The Bullshit That Spewed From Guliani and Romney's Mouths

The Resentment Strategy

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: September 4, 2008
THE NEW YORK TIMES

Can the super-rich former governor of Massachusetts — the son of a Fortune 500 C.E.O. who made a vast fortune in the leveraged-buyout business — really keep a straight face while denouncing “Eastern elites”?

Can the former mayor of New York City, a man who, as USA Today put it, “marched in gay pride parades, dressed up in drag and lived temporarily with a gay couple and their Shih Tzu” — that was between his second and third marriages — really get away with saying that Barack Obama doesn’t think small towns are sufficiently “cosmopolitan”?

Can the vice-presidential candidate of a party that has controlled the White House, Congress or both for 26 of the past 28 years, a party that, Borg-like, assimilated much of the D.C. lobbying industry into itself — until Congress changed hands, high-paying lobbying jobs were reserved for loyal Republicans — really portray herself as running against the “Washington elite”?

Yes, they can.

On Tuesday, He Who Must Not Be Named — Mitt Romney mentioned him just once, Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin not at all — gave a video address to the Republican National Convention. John McCain, promised President Bush, would stand up to the “angry left.” That’s no doubt true. But don’t be fooled either by Mr. McCain’s long-ago reputation as a maverick or by Ms. Palin’s appealing persona: the Republican Party, now more than ever, is firmly in the hands of the angry right, which has always been much bigger, much more influential and much angrier than its counterpart on the other side.

What’s the source of all that anger?

Some of it, of course, is driven by cultural and religious conflict: fundamentalist Christians are sincerely dismayed by Roe v. Wade and evolution in the curriculum. What struck me as I watched the convention speeches, however, is how much of the anger on the right is based not on the claim that Democrats have done bad things, but on the perception — generally based on no evidence whatsoever — that Democrats look down their noses at regular people.

Thus Mr. Giuliani asserted that Wasilla, Alaska, isn’t “flashy enough” for Mr. Obama, who never said any such thing. And Ms. Palin asserted that Democrats “look down” on small-town mayors — again, without any evidence.

What the G.O.P. is selling, in other words, is the pure politics of resentment; you’re supposed to vote Republican to stick it to an elite that thinks it’s better than you. Or to put it another way, the G.O.P. is still the party of Nixon.

One of the key insights in “Nixonland,” the new book by the historian Rick Perlstein, is that Nixon’s political strategy throughout his career was inspired by his college experience, in which he got himself elected student body president by exploiting his classmates’ resentment against the Franklins, the school’s elite social club. There’s a direct line from that student election to Spiro Agnew’s attacks on the “nattering nabobs of negativism” as “an effete corps of impudent snobs,” and from there to the peculiar cult of personality that not long ago surrounded George W. Bush — a cult that celebrated his anti-intellectualism and made much of the supposed fact that the “misunderestimated” C-average student had proved himself smarter than all the fancy-pants experts.

And when Mr. Bush turned out not to be that smart after all, and his presidency crashed and burned, the angry right — the raging rajas of resentment? — became, if anything, even angrier. Humiliation will do that.

Can Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin really ride Nixonian resentment into an upset election victory in what should be an overwhelmingly Democratic year? The answer is a definite maybe.

By selecting Barack Obama as their nominee, the Democrats may have given Republicans an opening: the very qualities that inspire many fervent Obama supporters — the candidate’s high-flown eloquence, his coolness factor — have also laid him open to a Nixonian backlash. Unlike many observers, I wasn’t surprised at the effectiveness of the McCain “celebrity” ad. It didn’t make much sense intellectually, but it skillfully exploited the resentment some voters feel toward Mr. Obama’s star quality.

That said, the experience of the years since 2000 — the memory of what happened to working Americans when faux-populist Republicans controlled the government — is still fairly fresh in voters’ minds. Furthermore, while Democrats’ supposed contempt for ordinary people is mainly a figment of Republican imagination, the G.O.P. really is the Gramm Old Party — it really does believe that the economy is just fine, and the fact that most Americans disagree just shows that we’re a nation of whiners.

But the Democrats can’t afford to be complacent. Resentment, no matter how contrived, is a powerful force, and it’s one that Republicans are very, very good at exploiting.

 

Rudi Giuliani comes off as a particularly slick "good ole boys" member...

He spins off so many contradictions, omissions and blatant lies that you can hardly keep up.

 

The very first words out the Obama campaign's mouth was to mock the mayoral experience of a town of 6000. I guess he forgot that.

OldTrader

 

I think that's fair game. Karl Rove mocked the governor of Virginia because Richmond was a 'small' town of 200k.


Here's Rudy:



Here's Rudy at a Gay Pride march in NYC:




Rudy Guliani, that conservative Republican.

 

Buy low.

You are a very angry person. You are over taking z10 as the resident nut job.

 

The whole Obama campaign is based on resentment. Resentment of anyone who has more than you. It's not your fault, it's the government's fault. A caring government would take away the rich(er) people's assets and distribute it to those who need(want) them, like say, Obama supporters.

In the upside down world of liberals like Krugman, stealing from people who earned and giving it to those who didn't is admirable. Of course, their own personal lives usually reveal little in the way of actual charity. Just as young lawyers learn to enjoy fine dining on the client's tab, liberals prefer to use other people's money to feel morally superior.

 

AAA - this isn't directed towards you (you attacked Krugman, not me, even though I don't think you did an effective job rebutting Krugman op/ed piece).

If you guys are going to personally attack someone, you're not going to get much respect from independents or objective people.

Here are the facts, that you can try to dispute if you want, but good luck:

Romney and Guliani both spoke before a overwhelmingly conservative and religious GOP Convention.

Both Romney are pro-gay marriage, pro-choice, and anti-gun Republicans.

It is incredible to me that Guliani, especially, would be so cheered and adored by the most right wing elements of the Republican Party, given that he is fervently pro-choice, pro-gay marriage and anti-gun. These are some of the core issues of the extreme right, and the fact that he is at 180 degree odds with them highlights the hypocrisy of the whole notion of him speaking at the GOP Convention.

Guliani also praised Bernard Kerik, who was a criminal, and Guliani cheated on his wife in a long-standing adulterous relationship.

Romney is among the most socially liberal governor of any state - he is the reason why it's legal to have gay marriage in Massachussetts.

I'm sorry if SOME of you don't like it when people post FACTS that highlight the fractured hypocrisy of the GOP, but I sure know that I've hit a nerve when the personal attacks ensue.

If these guys want to throw stones while they live in glass towers, and criticize people who are far more like them than unlike them, and if the extreme right wing is too ignorant to recognize these fundamental FACTS, then I guess it confounds me, but that I ultimately accept it.

 

Noone got wealthy in a vacuum though thats what they like to thump their chests about. What they're doing is trying to keep the wealthy from riding herd on the rest of us to get rich.

 

I was addressing his point about resentment. He accused the republicans of exploiting it somehow, when it is pretty clear to me that Obama's whole economic message is based on class envy.

Certainly the republican party allows a greater diversity of viewpoints than the democrats, which have to pass muster with dailykos before they are allowed to speak at their convention. I suppose this can seem hypocritical or at least inconsistent to those used to the rigid ideological constraints imposed by the left.

 

Nice one OT... give it to them. Right here witcha( and I mean "RIGHT")