Why are right-wingers winning in the political war they've been waging against everyone else for the past century? They refuse to compromise. Oh sure, they earn the scorn of self-proclaimed "pragmatists", those who made a fetish of "compromising" (today's codeword for craven capitulation, or as we used to call it in decades gone by, selling out). But when you measure it in terms of getting one's political agenda made into normal American policy, the far right has enjoyed tremendous success.
Stuart Zechman explained it all splendidly in his "Z-Files" episode for April 3rd, and since he puts it far more eloquently than I can, I'll repost it below.
I'm Stuart Zechman, and I've got a serious question for my fellow liberal Democrats out there:
What would it take for you to not vote for the Democratic candidate in an election?
Seriously, what's the threshold?
Where exactly is that line that can't be crossed, otherwise you'll withhold your vote?
Do you know? Have you thought about it at all?
You know, the conservative Republicans have.
The movement conservatives, way back in the 1980s, drew a line in the policy sand, across which no politician of theirs could step, lest ordinary Republicans vote against their own candidates.
And it wasn't a fundamentalists' issue like abortion, or one of their pet industry lobbyist issues, like "tort reform."
It wasn't the bloated war machine budget against which old Dick Cheney argued for downsizing and outsourcing, and it wasn't increasing the size of the federal government --they elected big government conservative George W Bush twice!
No, it was something else: taxes.
The line near which no Republican politician could safely tread was the issue of raising taxes.
And, if you think about it, that's a pretty intelligent choice, as far as thresholds go. A clear majority of Americans, almost 70 percent of them ten years ago, but still in clear majority territory today, have repeatedly told Gallup polling that they consider the amount of federal income tax that they pay --not that the very rich or corporations, mind you, but what they pay-- too high.
If you were going to draw a line on a policy, that would probably be the one you'd choose. It's too bad that national Democrats at the time didn't think of putting "we will not raise middle class people's taxes except in a time of war" in their platform, but, back then, they had something else in their arsenal that we'll get to later.
So, back to the Republicans: so it was that George W's father, George H. W. Bush ran in 1988 on this solemn pledge "Read my lips: no new taxes!"
As a matter of fact, by this time, a young activist named Grover Norquist had founded an organization called "Americans for Tax Reform," which came up with this interesting new political device called "The Pledge," which meant that candidates were offered a written, public contract to sign, which stated that the politician in question would never raise taxes, ever. And, despite some hesitating and delaying, in 1987, George H. W. signed that pledge, and sealed it with his "read my lips" nomination speech at the Republican convention.
But once he was in office, he faced a Democratic majority who would only support raising taxes as a means to cut the big deficits that Ronald Reagan had left on Bush Senior's doorstep.
So, in 1990, George H.W. Bush did what he thought he had to do: he compromised with centrist Democrats --liberal Democrats actually voted against the Bush Senior budget because they felt it taxed the poor-- and raised taxes on Americans.
And this compromise was fatal to his 1992 re-election chances.
Republicans voted for Pat Buchanan in the New Hampshire primary that year, which he won by an amazing 40 percent.
Buchanan proclaimed "...we Republicans, can no longer say it is all the liberals' fault. It was not some liberal Democrat who said 'Read my lips: no new taxes,' then broke his word to cut a seedy backroom budget deal with the big spenders on Capitol Hill." Wow, that's pretty intense!
Let's just repeat that clearly, so it doesn't get lost: movement conservatives organized around the country to primary a sitting Republican president.
And when that effort ultimately failed, when the national Republican machine eventually crushed the popular conservative insurgency, you know what Republicans did, then?
Huge numbers of them voted for an Independent candidate, Ross Perot.
They withheld their votes, rather than re-elect their own President, because their line had been crossed.
And their guy lost. And they dealt with it...well, if by "deal with," one means "take advantage of the other Party's centrist faction" and (then) "impeach the other Party's duly elected President over a blow job."
The point is that, somehow, ordinary movement conservatives --whose agenda at that pre-Fox News and talk radio time was largely shut out of the centrist national media-- were able to organize themselves, take the long view, to see upcoming elections in terms of a political and media war for hearts and minds to be won over the long run, and, most importantly, to follow through on their promises.
