By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 23rd, 2012 
Republican ideological excess and disintegration were in clear view in Iowa. New Hampshire suggested that this would likely lead to a weakened Romney candidacy. Now, the South Carolina results raise doubts about Romney’s inevitability. This was widely discussed yesterday among media pundits of various political stripes. But I think that more importantly the results highlight the sad state of the political culture of the right. They also enrich my judgment of how the general election will look.
The competing candidates represented disintegrating components of the right. Santorum is the value conservative, appealing to the working class, what remains of the Reagan Democrats. Ron Paul is the libertarian anti-statist, as the purist appealing especially to the young. Romney is the capitalist, the Republican of big business, once identified as moderate or even liberal (Romney’s father), now identified unsteadily as conservative. And Newt Gingrich is the Republican of resentment, more expressive of anger than of a clear reasoned position.
Gingrich, the demagogue, prevailed. He not so obliquely is the candidate of racist attack, as he rails against Obama as “the food stamp president.” He is the anti-elitist, denouncing the liberal media, and the Washington and New York establishments, proclaiming himself to be “the Reagan populist conservative.” Yet, Reagan created his coalition through the force of his positive personality, while Gingrich, in South Carolina, put together his primary victory with his personal negativity.
In response to my last post on the Republican primary season, Michael Corey challenged me, and Deliberately Considered readers, to take seriously Romney’s speech after he won the New Hampshire primary, to understand what Romney was presenting as the alternative to Obama’s policies. I think he misunderstood me. I recognize that Romney is presenting alternatives, as are Paul and Santorum. I welcome posts and responses explaining and supporting these positions. Wall Street, libertarian and value conservatives do have positive, but largely incompatible views. I judged, though, that the only thing that holds the Republicans together now is the emotional rejection of Obama. This was confirmed in South Carolina in the Gingrich victory.
I doubt Gingrich . . .
Read more: All You Need to Know about the Republican Primary in South Carolina
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 20th, 2012 
 This is the third in a series of reflections on the Obama Presidency. The first two were on governing with Democrats and governing with Republicans.
Barack Obama has been doing well recently. The public is beginning to experience the economic recovery. Job growth and consumer spending are up, a bit. Obama is shaping the political agenda on his own terms, with the full support of his party. At year’s end, he negotiated more resolutely with the Republican Congress, extending the payroll tax cut thus far for a couple of months, with every indication that it will be extended for a year. He has the political advantage on this, along with other legislative issues, as reported in The New York Times. He refused to be forced into making an abrupt decision in the Keystone XL oil pipeline. His Attorney General, Eric Holder, is challenging the legality of voter ID laws in the old confederacy. His job approval rating is up, as the Republican’s in Congress approval is down.
I think that the improvement in Obama’s standing is related to the change in the public debate, away from the obsession with deficits and cutting, toward jobs, inequality and social justice. This is not only a matter of changed tactics, but of a transformed political environment. Obama can thank Occupy Wall Street for making this possible. It’s an OWS not a Tea Party environment now. But it’s not just a matter of the environment. Obama also has contributed in a significant way. He made these issues his own in his Osawatomie, Kansas speech. I agree with David Howell, it was one of his best. He again revealed his capacity as story-teller-in-chief.
Howell liked the speech because it spoke to a pressing problem and its sociological consequence and political cause: “the massive and continued growth in inequality, linking this to the collapse of the middle class and to the obstructionism of . . .
Read more: President Obama vs. the Republican Congress
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 16th, 2012 
It’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day and I am thinking about the Obama Presidency. I reject the simpleminded criticisms of Obama in the name of King, such as those presented by Cornell West. I think we have to look closely at the political challenges the President has faced. In an earlier post, I assessed Obama’s political performance on the political economy working with a Democratic Congress. Today I consider his work with Republicans. I think it is noteworthy that he kept focus on long-term goals, even as he experienced ups and downs in the day-to-day partisan struggles. I believe he kept his “eyes on the prize.” Although King’s project is incomplete, Obama is, albeit imperfectly, working to keep hope alive. This is more apparent as Obama is now working against the Republicans, pushed by the winds of Occupy Wall Street, the topic for another day. It is noteworthy, though, that it was even the case during the less than inspiring events of the past year.
