Following developments in the Republican presidential nominating contest the instability of the race is stark. Every political contest involves flawed candidates: how could it be otherwise? But often the public develops a firm sense of the perspective of the candidates and chooses to join a team. As primary campaigns are waged on a state-by-state basis, it is expected that in some realms one candidate will do better than another, but psychiatric mood swings are something else. We saw the politics of allegiance in the competition between Barack and Hillary (and the wormy love apple: imagine our blue dress politics in an Edwards presidency!). In the states of the industrial Midwest, home to Reagan Democrats, Hillary posted strong numbers; Obama was more successful in states not so hard hit by industrial decline, states with a rainbow electorate, and those open to a new type of politics. Soon one knew the metrics of the race, even if the outcome was uncertain. But the Republican campaign upends these rules as voter preferences lurch wildly. This is a campaign year that reminds us of voters’ cultural fickleness – their political ADD. They are watching a reality television show and so are we (Jeff Goldfarb describes his pained reaction in “The Republican Reality Show”). If one is not newly tickled, one turns away. Media narratives set our politics.

We have gazed at candidates, quasi-candidates, and proto-candidates – Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, and The Donald – dance with the stars. Can parties fire their voters? Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty could have had his turn had he the internal fortitude or cockeyed optimism to recognize that to be dismissed in August might lead to be crowned a year later. If politics were based on a comparison and conflict of ideas, this would be inconceivable.

But American politics has become, as Jeffrey Goldfarb emphasizes, a reality show – adore it, dismiss it, or despise it, but depend on it. Voters demand diversion; they want bread and circuses, at least circuses. Around the scrum are kibitzers, now Sarah Palin and Donald Trump, who, after deciding to disengage, demand that attention be paid. Palin seems committed to pursuing Rush Limbaugh’s 2008 “Operation Chaos,” designed to prolong the Democrats’ primary contest and undercut the eventual nominee. In her case, the fleeting Governor undercuts what is ostensibly her own party as she tells her admirers to vote for Newt to continue debate, and, presumably, her role in it. Our rogue muffin, a mildly progressive governor of a mildly libertarian state, has assumed her role as a mistress of ceremonies of the grand guignol of tabloid politics.

At this moment, after the Florida presidential primary, Mitt Romney seems to have surmounted Newt’s second surge, despite Sarah Palin’s counter-cultural rap to “rage against the machine” by voting for the former speaker. Images, even those of the heavy metal left, are to be plucked by anyone plucky enough to do so. No doubt twists and turns will continue in this drama on the road to Tampa, as voters get bored with the pragmatic lassitude of Mitt, a man who would be Ike or at least Bush 41. Perhaps Ron and Rand Paul will galvanize voters to throw the TSA off the island, raging against those airport scanners and the bureaucratic touch that follows. More plausibly, we might discover that the sad illness of Rick Santorum’s special needs young daughter Bella, now hospitalized in Philadelphia (from the effects of the genetic disorder Trisomy 18), will provide sufficient weepy pathos to propel his candidacy among an electorate weaned on Love Story.

But what if Mitt triumphs? Mitt as nominee poses challenges for an ADD electorate that demands the frisson of thrills and the flutter of delight. Elections in which a President is on the ballot can be referendums or choices. The incumbent hopes that the voters will see the contest as a choice. The challenger, particularly in parlous economic times, hopes for a judgment of the sitting leader. Despite his deep pockets, if Romney is the Republican nominee, Obama will provide the only electricity in the room. He will be the Ozzy Osborne, Paris Hilton, and Kim Kardashian of October. Perhaps Mitt Romney will find it difficult to energize his base, but Barack Obama will achieve that for him. With Newt on the ballot, the choice will be stark, but with tame, vague Mitt, the election might be a referendum. Our ADD electorate will have to determine the narrative of the moment on that first Tuesday in November. On that day will the president be imagined a Greek naïf, an acolyte of Fidel, or the Great Leader of the resurgent East? Or is being an American Idol enough?

