Off Base

From the “Off-the-Reservation” Department
Over at Opinion-Journal-dot-com, Peggy Noonan has a very Two-Headed-Monster-esque article:

Off Base :: Washington Democrats think their core voters are barking mad
Or :: Washington Republicans know more than their core voters, so you should be quiet

It has occurred to me that both parties increasingly dislike their bases, but for different reasons and to different degrees. By both parties I mean the leaders and representatives of the Democrats and Republicans in Washington. I believe I correctly observe that they feel an increasing intellectual estrangement from and impatience with the activists who people their base of support.

In the past, Republican leaders in Washington bowed either symbolically or practically to the presumed moral leadership and cleanness of vision of the people back home. They understood the base wanted tax cuts and spending cuts, and for serious reasons. The base had deep qualms about abortion. The base intuitively recoiled from big government: They knew the best arrangement was maximum possible power to the individual and limited, policed, heavily checked power to the state. Or, as some back home might have put it, Don’t put your faith in governments, which are made by men; put your faith in individuals, who are made by God.

Republican leaders in the capital bowed to this wisdom–if not in their actions, at least quite often in their hearts.

Now they seem to bow less. They know the higher wisdom on such issues as immigration. They feel less fealty to the insights of the base. They know more than the base, are more experienced than the base, have a more nuanced sense of reality. And as for conservative social issues groups, the politicians resent those nagging, whining pushers-for-the-impossible who are always threatening to stay home or go elsewhere. (Where?)

Some Washington Republicans have been in leadership so long they’ve learned–they’ve learned too well!–that politics is the art of the possible. It is. But this is not an excuse to be weak, or ambivalent, or passive, or superior.

On the Democratic side, it is not just as bad but worse. They don’t only think they’re more sophisticated than their base, more informed and aware of the complexities. I believe they think their base is mad.

You can see their problem in their inability to get a slogan. Which, believe me, is how they think of it: a slogan. “Together for a Better Future.” “A Future With Better Togetherness.” Today for a better tomorrow, tomorrow for a better today.

A party has a hard time saying what it stands for only when it doesn’t know what it stands for. It has trouble getting a compelling slogan only when it has no idea what compels its base. Or when it fears what compels it.

Howard Dean is actually the most in touch with his base of all D.C. Democrats because he speaks to them the secret language of Madman Boogabooga. Republicans are racist/ignorant/evil. This is actually not ineffective. It’s a language that quells the base and would scare the center if they followed it more closely, but they can’t because it’s not heavily reported because “Dean Says Something Crazy” is no longer news.

Yes, I agree with both sides. Once upon a time I respected the 1994 Republicans. Now they don’t listen to their constituents anymore.
And the Democrats, their out of the mainstream, period.