Rachel Maddow’s sharp and, for the most part, fair critiques of media and political issues have become increasingly regular and often enjoyable. Last night, during comments on Christine O’Donnell, she takes a thoughtful, extended look at what her victory, as well as that of other Tea Party candidates, means for the national debate. She extrapolates the far right social views of these newcomers to predict a resurgence of the Republican “culture war” while dismissing the fiscally driven Conservative comeback as mere “marketing.”
A portion of her comments (via Mediate):
“The way the conservative resurgence has been marketed it’s all about fiscal conservatism, it’s all about cutting government spending…shrinking the size of the federal government, putting all those divisive social issues behind….But that is not at all what we’re seeing right now!…This year there are five candidates for Senate who want to ban [abortion] without any exception for rape or incest.”
Mostly, she seems to draw from two sources to make her case: The right wing social positions of most, if not all, of the Tea Party and last week’s Value Voters Summit (from which most of her video clips were taken).
First, the Value Voters Summit. A couple fun facts about the event:
-Who is behind the event? The Family Resource Council, an evangelical lobbying organization. The FRC is solely dedicated to “family values” issues, and, in fact, I do not see a single mention of fiscal responsibility or limited government on its website.
-Mike Pence won the straw poll this year. He hasn’t received over 3% is any major poll of Republican voters. Not exactly the pulse of the conservative movement.
To use clips from an FRC event, one that I can safely assume produces similar rhetoric year after year, to signal a Culture War resurgence is absurd and disingenuous. It is insignificant to the issue.
Now, on to her more salient point: the far right social views of the Tea Party are going to re-energize the “Culture War” that- as a result of two wars, the recession, and the progressive nature of public opinion- has been increasingly crowded out of the political debate. While, undoubtedly, some of O’Donnell’s ideas are far to the right of the main-steam, the issue is this: Will this affect, in any material way, a Republican controlled House’s agenda? No.
As it has been a strategic blunder for the Obama administration to misread their mandate- confusing a rejection of the Bush presidency with the endorsement of progressive fiscal policy-, it would be even more egregious for Republicans to misread the likely gains in the house and senate as an endorsement of social conservatism, and frankly, I don’t think it is even worth serious discussion.
And that’s the point. Listen, O’Donnell is far from a perfect candidate for main stream conservatives, but accepting that she dabbled in witchcraft in high school, and ignoring that she thinks masturbation equates with adultery… OK. She is really far from a perfect candidate…there is three reasons it wouldn’t the end of the world if she were elected.
1. While she certainly seems to hold some far right social views, her agenda is not related to social issues. Listen to her acceptance speech. It’s about small government and personal liberties. She understands why she was nominated.
2. If she harbors aspirations to push social issues, which is certainly plausible, then there is nothing standing in her way… nothing, that is, except the shifting tide of public opinion on most social issues, a lack of policy and legislative experience needed to be a force in Congress, and Republican leadership that increasingly sees little utility in pursuing social issues.
3. Mike Castle has been in politics since 1966 and the House since ’93. His main concern isn’t ideology or long-term prosperity; it’s bringing pork back to his state and getting reelected. The best feature of Tea Party candidates- or scariest, depending on your political disposition- is that they are going to actually do what they say, and that is limit government.
Strategically, Mike Castle was probably the better choice. He would have been a sure thing in the general election. But he lost. And it wasn’t because O’Donnell rallied the base with her anti-masturbatory rhetoric or used some hocus-pocus. He lost because the idea of “limited government” has been a fantasy in Washington, on both sides of the isle. The success of O’Donnell can’t just be attributed to her disciples at the Tea Party rallies, although they certainly played a role. She won because reasonable people, tired of hearing about fiscal conservatism but never seeing it, voted for her. She won because, when she claimed that she would fight for limited government, these reasonable people believed her. And even if she’s far from perfect, and likely will not be elected, it was worth a shot.