I have a longstanding weakness as a sociologist of media. There are often developments in media popular culture that I know are important, and to which I know I should pay close attention, but I just can’t stomach to read, listen or watch, leading me to be out of the loop. It started with the celebrity gossip in the supermarket scandal sheets. I could skim People magazine only with great difficulty. I remember my dismay when I did review (there were not enough words to say read) the celebrity treatment of Lech Walesa in which it was hard to discern why he was the subject of such close attention. I hit a severe watchers block when it came to the TV program Dallas. Then there were the worlds of Talk Radio and Reality TV. One of the biggest errors of my scholarly life was not paying close attention to the news craze about the OJ Simpson trial, when lack of patience with the silliness of “all OJ all the time” led me to overlook the importance of the racial politics of that media circus. I compensate for my low tolerance for junk by reading up, learning from scholars who reported on and analyzed what I had avoided. From the classic by Ien Ang, Watching Dallas, to Josh Gamson’s telling Freaks Talk Back.

But I am now proud of myself. I have finally followed a TV Reality Show from beginning to end, watching the Republican primary debates. All the elements are there, most apparent in the rise and fall of Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain and New Gingrich, each a worthy contestant, while an extremely unlikely President.

Bachmann gained limited attention playing in Iowa state fair, a local girl with a solid record of absurd assertions in and outside of the Halls of Congress, running for re-election and to be President of the United States.

Rick Perry seemed to be the charmed candidate until he opened his mouth and little or nothing came out during the debates, a promising star chosen from central casting, but just couldn’t act.

Acting was the strong forte of Cain and Gingrich. Cain knew little about his main issue, the economy other than a simple and appealing slogan. 999 the answer to any and all problems. Once he became the leading not Romney his ignorance became too much even for Republican primary voters, who have been trained by Fox to not pay much attention to inconvenient facts.

Gingrich, on the other hand, played the role of the man who knew too much. He was the master of dogmatic assertion, had a multitude of formed opinions, often in contradiction with each other, could think on his feet with dazzling speed and was a master of appealing to the prejudices of his audience. He started by limiting his demagoguery to the media and Obama, “the greatest food stamp President,” using racism, Islamophobia and parochialism in a way that the primary voters broadly approved. But then in the tradition of McCarthy, he turned on his Republican competition with fatal results.

Romney successfully fought back last night. But please note, the debate was not about substance but form, and the studio audience which bolstered Gingrich in South Carolina, turned against him last night when Romney put in a credible performance. He had a new debating coach in preparation for the season’s finale and he showed himself to be an able student.

The show is over. Newt Gingrich, the last not-Romney standing, was defeated. Mitt won. He won the Reality Show, that is. The race for the nomination is not yet decided. It is pretty clear that Romney will collect the plurality of delegates to the convention, but a combination of Paul, Santorum and Gingrich, still, may block him from a clean victory. There may be real politics at the nominating convention for the first time in decades.

And while the show is over, what it has concealed is not, the real debate in the Republican Party: the tension between fundamental commitments to the free market and to conservative values. Paul and Santorum work out the tension in opposing ways, with Paul emphasizing the market, Santorum, values. Romney tries to fudge the difference without the personal charm of a Reagan or the demagogic force of a Gingrich. Romney showed some previously unseen talents last night, but I wonder how he will play with a real political opponent, with a competing political vision. Such a debate will be more interesting than Reality TV, which still turns me off.

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 of Reagan’s vice president, George H. W. Bush and his son’s Presidency, George W., who also used a down home personality to win a contested election and then fear as the basis of his re-election. But now the grand Reagan coalition of the Grand Old Party is falling apart. The Tea Party has radicalized Republican rhetoric, and atomized its political positions, making the coalition impossible.

The tepid front-runner status of Romney, combined with the persistent strength of “not Romney,” is a clear indication of the present state of affairs. Yesterday, Romney couldn’t break through his glass ceiling, only 25% of the vote. The religious right coalesced around Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul revealed his libertarian power. Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry lost because of their substantial political weaknesses, while Newt Gingrich, the object of relentless attacks, promised to attack in turn in New Hampshire. There is serious contestation, with foundational disagreements. The thing that holds these disparate politicians together is a common rejection of Barack Obama, which has dark undertones, strikingly different from the lightness of Reagan’s personality.

