I hate the political culture of personal attack — though I agree character matters in politics — but I feel an overwhelming urge to ridicule Andy McCarthy for suggesting that Bill Ayers ghostwrote Barack Obama’s Dreams of My Father. I mean, has McCarthy gone insane? No, really. Is this the true face of the American right? Are there no honest conservatives willing to debate policy with the left? Are there or have there ever been such honest conservatives? I’m not talking about pitchfork-wavers and bigots here. I’m talking about our stalwart, “respectable” conservative Establishment. Is this the best the National Review can do? On closer reflection, in fact, McCarthy doesn’t even deserve our ridicule. His attack is beneath contempt.
October 12, 2008
9 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL
McCarthy’s attitude is that Obama must be defeated by any means necessary. There is no line he isn’t willing to cross if he thinks crossing it will help his candidate win — and suggesting Obama ghostwrote his autobiography is a clever attempt to manipulate the ignorant. Ignorant people are basically the base of the Republican party, as McCain’s recent rallies clearly indicate. But the economic crisis and the horror of the Bush administration is apparently motivating at least some Americans — those who feel a Patriotic duty to make an informed decision — to get educated about this stuff. It appears the Republicans may finally get called out this year for dragging down American politics with sleazy, stupid lies.
Consider all the folks who will walk into the polling booth in a few weeks and vote for John McCain: Of those, what percentage will look you in the eye and tell you they believe Obama is a Muslim, or that Obama attended a Muslin church, or that he’s an “Arab,” as one woman recently asserted at a McCain campaign rally.
I would guess the percentage will be pretty high. You want to know why Republicans are such abysmal failures at running this country? Because most of the people responsible for electing them (a) believe things that are simply false (including, for example, that Iraq was responsible for Sept. 11), and (b) consider liberals domestic enemies of this country, and believe every shred of decency must be sacrificed, if necessary, to keep them out of power.
Their tactics remind me of those Arab countries where many people believed, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, that Israel was responsible. Crazy people — Israel-hating Arabs and liberal-hating Republicans alike — believe what they want to believe, and don’t trust any evidence that contradicts their prejudices.
Comment by Ian — October 12, 2008 @ 1:03 pm
“Ignorant people are basically the base of the Republican party, as McCain’s recent rallies clearly indicate. ” You’re saying that the majority of the people that make up the Republican are “ignorant?” With comments like that how do you ever expect to have a country that is unified? A lot of what you wrote is correct, but don’t let the stupid comments of some people brand an entire party as ignorant. There are nuts and whackos on both sides, but that doesn’t mean that their respective bases are ignorant.
Comment by rbates — October 12, 2008 @ 8:56 pm
I think there are lots of ignorant people in the country, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and Other. Like Democrats and Independents, Republicans comprise a large and diverse set of people… I don’t agree with Ian that the base is “basically” ignorant. A fiscal conservative based in, say, Florida is perhaps less ignorant in many ways than someone, based in Kansas, who literally believes that the Rapture is imminent, though these are stereotypes. It’s possible for the Rapture-waiter to be smarter than the Floridian in some dimensions….
In any event, I don’t think the “ignorance” conversation is very useful or precise. The people who deserve to be attacked, in my view, are not some hypothetical Republican base — ignorant, intelligent, or whatever — but very specific people like McCarthy who come up with ridiculous arguments such as the one I linked to above.
The question I’m asking myself is: does McCarthy represent the mainstream of conservative and Republican thought in America? Isn’t the National Review supposed to be some kind of exemplar of excellence for the right? Posts like McCarthy’s make me think the NR is staffed by ridiculous clowns with no self respect.
To their credit, maybe, Jonathan Adler wrote the following re: McCarthy:
Comment by Lee — October 12, 2008 @ 9:32 pm
rbates: If it were only a few whackos on the right who were advancing this crazy talk about Obama being an Arab, a terrorist, a Muslin, etc — then I would certainly agree that it’s not justified to call the Republican base ignorant. As a reporter in small, overwhelmingly Republican towns, I’ve had an opportunity to meet plenty of Republicans who are well-educated, thoughtful, well-intentioned and compassionate. This doesn’t mean I don’t hold them accountable for supporting a Republican presidential ticket based on lies — but I don’t mean to suggest that all Republicans are ignorant.
But when the Republican party bases its entire campaign strategy on drawing a ridiculous link between Senator Barack Obama and a 60’s radical terrorist Obama happened to serve on a charity board with — the board of an organization founded by a Republican — it reveals that its base is ignorant.
There may be a few ignorant whackos on the left, but whackos aren’t the core audience of the Democratic presidential candidates’ message in the final weeks of the election. The Republicans are counting on “low information voters” to carry their ticket, period.
I’d love a unified country, but I’m more interested in doing what I can to make sure this country stays safe, free and prosperous. You may be right that telling the truth about the Republican party’s constituency will undermine unity, but as a liberal I’m sick of being bullied and I’m not going to hold my tongue when it seems like Sean Hannity is running our national politics.
