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Outrage, or A Ruling Coalition Broken
Sep. 13th, 2012 10:42 amSo, Romney criticized the President for "apologizing" to angry Muslims during the recent attacks on our embassies in the Middle East. Nobody apologized for anything, and Roger Ebert said that better than I can.
Various right-wingers, including ringmaster at Simberg's Flying Circus are attempting to support Romney. Jim Wright, in his statement, touched on this phenomenon. Romney and his apologists demand American "outrage" at the attack. This outrage was in fact expressed, explicitly, by people smart enough to wait and get their facts straight. But I'd like to go deeper, and try to understand why outrage seems to be the default mode of any conservative or Republican for any situation.
I submit that the Republican Party broke their ruling coalition in 2006 thru 2008, just like the Democratic Party did after the civil rights laws of 1964 and 1965. Outrage by everybody in the party is a result of this breach.
In the Sixties, the outrage over civil rights led to a three-way Presidential race, featuring an avowed racist George Wallace, who got 46 Electoral College votes in 1968. The other end of the spectrum, the "dirty hippies" of 1968, were outraged and stayed so well into the 1970s.
Here in 2012, the outrage is coming largely from the war hawks, libertarians and social conservatives. They started out by being outraged at the country club Republicans, largely because of the Bush bailouts, and are at the moment outraged at the lack of war against Muslims. The Republicans have avoided (for the moment) splitting into two parties, but they've attempted to patch things up by running a hawk (McCain) and a country-clubber who will say anything (Romney) as an attempt to hold the party together.
Since I suspect that Obama will win re-election, we will get treated to at least four more years of outrage.
Various right-wingers, including ringmaster at Simberg's Flying Circus are attempting to support Romney. Jim Wright, in his statement, touched on this phenomenon. Romney and his apologists demand American "outrage" at the attack. This outrage was in fact expressed, explicitly, by people smart enough to wait and get their facts straight. But I'd like to go deeper, and try to understand why outrage seems to be the default mode of any conservative or Republican for any situation.
I submit that the Republican Party broke their ruling coalition in 2006 thru 2008, just like the Democratic Party did after the civil rights laws of 1964 and 1965. Outrage by everybody in the party is a result of this breach.
In the Sixties, the outrage over civil rights led to a three-way Presidential race, featuring an avowed racist George Wallace, who got 46 Electoral College votes in 1968. The other end of the spectrum, the "dirty hippies" of 1968, were outraged and stayed so well into the 1970s.
Here in 2012, the outrage is coming largely from the war hawks, libertarians and social conservatives. They started out by being outraged at the country club Republicans, largely because of the Bush bailouts, and are at the moment outraged at the lack of war against Muslims. The Republicans have avoided (for the moment) splitting into two parties, but they've attempted to patch things up by running a hawk (McCain) and a country-clubber who will say anything (Romney) as an attempt to hold the party together.
Since I suspect that Obama will win re-election, we will get treated to at least four more years of outrage.
