Monday 20 April 2015

The Blue Horizon

The paleocons are unable to disguise their scorn at the entire Republican Presidential field, parts of which may be illiterate in two languages, but all of which is illiterate.

One of their key voluntary agencies, In Defense of Christians, booed off Ted Cruz for his Know-Nothing threat to intensify the Islamist genocide in the Middle East.

They are beside themselves with gleeful contempt on Twitter and elsewhere whenever any Republican aspirant to the White House tries to use a big word. 

Whereas they are really rather keen, and increasingly so, on Jim Webb.

The Democratic Party moved way out to the Left, causing Southern whites, Cold War hawks, and pro-life Catholics to become Republicans. The rest is history. Isn't it? Er, no, actually, it isn't.

Southern white Democrats were by no means all segregationists and white supremacists, and those who were, as such, had no particular reason to become Republicans in or after the 1960s.

It had never bothered them much before, and the Democrats had had a Civil Rights plank since as long ago as 1948, when Strom Thurmond had run against Truman as a Dixiecrat for precisely that reason.

Nevertheless, a higher proportion of Congressional Republicans than of Congressional Democrats had supported the Civil Rights Act, and anyone who voted for Nixon on the wrong side of the race issue must have been very naive indeed.

In accordance with his record, Nixon in office vigorously pursued desegregation.

That section of opinion might have fallen out of the Democratic Party. But it has never been given the slightest cause to fall into the Republican Party.

Say what you like about the Republicans, but they have never made the tiniest effort to permit the return of Jim Crow, instead providing two black Secretaries of State, which is two more than the Democrats have ever managed.

For good, old-fashioned race-baiting, see instead Bobby Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and both of the Clintons well into the present century. Watch out for some more of it between now and November 2016.

There was no reason for diehard Cold Warriors to vote for Nixon rather than Humphrey, little reason for them to vote for Nixon rather than even McGovern (especially once he had balanced his ticket), and none whatever for them to vote for Ford rather than Carter.

In the last case, quite the reverse, in fact; the same was true of those whose hawkishness was fiscal.

And there was, so to speak, no conceivable reason for pro-lifers, as such, to become Republicans rather than Democrats in or since the 1970s.

Look at the judges who handed down Roe v. Wade.

Harry Blackmun, the ruling's author, had been appointed by Nixon. Warren E. Burger by Nixon. William O. Douglas by Roosevelt. William J. Brennan by Eisenhower. Potter Stewart by Eisenhower. Thurgood Marshall by Johnson. And Lewis Powell by Nixon.

Even take out the two Democratic nominees, and that still gives a Republican majority in favour of what was in fact the overturning of the laws of all 50 states.

In stark contrast, one of the dissenting judges, Byron White, had been appointed by a Democrat, Kennedy, while the other, William Rehnquist, had been appointed by a Republican, Nixon.

No one found that remotely odd at the time. No one who had bothered to pay attention would find it remotely odd from the perspective of the present day.

Nixon, by Executive Order, first legalised abortion at the federal taxpayer's expense. Whereas it was Carter who signed into law the Hyde Amendment banning it, which, although Henry Hyde himself was a very conservative Republican, had been passed by a Congress both Houses of which had been under Democratic control at the time.

That Amendment has never failed to receive its necessary annual renewal by both Houses.

In 1976, Ellen McCormack, a strongly pro-life Democrat, became the first woman Presidential candidate ever to qualify for matching federal funding and for Secret Service protection. If there is not one already, and I should be delighted to hear of it if there were, then someone needs to write a full biography of Ellen McCormack.

(Someone also needs to do a "Whatever happened to each of them and to what each of them stood for?" study of the eight candidates whose names were placed in nomination for Vice President at the 1972 Democratic Convention.)

Both of McGovern's running mates were pro-life. Whereas Nelson Rockefeller legalised abortion in New York. Ronald Reagan, who to this day retains a totally undeserved pro-life reputation, legalised abortion in California.

Reagan, like Bush the Younger after him, proved to be worse than useless when it came to appointing pro-lifers to the Supreme Court, not even trying to do so on two of the three occasions when the opportunity presented itself to him.

Thus, in 1993, when Planned Parenthood sued the staunchly pro-life Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania, whose son is now a staunchly pro-life Democratic Senator for that state and made his case without difficulty from the platform of the 2008 Convention, over that state's very moderate legal restrictions on abortion, Planned Parenthood's case was upheld by a court every member of which had been appointed by a Republican President, including three by Reagan, apart from Byron White, who had dissented in 1973 and who was still dissenting 20 years later.

