Culture wars, 1932-2012

Culture wars are a luxury the country — the G.O.P. included — can no longer afford.

So states Frank Rich, in his Sunday NYT column.

Rich is being a bit too preachy by half: as if he's preaching to the GOP on how it can improve its brand and start winnning more elections.

I am old enough to have my *parents* tell me how it was growing up (as teenagers) in the 1930s' Depression. I think the GOP of 2009-going-forward is going to be like the post-Hoover GOP of the 1930s: attacking the "New Deal" as being "socialism" (and, in 1938, attacking it as being "fascism"), promoting a platform based on how we need to remove government involvement in the economy, and — at the same time — attacking the Democratic Party's "cultural values" as being un-American. Same old same old GOP. Nothing's really changed.

I'm an Obama Democrat (I don't mind saying, but then I'll also say, "I'm not a Democrat, I'm a deconstructionist"), like many in the 1930s were Roosevelt Democrats. At least that's how it feels to me.



(BTW, where is Maureen Dowd? Another vacation?

I get into an "argument" with someone ("RV") who thinks Frank Rich is "substantive" and Maureen Dowd is "frivolous". I find Frank Rich "banal" (that's a wee bit too strong, actually) and Maureen Dowd as being "stimulating, poetic". We have our own mini-culture-war on the left, apparently.)