The GOP and Facts

Daniel Larison takes a look at the Republican elite cooling on the idea of a Palin candidacy:

This year, the conservative intelligentsia doesn’t just tend to dislike Palin — many fear that her rise would represent the triumph of an intellectually empty brand of populism and the death of ideas as an engine of the right. ~Politico

This wouldn’t be much of a change from the intellectually empty brand of pseudo-populism that prevails right now. What makes some of the new movement conservative anxiety about Palin so amusing is that the people cited in the article continue to perpetuate the fiction that there are well-formulated ideas rather than slogans and talking points that inform movement conservative arguments. Here is a quote from Pete Wehner:

Wehner, now a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, cited the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous 1980 declaration that the GOP had become “a party of ideas.”
“Conservatives are very proud of that,” Wehner said. “But she seems at best disinterested in ideas or least lacks the ability to articulate any philosophical justification for them. She relies instead on shallow talking points.”

It’s true that Palin relies on shallow talking points, but where do these come from? They come from the institutions and leaders of the movement that is supposedly so concerned with ideas. Palin is disinterested in ideas, and she has flourished in the conservative media for years. She does rely on shallow talking points, and legions of conservative pundits have repeatedly defended her against charges that she is ignorant and incurious. Everything about her public persona since she received the VP nomination has been built up around tapping into resentment, grievance, and identity politics, all of which are in one way or another antithetical to critical thinking and substantive discussion of policy, and for a while most of her new detractors said nothing or gushed about how wonderful she was.

Note, the Republicans were the party of ideas in 1980.  Amongst the ideas were that tax cuts for the wealthy would trickle down and help out the middle class, that banks would work better with less regulations, and that federal deficits are a good thing.  Today, the Republicans still push the same ideas, even though they have all been proven to be false.  But don't tell that to a Republican, because they don't like facts which get in the way of a good narrative.  According to them, tax cuts always increase revenues, even though they don't.  They claim the government is solely at fault for the economic crisis in 2008, even though the private sector garners most of the blame.  Now they are opposed to deficits, even though the largest causes of those deficits are the Bush tax cuts, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Great Recession, all of which found their home in the Bush Administration.  Not to worry though, besides Palin, all the other candidates for the GOP will parrot those same points or lose prodigiously.  Republicans are the party of ideas, but it is the party of previously tried, failed ideas.