't think making nice to fundamentalists without compromising our core values will lure them to the Democratic party in droves.
If you're, say, an evangelical Christian, elitism (real or perceived) isn't even on the list of priorities.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:40 PM
And to continue tacking on comments to those of my betters, I wonder along with Dr. B in 108 what the practical difference is between "disagreement" and "contempt." Whether Democrats hold pro-lifers in contempt really isn't the issue; it's that Democrats vote pro-choice. Should they do it more politely?
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:44 PM
I wonder along with Dr. B in 108 what the practical difference is between "disagreement" and "contempt." Whether Democrats hold pro-lifers in contempt really isn't the issue; it's that Democrats vote pro-choice. Should they do it more politely?
This is completely wrong. The difference between disagreement and contempt is real and important. It's the difference between "I think you're wrong" and "I don't think you're entitled to an opinion." The practical difference is that when there are a whole lot of issues on the table, you can hope to win the support of people who disagree with you strongly on some of those issues, but you can't hope to win the support of people who think you're out to deny them a seat at the table.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:53 PM
Should they do it more politely?
In a sense, yes, if they want to win elections. For example (this is an example, not saying you said it, the Democratic party said it (exactly), just an example) if you say "to be a Democrat, you must be pro-choice, and if you are not pro-choice, you are misogynist scum (but you can still vote for us if you want to)," it sure limits the number of people you bring into your party. The Republican political apparatus has done a pretty good job convincing a number of people who sit on the margins that this is the way the Democratic Party is. baa is of course right (as always; that is the essential baa-nature) in 102, this does not tell the whole story, but it is a part of it. And it explans Bill Clinton's success--he made enough people on the margins feel like he was for them and wanted their vote and would take care of many of their interests, even if he could not support all of them.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:57 PM
What DaveL said in 114 is probably a better way to say what I was trying to say in 115.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 8:59 PM
Has the dog the baa-nature?
Moo.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 9:00 PM
Republican anti-elitism is in part the resentment of the monied elite against the credentialed / cultural / institutional elite. Bill Buckley isn't a son of the soil, but he's a semi-educated guy who hated his professors.
But some of the things he doesn't like about intellectuals (religious skepticism, irony / cynicism, anti-conventionalism) are also disliked by many who are in neither elite, and he can recruit that way.
Buckley isn't the best example, because he drips condescension. He hasn't bothered to learn a common-man schtick the way the other millionnaires have.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 9:03 PM
Evangelical demographics:
While on average older Evangelicals tend to lag slightly behind the average U.S. resident in education and income, there is a "continuing trend toward the GOP, as younger, better-educated, and wealthier Evangelicals replace an older, less upscale Democratic political generation."[10] Evangelicals who are politically or socially active, especially conservatives, seem to be increasingly upwardly mobile, suburban, highly-educated, and with above-average incomes, contrary to many popular stereotypes.[11] One group of scholars found that between 1978 and 1988, "Christian Right activism occurred predominantly in rapidly growing—and relatively prosperous—suburban areas of the South, Southwest, and Midwest."[12] Conservative Evangelicals also do a better job at rallying their own forces to vote. In 2000, 79 percent of Evangelicals who voted for Bush had been contacted at least once by a politicized religious group or individual, as compared to 36 percent of Gore voters.[13]
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 9:12 PM
For example (this is an example, not saying you said it, the Democratic party said it (exactly), just an example) if you say "to be a Democrat, you must be pro-choice, and if you are not pro-choice, you are misogynist scum (but you can still vote for us if you want to)," it sure limits the number of people you bring into your party.
And yet the Republicans have been pretty successful at hanging onto people whom their party establishment brands as blood-soaked baby killers. I'm not disagreeing with you, just marvelling at the contrast.
John Emerson's 118 has a lot of truth in it, I think. Slights or perceived slights during one's formative years can cut deep. I had a very interesting conversation with my dad last summer that left me with the strong impression that a goodly part of his worldview on religion and politics had its roots in a long-ago confrontation with a stereotypical liberal nitwit over something totally inconsequential. But he was young, in a new environment, and unsure of himself, and he perceived her as much more powerful and much more typical than she was. The feelings and the intensity of that seemingly trivial experience became part of his framework for interpreting other conflicts over religion in public life, with results that often seem strange to me.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 9:20 PM
casual bigotry against "fundies" doesn't help
I have to roll my eyes a little bit at this. We get to dislike people for their beliefs; that's not bigotry. I have extensive personal experience with fundies to undergird my exceedingly poor opinion of them. I've mostly known the prosperous suburban type though.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 9:31 PM
We get to dislike people for their beliefs; that's not bigotry.
I took the point to be that while we are allowed to dislike people for any reason at all, and even to express that dislike vehemently, such expression is not useful in getting them, or people losely affiliated with them, to vote for us. This is probably better said by the article you cited above:
It seems like reasonable advice. I am terrible about following it, though.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 9:42 PM
All I'm objecting to is the use of the term "bigotry" to describe hostility to fundamentalist Christians, when really the hostility has more to do with an accurate perception of what they stand for. I wasn't addressing the larger point. I've had two fundamentalist Christian best friends named Melissa; I traded cups of sugar back in Jr. high because exile in exurbia demanded it. I think I can usually manage it in real life political conversations, too.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 9:48 PM
Fair point. As I said, I'm not so good about this post Iraq war.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 10:02 PM
177 totally rules.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 11:07 PM
That is to say, 117 totally rules.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 06- 7-06 11:07 PM
The Dems could potentially get a lot of mileage out of demonizing fundamentalists to much greater extent. It would be hard to pull it off without alienating evangelicals, and to a lesser extent other devout groups. You'd need to craft a new narrative and change their knee jerk reactions. I don't think the current class of politicians and consultants could pull it off. Maybe no one can as long as the media enviroment is so favorable to wingnut narratives. Evangelicals have a bit of a presecution complex, and won't be so open when the attacks from secular politicians. Attacking specific preachers might help. Falwell, etc.
Tlking up dominionism, as a few pundits have begun doing, might possibly mobilize the anti-fundie vote without alinating evanelicals. (To educate the electorate about them would be commendable in other ways too).
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 3:15 AM
Should they do it more politely?
In a sense, yes, if they want to win elections.
But this can't be universally true, because it's not as if pro-life Republicans disagree with the pro-choice Democrats politely. Maybe contempt for those who disagree is a luxury that only a majority party can afford.
I'm all for comity in the political sphere, I just have a hard time believing that "contempt" is a cause rather than a symptom.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 9:34 AM
But he was young, in a new environment, and unsure of himself, and he perceived her as much more powerful and much more typical than she was. The feelings and the intensity of that seemingly trivial experience became part of his framework for interpreting other conflicts over religion in public life
My wife is amazed and appalled at the long shadow encounters I had when young with young women whose names I never knew hold over me. When you are young, sensitive, and hoping to assert yourself and be accepted, the power even nitwit young women have over you is actually enormous. Of course it shouldn't be so, and once you achieve acceptance — yes, from other women — it's no longer so, but still.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 9:52 AM
In my dad's case, I don't think it had anything in particular to do with his antagonist being female. He just perceived her as being the insider/establishment/powerful player and himself as being the outsider who was there on sufferance. And this feeling persisted even after he retired from the top end of the institution after a long and lauded career there.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 06- 8-06 12:56 PM