Eight Republicans out of nine judges. A third of the court appointed by Reagan. And before that court, Planned Parenthood beat Bob Casey, the Democrat who sought to uphold democracy in Pennsylvania. Of course. All round: of course.

RomneyCare provided and provides for state taxpayer-funded abortion from which, through Bain Capital, Romney continues to derive an income.

But ObamaCare repeats and strengthens the 1977, Democratic-enacted ban on federal taxpayer-funded abortion. It does so thanks to the efforts of Bart Stupak, a Democrat.

Or consider Joe Biden.

He was already a United States Senator before the judgement in Roe v. Wade.

During 36 years in the Senate, he voted to overturn that judgement by means of an amendment to the Constitution, he voted year on year to renew the Hyde Amendment banning federal funding of abortion, he voted against rape and incest exceptions until Hyde himself was forced to accept them rather than see that renewal vetoed by Bill Clinton (meaning that Biden has never actually cast a vote in favour of them), he voted to ban partial-birth abortion, he voted to overturn both of Clinton's vetoes of that ban, and he voted to recognise as legally protected persons those infants who survived abortion.

That is Biden's record, still unchanged in terms of votes cast.

But there is something beyond all of this.

The Democrats were not wiped out in the South by the Civil Rights Act or by anything else. The Democrats were not wiped out in Middle America by Reagan's rhetorical Cold War hardness, which bore no resemblance to his actions in office in his second term, or by anything else. The Democrats, as the very fact of the Caseys 20 years ago and today illustrates, were not wiped out in the Northern Catholic citadels by abortion or by anything else.

The Democratic Party controlled the House continuously from 1955 to 1995. It controlled the Senate for most of that period, and it has done so for much of the period since. It has won the Presidency on four of the six occasions since Reagan retired, and the popular vote on five of them.

Nixon Democrats, Reagan Democrats and, insofar as they existed, Bush Democrats were still Democrats, and they still are.

There has never ceased to be a natural Democratic majority, and Southern white populists, who have adjusted perfectly well to the racially inclusive polity that many of them always foresaw and which some of them actively pioneered, have never ceased to be part of it, indeed a key part of it.

The same is true, and if anything even truer, of Northern urban and now ex-urban Catholics.

Alas, those Cold War hawks who were Democrats also mostly remained in the fold all the way through the Clinton years, doing immense damage to the party, to America and to the world along the way.

They transferred to the GOP under Bush, and every step must be taken to ensure that they never come back in the guise in which they now present themselves, with their beating of the drum of war against all and sundry.

Just as the economic views of the paleoconservative movement that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union have no conceivable audience in the Republican Party but every hope of such among the Democrats, so the same is also true of the foreign policy views, and with both of the cultural views: the uncompromisingly pro-life, pro-family and patriotic case against global capitalism and its wars.

Those views, articulated or otherwise these days, define an indispensable section of a potentially permanent majority.

On my knees, I beg the Democratic Party not to nominate Hillary Clinton.

12 comments:

  1. You predicted all of this on Telegraph Blogs how long ago now? You said the paleocons would end up as Dems where they might get anything they wanted even if not everything, while the GOP was just the Big Capital and War Party determined to give them nothing. You were right.

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  2. "For good, old-fashioned race-baiting, see instead ... Jimmy Carter".

    Hello? Where is the actual evidence for this? (Or for much else, but for this in particular.)

    Carter got his start in gubernatorial politics by opposing the flinty segregationist Lester Maddox. Consult any biography of Carter or any history of politics in Carter's home state.

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    1. In 1976:

      "I am not going to use the Federal Government's authority deliberately to circumvent the natural inclination of people to live in ethnically homogeneous neighborhoods. I think it is good to maintain the homogeneity of neighborhoods if they've been established that way."

      "I have nothing against a community that's made up of people who are Polish or Czechoslovakian or French-Canadian, or black, who are trying to maintain the ethnic purity of their neighborhoods. This is a natural inclination on the part of the people."

      Yes. "Ethnic purity." Thus did he beat Gerald Ford.

      He has improved, of course. As did Lester Maddox. Or George Wallace. The Clintons haven't, though. And they never will.

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    2. Except, Mr Lindsay, that the extracts from Carter which you supply do ... not ... actually ... constitute ... race-baiting.

      To say "it is good to maintain the homogeneity of neighborhoods" is not at all the same as saying, or even the same as thinking, "I won't be out-n*ggered again." (Which is plausibly reckoned to have been uttered by George Wallace, as we all know.)

