Monday, February 27, 2012

Mayan Calendar ending refers to the GOP of today?

 http://nymag.com/news/features/gop-primary-chait-2012-3/

 This article is very important to the discussions we had in class prior to break.

"...its last chance to exercise power in its current form, as a party of anti-government fundamentalism powered by sublimated white Christian identity politics."

This article, appearing in New York Magazine, brings together many of the events coinciding with the election of Barack Obama. The article focuses on what is really a Schumpeterian outcome: The impending destruction of the current Republican party.  The article brings the idea forward of a last ditch effort by the Republicans to maintain the status quo: the old-school base that disliked welfare and followed ethnocentric rhetoric.

Check it out. You won't be disappointed.
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1 comment:

  1. DTFebruary 27, 2012 at 6:24 PM

    Interesting. While it's a thoroughly controversial claim that Republicans are engaged in some latter-day (for their patrons) "identity politics of Christian whiteness," it's an idea that political science has given some serious consideration to.

    Check out the following JSTOR link to a very keen article by Joel Olson, abstracted below.

    Mini Symposium: American Political Development through the Lens of Race

    Whiteness and the Polarization of American Politics
    Formats Available in JSTOR: Page Scan, PDF

    Abstract
    Bibliographic Information
    Author Information
    Notes and References
    Abstract(back to top)
    Scholars tend to agree that American politics has become polarized along partisan and ideological lines, yet the causes of polarization are in much dispute. The author argues that polarization and the culture wars are a consequence, in part, of the changing nature of white identity after the civil rights movement. The transformation of whiteness from a form of social standing to a norm produced ressentiment among whites, which Republican strategists mobilized by depicting Democrats as the party of intellectual snobs and undeserving rabble and the GOP as the party of the virtuous middle. Normalizing this middle and the snobs as white polarized whites along partisan and ideological lines, creating an incentive to win votes by appealing to hot-button cultural issues such as welfare, abortion, and gay marriage.

    Bibliographic Information(back to top)
    Whiteness and the Polarization of American Politics
    Joel Olson
    Political Research Quarterly
    Vol. 61, No. 4 (Dec., 2008) (pp. 704-718)

    Cheers,
    DT

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