Aug 30 2010

Douthat Gets It

Published by at 8:18 am under All General Discussions

Today’s must-read, maybe even the must-read of the entire election cycle, is by Ross Douthat at the NY Times (H/T RCP). The reason is it is a must read is because somebody finally understood what the Tea Party movement is all about, and writes about it with wondrous clarity (demonstrating Douthat’s own skill as a writer):

But after spending my Saturday at Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally on the Washington Mall, I’m beginning to think that I underestimated the man.

Instead, Beck served up something considerably stranger. This was a tent revival crossed with a pep rally intertwined with a history lecture married to a U.S.O. telethon — and that was just in the first hour.

There was piety — endless piety, as speaker after speaker demanded that Americans rededicate themselves to God. There was patriotism: fund- raising for children of slain Special Forces vets, paeans to military heroism (delivered by Sarah Palin, among others), encomiums to the founding fathers. There was an awards ceremony on the theme of “Faith, Hope and Charity,” in which community-service prizes were handed out to a black minister, a Mormon businessman and the St. Louis Cardinals’ Albert Pujols. And since this was (as you may have heard) the anniversary of the “I Have a Dream” speech, there was a long tribute to Martin Luther King Jr.

But one could also call the day a strange, unlooked-for fulfillment of King’s prophecies: 47 years after the “I Have a Dream” speech, here were tens of thousands of white conservatives roaring their approval of its author.

It was a long festival of affirmation for middle-class white Christians — square, earnest, patriotic and religious.

It was a celebration of America’s Main Street, its right-of-center core. It is the rejection of big government and the Politvcial Industrial Complex that was created in its dark shadow. It was a reawakening of We The People. It is also the remergence of the American ‘can do’ attitude – this time aimed at dismantling the defunct and bloated federal bureaucracy which has proven itself unworthy of limitless stewardship (a.k.a. being the national nanny). It is the greenest of green shoots, ready to take out the choking weeds of progressive liberalism and replace them with the millions of individual lights. The Shining City on The Hill is about to see a revival.

23 responses so far

23 Responses to “Douthat Gets It”

  1. WWS says:

    What he’s realized is that this is a Movement that exists outside of politics, and thus has a strength and a center of gravity all it’s own, one which outside political forces can’t touch.

    That’s why the movement terrifies them – they know that they can’t co-opt it and they can’t defeat it.

    I had been thinking there would be some “October Surprise”, some kind of last minute maneuvering to try and avoid the Democrat’s replay of the Little Big Horn. But I no longer believe that.

    I think they are going to tell themselves that everything is just fine, and that there is nothing to worry about. And then they’re just going to stand there and take the hit. It’s not because they have some “secret plan” – it is simply because they are true idiots who have no idea of what to do next, so they will do nothing at all.

  2. archtop says:

    WWS

    “I had been thinking there would be some “October Surprise”, some kind of last minute maneuvering to try and avoid the Democrat’s replay of the Little Big Horn.”

    I still believe that the (dying) MSM will pull out all of the stops in an effort to stem the tide. Look for:

    * ANY GOP scandal to get amplified 10x
    * Any piece of good news on the economy to be amplified 100x
    * Misleading polls
    * Suppression of Democrat bad news and corruption
    * Opinion pieces on how things were really MORE rotten under Bush

    In the end, this election cycle may be impossible for the MSM to whitewash, but rest assured they’ll give it a try…

  3. Mike M. says:

    If there’s an October Surprise, it will be an attack on the Iranian nuclear program.

    Whether or not it’s going to play is another matter. I suspect the American people trust Obama on national security issues even less than they trusted Clinton.

  4. kathie says:

    Isn’t it pathetic that “journalists” have been writing about events that they have no clue about. They don’t write about what they saw, felt, heard, they write about what they think. Thinking needs to be based on information, not made up out of thin air. Obama repeats the thin air and sounds more stupid by the day. Good for this guy for going, he usually writes tripe.

