this is a report done for al-jazeera about a palin rally in ohio---the location is noted at the beginning and at the end of the clip.
just watch:
i am not entirely sure what to make of this, once past the initial "what the fuck?"
i don't think any of these folk are evil or even particularly stupid--i think they live inside of particular information streams and assemble images of the world and explanations for those images entirely from within those streams. if your information is fucked up and you operate inside that space without relativizing it, you can't help but draw fucked up conclusions. it would happen to most anyone---assuming that you operated in the world in such a way as to either not know about or exclude other information streams, so that this functioned like an environment rather than as a choice. it *really* makes me wonder what passes for information in far right evangelical circles out there.
it is obvious that palin was chosen for the mc-cain ticket because she articulates something of the worldview that these folk share---so stoking the anger and fear that seems to be at its core is a deliberate choice on the part of the campaign.
this does not seem to me to be a strategy that's about winning the election--this is about something else.
and the political space they're playing to has little to do with economic conservatism, little to do with old-school patrician conservatism, nothing at all to do with classical conservatism--this is an ugly product of the blurring out of the line between fundamentalist protestant ideology, hyper-nationalism, and racism---and fear, which is the motor of most things in populist rightwing ideology and has been for a very long time (and this not just in the states).
the mobilization of this population is a direct consequence of the transformation of the right, particularly during it's last period of opposition under clinton. it's sources go back to the reconfiguration of the right across the 1970s.
it seems to me that this constituency is at this point more or less poujadisme redux: the ideology that appears to be mobilizing these folk--and worse the information contexts that are symmterical with this---amounts to a virulent, nasty petit-bourgeois fascism.
i hesitated to post this, but there have now been enough clips in various threads here and available elsewhere from different parts of the country to demonstrate that this is not really just about these folk in ohio in particular. they are representative of the kind of movement that the far right of the conservative coalition, embodied by sarah palin in many ways, and of the state that it is being encouraged to work itself up into.
so the questions:
a) the palin nomination appears to be geared toward this population. it is now totally obvious that she was not chosen because she had any real hope of attracting moderates or independents--she was chosen because she speaks to the populist far right.
do you think that is accurate?
if it is, what the strategy behind it?
because if the above is correct, it seems a totally counterintuitive way to run a campaign for president of a united states.
b) if the republicans loose in november, what do you think they'll do with a constituency like this as a significant aspect of their base?
this has come up in other threads, but to repose it here:
it looks like the period of cross-over for this hyper-nationalist, xenophobic stuff began right after 9/11/2001 and ebbed a little into the second bush term. the "war on terror" enabled it and the fiasco in iraq did it in. for a while, this was the mainstream discourse about the world (remember? you were there....) the base for it was laid by 8 years of organizational and media building by the right under clinton.
if that discourse has lost it's traction, but it remains the central ideological linkage to this population, do you think it'll prevent the republicans from being able to retool their politics?
because if mc-cain looses, it seems to me that the republicans are going to have to reconsider the way they frame themselves, and so retool their language.
aside: this is ugly shit. i think it astonishing that the mc-cain campaign is irresponsible enough to encourage this, to stoke it, to play with it, to use it.