Jonathan Rauch in the National Journal writes about the legacy of George Wallace and reminds us not only of the force that was George Wallace but that he was more than his racist statements.
Wallace’s national appeal, he states, came from ”a deep sense of grievance,” …. a feeling that elites “are not only screwing you over but at the same time they’re laughing at you, they’re looking down their noses at you.”
It is this sentiment Republicans have expressed of late. It is this grievance Sarah Palin, who Rauch likens to Wallace in her populist appeal, echoes from her speech lectern while evangelizing her talking points of big government elitists and aw shucks advice.
Her faux apostolic tirades may have broad appeal to the disenfranchised Christian Conservative Right but they and she fail to see the irony in her words as well as the lack of sound agenda. Palin rails against big government but provides only ambiguous solutions, she labels Democrats as elitists while earning an income far above her target audience’s earning capacity and while having a TV studio built in her house.
Furthermore, in her speeches, Palin, like Wallace, fail to “frame a coherent program or governing philosophy.”
Rauch closes his article with these thoughts:
“I am not saying that today’s Republicans are a bunch of Wallace clones. Or that everything Wallace did or said was wrong, or that Republicans should shun all of his themes just because he used them. I am saying three things.
First, with the important exception of race, not one of Wallace’s central themes, from his bristling nationalism and his court-bashing to his anti-intellectualism and his aggressive provincialism, would seem out of place at any major Republican gathering today.
Second, and again leaving race aside, any Republican politician who publicly renounced the Wallace playbook would be finished as a national leader.
Third, by becoming George Wallace’s party, the GOP is abandoning rather than embracing conservatism, and it is thereby mortgaging both its integrity and its political future. Wallaceism was not sufficiently mainstream or coherent to sustain a national party in 1968, and the same is true today.
Conservatism is wary of extremism and rage and anti-intellectualism, of demagoguery and incoherent revolutionary rhetoric. Wallace was a right-wing populist, not a conservative. The rise of his brand of pseudo-conservatism in Republican circles should alarm anyone who cares about the genuine article.”
Good points. Where I disagree, though, is his statement that conservatism is wary of extremism, rage, anti-intellectualism, demagoguery, and incoherent revolutionary rhetoric. Conservatism these days is all about rage and extremism, just read or listen to any right wing blog, radio station, TV station, or website and you will see the revolutionary and racist rhetoric is downright chilling and the call to arms blatant.
As to the anti-intellectualism, any wariness of that attribute dissipated the second Palin took the national stage with her insidious Machiavellian brand of incendiary idioms.
Further, conservatives seem to equate ‘elitist’ with ‘educated’ and in an attempt to distance themselves from that label make all manner of anti-intellectual statements like our President is not a citizen, is a socialist and is a Muslim. All statements that make about as much sense as a screen door on the bottom of a boat. Republicans do not seem to be distancing themselves from the Wallace/Palin brand of conservatism but are embracing only it’s toxicity. It is this, not conservatism itself, that is the most alarming.
