Rick Perlstein: As liberals were once naive about wingers, wingers are now naive about liberals.

Rock Perlstein, author of Before the Storm (about the rise of conservatism since Barry Goldwater's 1964 run for pres) and the new Nixonland, says he's astonished by the cluelessness of conservatives about how they're perceived by the left. It resembles a certain cluelessness from 40 years ago:

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/05/26/taking_the_adversary_seriously/



...


Liberals are quite simply not the patronizing asses, oblivious to the reality of our ideological adversaries, that we were during the period I write about. Don't believe me? Consider some historical examples.

In 1960, when college students began flocking to buy Barry Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative, the American left's image of a conservative was of a plutocrat in monocles and spats (and what kind of working-class voter could ever be attracted to that? Conservatism: nothing to worry about!).

That was stupid. No one would do that any more.

In 1966, when Ronald Reagan began surging toward the GOP gubernatorial nomination in California, Esquire, the leading edge of a certain smug center of liberal opinion, graciously allowed that the "Republican Party isn't bankrupt, or isn't that bankrupt that it has to turn to Liberace for leadership."

That was stupid. No one would do that any more.

In 1969, when Richard Nixon gave perhaps the most politically successful speech in the history of the presidency, an Ivy League anti-war leader responded, "What Nixon has tried to show is that there is a silent majority behind him. We know better."

That was stupid. No one would do that any more--for, without bothering to consult the Harvard New Left, the American people had just bounced the president's approval rating from 52 to 68 percent practically overnight.

...


I could multiply the examples endlessly. Liberals used to be really, really, really condescending. They're not anything like that degree of condescending any more. That so many conservatives find us precisely that condescending now is, to borrow, like conservatives these days are habitually doing, the antiquated argot of another age: it's a stone trip, man.

Dig it: they still think we're all August Hecksher and Abbie Hoffman. Just like in 1960 we still thought they were all wearing monocles and spats. As a custodian of the past and an advocate in the present, let me offer conservatives a historical observation: that kind of stubborn condescension--that kind of refusal to take the intellectual work of your ideological adversaries seriously--is not healthy for a movement's political future.

that today's conservatives are arguing with a steriotype of us from 40 years ago. I noticed it over the years when I talked to conservatives and other reactionaries that I personally know. They talked to me as if I were some hippy tye-died mental midget.

Nice to see I'm not the only one who had that idea.

Thanks for the article. :thumbsup:

Have you read him?

Check out the comments below the article. :thumbsup: Esp. the poster Michael Murry.

there was definitely a set of people, including politicians, who were smug, triumphalist, and condescending. It was not pretty. Regardless of rightness or wrongness, it created a backlas which Nixon benefitted from. The effects of depicting others as stupid or evil is no different from the effect of Rush Limbaugh on Democrats.

In this decade, the arrogance is more likely to be on the other side. But as evidenced on DU, there is still a lot of dismissiveness and contempt for conservatives in the party. It is not a way to win back the country. It is also one thing that makes Obama a good candidate.