What's Going On? We need a Liberal Manifesto

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Well, it's been a long time since I posted!  What is happening in the political microcosm of the US?

First of all, the Tea Party has won many of the Republican Primaries.  In other words, the candidates who have identified with the Tea Party sub-brand within the Republican Party (aka GOP) have won most of the elections that they have contested.

Mano Singham explains the position of the Tea Party within the Republican Party well.  Here's a reduction of his post.
The Republican Party, consists of several groups broadly described as follows:
(1) "old-style conservatives": Smaller government (self-explanatory), less government spending, law and order, and a sane 'stay-at-home' foreign policy
(2) "rank-and-file [conservative] social values base": Guns, gays, abortion, stem-cell research, flag, the Bible, and immigration
(3) "The Christianist leadership": people ... who claim to speak for the social values base but [who are more interested in lower taxes, and fewer social programs for the poor]
(4) "The neoconservatives": Their interests lie less in domestic policies and more in creating a muscular foreign policy. They dream of America exercising hegemony over the world, using its might to destroy its enemies. They are firmly convinced that America is a force for good in the world and should not be shy about using its military, political, and economic muscle to dominate it.

The Tea Party, he argues, is a loose coalition of people in groups (2) and (3) in "an uneasy alliance", who are often quite critical of the mainstream Republican agenda --and who wouldn't be?  As is clear now, the invention of the Tea Party allows the rank-and-file of the GOP to distance itself from its discredited leadership, and stand behind the portions of the Republican platform toolkit, if you like, that most lazy-thinking Republican masses can understand and support: The Bible, Patriotism, Guns, Motherhood and Applie Pie, but no foreigners, no gays and lesbians, and no abortion.

So that part is clear; we know where the Tea Party comes from --it comes out of the Bush era political disappointments and lost credibility.  And it brings to power the stupid end of the GOP glamour leadership, to battle the more intellectual end of the Democrat leadership as personified by Barack Obama.

It is becoming clear that a combination of factors have conspired to make the country as a whole, or at least the unthinking masses, suspicious of the intellectual elite in both parties.  This isn't surprising: First of all, the intellectuals in the GOP managed to throw mud in Bill Clinton's eye, and most of the country felt, simultaneously, that the Smartypants Bill Clinton was a suspicious character, and that the Smartypants Kenneth Starr and Newt Gingrich and all that ilk were deceiving the people.  The fact was that Smartypants Clinton was on the side of the people, while Smartypants Gingrich was on his own side.  The outcome was that now various hidden Smartypants could make it look as though anyone with the intelligence to actually solve the problems of the country was likely to have a hidden Smartypants agenda.  It seemed that only idiots were to be trusted.  So now the GOP has some actual idiots, e.g. Sarah Palin, and some pretended idiots, e.g. Rush Limbaugh (or maybe he really is an idiot), all working together to keep as many citizens as possible from voting in their true interests [I mean, the true interests of the citizens].

The thinking of the Barack Obama administration is opaque to everyone.  The partial failure of the Health Care Reform initiative, and the efforts of the health care industry to defeat the benefits of the new law, and the efforts of the GOP to point out new ways in which the new law could be problematic, all seem to result in making the Democrat Congress everyone's pet hate du jour.  All we know is that the President has come out calling for improved morale.

Unfortunately, a significant proportion of the Democrats in Congress are very nervous ninnys, who look as if they might want to turn coats at the drop of a hat.  These new Democrats, many of them pro gun and anti-abortion, pro military intervention, anti-gay and lesbian, anti-tax, anti-health-care-reform, are really conservatives in disguise.  They constitute a sort of Trojan Horse, and the only way to strengthen the position of the Democrats is to field a slate of true liberals.

The huge conservative presence in the media is constantly working to make "Liberal" a bad word.  It is imperative that those of us who are liberal should define that quality in positive terms; at the moment, it simply means not conservative.  What is the meaning of the word "Liberal" that describes what we stand for in this context?  What is it about the particular mix of values to which we subscribe that makes them integral, something more than a random mix of attitudes?  I think a Liberal Manifesto is long overdue.

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