Paranoids

I've gotten plenty of "Special DNC Survey on the Economy" letters over the years. They're essentially fundraising fishing expeditions. I doubt anyone at the offices care about what you fill out on the survey, or if you fill it out at all. They just want some cash. So I wouldn't be surprised if the surveys that the parties insert into these letters aren't checked for accuracy. That combined with the general craziness of the GOP leads to survey questions like this:



Republicans' wholehearted embrace of the paranoid style in modern politics would naturally lead them to the notion that their party members would get discriminated against in medical treatment. They've called Democrats everything up to and including Satan incarnate. Why wouldn't they think they're trying to kill them?

The RNC's alibi is that "the question was inartfully worded." Um, how would the wording of "The government could use voter registration to determine a person's political affiliation, prompting fears that GOP voters might be discriminated against for medical treatment in a Democrat-imposed health care rationing system" change anything?

I don't want to just put this out into the world irresponsibly, but looking at these warning signs I truly fear that something bad will happen in the next couple years.

A White Christian Party

Howard Dean got in some trouble for characterizing Republicans that way in 2005. He was merely citing the numbers:

PRINCETON, NJ -- More than 6 in 10 Republicans today are white conservatives, while most of the rest are whites with other ideological leanings; only 11% of Republicans are Hispanics, or are blacks or members of other races. By contrast, only 12% of Democrats are white conservatives, while about half are white moderates or liberals and a third are nonwhite.

Blogger is bloggered and won't display images, but the rundown of the poll is here.

This really informs the Sotomayor debate. With conservatives retreating to their ideological corners, it's not hard to expect a certain paranoia to creep in. White conservatives see the world changing and cannot get a handle on it. They believe that this diversity and multiculturalism targets them and their homogenous group, and they imagine that the nonwhite have an unfair advantage over them. It's perverse, but in context I get it.

And the world is only getting more diverse and more tolerant. Hard to see where conservatives go from here.

The Paranoia Industry

I know that everyone is scratching their heads over why every conservative and their brother is freaking out over how Barack Obama is going to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine and kick Rush and Sean off the air, even though that was never part of his platform, no bill has been introduced in Congress to that effect since the Democrats got the majority, and the sum total of the "evidence" for this nefarious scheme is a couple off-hand comments made by two Democratic Senators. James Rainey writes about it today.

Now, you can argue out whether or not there should be a Fairness Doctrine. But the answer to why conservative hucksters keep harping on it, of course, is that this is how the conservative movement keeps flush with direct-mail cash during their years in the wilderness. During the Clinton Administration there were all sorts of crackpot delusions about what Bill Clinton was preparing to do to stick it to conservatives and bring about the second coming of Armageddon. But you always have to read to the end of these missives, when they ask for "just $5 or $10" to save the Republic and fight the efforts to silence their voices. Conservatives understood the sense of engagement that comes with small-dollar donations long before Democrats caught up to them. The difference is that conservatives basically use it as a con game, stirring up emotional furies to part unwitting folks from their money. Rick Perlstein has a phrase for this: Conservatives treat their constituents like suckers.

It's exactly the same with this run on gun sales. While the actual evidence of an increase in gun sales since the election is somewhat thin (although FBI requests for background checks are way up), it is clear that gun sellers are using the spectre of Obama taking away Second Amendment rights to hawk their wares.

Some gun sellers like Wild West Guns in Anchorage, AK are holding “Obama Sale” events to take advantage of their customers’ misinformed fears and news outlets from NPR to Fox News have produced reports documenting the gun buying binge [...]

What the major media outlets overlook is that the Obama gun sale boom appears to be the result of a multimillion dollar effort launched by the National Rifle Association last summer to misinform voters about Obama’s gun policy proposals. As Politico reported in June:

The National Rifle Association plans to spend about $40 million on this year’s campaign, with $15 million of that devoted to portraying Barack Obama as a threat to the Second Amendment rights. … This fall, NRA members will get automated phone calls, mail pieces and pre-election editions of the group’s three magazines making the case against Obama.

So the NRA whips up fear about the imminent loss of gun rights, leading to a run on gun sales that benefits gun stores and manufacturers. Quid, pro, quo.

Fortunately for them, there's a conservative born every minute. (though hopefully more liberals!)