To Lee: Aren’t you putting politeness ahead of intellectual honesty? A “smart” person may believe in the Rapture, but does that mean a person who thinks Obama is the anti-Christ is well-informed? Are you ready to concede that the Republican base is as well-informed as the Democratic base, when Republicans support candidates who say global warming isn’t real, homosexuality is a choice, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are responsible for the economic downturn, and believe Barack Obama is a Muslin? How many Americans thought Iraq was responsible for 9/11 long after it was entirely debunked? I believe the people in 2005 who still thought Saddam Hussein played a role in 9/11 overwhelmingly vote Republican.
The ignorance conversation IS useful because it suggests that Republicans should educate themselves about the damage their candidates do to this country. And it is also precise, because it precisely conveys my belief that most Republicans vote based on false information or no information.
Comment by Ian — October 12, 2008 @ 10:19 pm
People vote for candidates for many reasons. As you point out, you knew many well-educated, thoughtful Republicans as a reporter. The tax policy views of these Republicans may simply have trumped their desire (in 2004) to punish W. for holding regressive views on homosexuality or evolution or global warming or civil liberties or whatever.
Which isn’t to say that we shouldn’t hold these thoughtful, well-educated Republicans accountable for their votes. We just can’t call them ignorant. In a sense, they’re worse than ignorant — they vote in full knowledge of what sort of policies they’re supporting. In a sense, I’m being much harsher toward these people than someone who charges them with ignorance.
Ignorance would be a great defense for why someone might support the erosion of civil liberties, an unjustified war against a country that was not on the bring of attacking us, environmental destruction, and the Constitution-smashing concentration of power in the executive branch.
I hold Republicans accountable for knowing about the policies they support. I blame them for being wrong. Ignorance is no more an excuse than not knowing traffic laws is an excuse for running a red light.
Andy McCarthy is not an ignorant man: he supports all these terrible policies — knowingly. He assumes perhaps that his readers are ignorant, but I hope that anyone who reads his insinuation that Ayers ghostwrote Dreams of My Father will immediately laugh at him.
Comment by Lee — October 12, 2008 @ 10:47 pm
Again, I’m not saying ALL Republicans are ignorant. I’m just saying that ignorant people are the party’s base. There are well-informed, thoughtful Republicans — but they do not make up the party’s base.
Comment by Ian — October 13, 2008 @ 8:46 am
I believe this is called the grasping-at-straws part of the campaign.
Comment by John — October 13, 2008 @ 9:35 am
Ian: Not necessarily to keep this thread going — I don’t know how productive it is — but when you say the base is ignorant, I just don’t know how that translates into numbers.
If I’m a Republican 100% concerned with abortion and using government to push my “traditional” values on the American public, but know or care nothing about global warming or foreign policy or tax policy or anything else, I guess you could call me ignorant on certain issues. Then again, I vote Republican because of my views on abortion and traditional values, about which I’m not ignorant.
According to a 2007 Newsweek poll, “48% of Americans believe that God created ‘humans pretty much in the present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so’” while “30% of Americans took the middle ground responding that they believed ‘Humans developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process.’”
These are people you could say are ignorant “about evolution,” and the beliefs may correlate with voting — the non-believers in evolution may be mostly Republicans. But I just don’t know how the numbers break down.
That said, I can agree to these sorts of conditional statements:
* If you believe Obama is a Muslim, you are ignorant of the facts.
* If you believe that the earth is 6000 years old, you are ignorant of the facts.
* If you believe that there is a “debate” among climatologists about global warming, rather than a manufactured controversy paid for by right-wing funders, you are ignorant of the facts.
* If you believe Saddam Hussein is responsible for the 9/11 attacks, you are ignorant of the facts.
Etc. I’m unwilling to say more than that at this time, not out of politeness, but because I don’t have the statistics on hand to generalize my claim.
If the problem is that the base of the Republican party is simply ignorant — rather than politically in disagreement with us, from a position of full information — then there is great hope to move the American public leftward. We just need to politely inform those who are uninformed — saying “ignorant” might be be considered insulting — about our correct views and the rest will take care of itself.
Comment by Lee — October 13, 2008 @ 12:00 pm
Lee, If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that if we politely inform the American public about global warming, the age of the earth, the cause of the Sept. 11 attacks, and the truth about Barack Obama, they will simply fall in line.
But the facts just don’t bear that out. The news media, college profs, and plenty of other respectable purveyors of info have been politely informing the public for years — and they’ve been savagely attacked and demonized for it.
You keep saying it’s unproductive to call right-wing voters ignorant. I think you’re wrong. I believe voters should know about the issues they’re voting about. Calling people “ignorant” is a way of challenging people to educate themselves.
Again — I’m not saying intelligent, well informed conservatives can’t disagree with liberals on moral issues and on technical matters of policy — but that’s not what’s driving the Republican party, is it?
You seem to be saying that I can’t say the Republican Party’s voting base is ignorant without statistics — then you provide statistics that more or less support my argument.
Comment by Ian — October 13, 2008 @ 12:19 pm