Steve M on Ted Cruz
As Jonathan Chait writes -- in a post titled "Why Ted Cruz Wants Republicans to Hate Him" -- Cruz thinks he's battling moderates in his party the way Barry Goldwater did half a century ago.
But moderates really were very powerful within the GOP in the 1960s.
Hence Nixon in '68.
Goldwater conservatives had to wage war on the Establishment if they wanted an unyieldingly conservative party.
The first real proof of their victory was Reagan.
Cruz, by contrast, is fighting exclusively on matters of style.
His side has already won the ideological battle[.]
If radicalism regarding means is a style, he's fighting about style.
He and the conservative commentariate are much more radical about means than the senior Republicans in the House and the Senate.
Think Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, and government shutdowns.
It's in that respect that, compared to him, the leadership of the party, both in the Senate and in the House, is moderate.
Jon Chait on Cruz
Chait's piece is pretty good.
The conservative movement, which was identified intellectually with National Review and politically with Barry Goldwater, wanted their party to launch a full-throated counterattack on big government.
They had an ideological program that differed sharply from the reigning ideology of Eisenhower and Nixon: a straightforward attack on big government as socialism.
Conservatives attacked big government, absolutely essential to the progressive vision, as communism, too, pretty much using the two words interchangeably, as did Reagan later, and as the right does, now and again, to this day.
Nixon claimed to be a liberal and conservatives agreed then and agree now.
Think EPA, negative income tax, a guaranteed annual wage.
Eisenhower was wooed by both parties to be their presidential candidate.
He thought the conservatives who wanted to undo the New Deal were crackpots and created the interstate highway system.
He nominated Earl Warren (a Republican) to the Supreme Court and Nixon encouraged him to enforce Brown in Little Rock , which he did.
Acting with and for IKE, Nixon supported a Civil Rights Act.
Every creation of the New Deal including especially Social Security, Brown, and the Civil Rights Act are denounced in Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative, ghost written by Brent Bozell of the founding generation at the National Review.
(They were denounced by Rehnquist, too, for whom Cruz clerked.)
But this of Chait's blurs a key point.
Conservatives have not completely worked out how far they would go if given absolute power — back to 1932? 1905? — but they agree on the direction.
Going back to 1932 undoes every progressive creation starting with those of the New Deal.
But significant parts of the progressive achievement pre-date the New Deal, including the federal income tax, the creation of the IRS, and popular election of the senate.
Much of the conservative movement and commentariate (see George Will, for example) is quite clear they want all that rolled back.
To understand conservative aims you have to think McKinley.
Too, Chait follows Steve M in misunderstanding TC's radicalism - his "style," according to SM and his "tactics,' according to JC.
Both of them treat this as some sort of shtick, some sort of self-advertising gimmick.
It is absolutely not that.
It is for real and deadly serious.
Cruz's stop-at-nothing methods are exactly why he is beloved not only of the tea-bagger wing of the conservative base but of nearly the entire conservative base and certainly the majority if not all of the conservative commentariate, some of whom were Reaganites in their youth.
And it is that radicalism, common to him and to many other conservatives in the House and in the Senate, that forced Boehner to pass a clean funding bill for Homeland Security without Republican support, relying on Democratic votes, a deal that was the only bright sign O's final years might not be years of total paralysis and final defeat for Obamacare.
And that in turn explains the fury of the conservatives of the base and of the commentariate against Boehner and McConnell.
PS.
Nixon was hated by the Democrats and fellow-traveling liberals before Watergate and they were delighted to use that scandal to destroy him, settling old scores from early Cold War days when he had been abundantly willing to use his otherwise undoubtedly sincere anti-communism for party advantage.
Think about the Alger Hiss/Whitaker Chambers affair, for example.
Politics, as they used to say, ain't beanbag.
Jon Chait on Cruz
Chait's piece is pretty good.
The conservative movement, which was identified intellectually with National Review and politically with Barry Goldwater, wanted their party to launch a full-throated counterattack on big government.
They had an ideological program that differed sharply from the reigning ideology of Eisenhower and Nixon: a straightforward attack on big government as socialism.
Conservatives attacked big government, absolutely essential to the progressive vision, as communism, too, pretty much using the two words interchangeably, as did Reagan later, and as the right does, now and again, to this day.
Nixon claimed to be a liberal and conservatives agreed then and agree now.
Think EPA, negative income tax, a guaranteed annual wage.
Eisenhower was wooed by both parties to be their presidential candidate.
He thought the conservatives who wanted to undo the New Deal were crackpots and created the interstate highway system.
He nominated Earl Warren (a Republican) to the Supreme Court and Nixon encouraged him to enforce Brown in Little Rock , which he did.
Acting with and for IKE, Nixon supported a Civil Rights Act.
Every creation of the New Deal including especially Social Security, Brown, and the Civil Rights Act are denounced in Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative, ghost written by Brent Bozell of the founding generation at the National Review.
(They were denounced by Rehnquist, too, for whom Cruz clerked.)
But this of Chait's blurs a key point.
Conservatives have not completely worked out how far they would go if given absolute power — back to 1932? 1905? — but they agree on the direction.
Going back to 1932 undoes every progressive creation starting with those of the New Deal.
But significant parts of the progressive achievement pre-date the New Deal, including the federal income tax, the creation of the IRS, and popular election of the senate.
Much of the conservative movement and commentariate (see George Will, for example) is quite clear they want all that rolled back.
To understand conservative aims you have to think McKinley.
Too, Chait follows Steve M in misunderstanding TC's radicalism - his "style," according to SM and his "tactics,' according to JC.
Both of them treat this as some sort of shtick, some sort of self-advertising gimmick.
It is absolutely not that.
It is for real and deadly serious.
Cruz's stop-at-nothing methods are exactly why he is beloved not only of the tea-bagger wing of the conservative base but of nearly the entire conservative base and certainly the majority if not all of the conservative commentariate, some of whom were Reaganites in their youth.
And it is that radicalism, common to him and to many other conservatives in the House and in the Senate, that forced Boehner to pass a clean funding bill for Homeland Security without Republican support, relying on Democratic votes, a deal that was the only bright sign O's final years might not be years of total paralysis and final defeat for Obamacare.
And that in turn explains the fury of the conservatives of the base and of the commentariate against Boehner and McConnell.
PS.
Nixon was hated by the Democrats and fellow-traveling liberals before Watergate and they were delighted to use that scandal to destroy him, settling old scores from early Cold War days when he had been abundantly willing to use his otherwise undoubtedly sincere anti-communism for party advantage.
Think about the Alger Hiss/Whitaker Chambers affair, for example.
Politics, as they used to say, ain't beanbag.
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