  5. kathie says:

    How smart is Obama, doesn’t he have advisers?
    Obama says he ignored Beck rally…

  6. >I still believe that the (dying) MSM will pull out all of the stops
    >in an effort to stem the tide.

    Who, outside of Democrats, are listening to them anymore?

    Thr MSM cashed in their credibility chips electing Obama and are reaping the rewards of that decision.

    Just look at their broadcast news ratings and newspaper circulation.

  7. lurker9876 says:

    http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/the_education_of_glenn_beck.html – The Education of Glenn Beck.

    wws isn’t the only one stating that Glenn is committing errors.

  8. WWS says:

    I support what Glenn Beck is doing, I really do! I just want him to clean some of these loose ends up so that the left doesn’t have an easy avenue of attack open. Of course, you’ve got to listen to him carefully to see these – I do, they don’t. Their loss, and I’m not going to help them by going on about it. Sometimes his facts are wrong, but his heart is still right, and that’s why people listen to him.

    btw, the only new scandal to pop up is thanks to (black Democrat) Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, who took the CBC scholarship money that was meant to send poor, disadvantaged black youths to college and who gave it all to her own kids instead.

    When asked about this, she claimed that no one had ever told her that she wasn’t supposed to hijack all of the scholarship money and give it to her own kids instead of who it was intended for.

    Nice.

  9. Terrye says:

    I have a lot of respect for the Tea Party movement, but I don’t much like Beck. I saw him on Chris Wallace the next day and he had not one good word to say about George Bush or Republicans. I think that if he thought he could start a third party and split the vote he would do it in a heart beat.

    The Tea Party movement is leaderless, deliberately so…it is a grass roots movement, but people like Beck will use that movement if they can for their own purposes.

    You know what bothers me? A lot of people are talking about how bad Bush was for believing in compassionate conservatism and yet compassion is part of what being a good Christian is all about. And making a point of bragging about he railed against Bush and despised the man does not make me want to be a part of any movement he claims to lead. He can do the Tea Party more harm than good.

  10. […] up for another homebuyer tax credit? – hotair.com 08/30/2010 Gimmicks. more… Douthat Gets It – strata-sphere.com 08/30/2010 Today’s must-read, maybe even the must-read of the […]

  11. WWS says:

    Imagine the Heart and the Decency of Bush combined with the Passion and Showmanship of Beck…

    Throw in a lifetime of experience and rugged good looks and you’d have something like… Reagan.

  12. Terrye says:

    WWS:

    Tis true.

  13. Frogg1 says:

    Glenn Beck: The Smithsonian called about 8/28
    http://www.therightscoop.com/glenn-beck-the-smithsonian-called-about-828

    The Smithsonian wants Beck to preserve some of the materials from the rally so they can preserve the history of the event. That’s pretty amazing.

  14. Terrye says:

    Frogg:

    Yep, that is amazing for Beck and that is what he cares about. I know I sound like a broken record, but I don’t trust the man. If this is remembered, it will be him that is remembered…not the people who were there and that is why Beck has latched onto the Tea Party.

  15. Jinny says:

    I thought it was amazing to watch, even though coverage was sparse. I have no problem if people remember that Glen Beck had the idea, organized it beautifully and people attended to make a statement.

    No one is perfect, there is no perfect messenger, if we demand absolute purity, we’ll have absolutely….. nothing.

  16. WWS,

    Serious students of political mass movements look at the trash these movements generate at their events.

    It is an obvious tell about the level of political commitment of the participants.

    This is from one such “Serious Student” I correspond with:

    Observation on Beck Rally:

    The Park Service guys know. The rally on the Mall attracted between 800,000 and 1,000,000 and the news outlets said around 100-150,000. This one is probably between 600,000 and 900,000. They didn’t leave one speck of trash on the ground.

    Serious Student:

    Such reports (of no trash — Trent) are interesting because they demonstrate a lot about commitment and cohesion. Where’d you run across that one? (Quite a few famous demonstrations and rallies have been no-trash affairs; quite a few others have been pigpens.
    .
    Serious folks (e.g. the Marian Anderson protest in the 30s, “I Have A Dream”), gather up their trash and don’t bring much to begin with; people just there for excitement are slobs (extreme case, of course, Woodstock, which wasn’t about anything anyway).

