Why Conservatives Are Still Crazy After All These Years
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/why-conservatives-are-still-crazy-after-all-these-years-20120316
Here’s the problem: To this way of thinking, the triumph of enlightenment liberalism is always inevitable. Now it’s demographics that’s the inexorable force (I debunk that argument here); in the 1960s, it was the certainty that Americans would never consent to give up their big-government perks. And yet, somehow, alongside the ordinary tacking of American political preference between Democrats and Republicans, conservatism continues to thrive. That’s because power begets power: Democrats can be counted on to compromise with conservative nuttiness, and the media can be counted on to normalize it. And it’s because there will always be millions of Americans who are terrified of social progress and of dispossession from whatever slight purchase on psychological security they’ve been able to maintain in a frightening world. And because there will always be powerful economic actors for whom exploiting such fear, uncertainty and doubt pays (and pays, and pays).
Conservatism is not getting crazier, and it’s not going away, either. It’s just getting more powerful. That’s a fact that a reality-based liberal just has to accept – and, from it, draw strength for the fight.
I don’t recall Reagan’s campaigns. Certainly nothing regarding his first run and little to nothing on his second run (I really didn’t start to become politically aware at all until Ford (I only know Nixon from historical reading), but really didn’t follow until the middle of the Reagan years). Reagan, for all I know, was the vitriolic anti-everything during the primary that the GOP is turning out now. The author of the article makes much of what he terms as Reagan’s reluctant agreement on increasing taxes, but based on my reading taxes at the beginning of Reagan’s terms they were much higher than I have ever considered fair. Still, it seems to me that the final comment is the most telling. The Tea Party wackos have got more power now and have ‘learned’ the ‘liberal strategy’ (all these in quotes because they all seem to be part of some delirium) of packing the courts with _conservative_ activist judges (though in the GOP’s eyes, they aren’t ‘activists’ since they are just ‘setting things to right’ when they overturn / create law).