And, whatever else you want to say about the creation scientists, tent-revivalists, costume survivalists, antebellum nostalgists and latter day Know Nothings who make up the Republican base, that was pretty darn smart of them.
In fact, it was the smartest thing that they could have done. And it was the right thing to do. Promises by high elected officials in America should be kept.
And what has the result been for Republican voters, the millions of ordinary people who want to see liberalism gone from America, who want to see centrism gone from America, and who want, above all, their rightist version of reality becoming normalized in American culture and politics?
Are they worse off politically than they were in 1992?
I don't think so. I don't think liberal Democrats would even be having conversations like this one, if that were true.
The thing is, though, that Democrats used to have a line they'd never cross, too.
Remember what that was?
That universally popular policy, that wonderful thing that justified the federal bureaucracy's existence in so many Americans' minds, that program that helped so many, that check --but not at tax refund check-- from the government that everyone knew somebody who got one, the program that couldn't be touched, called "the third rail of electoral politics" because it would kill the politician who went near it?
Remember Social Security? Remember the New Deal?
From what I can gather looking at recent political history, Social Security didn't even need a "Pledge," and Democrats successfully ran on praising it, not messing with it, and certainly not "reforming" one of the best things to ever happen to ordinary people in this country.
What ever happened to that line, after liberal Democrats decided to elect Third Way centrists like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to office?
Because I remember reading in the Washington Post last year, now listen to this, quote:
In debt talks, Obama offers Social Security cuts
President Obama is pressing congressional leaders to consider a far-reaching debt-reduction plan that would force Democrats to accept major changes to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for Republican support for fresh tax revenue.
At a meeting with top House and Senate leaders set for Thursday morning, Obama plans to argue that a rare consensus has emerged about the size and scope of the nation's budget problems and that policymakers should seize the moment to take dramatic action.
As part of his pitch, Obama is proposing significant reductions in Medicare spending and for the first time is offering to tackle the rising cost of Social Security...
Rather than roughly $2 trillion in savings, the White House is now seeking a plan that would slash more than $4 trillion from annual budget deficits over the next decade...
Something has changed in the national Democratic Party, for sure.
So, let me ask you again, what would it take for you not to vote for a [far right-wing]* Democrat?
Is there anything Obama or any Third Way Democrat could propose while in office that would cross that line?
Anything at all?
If you can't think of anything that would prevent you from voting for Obama in November, shouldn't we consider the possibility that we liberal Democrats are part of the thing that has changed?
Maybe there are some things we intelligent, educated, science-based, reality-based movement liberals could learn from movement conservatives.
Maybe one of those things is how to draw a line in front of what really matters to us, and then stand on it.
I'm Stuart Zechman, and this as been the Z-Files.
Do you understand now why we are where we are at this late stage? Do you realize now what is needed in order for the Left to finally prevail once and for all against the forces trying to wipe us out of existence? History is not made by people who were willing to throw their communities under the proverbial bus in exchange for temporary power. It was made by people who took a stand for something they believed in — even if what they believed in was depraved, violent, and destructive to society as a whole — and refused to accept anything less than 100% of what they wanted.
Imagine if Lyndon Johnson had been the sort of unprincipled "pragmatist" Democrat apologists now laud Obama for being. We would never have had Medicare, one of the most popular and successful social insurance programs in American history. Imagine if Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been more of a "pragmatist" than he was. We would never have had the New Deal, or Social Security, or the infrastructure that put America in place as a superpower.
"But but but...," you cry! "Today's political system is different from what it was back then! If Democrats don't cave at every opportunity, nothing will get done! We'll have nothing but gridlock for four years!"
When faced with the executive branch claiming the power to murder anyone it wishes, even American citizens, with no charges, trials, or convictions of any kind, and then acts upon those claims, gridlock is preferrable. Given the choice between undermining Social Security and Medicare, and leaving those essential programs alone, then be grateful nothing is done to them.
You have to draw a line and stand on it. If you truly hold those progressive-liberal-socialist-environmental principles you claim, you must not sell them— never.
As Robert Redford responded in the movie "Brubaker" to the question of leaving room for "compromise", you compromise "on strategy, maybe, but never on principle."
Right-wingers got that message. When will the Left?
