The Growing Backlash Against the Left
Tea Party Protest, Washington D.C. Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Freedom Fan
In my last post I commented on Peter Beinart’s confident prediction that America would follow the Democratic Party’s lead even further toward the Left. One of Beinart’s most telling points was that social attitudes have greatly changed over the decades to be more congruent with those of the Left. Almost everyone, conservatives included, believes racial discrimination to be unjust and intolerable. The almost unanimous conviction is that blacks and other minorities deserve equal opportunities to succeed. Fewer and fewer believe in discrimination against homosexuals. In addition, Beinart cites a number of Republicans who favor reforms in criminal justice to make it less draconian. He writes,
Last year, then–Speaker of the House John Boehner declared, “We’ve got a lot of people in prison that frankly, in my view, really don’t need to be there.” In October, a group of conservative Republican senators—Chuck Grassley, John Cornyn, Mike Lee, and Lindsey Graham—joined Democrats in introducing legislation to reduce mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug crimes, roll back harsh “three strikes and you’re out” sentencing laws, end solitary confinement for juveniles, and allow teenagers to have their criminal records expunged.
Beinart judges the reason for changed attitudes on crime on the part of some conservatives is the very success of the “tough on crime” reaction against the exploding crime wave of the 1960s and 1970s.
Beinart argues the reaction against George W. Bush’s war on radical Islamic jihadism, together with Obama’s example of a progressive program and the changed social attitudes, makes the American electorate susceptible to the Democratic Party’s progressive arguments.
While Beinart’s observations on changed social attitudes are mostly accurate, I believe he is entirely too optimistic these changed attitudes imply a new American sympathy, or at least a tolerance, for the programs of the Left. There is nothing about beliefs in racial and minority equality negating conservatives’ basic views. Conservatives believe the least government possible to guarantee equality before the law is the best way to maximize equal opportunity. Ironically, Henry David Thoreau, in a statement often attributed to the founder of the Democratic Party, Thomas Jefferson, has given all conservatives their mantra: “That government is best which governs the least!” At the moment, what constitutes “the least” appears to be negotiable. Such a motto does not forbid conservative agreement that all should have equal opportunities for education and for economic betterment. In fact conservatives would insist history and experience tell us economic opportunities are best provided by a free market with minimal government intrusion.
Also, Beinart may be more than a little premature about changed attitudes concerning crime. While many on the Left may be minimizing the impact of the Ferguson effect, an increase in crime resulting from police reducing their exposure to legal prosecutions seems to have interrupted a two decade fall in crime rates. Should crime continue to increase because of political harassment of the police, what conservative convergence on crime Beinart perceives might well evaporate.
Where Beinart really goes astray is in his judgements there has been little public backlash against Obama’s economic policies, nor against his public health policy, Obamacare. At the beginning of this year, Americans were somewhat more hopeful about the economy. In January, a Pew Research poll showed 27% rated the economy as excellent or good, 48% called it only fair, while 24% said it was poor. Although this result hardly seems to be a ringing endorsement of Obama’s policies, it was also not an outright condemnation. However, when asked in an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted January 12-15 whether they themselves were better off financially since Obama took office, only 25% said they were better off financially. This result was quoted at the very end of a Forbes.com post by Eric V. Schlecht in which the author discusses some of the economically very destructive policies of the Obama administration. More recently, after the October Democratic Party debate between their presidential candidates, the Wall Street Journal noted that all the Democratic candidates agreed: the current U.S. economy is a disaster. The WSJ then proceeded to quote each of the candidates on their negative views of the economy’s condition. Summarizing their take-away from the debate, the WSJ editors opined,
Look past the pro forma Republican bashing, and Tuesday’s message is stark: After nearly seven years of Barack Obama in the White House, America’s working families are struggling in an economy with fewer good jobs, stagnant paychecks, growing inequality and a system that rewards billionaires while hard-working Average Joes are left behind.
And this is the Democratic talking point. If Republicans want to make the case against Obamanomics, they can start by quoting Democrats.
The public’s opinion about Obamacare is similarly negative. A July Rasmussen Reports poll had the following results: 42% of likely U.S. voters had a favorable opinion with 20% viewing it very favorably; 53% viewed it unfavorably with 37% having a very unfavorable opinion. In my post Obamacare: The Democrats’ Gift to Republicans, I noted how Obamacare has entered a death-spiral with progressively increasing premiums and deductibles. As time wears on toward the 2016 elections, public opinion on Obamacare can become only more negative.
The final anchor dragging the political Left down is the newly prominent national security issue. With the rise of ISIS, two major Islamic jihadist attacks in Paris (the Charlie Hebdo attacks and the November 13 attacks) and the most recent jihadist attack in San Bernardino, American fears of jihadist attacks on the homeland have spiked. That Americans are quite justified in this fear is noted in my posts A Death Trap of Wishful Thinking and The Modes of ISIS’ Threat to US. Meanwhile, Democrats and most especially President Obama seem to be ambivalent to our national survival. See the posts The Purposes of Iran, A Failed. “Lead From Behind” Foreign Policy (1), A Failed. “Lead From Behind” Foreign Policy (2), Consequences of a Weak U.S. President, and President Obama’s Passions for discussion on this.
Economics, Obamacare, national security: three very big reasons to go Right, not Left.
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