I had this editorial called to my attention today, care of Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI). Although it shares a “double down” devotion to doctrinal purity in the name of Saint Ronnie with Michael Steele’s announcement of the return of Republican power, and shares too a sort of vague wish that energetic new ideas will arise—among *cough* conservatives—in place of an actual offering of energetic new ideas, it doesn’t come across quite so batshit crazy, swinging between a need for apologies and a refusal to offer apologies or trumpeting a grass-roots initiative secretly engineered in private conferences.
Still, there’s a kind of desperation there, a desperation that reminds me of nothing so much as Jefferson Davis’s speech following the fall of Richmond, claiming, in part:
“Relieved from the necessity of guarding cities and particular points, important but not vital to our defense…nothing is now needed to render our triumph certain but the exhibition of our own unquenchable resolve.”
Stirring words, skillfully composed, but painfully at odds with observable reality to anyone who paused to think about what they mean, rather than the sentiment they hoped to be realized: without all those pesky centers of population and industry, our armies are finally assured victory! Davis was reduced to inflating morale with lies, because he’d reached a point where hope was all his cause had left. Were he not defending a nation founded on nothing more than a desire to preserve slavery, I could consider him a tragic figure, shouldered with leading a rebellion he did not approve and forced to keep hope alive when all hope was gone. But he did, and I don’t.
Thaddeus McCotter’s essay displays the same empty sentiment, although McCotter differs from Davis in that he believes what he’s saying: without the support of all those pesky moderate voters, ideas arising from our renewed purity must surely be victorious! No actual ideas, merely the hope that ideas will arise if everyone just believes hard enough. Were he not defending a generation of sabotage to American wealth, power, prestige, and principle merely to further enrich the very wealthy, McCotter too might seem a tragic figure. But he is, and he doesn’t.
Conservatives have been coasting for years on a mixture of bullying and faith: faith in unregulated business, faith in a hateful god, and bullying of anyone who dared challenge either. They finally broke the system far enough that even bullying and faith aren’t enough to win elections outside the reddest of the red states. But they’ve been coasting so long that, now that bullying and faith aren’t working, they have nothing else to offer—not even the opportunity to engineer a convenient crisis just before election day, now that they aren’t setting policy. And once the general public stops buying into the faith, and stops fearing the bullies, there’s nothing left to run on.
Nothing in politics is forever. Some day the right wing will be back, probably sooner than is good for anyone. But not as long as this remains the party line. It’s a different kind of faith-based politics. Not politics motivated by religious faith, but politics rooted in a faith in inevitable victory. If we just believe hard enough, it will be true.
Which suits me just fine. Faith is no way to run a government; witness the recent results of running an economy on faith, or launching wars on faith. When the Republican party breaks its reliance on faith, and starts to measure policy, whether for elections or governance, on objective reality instead of what it might prefer to be true, they may come back in touch with reality, and I may have to start taking their ideas seriously again. Wouldn’t that be nice? Two political parties with meaningful ideas instead of merely half a party? But until they break the habit, they deserve the wilderness they’ve found themselves in.
