Conservatism

Murkowski = The Face of the Combine

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I have seen a lot of people writing about Lisa Murkowski’s decision to wage a spoiler write-in campaign, to try to prevent a Tea Party-backed GOP candidate from winning the general election.

Most of the writers look at it, incorrectly, in terms of Sen. Murkowski’s personal psychology. For example, they say she feels miffed about losing a seat that is supposed to be hers by right of inheritance. This motive may exist, but it is trivial.

In Illinois, there has long been an expression which describes the relationship between the two political parties: The Combine. Chicago Tribune writer John Kass seems to have originated this expression. See, for example, this article: In Combine, cash is king, corruption is bipartisan. Kass quoted former Illinois Senator Peter Fitzgerald: “In the final analysis, The Combine’s allegiance is not to a party, but to their pocketbooks. They’re about making money off the taxpayers,” Fitzgerald said. Kass went on: “He should know. He fought The Combine and lost, and the empty suits running the Republican Party encourage their friendly scribes to blame the social conservatives for the disaster of the state GOP.”

Sound familiar?

America, welcome to Illinois.

The way it works is this. The Democrat party is the senior member of the Combine. The GOP is the junior member of the Combine. The game is exactly the same, and whoever is up, or whoever is down, based on the random behavior of those rubes, the voters, does not matter. The game is always exactly the same, and the people who are in on the game, from either party, have a shared stake in defending the game.

The Combine is a term that should be more widely used in Illinois. It is also a word that should be more widely used in the USA in general.

Lisa Murkowski’s family, and her career, exist because of the Combine. Her interest is in preserving the existing game. She is preserving her stake and her family’s stake in a game they have benefitted from. There is no mystery about this at all. There is no need for psychiatry to understand why she is trying to stop Joe Miller. He threatens the game. It has nothing to do with the label “Republican.”

UPDATE: The GOP Senate leadership is respecting the primary result. Good. Mitch McConnell is reported as saying: “I informed her that by choosing to run a campaign against the Republican nominee, she no longer has my support for serving in any leadership roles, and I have accepted her letter of resignation from Senate leadership.” CORRECTION: I had previously, incorrectly said Murkowski was being from her committee positions. Big difference. My error.

More on Palin and Elite Status Anxiety

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This is an addendum to Shannon’s post.

It occurs to me that the whole Obama phenomenon and the vitriolic attack on Gov. Palin are two sides of the same status anxiety.

Globalization, as it got started, hammered wages in the USA in manufacturing, by exposure to low wage competitors in China and in Mexico, as well as moving the Mexican workforce here. This made white collar workers relatively more wealthy, it gave them domestic servants, it held down inflation so their wages stayed steady while new and better products were coming online, and it did not initially subject them to competition, and they did not initially face job insecurity anything like what blue collar workers faced. As a result they were able to engage in all kinds of luxury purchasing and status posturing. Stylish domestic decor, a refined taste in imported wine, and other SWPL, for example, were noted and status ranking assigned with exquisite care. David Brooks is very good on this status signalling, in his book Bobos in Paradise. This was all flattering to white collar workers, many of whom had non-quantitative degrees, especially law degrees. They had money in their pockets and they had nice stuff in their homes, and foreign-born domestic help. Life looked pretty good. Looking down on the majority of their fellow citizens was a big part of their identity. But then, all of a sudden, they began to feel the winds of change blowing, too. Their jobs became insecure, or disappeared. They began to see that their university educations did not mean a one way ticket to affluence. This terrifying prospect has opened up and getting worse at the same time that blue collar America has had a chance to adjust, and may even be better positioned to handle the ongoing globalization, and other technological changes that are coming along at an accelerating rate.

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Congrats to the Tea Party

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As I was listening to Bloomberg on the way into work, a quote of Lex Green’s popped into my head.

The news came on and yesterday’s primary results were announced (the Tea Party did very well), and one in particular was the most interesting to me. Christine O’Donnell won in Delaware. After the Bloomberg announcer said this, he also said that the Republican Party wouldn’t support her in the general election.

Reflexively I said out loud “well, Republican Party, you can just get f*cked then”.

I haven’t had much use for the Republican Party for a long time now. That quote from Lex?

“This little episode is one shiny tile in a massive mosaic that we are building together.”

Best Books on American Conservatism

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This is the list.

Best in what way? For what, and for whom?

If the question is, name the top five classic, canonical work of American Conservatism, my list would overlap with this list:

Frederick Hayek, The Road to Serfdom
Milton Friedman, Free to Choose
Barry Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative
Whittaker Chambers, Witness
George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America

These are very mainstream picks. Four of the books are written for a popular audience, and Nash is the best historian of the movement, but he ends before Reagan. They are genuine classics that everyone should read. But they are all old, and don’t directly address the world of today.

The peak moment for American Conservatism was Reagan’s election in 1980.

My list, and the list at the link, inadvertently show that American Conservatism is currently under-theorized.

There have been lots of good books since Reagan. But a synthesizing and overarching book is needed. If it exists, I don’t know it. Do you?

What does it mean to be an American conservative? What are we conserving? Why are we conserving it?

Stand By For Right Network

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Right Network goes live September 8, 2010.

This is going to be cool.