Mother Jones regular, Kevin Drum, offers an interesting insight in to the reason for the fear and loathing of Movement Conservatives, generated by the Campaign of Barack Obama.
We spend a lot of time around here, repeating the CW. Time to look beyond to the larger implication of an Obama win.
And, it's all good news!
This is a short, pithy article and I am going to quote liberally.
Drum begins by reporting on an insightful observation by Mark Schmitt.
Obama's Game Plan
The always perceptive Mark Schmitt notes that in his speech tonight, Barack Obama unveiled a campaign strategy that depends on attacking John McCain's politics, not his character. This is risky, considering the success that George Bush had with character assassination four years ago:
But there's another lesson in George W. Bush's 2004 victory over Kerry by demolishing Kerry's personal reputation: It left Kerry's agenda untouched.
Quoting Mark Schmitt:
As Bush discovered from the day after his 2005 inauguration, he had no mandate for conservative policies such as Social Security privatization because he had not run on them.
But if [Obama] succeeds, it will have the effect of giving the next president exactly what George W. Bush didn't have: A mandate. The voters will have rejected not just McCain, but the entire economic and foreign policy agenda of conservatism. And that's as important as winning the election, perhaps more important.
Voters may not realize that by rejecting Bush, and McCain, they are rejecting the convoluted reasoning behind the Club for Growth, and the Federalist Society, but the insiders will.
Kevin Drum then adds:
Tonight Obama made a start on a campaign that's based not just on talking points (though there will be plenty of those), but on a sustained assault on modern conservatism and a sustained defense of modern liberalism.
This Modern Liberalism is, in fact, a very old Liberalism. Devoid of may of the mistakes of the 1960's and 70's, it promises to return the party to a defense of the working class, and an appreciation of the value of government in mitigating the trials of life by instituting sane policies on trade, health care, regulation and education.
This is why conservatives have so far been apoplectic about his speech tonight: if he continues down this road, and wins, they know that he'll leave movement conservatism in tatters. He is, at least potentially, the most dangerous politician they've ever faced.
'Bout time, I say!
Kuddos to Drum and Schmitt for zeroing in on the real issue.