The "F-You" Election

Progressives lost this election -- but conservatism and the Republican Party are hardly stronger for their success.

MARK SCHMITT | November 3, 2010 | web only

Six years ago, pollster and political scientist Stan Greenberg published a book, The Two Americas, in which he broke down the American electorate of the middle Bush era into new categories. Two of those categories -- the only two I remember -- were the "F-You Boys" and the "F-You Old Men." The categories are so perfectly named that they require little explanation. These economically frustrated men were part of the core Republican coalition but were attracted to rebellious-seeming movements like Ross Perot's 1992 presidential candidacy or pro-wrestler Jesse Ventura's Minnesota gubernatorial campaign. Together, Greenberg estimated, the F-You Boys and their older counterparts added up to about 13 percent of the American electorate, and as of 2004, they were of "declining social and political influence."

Tuesday's election, and months of Tea Party and other well-funded rebellions, brought back to power the F-You Boys, the F-You Men, and -- if exit polls confirm a narrowing of the gender gap -- F-You Women as well, exemplified by Sarah Palin's "mama grizzlies." Economic frustration is on the rise, and the results tracked it -- in the Midwest, in the border South, and particularly in the Rocky Mountain West, states like Arizona and Nevada that once believed they were "recession proof" are now enduring unemployment rates well over 10 percent. But there were also F-You Billionaires, like the Koch Brothers, whose principal economic frustration is that their inherited fortunes might be modestly taxed; and the F-You Wall Streeters, who two years ago supported Barack Obama, and whose industry was saved by government bailout, but who now seem to have convinced themselves that they were the passive victims of a hostile takeover.

But an election based on a rebellious, screw-'em-all mood is a rocky base from which to govern. While the results are a major setback for progressive hopes of further policy changes, they are no victory for either conservatism or for the Republican Party, both of which had to transform and become almost invisible in order to survive.

There have been three major Republican/conservative takeover elections in recent history: 1980, when Ronald Reagan carried 12 seats and control of the Senate; 1994, when Newt Gingrich's Republicans took both houses; and 2010. The first, while in many ways a reaction to the incompetent presidency of Jimmy Carter (a conservative Democrat whose flaws came to symbolize liberalism) unquestionably carried a mandate for conservatism. The second, 1994, was in many ways a reaction to congressional corruption, combined with a long-postponed rejection of Southern Democrats, but Gingrich and his allies took it very seriously -- perhaps too seriously -- as an ideological mandate. This year, though, right-wingers barely even pretended to have a comparable program-cutting agenda. Their main talking point about health reform was that it would cut Medicare benefits. They railed about TARP and the auto bailout, but the former originated in the Bush administration, and they will not attempt to repeal it. They talked about creating jobs by reducing the deficit, which is economic nonsense. Moreover, not one of the policy plans the Republicans produced would reduce the deficit by a penny. Tea Partiers ranted about constitutional and economic schemes that they probably won't even introduce, much less pass.

Much more: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_fyou_election

Logic-defying (to put it mildly) and absurdly lame rationalization.


Sadly, quite consistent with the shift to the right that has been manifesting itself everywhere in the political establishment.