The talking heads have noted the likely practical result: there will be a longer primary season that might have been. It may take some time for Romney to seal the deal, though he still will seal it. The election will be between Romney and Obama, with the vaunted enthusiasm for the right greatly diminished. Romney lacks both the clear convictions and the personality that Reagan had to keep the coalition together. Paul may run as a third party candidate. True believers, Christian conservatives along with libertarians, will probably continue to doubt Romney’s conservative bona fides. And there are just not that many neo-conservatives and corporate conservatives. The Republicans are falling apart.

Barbara Ehrenreich posted a witty note on her Facebook page yesterday that went viral:

“In a race between a white supremacist, an advocate of child labor, a couple of raving homophobes and an empty suit, there can be no “winner,” so please don’t bother trying to wake me with the news.”

I think Ehrenreich needs to wake up. The Republican Party is one of the two parties in this institutionalized system, with a distinguished past. Its twists and turns, its rise and fall, will determine what is possible in the United States, as well as what is impossible. This has been quite clear since the election of President Obama. Imagine where we would be if he had a loyal opposition. And it will continue to be true if Obama wins yet again, which I think is likely.

My conclusion: the Republicans are at the brink of disarray. They could conceivably prevail in the November elections, but if they do, there would be a contradictory mandate, Reaganism beyond Reagan, with fear and hatred holding it together. More likely, after the Iowa caucuses, will be the re-election of President Obama, with a disorganized opposition permitting him to operate more freely. That, along with a social movement pushing him forward, making “change we can believe in” likely. But then again,  maybe I am being a bit too optimistic.

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, this was the reason for the socialist radicals to support Hitler in the thirties.

Bachmann, Perry, Cain and now Newt Gingrich have successively led the national polls over Romney. They are increasingly outrageous as the true-believing candidate. Bachmann seemed to be so uninfluenced by the facts that she burnt out. Perry seemed to forget who he is, or at least who he claims to be, one too many times. Cain not only conveniently forgot about his history of serial sexual harassment. He appeared to not have ever known much about the world beyond his motivational riffs and his slogan for his 999 program. And now the American blowhard-in-chief, Newt Gingrich, is back, appearing as the last man standing. Said to be the intelligent conservative, filled with innovative ideas, thinking that he is always the smartest guy in the room, his willful ignorance is stunning.

About the Arab Spring:  “People say, ‘Oh isn’t this great, we’re having an Arab Spring,’” he said. “I think we may in fact be having an anti-Christian spring. I think people should take this [assertion] pretty soberly.”

About the most significant danger facing America:

“I have two grandchildren — Maggie is 11, Robert is 9,”  Gingrich said. “I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they’re my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.”

And in a report today, on the grey non-partisan Congressional Budget Office: “a reactionary socialist institution which does not believe in economic growth, does not believe in innovation and does not believe in data that it has not internally generated.”

These are but a quick sampling, brought to you thanks to the remarkable power of Google. “A Little Red Book of Gingrich” would be pretty funny if he remains an outsider, but that such a pillar of wisdom could become the candidate of a major political party, not to imagine President Gingrich, is truly horrifying.

The poor quality of the Republican field is, I think, not just a consequence of a chance collection of unqualified and undistinguished individuals. It is, rather, a manifestation of a deep crisis in American political culture. The Republican Party has become a bastion of know-nothing ideological true-believers. The Reagan revolution has become radicalized. Christian conservatives, market fundamentalists and nativists (ascendant in response of the election of Barack Hussein Obama) each demand ideological purity. The contradictions among these fundamentalist positions, and the tension between them and factual reality, guarantee that the serious and the responsible need not apply. The only way they can is by hiding their more sober qualities. This is Brooks’s hope for Romney.

Obama and the Democrats are not so constricted, but they have been profoundly and negatively affected by the ideological madness of the right. Given a polarized public, Obama has tried to work with Republicans and the results have been mixed at best, outraging his supporters and critics on the left, perplexing his previous supporters in the center and even on the right (e.g. Brooks and Company). The Democrats have not distinguished themselves in addressing some enduring and profound problems the American public faces. This is where I think the significance of Occupy Wall Street comes in. It helped to put forward some stark facts about the American social condition, concerning the issues of inequality, the structural restrictions on social mobility. It opened public discussion about these and other outstanding issues concerning social justice, providing the opportunity for debate and action. Thus far, it has been very successful.