Responding to the Republican victories in the 2010 elections, the President had to face a fundamental fact: elections do indeed have consequences. While his election provided the necessary mandate for his economic policies and for healthcare reform, the Republican subsequent gains in the House and Senate, leading to a smaller majority for the Democrats in the Senate and the loss of the House, empowered the Republican calls for change in policies. And, even though divided government became a reality and gridlock was the basic condition, action was imperative. The sluggish economy, long-term budget deficits and the debt ceiling defined the agenda after the bi-election. The approaches of the Republicans and the Democrats could not have been more different.
Obama had a choice, to fight the Republicans head on, or to try to accommodate the new political situation and seek compromise. He chose compromise. It wasn’t pretty, nor was it particularly successful as a political tactic.
The Republicans made clear that their first priority was to turn Obama into a one-term president, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell infamously put . . .
Read more: Thinking about Obama on MLK Day: Governing with Republicans?
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 12th, 2012 
The primary results in New Hampshire Tuesday night point toward the general election campaign. Romney will be the (uninspiring) Republican candidate. As he runs against “Obama’s failed presidency,” many conservatives will wonder whether there really is a choice. Ron Paul will probably not run as an independent libertarian, but his supporters will have to judge, in their terms, whether a big government Republican is really preferable to a big government Democrat. Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum will dutifully follow the leader, but working class Republicans, or as they used to be called Reagan Democrats, will harbor their doubts concerning the representation of their economic or moral interests. Republican unity, if not enthusiasm, will focus on the negative, the rejection of Barack Obama, but the 2010 Republican emotional advantage, which is very important in politics, as Jim Jasper has explored here, is finished.
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By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 4th, 2012 
It’s déjà vu all over again, a nursery rhyme with a political twist.
“The Republican Party sat on the wall. The Republican Party had a great fall. All the Party horses and all the Party men couldn’t put the Party back together again.”
Last night in the Iowa caucuses, the Reagan revolution died before our eyes, and no one seems to be noticing. The fundamental components of the Republican Party, forged together by Ronald Reagan in1980, are no longer part of a whole, ripped apart by the Tea Party and its unintended consequences. The only thing that may keep the party going is hatred of Barack Obama.
“Reaganism” was never a coherent position. It involved tensions that were unified by the power of Reagan’s sunny televisual personality.
In 1991, in The Cynical Society, I observed:
“The ‘conservative mood’ was not a … natural creation. It was constructed … by Reagan himself…his package brought together a new combination of symbols and policies…Fetal rights, a balanced-budget amendment, advanced nuclear armaments, tax and social-welfare cuts, and anti-communism do not necessarily combine. Reagan combined them.
As the satirical columnist, Russell Baker glibly put it, some supported Reagan so that he could be Reagan (the ideologues – this was the well-known refrain of the New Right), others supported him so that he could be the Gipper (the nice guy) he portrayed in an old Hollywood football film. But both sorts of supporters, who were fundamentally in conflict, created the new conservative mood. They constituted the Reagan mandate. Reagan did not represent a diverse constituency. He created it as the political majority.”
Neo-conservatives concerned then about the Communist threat, now are concerned with Islamofascism. Christian moralists, libertarians and corporate conservatives conflict on many issues. Reagan minimized this through his media presentation of self in political life.
The coalition persisted through the one term presidency . . .
Read more: Iowa: The Republicans Fall Apart
By Gary Alan Fine, December 8th, 2011 
I am reliably informed that Deliberately Considered is not the first website that Republican operatives turn to, and I have little interest in stalking these worthies, at least without a Newt Gingrich-level consulting contract. However, I do follow the Republican nomination demolition derby with skeptical amusement, awaiting the Santorum boomlet and wondering if, by some Mormon miracle, Jon Huntsman might be the last man standing. More likely is that Republicans will find themselves with a set of fatally-damaged goods.
