tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post205216898694951692..comments2023-10-16T07:13:12.123-05:00Comments on A plain blog about politics: Liberals, Discontented, and LearningJonathan Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15931039630306253241noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-31556284611360941202010-01-19T16:12:22.229-06:002010-01-19T16:12:22.229-06:00It's a tough nut to crack. Conservatives have ...It's a tough nut to crack. Conservatives have the altar of Reagan to pray at (constructed, of course, post-Reagan, and more than partially invented to fit their desires). Liberals used to hearken back to either JFK or FDR, but I think they've ebbed a bit in the "recent archetypes pantheon" for liberals, mostly because they aren't recent. <br /><br />However, let me ask why not having an inherent personality-type difference is a virtue of a theory? Shouldn't we expect people with different worldviews and often different upbringings to differ in how they think their parties should conduct themselves? The old saw is that the GOP believes in tyranny tempered by assassination, and the examples held up there are Cannon and Gingrich. The Dems, on the other hand, are commonly thought to believe in "earning your stripes" so Pelosi is Speaker because she beat Hoyer in the whip vote a decade ago. And, the story goes, the differences between the parties are to be expected because Republicans are so much more internally homogenous than Dems. <br /><br />You agree with the difference between liberal abandonment of Obama and conservative abandonment of Bush (although, to be fair, Bush delivered on their raison d'etre in years 1-3 with the tax cuts, so perhaps Bush had given them less reason to abandon him until the profligate spending was apparent a few years later). <br /><br />Where I agree with you is the idea that both sides contemplate cutting off their nose to spite their face. However, I'm not sure where to go from there. Did CONSERVATIVES learn that lesson from Reagan, or did BUSH learn that lesson from his father and his White House simply enforce it? Self-restraint could look similar to restraint for fear of never having your phone calls returned.<br /><br />I don't know; I'm mostly rambling. I still think that the great work that makes sense of the differences between the modern party has yet to be written.Matt Jarvisnoreply@blogger.com