Faction Fortunes
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Political parties are a bit like life itself. When one species succeeds, another might be threatened. When one faction rises, others must fade. I’m sure T-Rex ate a lot of dinosaurs that had happily ruled the land before those mobile jaws of death appeared.
Not that Ron Paul looks like a T-Rex mind you, but he might be one.
Every political party is composed of factions. After one faction has been down long enough and lets the other factions screw up enough, they gather the will and momentum to take over. Democrat factions range from Blue Dogs who are indistinguishable from blue collar Republicans, the Malleable Moderates who ruled the party under Bill Clinton, and the Communist branch (guess who is their current monarch).
The Republicans have three basic branches. There are the Social Conservatives who, despite media misinterpretation, are basically the noisy minority who must be recruited to get election day turn-out. Then there is the Manifest Destiny branch, of which George Bush was the latest figurehead. Finally is the Libertarian faction, who are descended from Lincoln and Goldwater, and mainly want government to keep its nose out of The People’s business.
Which makes Ron Paul’s near win this weekend newsworthy.
The Southern Republican Leadership Conference (SRLC) is in most ways everything it sounds like: Southern Republicans who comb, groom, vet, anoint and slay leaders within their ranks. However, since southern Republicans were abolitionists and most emancipated southern black became Republicans out of gratitude (and fear, since Southern Democrats enjoyed hanging them), the SRLC has a stubborn preference for freedom. This is a Good Thing, though here in San Francisco you could never convince local liberals whose world perspective stops at Oakland.
That’s unfair. Some have gone as far as Lodi.
Mass media (which now includes you and me) have shamed Social Conservative Republicans into near silence. Sure, they get their dander up about abortion, but on all other matters they are pleasantly quiet these days, perhaps knowing that other dinosaurs passed into history. Bush the Younger has destroyed, perhaps for ever, the Manifest Destiny faction. Then again the Manifests are prone to this outcome since big dreams require big money and bigger government, which goes against the small-government mindset of the other two factions of the Republican party and 99% of the public.
Seriously, you have to be a cretin from Chicago or Crawford to want more of the stuff.
With the other two Republican factions in silence or shambles, the Libertarian faction’s rise is expected. But the rapidity of the rise is enhanced by the fact that Americans of all affiliations have had quite enough of recent federal robbery. Bush’s bailout, Obama’s slush fund handsomely disguised as ‘stimulus’, and unconstitutional hijacking of health insurance have gotten the “leave us alone” crowd in low, middling and high dungeons. They are ready to back anyone with a plan to dismantle any part of the federal government, preferably at the wholesale level.
a.k.a. Ron Paul.
That the SRLC failed to anoint the elderly and irascible Paul by one vote is an indicator of Republican introspection. Contrast fundamental Paulinista sentiments with the Tea Party pack who, despite irrational slander by everyone working for MSNBC, are mainly small government and strict constitution advocates. You can’t have a conversation with Ron Paul without him citing constructional clauses and asking what harm would come from returning taxes, budgeting and authority to the states. Paul Pushers, SRLC members and Tea Partiers come from the same mindset and have overlapping memberships.
If I were a Republican (which I am not) I wouldn’t be a Paulinista, mainly because I have a foreign policy. But I understand why the Republicans are hurtling his direction. He may not get the presidential nod, but he will drag the pack away from the Schlafly and Bush branches and toward a freer light.
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2 Responses to “Faction Fortunes”
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If you have polite and articulate comments, please provide them. Rants and flames are discarded.
Be honest… to which party did those good ‘ol boy southern Democrats migrate after the Civil Rights Act left them weeping in their Stars n Bars hankies?
Actually they stayed Dixiecrats.
I was in the south from birth until the mid 1990s, and mostly in the post civil right era. I met a wide swath of people, including my share of utter racists. With very few exceptions they were born and remained Democrats.
Some things endure because they are passed down from one generation to the next. Party affiliation, taste in BBQ, prejudices.
Now, I have not had the pleasure of spending a great deal of time in the north, but my former career took me into Boston frequently. Of the biased there all were Democrats and a shade nastier than their Southern brethren.
Here in San Francisco the most over-the-top racist I have met (and I mean a fellow one step shy of wearing a hood) is a Democrat.
Does my statistically suspect sample indict every Democrat? Of course not, no more than George Bush makes every Republican an idiot. But it says stereotypes are rarely valid … even those of Republicans.