What has been most notable about the current Republican contenders is who has chosen not to run. These are politicians who have avoided the injurious process that constitutes what we term the American democratic process. Significant figures such as Mike Huckabee, Haley Barbour, Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, John Thune, Bobby Jindal, Chris Christie, Jim DeMint, Marco Rubio, and Jeb Bush (!) – and, for comic relief, Sarah and The Donald – have all determined that they should watch this unreality show from afar. While one – even a Republican one – might not embrace all of these possibilities, several compare favorably to the current field.
Some commentators, such as Howard Megdal of Salon.com, speculate that Republicans can save themselves from themselves if none of the announced candidate were to win, and for Republicans to retreat to the once common outcome of a brokered convention in which through negotiation wise men anointed a candidate. Will we see a convention of the sort that through a night of cigar smoke gave birth to Warren Gamaliel Harding on the tenth ballot? Or the one that selected Woodrow Wilson on the 46th ballot? With the Republican commitment to proportional awarding of delegates, if the current candidates remain in the race, it is likely that no candidate will gain a majority of delegates, and the decision will be made at their late August convention in Tampa, Florida with delegates eventually released from their commitments. The gift that Republicans can hope for late summer is a collection of losers.
The question is not who would have the . . .
Read more: Brokered Democracy
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, November 22nd, 2011 
In my last post, I argued that Occupy Wall Street had clear, present and positive goals. I made my argument by focusing on one part of the New York occupation, the Think Tank group. I highlighted its principled commitment to open discussion of the problems of the day, based on a radical commitment to democracy: social, cultural and economic, as well as political. This is serious business. It can be consequential as OWS figures out ways to not only speak in the name of the 99%, but also in a language that the 99% can understand, so that it can respond and act. I promise to analyze directly the challenges involved in a future post. But I’ve been working hard these past weeks, and don’t have the energy to do the hard work required. Today, I feel like something a bit lighter, and will be suggestive and less direct about the big challenges, reviewing the Republican Presidential field, and some other more comic elements of the present political landscape in the United States in the context of the opening that OWS has provided.
Commentators broadly agree: the Republican field for President is weak. The likely nominee, Mitt Romney, appears to be cynical to the core. Making his name as a reasonable moderate Republican Governor of Massachusetts, he is now running as a right-wing ideologue. Once pro-choice, he is now pro-life. Once for government supported universal health insurance, now he is violently opposed to Obamacare. Once in favor of reasonable immigration reform, now he is an anti-amnesty radical. David Brooks, the conservative columnist we of the left like to quote most, supports Romney with the conviction that he doesn’t say what he means.
After Romney, things get even stranger. If these people mean what they say (and I think they do), we are in real trouble, because one of them could be the next President of the United States, insuring its decay as the global power. Perhaps this is a reason for radicals to support Republicans? But then again, . . .
Read more: Republicans, Revolutionaries and the Human Comedy
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 20th, 2011 
We live in difficult times, but the political capacity to address the difficulties may be emerging in America, none too soon and in the right place.
The Republican presidential nomination debates reveal how far the GOP is from addressing the concerns of the American public. It seems, as a consequence, that President Obama’s re-election is likely, even with the persistent tough economic situation. He makes sense. The Republicans don’t. They offer the 999 plan and other fantasies as economic policy. Obama proposes sensible realistic programs, the jobs bill and the like. The re-election, further, may very well have very significant consequences. The Obama transformation, which I have reflected upon in an earlier post, may proceed and deepen. I have this hope because of Occupy Wall Street.
