Paul Krugman is Fighting the Last War
The essence of Paul Krugman’s latest installment in his endless rant again Obama’s “politics of hope”is that Bill Clinton tried to run as a candidate of hope in 1992 and it got him nothing but scorn.
Whatever hopes people might have had that Mr. Clinton would usher in a new era of national unity were quickly dashed. Within just a few months the country was wracked by the bitter partisanship Mr. Obama has decried.
Krugman’s argument for the last six weeks has been that only a fighting partisan can take on the “malefactors of megawealth”that are wrecking this country, and that Obama’s vision of a Post Partisan Politics is an impossible dream–A Fairy Tale. My problem with Krugman’s op-ed is he assumes we are still in 1992, when the power of the boogie men he cites (Jerry Falwell, Rush Limbaugh, Richard Mellon Scaife) was unchallenged. Today, Falwell is dead and there are more evangelicals following the progressive teachings of Rick Warren
Finally the much vaunted power of Right Wing Talk Radio is beginning to fade in the age of the Internet (just starting in 1992). Rush Limbaugh has enough trouble trying to convince hard core Republicans to vote against McCain and Sean Hannity’s embrace of Rudy Guiliani has not exactly produced results. Republican’s who might have passively nodded in assent to Limbaugh and Hannity screeds, now see that the curtain has been torn back on their Oz like manipulations and they really don’t have all the power they pretended to have. The notion that these blowhards could move the whole country is laughable. I know Krugman has been bloodied by these same forces of the right wing media machine, but he is letting his paranoia impinge on his judgement.
“The progressive teachings of Rick Warren”? Actually, Warren is a pretty strong Bush supporter. He’s perhaps more skilled at disguising his politics than the old-school religious right, see this article- http://www.pastors.com/rwmt/default.asp?id=178&artid=7543&expand=1 where he manages not to actually say “vote Bush” while still getting the conservative message across.
Rick Warren has started broadening his message to include some anti-poverty and environmental concerns. It doesn’t really make him a progressive just yet, but there is a growing fissure in the Republican party’s God & Mammon coalition (‘God talk for the poor, bucket loads of cash for the rich’).
As Bill Clinton used to say, some of these people are “reading the whole Bible.” Obama has adopted a similar trope: “has anybody here read the Bible lately? There are all these long passages about poor folks …”
There is an unmistakable strain of authoritarianism in the Gospels, but it is more the exception than the rule. There is some reason to hope that a mellower reading will gain traction among the evangelicals who have been providing the grassroots muscle behind Republican GOTV.
The progressives must bring in the communities of faith to make this post-partisan coalition the Obama campaign is trying to create come in to being. Warren did more, quicker in Tsunami Relief than the United States Government. He invited Obama to Saddleback to talk about progressive faith values.
We can’t have knee jerk reactions to old tropes. We are in an interregnum.
[...] certainly put the War vs. Peace theme back into the election. As I suggested a couple of days ago, Democratic pundits like Krugman who still think Limbaugh and Hannity have power, are not paying attention. It’s actually fun [...]