I told you so! OK, two weeks ago doesn't exactly establish my prophetic credentials, but it does suggest a useful degree vigilence outside the carefully scripted narratives of the dopamine distraction theatre of U.S. politics. Nowhere in the mainstream media do we hear anything about Supreme Court nominee Roberts record on racial justice. Trust me on this one, conservatives will continue to warm to Roberts the more they learn about his Reagan-era writings on civil rights. So-called black conservatives will predictably bite their tongues and fall in with the party line. Perhaps the conservative black afrostocracy will step up to the plate and say a little something about this nominee, but I'm not holding my breath for that deus ex machina moment.
Noam Scheiber at The New Republic has a fair amount to say about it, viewed from the perspective of a Rovian dopamine distraction programmer and gamesman....,
Conservatives had lots of reasons to like John Roberts's nomination to the Supreme Court. But the one they cited most eagerly was that the nominee, barring some unforeseen revelation, was neither a woman nor a minority. David Brooks praised President Bush for "mov[ing] beyond the tokenism of identity politics." National Review's Jonah Goldberg was relieved that Bush had "tagged a plain old really smart white guy." "[B]y not worrying about walking out to the podium last night accompanied by a white male," William Kristol concluded, "Bush did something important and courageous."
At the time, the glee with which conservatives greeted Roberts's white male-ness fell into the category of slightly weird but hardly worth a second thought. In retrospect, it was rather telling. To the extent that Roberts's nomination has been defined in the early going, it is civil rights issues that have defined it. That has, in turn, produced two reactions on the right. On the one hand, conservatives have continued to warm to Roberts the more they learn about his Reagan-era writings on civil rights. But these discoveries have also created a gnawing, if not quite urgent, sense of anxiety among Republicans--and rightly so.
Roberts comes across as nothing if not conservative in the thousands of pages of documents he wrote as a Reagan-era legal adviser. Roberts favored a highly restrictive interpretation of the Voting Rights Act. He concluded that Congress had the authority to pass so-called court-stripping legislation in order to prevent courts from imposing busing as a remedy for segregation. He took a dim view of a Justice Department decision granting restitution to people discouraged from applying to jobs for reasons related to race. He argued against an affirmative action program on the grounds that it led to the hiring of unqualified candidates.
In the early '80s, Roberts's positions on these issues were not only popular among conservatives, they were central to what it meant to be a Reaganite, both politically and ideologically. The conservatism of the era was very much a reaction to the perceived liberal excesses of the 1960s and 1970s, particularly on matters of civil rights. Ronald Reagan won states like New York, New Jersey, Michigan, and Pennsylvania thanks largely to the resentment that blue-collar, white Democrats harbored toward welfare, busing, and affirmative action. Meanwhile, the '80s saw elite universities churn out hoards of conservative ideologues radicalized by the political correctness they felt pervaded their campuses. Northwestern University Law Professor Steven Calabresi has said he founded the Federalist Society, the conservative legal organization, to counter liberals' dominance at Yale Law School, where he was a student in the early '80s.
But, while conservative elites still harbor these resentments, things have changed among voters. Bill Clinton helped defuse race as a political issue across the Northeast and Midwest when he signed welfare reform in 1996. Around the same time, race was creating political problems for the GOP. A Wall Street Journal poll found that 66 percent of Americans thought the GOP was intolerant. Republicans began suffering defections among Sunbelt Latinos and moderates nationally thanks to the punitive cast of their immigration and welfare policies.
The coup de grâce came when then-Governor Bush, partly as a concession to political reality and partly as a result of his own personal decency, self-consciously fashioned himself as a new, tolerant brand of Republican. Bush has largely repudiated appeals to racial resentments. He has proposed instead to liberalize immigration and has scrupulously practiced affirmative action within his own administration. While the Reagan/Bush I/Newt Gingrich coalition largely repelled minorities with its preoccupation with race, the Bush II coalition directly enlists socially conservative blacks, Latinos, and women (albeit in a new crusade against gays).
