John — I think you put your finger on half of what bothers me about the piece which, I agree, has a lot of stuff going on inside it. Here’s my big-picture problem.

On the one hand he casts all conservative arguments and tactics in the worst possible light, working from the assumption that conservatives and Republicans operate in bad faith with nothing but cynicism and perhaps bigotry motivating them. But then, in the second half of the article, in what he apparently sees as a nod to balance or truth-telling, he lays out an analysis of the Democrats which supports the conservative point of view. It’s Sullivanesque in that he must first clear the way by saying conservatives make their arguments from illegitimate motives, but my motives are pure so I can say pretty much the same thing.

He says that Republicans have cyncially exploited themes of elitism, women’s rights, homosexuality etc in an attempt to craft a Republican populism:

It was the central achievement of Wallace, Black, and Atwater to link all these themes–elitism, religion, race, sexuality–together with a range of economic and social issues in order to assemble an overarching message. Indeed, because they so successfully conflated the various characteristics of liberalism into a single image over time, GOP strategists are now able to use any one issue–affirmative action, gay marriage, flag burning–to effectively raise them all. From this perspective, taxes are used to finance welfare programs that encourage family dissolution. Blacks and immigrants are deeply affected by such government policies, but, in the Republican view, no family is immune. Lax law enforcement, no-fault divorce, sex education, and pornography together foster fragile families and out-of-wedlock pregnancy, which, in turn, drive crime, drug abuse, and urban and suburban chaos. In the eyes of the cultural right, the sexual revolution, the women’s rights revolution, and the blurring of gender roles–as well as abortion and the so-called gay agenda–all merge to usurp the status of those who were traditionally dominant, to upend authority, including paternal authority, and to corrode the lives of children and orderly, decent communities. All of this is abetted by an activist judicial system that promotes secularism and enables the emergence of an increasingly deregulated sphere for immoral private action. To liberals, all of this may sound like a laughable caricature of their political philosophy. But, to conservatives, it has long been a reliable formula for victory–and it still is.

But then Edsall wheels around and concedes that there’s much merit to the Republican argument. But, of course, Republicans aren’t sincere when they make it, only sober-eyed liberals like Edsall can say things like this in good faith:

Many Democrats–and writers such as Thomas Frank–have called for the party to reconnect with the white, working-class, male voters it has lost over the decades. The problem with this call to populism is that the party’s most influential wing is not populist; it is elitist–affluent, well educated, urban, indifferent (or hostile) to organized religion, and, on the controversial social issues of abortion and gay marriage, well to the left of the general public. The values of this elite tend to prevail in party debates and in the crafting of Democratic platforms. Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union–and himself an Ivy League graduate–recently said that the perception of Democrats as “Volvo-driving, latte-drinking, Chardonnay-sipping, Northeast, Harvard- and Yale-educated liberals” isn’t a perception at all, but rather “the reality. That is who people see as leading the Democratic Party. There’s no authenticity; they don’t look like them. People are not voting against their interests; they’re looking for someone to represent their interests.”

Another example — similar to the shabby use of Wallace John discusses — is his opening anecdote about Rove. He details Rove’s painful family history and then says:

The story of Rove’s dysfunctional family tells a lot about the Republican Party machinery he would later help to perfect. Unlike baby-boomers, who smoked dope, protested the war, and lived with a succession of girlfriends before becoming middle-age liberals, Rove understood the longing of many Americans for a traditional nuclear family and a sense of social order. He grasped the values crisis brought on by the sociocultural revolution of the ’60s and ’70s because he himself had lived its worst consequences. And–like previous Republican strategists, including Kevin Phillips, Pat Buchanan, Charlie Black, and Lee Atwater–he realized that these sentiments, however crass they sounded to the ears of liberals, held appeal to many voters and could therefore be harnessed to his party’s advantage.

This is interesting, maybe even plausible — its nastiness notwithstanding. But, couldn’t you use the exact opposite evidence to make the exact same argument? What if Rove had grown up in Mayberry with a perfectly intact and happy family? Edsall could then argue that Rove’s idyllic youth made him hostile to the counter-culture and attuned to the yearning for stability and wholesomeness in Red State America. When both A and not A support the same conclusion, you’ve usually got an argument that was decided well ahead of the game.