Obama’s Week

The only point worthy of comment this week was the reaction by the Republicans to Obama’s inauguration speech in which he gave a fairly straightforward defense of expansive government and what used to be leftish social policies.

They immediately jumped on its progressive tone and hurled the word ‘liberal’ around as if it were the ultimate curse word. It may have been thus when Reagan spat it out and launched his three decade long attack on the middle class.

But it isn’t now. Not any more.

And therein lies the Republican problem.

They are still looking at the world through a 1950’s lens. Back then the public was decidedly more conservative. Or should I say less tolerant? Public opinion was firmly against all sorts of things that we now take for granted. So traditional conservatism could claim to be mainstream and view liberalism as a nasty and unrepresentative intrusion into the great American way of life.

Women’s rights. Civil rights. Gay rights. All sorts of things have changed along the way.

But the GOP hasn’t. America has moved. It is far more diverse, more tolerant, and more collective than is was fifty years ago. Far, far more.

It was commonplace in elitist and media circles to refer to the US as a right of center nation. This observation was based upon that 1950’s view of the world, and was used to decry any effort to expand government, enable more tolerant social policies, and broaden attitudes generally.

The Republican party embodied basic America values back then.

Things change though. America has moved way away from the norms of that era. This is despite Reaganism. Perhaps it’s because of Reaganism.

The outright privilege given to a few and the complete ignorance of the issues of the many that characterized the last three decades of government – by both parties – altered the experience lived through at grass roots level. Add in the well discussed demographic shift that is rewriting what the average American is, and the aspirations of our electorate has changed dramatically. And continues to change.

What has not changed is elitist and media opinion, and Republican sentiment.

So, when Obama captures the essence of modern America he is called liberal and far to the left, when, in fact, he is simply describing what we have become. He is being mainstream. Not by design, but because the mainstream has moved left.

America is becoming a left of center nation.

This is such a threat to contemporary Republicanism, which has moved rightward since Reagan, that it has no response other than a series of dazed curses. The media hasn’t caught up either. It lazily repeats its old lines without thought of what has occurred. And the elite is deeply concerned. After all it is the elite that gave us the intellectual framework for a right of center nation, and it was the elite who reaped the rewards of the Reagan shift. Any subsequent move to the left will threaten the privilege the elite garnered, so the hysteria and dire warnings gushing from our erstwhile leadership can be safely ignored.

This doesn’t mean that either the Republicans or the elite will go quietly. Far from it. Their entrenched capability to resist change cannot be underestimated. So our current political divide will continue bitter and enervating. But it will pass. The great wave of demographics will swamp the past. The rules will be re-written, and what was once intolerable will become included in a revised norm. The subject matter of discussion will have to reflect this change, and will exclude many issues that Republicans now hold dear as being irrelevant.

Continuing to talk about those old issues will simply consign the Republicans to the past.

Unless, naturally, they change too.

Given their reaction to Obama’s speech they haven’t yet grasped the new political reality dawning in America. They will eventually. Meanwhile they will act ever more anachronistically, look ever more quaint, and run the risk of fading from view entirely.

I only wish the media could catch up as well. Maybe that’s too much to ask.

It was Obama’s week. Or, perhaps, it was the new America’s week.

Either way, it wasn’t good for the Republicans. They really need to change.