In this context, it's hard not to see Roberts's memos as a political liability. Conservative bloggers have spent much of the last two weeks defending the nominee's individual positions--often with justification. A careful reading of the memos doesn't evoke the mind of a racist. It evokes a principled, if rock-ribbed, conservatism--someone devoted to the belief that government does more harm than good when it relies on ambitious means to defend civil rights.
But, collectively, the weight of his civil rights positions have the effect of casting Roberts as someone out of step with the current political consensus on race, or at least with the tentative peace Bush's GOP has forged. And the GOP establishment knows it. In the days since Roberts's memos began trickling out, administration surrogates have mostly sought to distance Roberts from his own paper trail. Asked about the memos, administration spokesman Scott McClellan would say only that "the files that you're referring to mostly are from about 20 years ago." South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham argued that Roberts was merely advising a "client": "I've represented rapists, murder[er]s. ... You shouldn't hold it against me the thoughts of my client." The few times the GOP has engaged on substance have been to repudiate a position attributed to Roberts. Last week, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell announced that, contrary to popular opinion, Roberts had actually opposed court-stripping. (Roberts opposed it in practice but believed Congress had the power to do it.)
For Republicans, the risks posed by Roberts are the mirror image of the risks posed by Robert Bork. Bork, with his shaggy hair and condescending manner, was a tough sell in the Senate. But he posed no long-term risk to a party that largely shared his views on civil rights. Roberts isn't likely to encounter problems in the Senate. But, in closing ranks behind him, Republicans risk handing Democrats a political wedge. In 2004, Bush increased his share of the black and Latino vote by roughly 2 and 6 percentage points, respectively. Karl Rove believes this trend is the key to a future GOP majority. Yet these inroads are fragile. As Deval Patrick, a former Clinton civil rights official, said after Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman apologized to the naacp for his party's checkered racial past, "The Republicans have a lot to answer for." If Rove's majority fails to materialize, we may one day look back on Roberts as the reason why.
Posted by at August 5, 2005 10:29 AM | TrackBackGetting Republicans to bow, scrape and apologize is an exercise in self-righteous futility. What is the point?
Quite right. But having anything whatsoever to do with them beyond the most extreme reaches of practical necessity is an exercise in laying down with dogs that I'll have to take a pass on. Worse than that, it's an exercise in Pharisee-ical hypocrisy of the very worst sort. I've come to terms with the fact that they need me a hell of a lot more than I need them. From the comfort of my little perch here in oppositional Hades, it's only a matter of time before I get to witness them imploding under the crushing burden of their genetic bias and stupidity. I dropped a bon mot over at P6 this afternoon that is perfectly appropos to this notion..., substitute Republican for weird and it hangs together equally well.
Painting Roberts as anti-affirmative action and anti-civil rights may be useful or true
Just the facts sir, just the facts...,
You gin up this backchannel conspiracy about planned political hostility to blackfolks in a substrate of 'supreezy', claim Roberts to be an agent of Satan and then what?
supreezy?
I said supreme court nominee..,
What's with this supreezy binnis brah? Sounds like I threw a rock into the dark and hit something.., I'm merely reporting the facts in the context of an issue that should be germaine to any and all black partisans, including those intrepid souls intent on dancing with the devil cause of the miniscule possibility of longterm upside potential. (:
The Supremes and law enforcement are pivotal to black partisan interests, but they're not being addressed by any of the media savvy HNIC's in that context, at all, I'm just doing my little piece to rectify that glaring oversight.
Now, I know you said you were going to play trick or treat at some librul watering holes Cobb, but come on mayne, you know you gotta come hella more correct than that if you're going to step to this here ruthless black partisan digital punisher. I recommend turning up the William F. Buckley in your repertoire and turning down the Bill O'Reilly brah. You cain't distract me with trivial handwaving like this mayne;
If you're going to demonize, pick a devil and display the details. Whatever happened to Alberto Gonzales? I thought *he* was the devil incarnate? No, that was John Bolton. No wait, It's all REAGAN'S fault.
If your clanofthecavebearconfederateflag digital troglodyte bredren could tolerate it, I suspect you already would've brought your Buckley game rather than your O'Lielly game. Polish off the former and leave the latter to the likes of Missy-B
Posted by: cnulan at August 5, 2005 04:09 PMI apologize and warn. I cannot find, within the context of Google and the patience I can muster, any reference to your use of the flatulent term 'supreezy'. I swear I'll Donkey Kong anybody I hear using it. I've got no patience with white supremacy, nor with anyone who assumes it is the hegemonic conscience of America.
