Paul Krugman has an interesting post up about how Republican identity politics aren’t working as well as they used to, and that’s causing them to flail about, unable to get their shit together. For a long time, the conservative argument has been, “Vote for us and we’ll protect you from the rising tide of intellectuals, non-white people, gays, and women who don’t know their place. We know that you often feel small and unmanned just because you’re ignorant and fearful of difference, but we’re here to tell you that being ignorant and fearful are the marks of True Manhood. As proof, we have George Bush, who will show you the outline of his cock through a fighter pilot uniform, to show that he has one.” You’d think that sort of premise would have a narrow following, but it turns out that if you cobble together people who felt left out of the sexual revolution, the proudly stupid, the racists, and men who live in constant fear that someone’s going to find out that they’re actual pussies, you had enough to put together a coalition that won elections.
Krugman:
The thing that is really driving conservatives crazy, I think, is that their identity politics just isn’t working like it used to. Their whole approach has been based on the belief that Americans vote as if they live in Mayberry, and fear and hate anyone who looks a bit different; now that the country just isn’t like that, they’ve gone mad.
Part of the problem is that Mayberry isn’t what it used to be. Remember that a lot of Bush’s appeal was that he came from West Texas, which is supposed to be the heartland on acid. And the hometown he claims—-Midland—-still has that resentful middle class people playing redneck attitude all over it. But I grew up a couple hours south of that in an area that’s even more West Texas, and well, times are changing there. You’ve got the wind farms and organic beef ranches. Marfa is now a little art colony beloved by yuppies, and I saw someone working the geek chic aesthetic last night wearing a Marfa, TX T-shirt. My hometown apparently now has a record store run by a Lou Reed fanatic, and the county I grew up in, which voted for Bush for the past two elections, went for Obama this time. This, despite having a population density that puts Alaska to shame. Now, this isn’t exactly a huge change—-that part of West Texas has always had a big hippie contingent pushing back against the old boy network, and white people don’t really have a majority and haven’t in a long time—-but it shows that there was a lie at the center of the mythology about Mayberry.