Grass Greener, etc.
I just want to draw everyone’s attention to the comment thread of this post. The post itself isn’t particularly interesting, but the comment thread is fascinating in that it reads almost as a direct mirror image of dozens of comment threads that you’d find on progressives blogs decrying the latest “surrender” by Democratic office holders. I find it fascinating because beliefs in the incompetence of the Democratic party, and a set of related beliefs about the political ruthlessness of the GOP, simply aren’t shared by movement conservatives; they believe that the GOP is full of weak-kneed traitors kneeling before Reid/Pelosi/Obama and willing to surrender its most cherished principles etc. etc. etc.
To be sure, I’m not surprised by this; the GOP faithful have demonstrated an admirable (?) willingness to destroy any politician who wanders, however briefly, into “moderate” territory. What’s interesting is that the subjective interpretations of both progressives and movement conservatives regarding their Congressional delegations are almost identical. Moreover, New START isn’t even really an issue where we would expect that oligarchic centrist village corporate duopoly etc. etc. to have a strong set of opinions.
…I should note that if you read this post and think that I’m assigning any kind of moral equivalence to progressives and movement conservatives, ur doing it wrong. What I’m interested in are the structural/psychological dynamics of blame; who it’s assigned to, and what the character of that assignment is. In this case, I find it fascinating that both progressives and conservatives assign key blame for failure on their own party, and that the character of that assignment is dispositional rather than situational (weak, spineless Rep/Dems, etc.).