It's a new election, and Michele Catalano is back on the circuit with the same old rap:
But the last two days of mudslinging against Palin have been so extreme, they have transformed her into an almost sympathetic figure in my eyes. More important, the barbs thrown at her have made me look upon liberals with a level of contempt I have not felt since, well, 2004.If I’m rushing to the defense of a woman whose core ideologies I oppose, then something pretty bad must be going on. And that something smells like a pungent mixture of hypocrisy and desperation.
So, it's been a while since I did a lot of political blogging and, honestly, I'm probably off my game. A proper political blog rant builds up steam, makes a lot of unequivocal statements about how much the target of the rant sucks, and wraps up with some generalizations about the evils of... whatever. Take your pick: the war, being against the war, Michael Moore, George Bush, what have you. And I just don't have the time to get into all that these days. Basically, I'd like to say this:
I knew the instant I read the Daily Kos piece about how Trig Palin was supposedly Bristol Palin's daughter that the whole thing was going to backfire in a huge way. For one thing, the Democratic Party has the rare pleasure of running in the wake of one of the most unpopular presidents in history. And unlike, say, Ford, -- who, aside from pardoning Nixon, was basically nothing much to write home about -- Bush Jr. is actually unpopular for mistakes he and the Republican party have made on a wide range of domestic and foreign policy issues. They had effective control of all three branches of government for 6 years, and they just fucked the dog: they failed to win either of the wars they started and the economy's in a shambles. Not only did freedom not spread in the Middle East, but the war in Iraq has expanded the power of Iran and Syria, and is threatening to destabilized Turkey -- the only secular Islamic democracy in the region. Everything Bush touched has turned to absolute shit, and McCain was right there with him pretty much every step of the way.
So why the fuck would anyone mess with Sarah Palin about her family background?
Basically, it boils down to a failure of perception on the left about social conservatism, and where it fits into the Republican party's political platform. Because most Democrats hate the social conservative agenda a lot more than they hate the rest of the Republican political platform: trickle-down economics is clearly an idea dreamed up by someone with Alzheimer's, but most Democrats are basically willing to live with it. Some of them even think it's a good idea. What they're not willing to live with is a government that legislates personal morality -- drug use, sex, reproductive rights -- or a government that legitimates the influence of religion on government. These are the Union-breaker issues for Democrats. Someone who disagrees with them on these issues is, in some small but important way, almost less than human and must be politically marginalized by any means necessary. And these issues are so provocative to Democrats, causing them to fly into such a blind unreasoning rage, that they cannot conceive of the simple reality that most Republicans don't care very much about these things.
Because they don't, you know.
The main stream of the Republican Party basically wants an unbeatable military, a massive and well-equipped police force, a judiciary that never finds anyone innocent, and large, cheap, infinitely expandable prisons. Other than that, it's extremely important that the government regulate nothing unless it is to the clear advantage of business over the interests of the consumer: broadcasting, transportation, and agriculture.
The problem Republicans face is that this agenda isn't very popular on its own merits, so they have to ally themselves with other groups in order to have any voice in the government. And one of these groups are the batshit crazy social conservatives who hate abortion and drugs and four letter words and all that other shit. Mainstream Republicans basically tolerate these wingnuts because their policy agenda doesn't mean much to most Republicans: they don't expect to have a lot of abortions, they don't really like the culture that embraces out queers, they prefer cigarettes and booze to other drugs -- and so on.
So every couple of years the Republicans get up and mouth some platitudes about stem cell research and contraception, and the Democrats go completely insane and start tearing into the Republicans as if condoms in schools was really the most important issue facing the country. And because it's such an important issue, the left pulls out all the stops; they resort to name-calling and photoshopping and every other cheap disphsit stunt they can think of. They chase these issues under the mistaken impression that Republicans care about them as much as Democrats do, and that if they can only make the Republicans see what hypocrites their candidates are, then Republicans will abandon the candidates and the Democrats will win.
But secular Republicans don't care about this shit. And socially conservative Republicans don't either: they can do the math. Who cares if some Republican politician likes to get fucked in bathroom stalls, as long as he makes fucking in bathroom stalls illegal? As long as he says he's sorry, the social conservative movement can still use him. In fact, a contrite politician is more useful than a scandal-free one, because he needs that social conservative vote more, and he'll enact more fascist legislation to keep it.
Meanwhile, left-wing ideologues provide people like Michele Catalano with all the ammo they could possibly need to paint Democrats as hypocritical lunatics.
And if the Democrats lose in 2008, this will be part of the reason.
But the fact that the Democrats' spittle-flecked rants are embarrassing and tactically counterproductive shouldn't obscure another basic reality of this situation: the Republican Party is the party of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. And Michele voted for Bush in 2004 in spite of the fact that Bush's supporters -- people tied directly to his campaign -- engaged in one of the most heinous political smear campaigns in modern political history against none other than Michele's current candidate of choice, John McCain, during the 2000 Republican primaries. Rush Limbaugh, a powerhouse of secular conservatism -- who received a special call from the Bush White House on the 20 year anniversary of his show -- called Chelsea Clinton a dog on national television when she was only 13 years old. And let's not forget the "Obama's a Muslim" and "Michelle Obama hates 'whitey'" memes that the right wing has been passing around the internet.
None of this excuses the behavior of the people who have been smearing Palin, her daughter, and her daughter's boyfriend for the past five days. But it does demonstrate that Michele Catalano's expressions of moral outrage -- and those of most people on the right -- are demonstrably hypocritical or disingenuous.
And let's not forget that bit at the top: the Republicans, whatever their moral and rhetorical failures, are the party that brought us two horrible wars, over 4,000 dead American soldiers, a collapsing economy, warrantless wiretaps, higher crime, higher rates of drug use and overdose, a plummeting dollar, runaway inflation, the practical end of the Geneva Conventions, and torture.
Let's concentrate on that. Because this moral turpitude argument is a fucking loser.
UPDATE: Evidently McCain isn't Michele's candidate of choice. Or not her candidate of choice of record. But, honestly, when she's posting on Pajamas Media, it's hard to take her declaration of independence completely at face value. Not that PM couldn't use a moderating influence.
Posted by Joshua at September 4, 2008 11:45 AM