[lbo-talk] The Green Party: a wholly owned subsidiary of the GOP

ravi gadfly at exitleft.org
Thu Aug 3 22:29:13 PDT 2006


At around 3/8/06 7:30 pm, Doug Henwood wrote:
> On Aug 3, 2006, at 7:16 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>> The secret lies in the stupidity of conservatives not to recognize that
>> their best friends belong to the Democratic Party. Confusing the DP with
>> actual progressive politics, they contribute to the Green candidate in
>> the hopes that he will spoil it for the DP.
>
> Actually conservatives like people like Santorum and want them to win.
> They know quite well that their best friends are not in the Democratic
> Party. That's not meant as praise of the Democrats, but you should
> really acquaint yourself with the facts before you start holding forth.
>

I tend to see Carrol's point (if I understand it right): you can have quite a few best friends. Santorum & Co of course are the best of the best, since they are identical to the conservatives, but the next set of best friends can be those that keep Santorum & Co in power. In a situation where the pretence of democracy has to be maintained to keep the public in stupor, they (the Dems) perform a function that is quite important. IOW, the Democrat is a slimy but necessary tool that should not be confused with real enemies (like a real progressive).

Also, when you have a dud like Santorum on your hands, your best bet as a conservative is to get the right Democrat elected. Casey might well be that. IIRC he is quite the "moderate" Democrat, which includes in his case being anti-choice. The last thing you want to do as a conservative is set off even a minor insurrection like what is going on in CT.

I used to argue for (or at least ask for valid criticism of) the ABB line. But the performance of Democrats w.r.t NSA spying, etc, etc, has lent credibility to the argument that the Democrats are truly not an alternative.

--ravi

-- Support something better than yourself: ;-) PeTA: http://www.peta.org/ GreenPeace: http://www.greenpeace.org/ If you have nothing better to do: http://platosbeard.org/



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list