Some sentences to ponder, randomly arranged:
The Republican Party, and the conservative movement that propped it up, is doomed...These are not the grumblings of some despised, Liberal outsiders that I hauled up from the archives of the earliest days of the Left blogosphere -- despised, Liberal outsiders who could not get a call returned from Chuck Todd if they were holding his pet hamster, "Chew Chewitt", hostage.
For the entire history of modern conservatism, its ideals have been wedded to and marred by white supremacism...
I’ve read dozens of conservative intellectuals writing compellingly about non-racist conservative ideals. Writers like Andrew Sullivan, Ross Douthat, Reihan Salam, Michael Brendan Dougherty, and too many others to count have put forward visions of a conservative party quite different from the one we have.
But not one of these writers, smart as they are, has been able to explain what actual political constituency could bring about this pure conservatism in practice...
“...the conservative movement is fundamentally broken. Trump is not a random act. This election is not a random act.”...
Trump’s politics of aggrieved white nationalism — labeling black people criminals, Latinos rapists, and Muslims terrorists — succeeded because the party’s voting base was made up of the people who once opposed civil rights...
“[Trump] tapped into something that was latent in the Republican Party and conservative movement — but a lot of people in the conservative movement didn’t notice."...
Conservative intellectuals, for the most part, are horrified by racism. When they talk about believing in individual rights and equality, they really mean it. Because the Republican Party is the vehicle through which their ideas can be implemented, they need to believe that the party isn’t racist.
So they deny the party’s racist history, that its post-1964 success was a direct result of attracting whites disillusioned by the Democrats’ embrace of civil rights. And they deny that to this day, Republican voters are driven more by white resentment than by a principled commitment to the free market and individual liberty...
“[Conservative intellectuals and conservative politicians] had this view that the voters were with us on conservatism — philosophical, economic conservatism. In reality, the gravitational center of the Republican Party is white nationalism.” ...
By refusing to admit the truth about their own party, they were powerless to stop the forces that led to Donald Trump’s rise. ...
These are the ruminations of Mr. Avik Roy, "Republican Intellectual" as reported in Vox today.
Today. (h/t alert reader "RF")
Longtime readers will remember Mr. Avik Roy from just a couple of years ago when he was regularly invited to appear on MSNBC's late, lamented "All in With Chris Hayes" and NBC's Wretched Thing That Wouldn't Die "Meet the Press" to lie about poverty, health care, and, well, just a whole buncha stuff:
...
For example, this Sunday when one of America's Most Respected Sunday Zombie Gasbags programs put on Avik Roy -- "...contributor to National Review Online, where he was described as a member of Mitt Romney's Health Care Policy Advisory Group" -- to talk about health care (right after having Rudy Ghouliana on to personally attest to the honor and integrity of Chris Christie) this first question I asked myself was whether or not he has, say, a record of Gish Galloping wingnut healthcare bullshit every time he gets is front of a camera.
Turns out, yeah, he does:
Premium Bullshit.
Forbes Tells The Truth, Then Lies About Obamacare.
Avik Roy has facts wrong on Arkansas "private option".
Avik Roy and the wonk gap
Run Everybody! Avik Roy is Coming!06/03/13 04:31 PM—UPDATED 10/31/13 02:54 PM...note that Roy was on “All In with Chris Hayes” last week, and as Kevin Drum noted, Roy “offered up a criticism of Social Security’s disability program that was so misleading that Michael Astrue, a former commissioner of the Social Security Administration appointed by George Bush, nearly had a heart attack on the air.”Shortly thereafter, Roy weighed in on the latest report on California’s exchanges under the Affordable Care Act. While most of us saw the news from the Golden State as excellent news and proof that “Obamacare” implementation is proceeding apace, Roy published a remarkably dishonest piece arguing the opposite, deliberately omitting relevant details.The always-mild-mannered Jonathan Cohn explained in detail why Roy is plainly, demonstrably wrong, but added an important point about the larger issue.If you want to know why we can’t have an honest debate about Obamacare, all you have to do is pay attention to some recent news from California – and the way a highly distorted version of it, by one irresponsible writer, has rippled through the conservative press.Right. Jon, Krugman, and Ezra, among others, have detailed reports explaining why Avik Roy’s analysis simply doesn’t make sense – I won’t recreate the wheel here – and I hope folks will follow the links to understand the underlying policy dispute. It’s not just of a gray area; Roy is simply wrong.But it’s the point about “why we can’t have an honest debate” that resonates with me.Indeed, it reinforces the “wonk gap” thesis I’ve been kicking around for a while.Remember, Avik Roy isn’t just some guy who shows up on Fox to rant and rave about “death panels”; Roy is one of the conservatives who hopes to prove that serious policy scholarship still exists on the right. He publishes content with a credible tone; he doesn’t fly off the rhetorical rails; and he genuinely understands the policy details.But when it comes to advancing a partisan/ideological agenda, Roy is nevertheless willing to publish “Obamacare” criticisms that are transparently ridiculous.I believe this is yet another data point that highlights the wonk gap. As Republicans become a post-policy party, even their wonks – their sharpest and most knowledgeable minds – are producing shoddy work that crumbles quickly under mild scrutiny....