And yet I must confess that I am not so vested in all of this advocacy as I think everybody thinks I am. I simply don't see that the majority of interactions between Americans, especially those most deterministic of black progress, as mediated by poisoned interests. Rather, I see a political orientation, tied to the liberal and radical left, which creates an impenetrable gauntlet of qualifications on blackness which creates a barrier to simple enjoyment of mainstream goods, services and belonging.
Posted by: Cobb at August 5, 2005 07:04 PMI have no doubt whatsoever that white supremacy was the historically overt and presently covert collective inspiration motivating American governance. I have no doubt that some skinfolk are amenable to an attempt to instantiate supremacist values themselves - in prayerful hope that American supremacy will obviate and eclipse white supremacy. That's not a world or worldview I aspire to for moral and practical reasons.
I see a political orientation, tied to the liberal and radical left, which creates an impenetrable gauntlet of qualifications on blackness which creates a barrier to simple enjoyment of mainstream goods, services and belonging.
Mine is the more deeply troubling orientation brah. As a traditional patristic orthodox christian, in no way bound to liberal or radical left political expression, in fact so orthogonal to that orientation that I'm commonly dismissed as a misogynistic, medieval, heteronormative bully by leftist identified folk - a stance which I believe you vibe with at a fundamental level - I am intensely critical of our habitual enjoyment of mainstream goods, services and belonging...,
Now, throw in thermodynamic realism, and tell me that what I'm coming with is poisoned or wrong-headed? My rejection of the neoconservative polity comes down to a simple rejection of the short view (benign) and hypocrisy (malign). If I refuse to tolerate it in myself, what could possibly compel me to tolerate it in another? In the best of possible worlds, thermodynamics preclude an upside to neoconservative delusions about what the future holds in store. The world has shifted operational parameters and the neocon idealists have failed to consider these variable coefficients in their equation for the future.
My allegiances and values are bond. As skinfolk who can be partisan kinfolk, we each have a role to play. I'm just not counting on anybody other than the Lord to lift a finger to help make a way for me and mine. It just doesn't get any more simple, straight up, and plain than that - and it's an obligation I uphold with Luciferian glee.
Posted by: cnulan at August 5, 2005 09:06 PM
This is dopamine theatre.
I haven't heard the name Deval Patrick in a dozen years - (Where do all the Civil Rights attorneys go in the off-season? How ever do they survive?) Hmm. They try to de-civil-rightize themselves and go mainstream.
Getting Republicans to bow, scrape and apologize is an exercise in self-righteous futility. What is the point?
Painting Roberts as anti-affirmative action and anti-civil rights may be useful or true, but I have to confess that I cannot get any grasp of a real hardball perspective on this. You gin up this backchannel conspiracy about planned political hostility to blackfolks in a substrate of 'supreezy', claim Roberts to be an agent of Satan and then what? What's he going to do? And what is anybody going to do after this horrendous thing is done?
It can always be argued that now that the door of Civil Rights has been swung wide open to 98% that every percentage point of closing demonstrably hurts x% of the minority population and enforces a chilling effect. But I'm not cold. In fact, where I stand it's a bright sunny day. And until such time as I take a look around and see Michael Jordan and all the black doctors and lawyers selling off their American assets and fleeing to New Zealand, I'm not going to sweat an iota over the potential for cataclysmic regression of Civil or Voting Rights.
None of the objectively dispossesed in Florida have the gumption to even log into this blog and give any accounting. They got run over by a truck. Now what? If they can't raise their torches and pitchforks for their own damned selves, I'm not going to loose any sleep nor is my heart going to loose any blood. Let's get to the news of the pain that's real rather than speculate about the character deficits of candidates. If you're going to demonize, pick a devil and display the details. Whatever happened to Alberto Gonzales? I thought *he* was the devil incarnate? No, that was John Bolton. No wait, It's all REAGAN'S fault.
Posted by: Cobb at August 5, 2005 02:17 PM