Real Americans

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Over at The Moderate Voice retired Air Force officer Dorian De Wind is upset that Republicans, conservatives and the Tea Party crowd are claiming they are the "real Americans - the only one's who love the constitution.

I respectfully ask our Republican friends to challenge us, Democrats, on
policy and politics, on party line and philosophy, even on principles,
but, please, do not question our patriotism, our �Americanism,� our love
for God and Country, because when you do so you are not only
dishonoring half of all Americans, you are doing a disservice to your
causes, legitimate and righteous as they may be. You are also
discrediting yourselves and, more important, you are demeaning and
dangerously dividing the Real America you profess to
honor and love.

I have a word of advice for Dorian - don't hold your breath.  What passes for the Republican Party and the modern conservative movement is nothing but a bunch of angry white Republicans.  John Cole has taken to calling them the Confederate Party.  They are not only angry that the Democrats won, they are still angry that the South lost the Civil War.  They are upset that an "uppity" black man occupies the White House. Their only knowledge of the Constitution is what Glenn Beck told them it says.    Even DC insider Marc Ambinder gets it:

Have Conservatives Gone Mad?

I want to find Republicans to take seriously, but it is hard. Not because they don't exist -- serious Republicans -- but because, as Sanchez and others seem to recognize, they are marginalized, even self-marginalizing, and the base itself seems to have developed a notion that bromides are equivalent to policy-thinking, and that therapy is a substitute for thinking.

It is absolutely a condition of the age of the triumph of conservative personality politics, where entertainers shouting slogans are taken seriously as political actors, and where the incentive structures exist to stomp on dissent and nuance, causing experimental voices to retrench and allowing a lot of people to pretend that the world around them is not changing. The obsession with ACORN, Climategate, death panels, the militarization of rhetoric, Saul Alinsky, Chicago-style politics, that TAXPAYERS will fund the bailout of banks -- these aren't meaningful or interesting or even relevant things to focus on. (The banks will fund their own bailouts.)

Conor Friedersdorf thinks the problem lies with the conservative movement's major spokespeople -- its radio/net news nexus -- and the "overwhelming evidence that their very existence as popular entertainers hinges on an ability to persuade listeners that they are "'worth taking seriously as political and intellectual actors.'" That is why the constant failures of these men to live up to their billing is so offensive, destructive, and ruinous to conservatives. There are plenty of women, too, is all I'll say.

I think this sensibility is pervasive throughout the smart media -- old and new. I think it's one reason why, say, Jake Tapper and other good reporters are very keen about direct fact-challenging -- why the media is reasserting itself as gatekeepers. (CNN might want to think about branding themselves here, even at the risk (well, the reality) of calling out Republicans more.) I think it's because there's so much misinformation out there -- most of it spread by the conservative echo-chamber. With the advent of Fox News and the power of that echo-chamber, complaints about liberal media bias are quite irrelevant -- the reaction to it being like lupus's reaction to the body, as Jon Stewart correctly noted.

As long as the Republican Party and the conservative movement remain slaves to the entertainers at FOX news and on the radio nothing will change.