Holding the Gates

By Fester:

American politics can be conceptualized as a competition between reactionaries, conservatives in the traditional small 'c' sense of the word, and liberals.  Two to one wins and if the tag team lasts, it is a dominant governing coalition for a generation as the out group is marginalized to regional strong holds and discredited policies. 

Andrew Sullivan looks at the reactionaries' belle femme and draws out her implications:

Some readers think my continuing attempt to expose all the lies and flim-flam and bizarre behavior of Sarah Palin is now moot....

But even if she is history, she is history that matters....

The impulsive, unvetted selection of a total unknown, with no knowledge of or interest in the wider world, as a replacement president remains one of the most disturbing events in modern American history. That the press felt required to maintain a facade of normalcy for two months - and not to declare the whole thing a farce from start to finish - is a sign of their total loss of nerve. That the Palin absurdity should follow the two-term presidency of another individual utterly out of his depth in national government is particularly troubling. 46 percent of Americans voted for the possibility of this blank slate as president because she somehow echoed their own sense of religious or cultural "identity". Until we figure out how this happened, we will not be able to prevent it from happening again.

The reactionaries are currently insane in a political sense. And it is the obligation to form a coalition of the sane to oppose and marginalize the insane elements of the political discourse.  And we have been seeing that happen over the past couple of years as the Daniel Drezners, Andrew Sullivans, John Coles, William Welds, and others who self-identify as conservatives but also believers in the Enlightenment migrate to support (grudgingly at times) a party that is not insane in its base, views on knowledge, and believes in verifiability of an empirical world. 

I have to disagree with my colleague Ron on the desirability of keeping Gates or other Scowcroft allies on-board and involved in the Obama administration.  They may be scumbags or they may be angels (I'll vote for un-indicted co-conspirators for Iran Contra for a decent number of them) but they represent an element of the sane political spectrum.  And if picking off that group further wedges the rump GOP into the Kristol/Palin/Gingrich/Limbaugh positive feedback loop towards Peak Wingnuttery, that might be a price worth paying. 

Comments

[Ron Beasley]

I can actually see an advantage of keeping Gates on short term, a year or less, but you don't have to be insane to be dangerous and the Skowcroft camp of "realists" have proven themselves to be dangerous but some temporary cooperation during the transition might prove to be wise.