Interesting piece in the WaPo:

washingtonpost.com

The left has a political interest in defining the broad backlash against expanded government as identical to the worst elements of the Tea Party movement — birthers and Birchers, militias and nativists, racists and conspiracy theorists, acolytes of Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo and Lyndon LaRouche.

This characterization fits a predisposition of some on the left to dismiss many of their fellow citizens as dangerous rubes. It does not fit the 60 percent of New Jersey independents, the 66 percent of Virginia independents and the 73 percent of Massachusetts independents who voted for Republicans in recent elections. It does not fit Palinism, which, in spite of populist excesses, usually swims in the conservative mainstream. It does not even fit the polling of Tea Party activists and sympathizers, who report a fairly typical range of conservative views. The Tea Party movement, on the whole, seems to be an intensification of conservative activism, not the triumph of the paranoid style of politics.

But the birthers and Birchers, militias and nativists, racists and conspiracy theorists do exist. Some, having waited decades in deserved obscurity, hope to ride a populist movement like remoras. But there are others, new to political engagement, who have found paranoia and anger intoxicating. They watch Glenn Beck rail against the omnipresent threat of Saul Alinsky, read Ayn Rand’s elevation of egotism and contempt for the weak, listen to Ron Paul attacking the Federal Reserve cabal, and suddenly their resentments become ordered into a theory. Such theories, in politics, can act like a drug, causing addiction, euphoria and psychedelic departures from reality.
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Eventually, these theories require repudiation or else they can taint a political movement — like a little red dye turns a container of water pink. This is precisely what William F. Buckley did in the 1950s and ’60s, repudiating Rand and Robert Welch of the John Birch Society, thereby creating a legitimate conservatism that could elect candidates such as Ronald Reagan.

A similar effort will be required today of conservative political and intellectual leaders. It will not be easy. Sometimes it takes courage to stand before a large crowd and proclaim that two plus two equals four.

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