But I am worried as I look around the blogosphere and as I look at some demonstrations close to home. Some attached to the OWS movement want to push it in a direction that will assure its insignificance and destruction. They would rather play at revolution than work for significant social change. While they dream of and chant slogans about “smashing capitalism,” something that makes no sense to the American public at large, and among serious economists and to most serious social and political scientists as well, they may fail to seize the day.

In the absence of Occupy Wall Street, such sloganeering is quaint and comic, a tragedy of the twentieth century repeating itself as farce in the twenty first. But because there is a real opening right now for significant change, there is the danger that we may face tragedy yet again in the form of a lost opportunity.

Now is the time when control over corporate excesses may be a real possibility. Now is the time when links among significant social forces, including labor unions, feminist movements, civil rights movements, gay and lesbian rights movements, environmental movements and the like, and indeed, the Democratic Party, could move a broad public. The unions, especially, are social organizations that have the institutionalized power to address the concerns raised by OWS. The unions need the energy and imagination of OWS, as OWS needs the power of the unions. Now is the time that Barack Obama can be pushed to be the president he promised to be. The Democratic Party is the political force that can put an end to the party of the American Tragedy, the GOP in its present configuration, so strikingly revealed by their leaders who would be President of the United States of America.

Or we could denounce liberals, Democrats and play revolution. That would be pretty funny if it weren’t so serious.

On Friday, I intended to use some posts from the past to illuminate the political events of the week, but found myself writing about more private problems, about the human condition and my own incapacity in understanding it. Today, I return to more familiar terrain, thinking about the changing American political landscape.

Viewing the Republican presidential debate in Iowa on Thursday, I was reminded why the 2012 election is so important. What the Republicans propose on the economy, on American identity and principles is strikingly different from President Obama’s promise and performance. Day to day, it has seemed that Obama is losing his focus. But I am convinced that he is accomplishing a lot and that the alternative is stark. In April, I presented my guide for judging his Presidency. I think it still applies.

Trying to figure out the stakes in an election requires understanding the issues, and judgment of Obama’s leadership and the Republican alternatives, but also, and perhaps more importantly, it requires an understanding of imagination. Governor Paul LePage of Maine gave clear expression of the right-wing imagination when he ordered the removal of murals celebrating labor at the Maine department of labor – not fair and balanced. These murals are not even particularly provocative. Images of the banned murals were presented in a post by Vince Carducci.

Cultural works that don’t depict a specific worldview offend the Tea Party imagination. And work that can’t be supported through the market, following Tea Party wisdom, is without real value. The cultural and market fundamentalism present a major civilizational challenge.

While this challenge must be met rationally, politics isn’t and shouldn’t be only about reason. Feelings, along with imagination, also are of telling import, as James Jasper explored in a post last Spring.

I feel strongly about the Tea Party, as the Tea Partiers feel strongly about their commitments. I know this is important. How the emotions will affect political choice will play a big role in the coming elections. How is it that public personalities that I find so repulsive are actually attractive to my fellow citizens? I can more easily accept my policy differences with Tim Pawlenty than I can listen to Michele Bachmann or Rick Perry. I hope the majority of my compatriots feel the same way, but I worry about this arena of feelings. It is one thing to recognize that feelings matter. Its quite another for them to run wild, as in the xenophobic birther movement.

Mine is not always a reasonable response, I admit, and I try to fight against this. I have been looking for conservative thinkers and public figures to respect, without much success. I have sought out conservative contributors to our discussions and hope for more success in this regard. I think that there is an underlying serious debate about the public good occurring in American politics, but I am perplexed how ideological certainty and willful ignorance of facts seems to be the price of admission into Republican presidential politics. Not one of the Republican presidential hopefuls would agree to reduce the deficit if it included minimal tax cuts. This indicates that they are either ignoring hard budgetary realities or that their ideological project is to radically reduce the role of the state, far beyond the expectations of the general public.

The Republicans have included the extreme right into their mainstream ranks. As a committed partisan, I believe that this will lead to Obama’s reelection and a more Democratic Congress. I also hope that as a result a more reasonable opposition emerges. As an analyst of politics and the human comedy, I fear that my partisan self may be mistaken. Fictoids have power. True belief can be convincing. Calm deliberate leadership can look weak, and the economy is stagnating, thanks to global forces, but also to American politics gone wild. Reason, imagination and feelings may be destructively interacting.