      If we have reached a stage where the word "baiting" is to be used as promiscuously as the word "racist" or "fascist" to include "anything which I happen not to like", then really we might as well leave all public discourse whatsoever to The Charlie Hebdo Herald's moral titans. Such as Mary "Discussing Uganda" Kenny, Ed "How To Pull Women" West, and Sister Alexandra Lucie-Smith (last seen, in her menopausal way, upholding Charles II as an exemplar of Catholic sexual morals or something).

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  3. Whenever the Republican candidates try to say a big word? Oh boy, you are hopelessly clueless. There's nobody in the running who is an intellectual match for Ted Cruz.

    Do you have any idea of Cruz's academic achievements?

    Graduating magna cum laude from Harvard while Executive Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Policy and winning numerous cases as Solictor General of Texas? He's handled more Supreme Court briefs than any member of Congress.

    A brilliant legal advocate of Christianity in the public square, the right to bear arms and capital punishment and a fierce opponent of marijuana legalisation and abortion, the boy's a true Republican.

    As for war,Ted Cruz opposed Obama's war with Syria on the grounds that the US shouldn't be "Al Qaeda's airforce".

    Rand Paul-also fiercely pro life and anti war-is, I have to add, another great candidate.

    He's opposed all Obama's wars.

    Both of them can stop Hilary.

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    1. The new Old Right boys probably laugh more at Cruz than at any of the others, and that is saying quite something. Well, apart from Rubio, perhaps. But even so.

      Immensely sophisticated people themselves, steeped in the Great Books and all that, they regard the entire Republican field as a chimpanzees' Tea Party (did you see what I did there?). Including Ted Cruz. Very much so, in fact.

      One of the things that I always did tell them about crossing the aisle was that they would meet at least some people who were at their own intellectual and cultural level. There is no longer any possibility of that in the GOP. Look at its Presidential field.

      Don't do Cruz and the Middle East. Just don't. You'll only make yourself look as silly as he made himself look when he caused a hall full of Middle Eastern Christians to boo him off.

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    2. Cruz is a joke candidate, he might not know it but he is, they all are. The Dems are going to walk this election so the important thing is who they nominate.

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    3. Precisely so. All of my paleocon associates were beside themselves at the hilarity that Cruz so much as considered himself a possible candidate for President.

      They don't much care for Rand Paul, either. They see him as not a patch on his father. Mind you, he is still better than Cruz, or Rubio, or Jeb, or...

      But, as you say, none of them is going to win. I would back Rand Paul against Clinton, but she would still win if she were the nominee. The Democratic nominee is bound to win. The question is who that is going to be.

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  4. The Republican field is very paleocon. Do you know Rand Paul's views on war?

    Do you know he and Cruz vehemently opposed Obama's typical Democrat adventurism in Syria, memorably described by Ted Cruz as making the USAF "Al Qaeda's airforce"?

    The neocon Chimps Tea Party is the party of Hilary Clinton (and absolutely nobody else anyone has heard of, in the running). Fortunately she can be beaten thus time.

    Anyone who reads this would laugh themselves to tears at calling Ted Cruz illiterate.

    He's one of America's leading legislators-nobody in Congress has taken as many Supreme Court cases, nor has any practising lawyer in his state.

    Lindsay is utterly illiterate. His stuff about Obamacare and the Hyde Amendment proves it

    Nancy Pelosi this week admitted Obamacare is directly funding abortion.

    As is the Democrat funding of Planned Parenthood.

    Everyone in America knows that.

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    1. The Republican field is very paleocon.

      Not according to the paleocons, it isn't. They think that Rand Paul is the best of a very bad lot, most other members of which, including your beloved Ted Cruz, are literally laughable.

      They like Jim Webb, though. A lot. They have done for quite some time.

      I stopped reading after your first line. Everyone who knows anything will have done.

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    2. Nancy Pelosi this week admitted Obamacare is directly funding abortion? No she didn't, stop peddling that old lie, even she said it which she didn't, it isn't true.

      Plus the Republicans control both houses of Congress, if there is federal funding of abortion through some legal loophole nobody can see, what are they doing to stop it, where is their Bill?

      Nobody else anyone has heard of in the running? Even you have heard of them and you are, as Mr. Lindsay would say, illiterate. The only Republican Senator to vote against the Iraq war is now a Dem and in the running, Reagan's Navy Secretary is now a Dem and in the running with what looks to be the support of the American Conservative.

      That magazine is deeply disappointed with Rand Paul and despises all the other GOP contenders including Ted Cruz.

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  5. John McCain Just Can't Stop Laughing At Ted Cruz http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/20/concealed-guns-military_n_7104506.html.

    He ain't the only one.

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