Excerptcize

On Friday I wrote the following:

[...] socially conservative, right wing political factions in the US have truly earned the label ‘noise-machine’. Social conservatives in the States are vocal, well organized, well funded and extremely active in all levels of politicss [They] recycle talking points through an endless echo chamber that greatly increases the media attention given to what are often fringe opinions. The huge media saturation that these groups are able to attain inflate their perceived strength.

While I do believe this to be true, it is just barely so. The Obama adminisration is still less than a year old, and prior to January 20th, 2009 the leader of the US was a man, who after countless disgraces,  is still adored today by a third of the populace. Even with the majorities in Congress that Democrats gained in 2006 and strengthened in 2008, passage of any legislation is still a tenuous and delicate balancing act. With a large majority in the House of Representatives and a vaunted (at least in most media circles) ‘supermajority’ of 60 of the 100 seats in the Senate, any and all legislative victories are still extremely hard won, as the GOP, masters of legislative procedural abuse (tactics Canadians are also becoming more familiar with) are also very good at rejecting, in unison, every single policy proposal that attempts to wend it’s way through Congress. It’s also further worth noting, that were it not for a few hundred voters in Minnesota who pulled the lever for Al Franken, the Democrats would have ‘only’ 59 seats in the US Senate (a body that hilariously refers to itself as ‘the greatest deliberative body on the planet’) and the House and Senate majorities, along with Obama in the White House, would not have been sufficient enough to pass anything this past year.

It also seems that on the day I decided to write about over perceptions of ‘conservative’ strength, events had conspired to highlight how strong and pervasive it truly is.

Last week it was announced that Sarah Palin would be joining Fox News Channel on a multi year deal to provide “political commentary and analysis.” She also made her debut on the ‘fair and balanced’ broadcaster, and from a ratings stand point, was a smashing success, as nearly 4 million people tuned in to her appearance on “The O’Reilly Factor”, double the combined audiences of MSNBC and CNN. Those who love Palin really love her. Andrew Sullivan, who at his blog The Daily Dish has written about Palin in near abject horror since she was thrust onto the national stage by a desperate John McCain, commenting on the ongoing fusion of Fox News Channel and the Republican National Committee, noted the following after watching her interview with Glenn Beck:

[The] launch of a new political-media party is being framed around Palin as a “reluctant to serve” outsider, a new Washington combined with Esther. Hence her resignation is a reason to support her! It proves that she was too pure, too Godly, to survive the worldly political corruption that infects everything in Satan’s capital city, Washington. And that’s why the elites will do everything to destroy her – not because they have some idea that a political leader should not be a congenital liar or ignorant of fifth grade history or devoid of any relevant experience – but because they are on the side of Satan.

[...] the fusion of Fox Barbie-doll beauty, marinated in evangelical Christianity, mouthing every cliche that survives from the Reagan era until it has no relation at all to reality, propelled by what former Christianist Frank Shaeffer has called “the deepening inferiority complex suffered by the evangelical/fundamentalist community.”This FNC/RNC merger is another threat to reasoned discourse in public life, because it is a showman’s concoction of very powerful emotional elements: resentment, sex, religion, anger. It creates its own reality.  “We Do Not Torture”; everyone in Gitmo was the “Worst of the Worst”; the stimulus lowered growth; all the debt is Obama’s fault; Obama is a Muslim and non-American; the White House is stacked with the Islamist/socialist enemy within; if we had not bailed out the banks, we would be roaring back from the recession; Obama wants to ignore the war in order to effect a radical transformation of America into some kind of scary version of France and Waziristan. And on and on. I’m not exaggerating. Listen to these maniacs.

Andrew’s large readership was able to provide this missive that he entitled ‘Among The Palinites’:

Over Christmas, my brother and I paid a visit to the other side of our family. They live as far as they can from an urban center, and are distrustful of “citified” people, though they make an exception for my side of the family, even if we are looked upon as somewhat freakish. They are Red Staters trapped in a Blue State (Washington), and resent it. They are nominally Christian [...] All routinely refer to President Obama as “the nigger.” All watch Fox News in between bouts of video games [...] On this visit, we found that Sarah Palin’s book had become the Christmas gift of choice for most of them. Whether they’ve read it or not, she was the primary topic of their conversation. They adore her. “She speaks like us,” one aunt said, almost tearfully. “She’s one of us.” Their anger, impotent at the moment, seems to be growing.

I’ll only force you to gag with one more excerpt; this one from Steve Benen’s weekly feature ‘The God Machine’:

In Alabama, Republican gubernatorial hopeful Bradley Byrne got himself into considerable trouble recently when he said publicly, “I believe there are parts of the Bible that are meant to be literally true and parts that are not.” This seemingly reasonable observation generated intense right-wing pushback, and threatened to derail his statewide campaign. Byrne has since backpedaled, assuring voters, “I believe the Bible is true. Every word of it.”

Suffice it to say, right wing, bible quoting, social conservatives are an extremely powerful segment of the American electorate. The rub of my previous post was to note that despite their volume and intensity they do not represent a majority view of Americans. That does not exclude the fact that they currently wield a significant level of power as it is, and are ever in search of more. Ambivalence is not the correct strategy to implement in engaging with these groups.

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