I did not watch Palin’s speech, either
… but if the reactions of dissident conservatives like Rod Dreher and Patrick Deneen (not to mention my lovely wife Angela, who did not watch it live but caught some highlights on the news) are any sign, Democrats are in some deep trouble. Josh Marshall is surely right that the numbers don’t naturally suggest a campaign strategy centered on energizing the base, but by any reasonable measure the base is frigging ENERGIZED right now, and any polling data on party identification are going to have trouble picking up on the number of cultural conservatives who’ve left the GOP just because they thought it didn’t have anything to say to the Palin families of the world.
So yes, it is about the culture wars, though that doesn’t just mean guns and abortion: the conflicts in question are fundamentally about culture (see James for some of the relevant distinction-making), and all those Obama supporters who thought that John McCain’s seventeen mansions were the end of his campaign’s potential for widespread populist appeal had better start thinking again. Like it or not, a small-town mother of five with a pregnant daughter is going to connect up with many more middle-American voters than an Ivy League-educated father of two who owns a mansion on Chicago’s South Side. (Sorry, but it’s the truth. And yes, race is almost surely a subtle but significant factor here as well.) As so much of tonight’s rhetoric made clear, all the attacks on Palin over the past week have done a great deal to reinforce many conservatives’ image of themselves as a threatened minority besieged by an army of distant, know-it-all elites – now brace yourselves for the GOP’s ability to run with this theme all the way to November, and don’t be surprised if it carries the day.
If the Obama campaign wants to win this election, they had better find a way to get the focus of attention back on John W. McBush, and do so right quick.
[UPDATE: And cf. MBD.]
[UPDATE 2: And also Alan Jacobs.]
Filed under: conservatism, media/culture, politics
I get that this tack is politically effective, but is cultural identification really a reason to vote for a McCain-Palin ticket?
I mean, I understand that Palin embodies a lot about what you like about localism, traditionalism, and small-c conservatism. I sympathize, and I find a lot to like about her too, both politically and personally. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that her personality will have a prominent influence on McCain’s actual policies. What’s particularly worrying to me is that the issues she’s least familiar with – foreign policy, civil liberties etc. – are precisely the ones on which McCain is most extreme. If she spends four years in office absorbing McCain’s worst tendencies, I fear she’ll become the female equivalent of George W. Bush: a political figure conservatives intuitively identify with but whose policies are absolutely frakkin’ awful.
I agree entirely, Will, and didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.
My favorite moment of her speech was the cheers and applause when she introduced her husband as a a “proud member of the United Steel Workers’ Union.” Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, but it seemed an olive branch to religiously-faithful, old-school democrats disaffected with the social agenda of their party. (And, no doubt, a shrewd wink at Ohio and Pennsylvania.)
I don’t want to be naive about the labor movement. I’m familiar with its abuses and the strain it has put on many of our domestic industries. Still, I’d be delighted if this demographic felt more at home with the GOP. I remember reading about an older Catholic woman who had been active in the Democrat Party. She said something to the effect of, “I find it harder and harder to pull the ‘D’ lever, but no easier to pull the ‘R’ lever.”
My favorite moment of her speech was the cheers and applause when she introduced her husband as a a “proud member of the United Steel Workers’ Union.” Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, but it seemed an olive branch to religiously-faithful, old-school democrats disaffected with the social agenda of their party. (And, no doubt, a shrewd wink at Ohio and Pennsylvania.)
I don’t want to be naive about the labor movement. I’m familiar with its abuses and the strain it has put on many of our domestic industries. Still, I’d be delighted if this demographic felt more at home with the GOP. I remember reading about an older Catholic woman who had been active in the Democrat Party. She said something to the effect of, “I find it harder and harder to pull the ‘D’ lever, but no easier to pull the ‘R’ lever.”
So I have a question: will Democrats be in deep trouble before or after Palin’s inevitable gaffes in the next six weeks?
Or are we just assuming that Palin being blessed by god simply won’t make any mistakes worth noting?
Joseph:
For whatever it’s worth, I think that Palin will be considerably less gaffe-prone than many are assuming. I also think that one upshot of the attacks of the past week is that when the press or the punditry goes after her for whatever gaffes she does end up making, the natural reaction for many of her supporters will be to roll their eyes and chalk it up to a conspiracy. But at the end of the day, I’d suspect that Palin is a shrewd and talented politician who will handle the press well and run circles around Biden in the debates. That’s just a sense, though, and isn’t based on anything especially substantive except for what a few people have written about her political skills. But if I were an Obama supporter (as I suppose I sort of am), I really, REALLY wouldn’t be waiting for her – as opposed to McCain, or one of his supporters or advisers – to fall on her face.
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