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shakran echoes what i have been seeing from the right's talking and writing machines---conservatism is ok, the bush administration lost.
tactically, this is the move one had to expect from there.
the logic itself is not yet a positioning, it is a separation that will enable positioning.
so it is not yet clear which way conservativeland will move in response to these elections, the position from which the process of differentiation is going to restart.
it seems logical, based on this move, that you would see the conservative apparatus position itself rightward.
i have seen polls (in this mornings nytimes for example) indicate that the republicans got about 70% of the white evangelical vote, and lost about 30% so shoring up the far right base would make some sense.
but the problem for the conservative apparatus is the center, not the right.
if the machine shifts right, then the assumption would have to be that moderates are like a lumpen-factor that shifts whichever way the political winds blow.
so the interpretation of the elections would be: tend to the extreme right base, and hope that the way in which iraq continues to devolve (for example) can be pinned on the democrats in such a way as to reverse the winds that blow the moderates around.
insofar as iraq is concerned, this tactic would presuppose that the far right base is wholly deluded about what is happening in iraq such that problems can emerge now and be pinned on attempts to adjust the american position there. which is kinda crazy, but who knows.
thing is that nobody has much room to manoever within this new set-up. the bush administration is still there. power is split in the senate. the house looks like a weak counter to the administration, its inverse, but weaker.
the iraq disaster is still there as well, to be worked out in a context that provides a very narrow margin for manoever.
so i am not optimistic.
but it is the tightness of the political game that makes me think that the conservative apparatus will shift rightward, simply because by doing that the ideology could till foreground differences in political position as differences of identity ans differences in informational context as different camps in the war against Evil etc.
while i hope that the conservative machine fucks up and finds itself sliding into a richly deserved oblivion, it makes little sense to expect it. these are not stupid people. never underestimate the adversary. never overestimate the adversary. wait and see what the move is.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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