Out of power and out of touch, they feast on stale slogans and whine.
by Thomas Frank

Just as the financial crisis has created toxic assets and "zombie" financial institutions, so has it transformed conservatism into a movement of the living dead. Its partisans cling to a now-toxic portfolio of discredited notions, rhetoric, gestures and strategies. They lumber comically on, their only goal being to obstruct efforts to save the economy from catastrophe.

These days the zombie right is rallying around CNBC commentator Rick Santelli, who won fame last month when he railed against a rescue of the economy's "losers."

Mr. Santelli claimed he was backed in his outrage by "the silent majority" -- meaning a floor full of traders at the Chicago Board of Trade -- and he called for a "Chicago tea party" to protest the administration's mortgage plan.

Next thing you knew, there were "tea parties" all over the land. When I showed up for one last Friday in Washington's Lafayette Park, however, my suspicions were immediately raised. A fellow in an expensive-looking pinstriped suit came hustling into the gathering knot of the discontented, handing out pink pig balloons. This had to be a put-on, I thought, one of the "Billionaires for Bush" pranksters in his capitalist costume, preparing to lead us in a chant of "Four More Wars."

But no, this was for real: the pigs symbolized "pork," the stuff of which President Barack Obama's stimulus package was supposedly made. Suits were common among the protesters. And the slogans on the signs made their undead politics impossible to misinterpret: "Liberalism Socialism Communism," read a typical one, "What's the Difference?"

Lending proletarian authenticity to the proceedings was the famous Joe the Plumber, who took up the bullhorn to deliver a dose of working-class cynicism that would have been convincing in, say, 1978. "Our politicians up on the hill, Republicans or Democrats, don't give a rip about you, and that's the bottom line right there," Joe Wurzelbacher declared.

Banks are insolvent, asset prices are falling, GDP has taken a nose dive, but what exercised this bunch was the possibility that government -- understood as a force of pure evil -- might get too big.

"America wants people who are gonna come to D.C. and say no," exhorted Andrew Langer of the Institute for Liberty. "No more taxes! No more spending! No more expansion of government!" Another speaker insisted that deregulation was not at fault for our troubles, and that the free market had never really been tried.

As the event wore on, the speakers began to repeat, zombie-like, some version of the famous line from "Network," the 1976 movie, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore."

I got out of there quick. This was no place to find the changed, chastened conservatism that all the pundits are looking for.

But at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which was going on in the swank Omni Shoreham hotel on that same day, what I found was merely a smoother version of the same grumbling.

Capitalist self-pity was much in vogue. Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, looking tanned and groomed and yet strangely mechanical, joked that he needed to get through his speech "before federal officials come here to arrest me for practicing capitalism."

Jim Gilmore, a former governor of Virginia, moaned that the "philosophy" one encountered in the land these days was that "people who succeed and have wealth are bad people, and they're entitled to be discriminated against in the tax code."

Perhaps this was because the current economic crisis was being "overblown," as claimed Lew Uhler, who heads the National Tax Limitation Committee. The administration was trying "to create as much trouble for all of us as possible, and we're here to create trouble back, back, back!"

A little while later, Mr. Uhler lapsed into the same confused zombie cry as the tea partiers across town: "We're not going to stand around and take it anymore! We're mad as hell and we're not taking it!"

They're not going to take it anymore? I guess it's supposed to be obvious that conservatives are history's real victims -- that their imagined suffering at the hands of that Big Deficit to Come trumps the global systemic economic crisis and all the upheaval it may unleash.

Or is it that the mind of the right is running on some spooky kind of autopilot? "Silent majority," "Mad as hell": These are the sayings of the 1970s. Remembering them brings back all the false populisms to flicker across the screen since then, all the stale illusions that brought us to our present disaster -- all the fake cowboys, the folksy radio talkers, the regular-guy billionaires, the middle American tax rebels, the salt-of-the-earth bankers.

There is much to dislike about President Obama's approach to the financial crisis. But opposition, it seems, will have to come from somewhere other than conservatism. The party out of power is also a party out of touch.

© 2009 The Wall Street Journal
Thomas Frank is the author of The Wrecking Crew, What's the Matter with Kansas? and One Market Under God.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/05-7

madman is on the loose again...thought i tied the knots tight

wow, an anti-conservative editorial from a leftist economist. Who'd have thought. Frank has always been critical of conservative economics and this is nothing more than his politicized opinion. how about posting something from your own brain for once instead of regurgitating, once again.

sounds like someone got offended . are you a conservative by chance my friend ?

We will see in 2010.

fiscally, yes. And this has what to do with the topic?

conservative and far right republicans are getting desperate to rally their troops, as evidenced by these silly tea parties and santelli's rant.

their numbers are dwindling to start with, mccain-palin drove away more (moderate and centrist) republicans than they held, and steele's RNC doesn't even have a finance director or a political director.

hello, more democratic victories in 2010 and 2012.....

I wouldn't plan any parades just yet.

not if we keep getting this...day by day...

here's a couple of quotes...that I've often wondered...could they can ever play out...in my lifetime...in this great counrty...I would say...we are inching closer by the day...

America is like a healthy body...and it’s resistance is threefold... It’s Patriotism...it’s morality...and...it’s Spiritual life...If we can undermine these three areas...America will collapse from within...Joseph Stalin

I am for socialism...disarmament...and...ultimately for abolishing the state itself...I seek the social ownership of property...the abolition of the propertied class...and the sole control of those who produce wealth...Communism is the goal...Robert Nash Baldwin founder of the ACLU...GULP !!!!...

Right/Left...

Once people start tuning in to the Revolution for Liberty, then things will start turning around. Campaignforliberty.com

Republican or conservative party has imploded from the inside and the reasons for this are as follows:

Fiscal conservatism is great if it applies across the board but the fiscally conservative republicans have been fiscally conservative to the middle and under classes and fiscally liberal to the big corporations and elite.

Following the constitution is already happening in this country at the level it should be with a few exceptions. Like president Bush's slight deviations. The contitution is a living document it is not static. It will grow and evolve as the country grows and evolves and that is how it should be. Following the Constitution, Bill of Rights and Declaration of Idependence as it was intended as the basis for this country and moving forward from that to what the country needs is how we should be going, not backwards and in reverse.

Personal responsibility is just that, your own personal responsibility. The laws of the land are designed to keep the peace but they cannot extend into the realm of personal responsibility to the level the conservatives want it to. All Americans do not need to live their lives in the way the religious do, the way the conservatives do, the way the liberals do, etc.... As for entitlement, if you look at the current helping programs from the government none of them are enabling to entitlement anymore so this is a mute point at this level. The only reason the entitlement argument still exists is to encite hatred behind the scenes.

Until the republican/conservative party gets these issues resolved within their ranks they will continue to implode.

They need to respect others rights to live their life happily how they want to live it and stop overstepping their boundaries. They need to grow up, in my opinion.

what do i bring to a pity party lol