The Conservative Movement

Yesterday I took my seat at the Civitas polling luncheon and began to chat with the other folks at the table. Turns out that the couple I sat down next to had come up from Wilmington specifically to attend the Take Back the State Rally, and that this was their first Civitas meeting. They heard about the rally from their WPTF affiliate, which had been promoting the event for several weeks.

The commentary part of the luncheon was like it always goes:

• they did some union bashing,
• they talked about how McCain isn't radical enough but you should vote for him anyway,
• they talked about effective ways to attack Obama,
• they said Perdue is only winning the Governor's race because she is a woman,
• they were sad that voters continue, against all evidence, to buy into the global warming myth,
• Dallas Woodhouse suggested South Carolina ought to invade North Carolina, and that Mississippi is a better run state than NC
• Chris Hayes (the Civitas pollster) admitted they frame their poll questions to "educate" the voters and influence the poll,
• DeLuca said that Democrats are the reason why the price of gas is increasing and therefore you should vote GOP

Here's an mp3 of the luncheon.

Here's the poll results.

Once the luncheon was over DeLuca reminded everyone why we're all here: to rally to take back the state from the Democratic party. He strongly encouraged everyone to attend. As I got up to leave, I heard the nice couple at my table talking about the presidential race:

Husband: What frightens the living daylights out of me is Obama in the White House. If you look at his resume, he doesn't bring anything to the table.... But uh, you have the biggest corporation in the world, which is the United State Government.... [inaudible] ...when he has no experience. So I guess that's that. It makes a difference, they're different people...

Wife interrupts: At least he's got a good talking...

Husband interrupts: If he has no resume, no experience to bring with him, he'll bring people in who... [inaudible] ...who will be the Wrights, the people he's associated with: AFL-CIO, MoveOn.org, George Soros... [inaudible]

I don't want to make it into a racial situation, but we as a country are a Western civilization, if you know what I mean. We are part of the Greek civilization, we're part of the Roman civilization, we're part of the German civilization. Martin Luther, Magna Carta, Independence; that's who we are as a people. That's who McCain is as a person.... His granddaddy was an admiral... [inaudible] He served the county, he was out of Western civilization. Obama doesn't come from Western civilzation. Obama doesn't know about the Magna Carta. Obama doesn't know anything about it. He doesn't know anything except what he was taught about it from his mother. His parents were not married. I'm not saying that's wrong; that's who he is. That's where he comes from and that's what his values are.

I guess that's the reason for the political situation. They are trying to take us away from our Western heritage, and make us multicultural. That's what bothers me a little bit, we were a great nation. We could still be a great nation, if we hold on to those things of value. But we're moving away from it. We're all moving away from it. That's horrible, it bothers me. And that's why I believe in the Republicans. The Republicans mean to me: it's what we were in our better years and what we're going to be. That's why I think the Republican, McCain, that's who our president needs to be.

Here's an mp3 of this conversation. I didn't set out to record it, but the recorder was on.

Once a get off work, I go down to Halifax Mall behind the General Assembly to see the state get taken aback. I was greeting by the nice pig:

There was a crowd of about three or four hundred people, and a number of tents for each of the Art Pope organizations. Some photos:

The Libertarians were out there too:

At Halifax Mall there is this wonderful mural that expresses North Carolina's obligation to her children and education. As I went over to take a picture I heard Skip Stam speaking at the podium:

It says:

Let us teach honestly and boldly that education is not only the best thing for which public money can be spent, but that it is also the most expensive.

Nothing except ignorance is more costly than education.

Standing in the shadow of this great monument, Skip Stam called upon the state to reduce education spending and fire some of those lazy teachers. Here's a picture of Stam in the afterglow:

Then Michael Steele spoke. Steele holds a special place in my heart because I worked for an anti-poverty in Maryland while Steele served as Lt Governor. Maryland is a progressive state, so whenever the Republican leadership had something nasty they wanted to do to low-income people, they would have Steele be in charge of it. One of these little "initiatives" was to destroy libraries in low-income neighborhoods. While Steele was willing to show up at the press conference to pat himself on the back for cost cutting, he wasn't actually willing to talk to families about the effect this would have on their already underserved neighborhoods.

A group of elderly women went to one of Steele's fundraisers to confront him on the issue. This enraged the Republicans who were hosting the event. In Michael Steele's presence, College Republicans punched and kicked the community activists, many of whom were old enough to have been Steele's mother. So, yeah, I don't really think much of "national leader" Steele (as he was billed).

Steele preached against bipartisan cooperation and presumed to have a message for "mister" Obama. That message? "Associations do matter." Considering who I associate Steele with, I'm glad to hear him say it.

I left the event at that point. But not before getting a photo of this man (who you may recognize):

From what I hear, when Bob Dole spoke he volunteered to the crowd that he and Liddy have spent the past five decades living at the Watergate hotel. I don't know why he felt the need to emphasize that, but here it is:

I'd like to throw out some words in conclusion. For the past 30 years, the Right has out-organized the Left. We got beat in our field efforts, beat in our fundraising, and beat in our communications efforts. We got beat when we lost elections, and we got beat when we won elections. Conservatives have been unified in lockstep even as they march backwards.

Despite this discouraging track record, conservatives have never succeeded in taking us back to "the good old days," mostly because those days were never that good. It wasn't good when we allowed children to die of hunger and cold, it wasn't good when we didn't have social security, it wasn't good when sweat shops were the norm, it wasn't good when many Americas lacked civil rights or human dignity, and it wasn't good when the very concept of human rights was denied. The fact that conservatives of previous generations opposed these social advances is an embarrassment to today's right-wing partisans (or at least should be).

In order to bind together a myraid of complaints and nostalgias underneath one banner, the GOP must reject diversity and creativity. You can't admit innovation into an absolutist framework. While conservative organizers may like the way it sounds to call their efforts a movement, they don't propose solutions to problems so much as a refusal to admit that problems exist. So add "Conservative Movement" to your list of oxymorons.