Obama V. Romney
- Thread starter Leo
- Start date
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
I mean it's not very complicated. the GOP is stuck between rock and hard place. growing its base necessitates compromising on the very issues - immigration, abortion, gay marriage, etc - that bring out a big chunk of its current base. it simply can't start off every election cycle heavily conceding black and latin voters and turning off women in droves and expect good things to happen, and the problem will only get worse going forward.
OTOH, after O crushed McCain in 2008 and the Dems swept the Senate and House everyone was talking about the end of the Republican Party and then they promptly took back the House (which they will maintain with a healthy cushion, Dems will pick up maybe 5 seats - here's a nice rundown of some of the key races for anyone interested). a majority of states have GOP governors. so while the GOP identity crisis is very real I think you still have to take w/a bit of a grain of salt.
and of course as Vim said, O presided over a drone war and placated Wall St, so some things just stay the same no matter what. we'll see if Elizabeth Warren (who handily beat tea party poster boy Scott Brown btw; unfortunately Michelle Bachmann eked out a reelection) can have a real go at getting some real financial regulation done w/help from a second-term O but I'm pretty skeptical.
OTOH, after O crushed McCain in 2008 and the Dems swept the Senate and House everyone was talking about the end of the Republican Party and then they promptly took back the House (which they will maintain with a healthy cushion, Dems will pick up maybe 5 seats - here's a nice rundown of some of the key races for anyone interested). a majority of states have GOP governors. so while the GOP identity crisis is very real I think you still have to take w/a bit of a grain of salt.
and of course as Vim said, O presided over a drone war and placated Wall St, so some things just stay the same no matter what. we'll see if Elizabeth Warren (who handily beat tea party poster boy Scott Brown btw; unfortunately Michelle Bachmann eked out a reelection) can have a real go at getting some real financial regulation done w/help from a second-term O but I'm pretty skeptical.
vimothy
yurp
Why is technocracy inherently liberal?
Because technocracy is about the rational (re)organisation of society by a body of experts to bring about some aim, like maximising personal autonomy, as efficiently as possible.
This idea that society is a piece of technology that can be used efficiently to bring about an outcome where individuals get maximum satisfaction is what I think of as liberalism--the means and the ends of liberalism.
Conservatives look instead to the natural order and to inherited institutions. They don't believe that social problems can be "solved" as if they were technical problems, and they don't believe that society is a means to bring about ends that are inherently liberal.
Because technocracy is about the rational (re)organisation of society by a body of experts to bring about some aim, like maximising personal autonomy, as efficiently as possible.
This idea that society is a piece of technology that can be used efficiently to bring about an outcome where individuals get maximum satisfaction is what I think of as liberalism--the means and the ends of liberalism.
Conservatives look instead to the natural order and to inherited institutions. They don't believe that social problems can be "solved" as if they were technical problems, and they don't believe that society is a means to bring about ends that are inherently liberal.
D
droid
Guest
Im finding a lot of the talk about left/right wrt the election kinda hard to swallow. Transplant Obama and Romney to Europe and you have a Centre Right candidate (Obama) who is liberal on some social issues, roughly equivalent to the Tories and a batshit crazy right candidate (Romney) roughly equivalent to what? The BNP or something?
Considering the European scale is about already places the 'centre' where the right was 30/40 years ago and there are few genuinely left wing movements in Europe, calling either party 'left' just seems silly.
(Though I do accept that its convenient and its all relative anyway.)
craner
Beast of Burden
Vim was caricaturing Droid's position. The Drone War is simply a way for Obama to avoid all of the hard foreign policy decisions he should be making. For all the benefits (i.e. all the dead terrorists) the policy is an on-going disaster: a moral disgrace and a tactical boomerang. The very worst thing about Obama, it seems to me, is his foreign policy, starting with that dreadful speech he delivered in Cairo in 2009. This is a whole other can of worms, however.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
your take on Nixon + Reagan is exactly backwards unless I'm misunderstanding you. the point is that both were too liberal to win a current GOP presidential primary.
the center absolutely is not "moving left". socially yes - but even then only in some ways, abortion is still basically an even split - but fiscally it's the exact opposite. Nixon widely expanded social safety nets and founded the freaking E.P.A. that could never happen in the age of Grover Norquist.
and i'm sorry, but the issue is precisely that the GOP let the fringe in (in fact, went out and recruited them via the astroturfing that kicked off the Tea Party).
craner
Beast of Burden
I think I see where you are coming from -- like the Tory complaint about the Foreign Office or Whitehall mandarin, although I suppose we also have the Machiavellian Sir Humphrey gargoyle here, too. The technocracy is a state function, hence wedded to the State. The maximum satisfaction for largest number of people -- this is Mill and Utilitarianism, I suppose. It makes sense, but something in my head is resisting this. You could also say that a technocracy is the architecture of order and tradition in some states.
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vimothy
yurp
I dunno.
I'd say that Europe is just travelling along the curve at a faster rate, but that we're both going in the same direction. The European centre would be regarded as quite far left 40 years ago. The same is true of America. But when you one to the other at any moment, it looks like its travelling to the right.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
no a lot closer to UKIP. to their credit the GOP has generally rid itself of overt racists i.e. David Duke.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
have to absolutely disagree with this, see above. Nixon was way too far left to be a factor in today's GOP. Nixon coexisted in a party with Nelson Rockefeller. there is no such thing today as a Rockefeller Republican. or actually, there is. his name is Barack Obama.
about Europe I know much less but it still seems wrong. probably craner or somebody could better go into it.
vimothy
yurp
Well, I don't think that fiscal issues are that central. But whatever happens, the government will expand as a function of time. It doesn't matter who is in change, as far as I can see:
You can see from the graph that, not only is it growing in absolute terms, but, allowing for some cyclical variation about trend, its even growing as a share of income!