OWS is already a resounding success, and it has the potential to extend the success for months, indeed, probably for years ahead. We at Deliberately Considered have been discussing the occupation. Scott and Michael Corey, like observers elsewhere, are concerned that the occupiers don’t have a clear program. They seem to be a hodgepodge of disparate misfits, anarchists, druggies, vegans, feminists, trade unionists, environmentalists and veterans of left-wing battles past, with no clear unified goals. The political causes they espouse seem to be as varied as they are as a group. They express a sentiment and sensibility, but they do not propose any policy. Yet, I think it is crucial to note that there is a simple and telling coherence in the protest and that there is a discernable achievement already that is being deepened as the occupation persists.
The occupiers are telling a simple truth. America is becoming an increasingly unequal society. The rich are getting rich and the poor (and working people) are getting poorer, especially the young and people of color. The occupiers call upon the media, the political class and the population at large to take notice, and notice is being taken as the occupations spread around the country and the world.
. . .
Read more: The Republicans, Obama, and Occupy Wall Street
By Nahed Habiballah, October 17th, 2011 
The recent parliamentary elections in Poland allowed many to heave a sigh of relief. Once again Law and Justice, the party known best for propagating religious conservatism, war language and conspiracy theory has been pushed back to the opposition. It is also the first time in Poland’s history of a democratic state that the ruling party, Civic Platform, has managed to stay in power longer than one term. So should democrats be cheering?
A popular feeling among the voters was that there was no one to choose from. Once more people left their homes to choose a lesser evil, that is Civic Platform, whose leader, Donald Tusk, promised the politics of love, but said nothing about the much needed changes. Indeed, Poland has been lucky in the crisis managing to keep her economy growing, but after the Civic Platform’s first full term, the country’s internal issues, including employment and retirement reforms, are still waiting to be approached. Will the ruling party be more courageous this time?
Yet significant change has occurred. While the center and right look pretty much as they did before, a notable shift can be seen on the left side of the political stage. The post-communist leftist party with a bureaucratic leader lacking any noticeable ideology lost a significant number of votes to a new movement centered around Janusz Palikot, a charismatic businessman turned politician. Palikot gained attention as a member of the Civic Platform, but was thrown out of the party for his foul tongue and press conferences in which he used plastic guns and dildos as his unconventional props. Yet, beyond the show, Palikot’s efforts to improve regulations for small business and his open aversion to the Catholic Church’s omnipresence in political life, resonated with the public. Still, the high number of votes his movement received came as a surprise both to the voters and Palikot himself.
Now, after more than two decades of democratic rule, Poland shares similar ills with its neighbors: . . .
Read more: Elections in Poland: More than the Lesser of Two Evils?
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 10th, 2011 
I am on the road from Gdansk. It’s been an intense few days. Last Tuesday, I joined the Occupy Wall Street demonstration for a bit. By Wednesday, I was in the Gdansk shipyards, where Solidarity confronted the Party State in 1980, ultimately leading to the collapse of the Soviet Empire. I was interviewed for the Solidarity Video Archive, giving my account of the work I did with Solidarity and my understanding of the great labor movement. Immediately after which, I was taken to Gdansk University, where I gave my talk, this year’s Solidarity Lecture, “Reinventing Democratic Culture.” It opened the All About Freedom Festival. Over the weekend, I visited my family in Paris, and now I am flying over the Atlantic on my delayed flight to Newark, hoping I will get back to New York in time to teach my 4:00 class, The Politics of Everyday Life. It has been a packed week.
Unpacking my thoughts is a challenge. A new social movement is developing in the U.S., with potentially great impact. In Poland, a new generation is confronting the Solidarity legacy, trying to appreciate the accomplishments, while also needing to address new problems. Yesterday’s elections in France and especially in Poland were important. Yet, just as important for what was not on the ballot as for what was. Everywhere, there seems to be a political – society agitation and disconnect, with the politics of small things potentially contributing to a necessary reinvention of democratic culture.
I have many thoughts and will need more time to put them into a clear perspective. Here, just a start. I have a sense that things are connected: not falling apart, rather, coming together.
In the U.S., the central ideal of equality has been compromised in the last thirty years. From being a country with more equal distribution . . .
Read more: Things Come Together: Occupy Wall Street, Solidarity, Elections and Khodorkovsky
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