[Peace-discuss] The Kennedys' fake liberalism... [reformatted]

[C. G. Estabrook]

The emergence of Mad John McCain as the putative Republican nominee 
looks like being a difficulty for those who think our problems are 
caused by people who don't believe in evolution.  "Evangelical 'values 
voters' of the Midwest and South" would not seem to be too happy with 
McCain, whose favorite argument appears to be, "Fuck you!" (In that at 
least, he's a worthy successor to Cheney.) See 
<www.capitolhillblue.com/cont/node/2534>.

If evangelicals turn out not to be directing presidential politics (and 
never have), what are they going to do in a Clinton-McCain election? 
Vote for Hillary? --CGE


David Green wrote:
>  From Wiener's review (thanks Carl):
> // 
> /Michael Kazin recently warned against viewing Hofstadter as "an elegant 
> ruin from a benighted age." Brown agrees, arguing that we need 
> Hofstadter to understand the tormented politics of our time. In this 
> view, Hofstadter may have been wrong about yesterday's Populists, but he 
> was right about today's Republicans. *The rise of George Bush is said to
> mark the return of status politics, because Republican majorities depend 
> on the Evangelical Protestant "values voters" of the Midwest and 
> South--former Populist areas!* Facing economic decline, they blame their 
> problems on the "liberal elite" and vote for prayer in schools and guns 
> everywhere else....(Wiener's view:) That seems like a thin lesson to 
> draw from a thick body of work./
> // 
> Indeed, it seems like no lesson at all to draw from Hofstadter's work, 
> both because Hofstadter himself appears to have had serious doubts about 
> it, and because it's wrong. Because the Democrats repress class and 
> economic issues, "red state" voters either vote for Bush or stay home. 
> They're absolutely right in their mistrust of a liberal elite, and right 
> to associate that elite with the horrible Clintons and his erstwhile 
> Democrat successors, including of course his wife. Talk of "status 
> anxiety" and "status politics" among the middle and working classes is 
> intellectual sloganeering and reactionary sociology from both liberals 
> and conservatives who are threatened by "extremes" who want to rethink 
> the notion of "progress" in an egalitarian manner that debunks the 
> measure of Gross Domestic Product.
>  
> DG