The Party That Hates America Always Loses

[NATO AIR]

in 98, it was the GOP

in 04, its the dems.

http://dynamist.com/weblog/

But now I'm finally starting to feel like a red state voter. The combination of paranoia and hatred coming from disappointed Democrats is more than a little scary. To take a relatively mild example, this sort of rhetoric is not only fearsomely intolerant but seriously detached from reality. It's not about the actual George Bush, his actual policies (love them or hate them), or his actual supporters. It's a strange emotional exercise, whipping up hate and fear while feeding a Mean Girls sense of superiority.

I got fed up with Republicans in the late-90s because their loudest voices seemed to hate America. They turned me off, and they turned off a lot of other voters. Here's what I wrote after the 1998 midterm elections:

I told you so. The party that hates America will lose. The party that imagines no positive future, offers no "vision thing," will lose. The party that thinks it is better than the American people, that makes large segments of the voting public believe they are its enemy, that convinces people it wants the government to boss them around and destroy the things they love, will lose.
On November 3, that party was Republican. The GOP went down to humiliating defeat, losing close race after close race, plus many that weren't supposed to be close. The party lost its solid grip on the South and collapsed in California. It managed to lose seats in the House, an extraordinary result that even Democratic pundits failed to predict.

And it deserved to lose. Republicans sold out their economic base, invested all their hopes in scandals involving a president not on the ballot, and ran as the party of scolds, pork, and gloom. No wonder their voters stayed home.

This election was a test of the notion that Republicans can scorn anyone who talks about freedom, treat issues as matters of bribery rather than principle or vision, alternate between patronizing and ostracizing immigrants and women, regularly denounce American culture, and generally act obnoxiously toward the country they supposedly represent--and still win, because the Democrats are worse and Clinton is a sleaze.


Rallying around GWB in 2000 was the Republicans' way of repudiating the cultural pessimists. Bush was a Washington outsider who hadn't engaged in Clinton-baiting. He was religious without being self-righteous or finger-wagging, a sunny Sunbelt politician who celebrated the open society and didn't wax nostalgic about bridges to the past. I can certainly understand why people oppose his policies, but Bush (like Bill Clinton, another personable politician not far from the political center) makes a strange devil figure.
Back during this summer's Democratic convention I blogged that "now it's the hard-core Democrats who think the country is going to hell--but at least they blame the administration, not the general public." Post-election, alas, they blame their fellow Americans. And when voters feel hated, they respond by voting in droves for the other guy. (Just ask Pete Wilson.)

As Jacob Levy noted during the Democratic convention, the Dems have their own sunny side. But we haven't heard much of it since last summer.