I planned to write about this anyway but luckily a smarter guy beat me to it.
If the Republicans inherit the White House amid continued economic weakness, they’ll be lucky if the left gives them the nine months they gifted Nixon. The better bet is that we’ll hear a cacophony of “Romney’s recession” (or some appropriate alliteration should Perry win) from the liberals at the first hint of bad economic news in 2013. The mainstream media won’t be very far behind. All in all, it could be worse than it was for Nixon in the late 1960s. And to put the idea of “worse than Nixon” into perspective, it’s worth remembering what Charles Colson once said about being at the White House in the 1960s – “like living in a bunker.”
Why should we expect it to be worse? For starters, the left is much more partisan now. That is, the ideological goals of the left are now completely intertwined with the partisan goals of the Democratic party. It wasn’t always this way: Vietnam as an issue split the Democrats, with the AFL-CIO, for instance, coming down on the pro-war side. But those days of a divided Democratic coalition are long gone – the left and the Democrats are now one and the same, meaning that we should expect a much quicker reaction to a GOP administration. Additionally, the left is a much broader alliance now than it was in the late 1960s – African American, Latino, feminist, environmentalist, and consumer rights groups have all now joined the traditional labor-liberal alliance. That means we should expect a better financed, better coordinated, and more effective set of protests than what Nixon saw. Right now, the broad network of left wing groups is dispirited and unsure of itself, but that’s just a temporary condition. Rest assured, it will go all out to mobilize against the GOP, almost as soon as the 2012 election is over.
The most ridiculous (and, if you’re sympathetic to them, tragic) thing about OWS is that they’re trying to mobilize the left against “the system” at the very moment the left is mobilizing to re-elect the guy who’s in charge of the system. In an alternate reality, state senator Obama would be giving a speech today at Occupy Chicago about how greed is the cancer of America or whatever; in this reality, President Obama needs to watch his mouth and stay on the good side of those Wall Street one-percenters who helped bankroll his campaign last time. The whole dynamic is a cosmic joke, amplified by the reality that millions of liberals have eschewed protests over the last few years out of allegiance to the current ruling Democrat and/or the perpetual fear of the imminent wingnut apocalypse that’ll surely unfold if their own party leadership is weakened. That’s why the anti-war movement has faded into nothing; that’s why there’s apprehension but no outrageously outrageous outrage over The One ignoring his own lawyers to wage war in Libya or relying on a secret national-security panel that can place Americans on a “kill list.” Those sins, committed by a Republican, would signal the end of the republic per standard left-wing blather. Committed by a Democrat, they’re merely … “troubling.” Or maybe not even that.
Once a Republican is President the media will ”discover” all of the homeless, too.
As bold as our local homeless encampments are (all along the sides of our freeways and in all the ”cloverleaf” freeway on-off ramps) we have had no coverage since Obama took office.
But you know we will as soon as a Republican is in charge.
And, we’ve talked about cutting gov’t while only cutting the amount of GROWTH rate of gov’t programs.
When a Republican is President this will be screamed about as if cutting even the rate of a gov’t programs expansion is murder.
Does knowing all these tricks help at all in making a case without big media’s assistance?
I can only hope.