I won't post more graphs, but I think that you'll be hard pushed to find any evidence that our contemporary fiscal conservatives have had a material impact on the size of the American government.
As for the rest, take any dimension you like, cycle back 50 or 100 years and tell me if society has become more liberal or more conservative. In every dimension I can think of, the answer is that society has become more liberal.
And who were this "fringe" voting for before they were let in by the GOP? They were voting for the GOP. The problem is that to be a moderate today, which is what you probably are if you are a competent politician or bureaucrat, places you much further away from the "crazies", i.e. the GOP's traditional base, than it did in the past. This becomes less of a problem, I suppose, if the GOP simply ignores them. I mean, who else are they going to vote for?
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
if anything where you could point to a shift to the left is Latin America (Morales, Correa, Lula and now Dilma, and of course the original, Chavismo) but even that is more complicated than just a 40 year gradual arc leftward.
plus even by point of comparison - Brazil elected a former guerrilla president. in the U.S. Obama was pilloried for very tangential association with a former guerrilla.
plus even by point of comparison - Brazil elected a former guerrilla president. in the U.S. Obama was pilloried for very tangential association with a former guerrilla.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
I'm not talking about actual impact on government's fiscal policy, I'm talking about winning elections, and what makes up political discourse in this country. nearly every conservative politician outside of Ron Paul talks up small government and then does mostly the opposite - I largely agree with your point that technocracy is essentially liberal - but that's not the point. the point is what people believe and what politicians say to go get elected and what parties put in their platforms and what stupid petitions entire parties (basically) sign.
as far as social issues, it's much more complicated than you make it out to be. drug policy has gotten far more draconian (the Rockefeller laws, FFS) in many ways, medical marijuana etc not withstanding. gun control - not something I'm personally for (with exceptions), but whatever - is pretty much a no-fly zone for Dems at this point. abortion remains as divisive as ever.
not to mention the greatest and most obvious rightward creep of all - the attitude towards labor. the left was at its strongest in this country - by a wide margin - before WWII (and especially before WWI - Palmer Raids and suppression of the IWW etc). the Progressive Era for crissakes - Eugene Debs, an actual socialist, got 6% of the votes for President in 1912. a great deal of Republican - and some Democratic - effort in the last 40 years at dismantling both the New Deal and LBJ's Great Society (tho selectively of course, excluding the untouchables like Medicare).
IdleRich
IdleRich
Is this not because a state governor can be a lot more specific in their policies and beliefs and avoid having to appeal to all the parts of their party across the country? In other words they don't face the problems we're discussing that dog the GOP as a whole.
I'd say that was more as a result of Parkinson's Law than a triumph of centrist ideology. Same as in this country, every government promises to save money on the civil service and reduce the number of quangos but ends up doing precisely the opposite.
They were voting for it but they weren't running it.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
which is all to say that, no, I don't agree with your shift to the lift, or liberalization, or whatever.
and as far as that fringe, yes, most of them were probably voting GOP (if they were voting at all, of course) but they were doing so relatively quietly. like, obviously they were a part of the GOP milieu and discourse but they weren't dominating it. and that's precisely what the GOP needs to not project in order to appeal to the voters it needs to grow. Buckley didn't stop the fringe from voting GOP - he created plausible separation between the John Birch Society and the GOP mainstream so Republicans could more easily appeal to moderate voters (*rich just said the same thing but more succinctly*).
and as far as that fringe, yes, most of them were probably voting GOP (if they were voting at all, of course) but they were doing so relatively quietly. like, obviously they were a part of the GOP milieu and discourse but they weren't dominating it. and that's precisely what the GOP needs to not project in order to appeal to the voters it needs to grow. Buckley didn't stop the fringe from voting GOP - he created plausible separation between the John Birch Society and the GOP mainstream so Republicans could more easily appeal to moderate voters (*rich just said the same thing but more succinctly*).
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
yes that's it exactly - see Mitt Romney, former pro-choice, universal health care installing Republican governor of blue as it gets Massachusetts. or Michael Bloomberg.
actually I've heard thinking that the GOP might do well to loosen its line on things like abortion and immigration, much like Nancy P did for the Dems on gun control. i.e. keep it (quietly) in the party platform but allow Senators and especially Representatives a freer hand so they can tailor to their individual constituencies. tho that seems like a stopgap have your cake + eat it to kind of thing but hey when you're desperate.
D
droid
Guest
Yep, sorry, thats what I should've said.
Still, the BNP are a bit slyer these days. There's tons of American commentators that would be far more extreme (in public at least).
D
droid
Guest
Do you have a graph that deducts defense spending from expenditure?
Some nice symmetry there.
I don't see anyone calling for a cut in this trend. Even Obama's 'military cuts' just slow the rate of increase.
crackerjack
Well-known member
So would I. If you've spent the last 4 years making out that Obama is a Kenyan Muslim Marxist big-state anti-American devil you're hardly gonna stay home just cos Mitt isn't barking quite as loudly as you. He obligingly changed position on almost everything he ever believed in to suit you and your crazy mates, after all.
Apparently the reason Gallup made such an arse of this election (remember the +6 Romney leads?) is that they estimated whites would be 78% of the vote. In fact they were 72%. Since turnout looks like being only a bit down on '08 (a good chunk of that attributable to Sandy refugees), presumably they reckoned that non-whites, having got over the novelty of a non-white president, would revert to type and stay at home.
Who voted for Garry Johnson? Get the feeling US libertarianism takes as much support from otherwise left-leaning anti-war social liberals as from people who've slipped off the regular right map.