ObamaCare in California – Reuters Rehashes Avik Roy’s Lie
They Can't Stop Lying About Obamacare
Avik Roy has a habit of dropping patently false narratives then when called on it is like,"Whatever, my real point is" #Fail #Nerdland
— Lizz Winstead (@lizzwinstead) February 23, 2014
What is fascinating about this slow disintegration of the GOP is how perfectly it reveals the parallel catastrophe we dirty hippies have also been on about for years. Specifically, just how completely the degenerate Right has beaten the media into letting them control the frame of every public policy debate.
Of course Mr. Avik Roy was deployed by the Right as a professional liar to prop up their depraved policies. They have an endless army of such interchangeable, well-funded drones, perpetually gassed up and ready to be crashed into any serious discussion of any public policy that might threaten to veer off into the subject of how the government might be used to, y'know, actually help the citizens of the United States. I know it, you know it, Chris Hayes knew it, and presumably at least someone on Chuck Todd's staff knows it.
And yet it didn't matter.
Likewise and on a much grander and more tragic scale, of course "the conservative movement is fundamentally broken" and has been for decades. Of course "the entire history of modern conservatism, its ideals have been wedded to and marred by white supremacism" as any averagely bright citizen who could read at a fifth grade level and was not it catatonic denial about reality could have told you -- and has been trying to tell you -- for decades.
And yet this particular story -- this long-running, monumental tragedy of immediate and critical importance to every American citizen -- has been explicitly ignored for decades by the people whose constitutionally-protected job it is to report to the American people, stories of all kinds -- from water-skiing squirrels to baseball scores -- but most especially stories of monumental and consequential importance to our lives and our futures.
We have reached a place where simply telling an important and observable truth in the media is now so dangerous to the entire corporate media structure that even the tiniest splinter of that truth is only allowed on camera under heavy sedation and carefully muffled and battened on all sides by the best Gingriches and Hewitts and Fourners money can buy.
I'm glad the prevailing political wind has shifted enough so that an opportunist like Mr. Roy now sees acknowledging some fragment of the truth as his best career move.
I am deeply disturbed that it has taken a Category Five shitstorm named Trump -- a shitstorm which has been bearing down on this country for decades and to which people like Mr. Roy have been actively contributing -- to finally nudge professional wind-socks like Mr. Roy in the general direction of not-lying,
4 comments:
The other theme in the Vox interview Roy raised (besides white racism) is that, if people really understood the GOP's conservative principles they would embrace them. But then he went on to observe that Millennials, minorities and immigrants don't seem to care much for limited government (scratching head, no doubt). The problem is that the only people who approve of the rabid individualistic, Randian dystopia that is the core of Conservative "principles" are the wealthy, powerful billionaires that would be the GOP's sole constituency if it truly renounced white supremacy. Not many votes there.
"I’ve read dozens of conservative intellectuals writing compellingly about non-racist conservative ideals. Writers like Andrew Sullivan, Ross Douthat, Reihan Salam, Michael Brendan Dougherty, and too many others to count."
Translation: Once again, the problem are THOSE Republicans, over there...wwwwwwwaaaaaayyyyyy over there. Certainly not people who at best, owe their careers to the GOP's embrace of post-1964 white disillusionment over civil rights or at worst have specifically said/written racially insensitive things (so stop Tweeting me links to Sullivan's articles damn hippies!). Because I don't want any awkward moments in the next greenroom and/or at the next cocktail party when I will run into these people.
We can expect much more of this as the rats climb onto the currently under constriction "SS Post-Trump Republican Party" rebranding to be launched sometime before Thanksgiving when the news is flooded with "Is the honeymoon over for Hillary Clinton?" stores.
Roy is a smooth liar and his inclusion of Sully as non-racist is risible. But at least he's acknowledging the foundation of racism for today's Rs That's farther then the likes of Brooks will go.
"I am deeply disturbed that it has taken a Category Five shitstorm named Trump -- a shitstorm which has been bearing down on this country for decades and to which people like Mr. Roy have been actively contributing -- to finally nudge professional wind-socks like Mr. Roy in the general direction of not-lying,"
I would agree with you except for the part where it is VERY VERY LUCRATIVE to lie, and lie big. And you have the Rogues Gallery of professional wind-socks to prove it.
You saw this coming. the conservative movement intentionally wed themselves to the white nationalist movement, and then denied it to everyone who would inquire about it, including themselves, it pursuit of political power.
They yoked up a semi-conscious rabid elephant to their electoral sledge, and when the elephant finally woke up and started rampaging again, they are now professionally horrified. As they are required to be per clause 5 subsection 18 of their contracts.
The oxymoron "conservative intellectual" has never been more on display than recently. With any luck, some people in power will start to ask exactly what they were paying for, or some people with votes will ask themselves exactly what they have been listening to all these years.
But probably not.
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