    Trent —

    Gatewaypundit had cellphone video of the Beck versus the Sharpton rally. Beck’s rally was spotless and Sharpton’s was a pig sty.

    Serious Student:

    Interesting but not surprising.
    .
    At a guess, hornet-swarm events, since everyone at them tends to be committed, probably are mostly clean. At the anti-prop-8 march/rally I worked the laughable job of security for (if anything had gone wrong, security’s numbers were wholly inadequate by conventional standards, maybe a tenth of what we should have had, but in fact we could’ve gotten by with two grade school safety patrol kids, because the biggest problem we had was one dipshit), the trash problem was handled as follows: before dismissing the crowd, the last speaker said, “Hey, everyone, remember this was all grass roots and there’s no organizers, so you have to pick up your own trash, and if you didn’t have any, pick up somebody else’s. We need this place spotless.” And the whole crowd did it, right then; just grabbed all the trash in site and moved it into the barrels.
    .
    That’s actually probably a good way to tell real hornets from astroturf. Real hornets clean up. Very consistent with the dedication and the sense of participation.
    .
    And Rev. Al hasn’t thrown a real grass-roots event in 30 years at least. Most of the leftists I know won’t go to anything he’s connected with for a whole bunch of excellent reasons (the biggest one being you cannot work with Big Al without feeling like a tool, either traditional or modern sense).

    “Serious student” makes a very distinct point about the difference between a “Hornet swarm” of activated individual Americans exercising their political rights and the usual “astro-turf” of smelly leftist usual suspects showing up at WTO meetings or union thugs.

    The former are much more dangerous for the American ruling class than the latter as the “Hornet Swarm” are from outside the current system of special interest. And are thus unreachable, uncontrollable, and unpredictable by the both current political elites and special interest factions.

  17. Terrye says:

    Jinny:

    I am not talking about purity. I am talking about the fact that Beck hates Bush and dislikes Republicans and makes no bones about it. I am afraid he will start a third party and put the Democrats back in power.

  18. Terrye says:

    And the thing is Beck did not start this movement, the men and women all over the country who went to townhalls started it. They deserve the credit, not Beck.

  19. You can hates Bush and dislikes some Republicans and still be a tea party type.

    In fact, that would describe most Tea Party types as Pres. Bush and the Delay Republican Congress were all “big government conservatives”while the Tea Party in the main are small government economic conservatives.

    The TSA and the drug benefit entitlement were both started under Bush and Delay.

    Neither saw a big government program they didn’t like.

  20. WWS,

    Run, don’t walk, to this Chicagoboyz post:

    I Think I See What Glenn Beck is Doing
    Posted by Lexington Green on August 31st, 2010

    http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/15295.html

    The Glenn Beck rally is confusing people.
    .
    Why?
    .
    He is aiming far beyond what most people consider to be the goalposts.
    .
    Using Boyd’s continuum for war: Material, Intellectual, Moral
    .
    Analogously for political change: Elections, Institutions, Culture.
    .
    Beck sees correctly that the Conservative movement had only limited success because it was good at level 1, for a while, weak on level 2, and barely touched level 3. Talk Radio and the Tea Party are level 3 phenomena, popular outbreaks, which are blowing back into politics.
    .
    Someone who asks what the rally has to do with the 2010 election is missing the point.
    .
    Beck is building solidarity and cultural confidence in America, its Constitution, its military heritage, its freedom. This is a vision that is despised by the people who have long held the commanding heights of the culture. But for millions of people, almost certainly a majority, this vision is obviously alive and kicking.
    .
    Beck is creating positive themes of unity and patriotism and freedom and independence which are above mere political or policy choices, but not irrelevant to them. Political and policy choices rest on a foundation of philosophy, culture, self-image, ideals, religion. Change the foundation, and the rest will flow from that. Defeat the enemy on that plane, and any merely tactical defeat will always be reversible.

    Go there and read the rest.