Mon 3 Apr 2006
Are a lot of classic Republicans really against Bush?
Posted by David under pass alongs
1 Comment
Who knows how true it is, but I certainly enjoyed [this episode of the K-Chronicles](http://www.buzzle.com/showImage.asp?image=11041). And it sure seems believable. You’d think that anyone against, say, increased government spending would not appreciate the current administration.
It is easy for me to think of the republicans like being the catholics while the democrats are the southern baptists. I think about this from the sense that the catholics have a “top down” power structure; the pope sets direction and orders flow down as they would in any corporate infrastructure. The southern baptists on the other hand are individual churches that join “conventions.” The Long Run Association is one of the largest conventions, spanning most of the southern states. These conventions work by individual pastors joining committees and voting on things. The most the convention can do is remove a church from the convention if the representative pastor starts doing wacky things. There is no “defroking” or excommunication that can happen. This is why, by the way, most tv preachers are southern baptist – you get great brand recognition and no one can tell you that you are not southern baptist…
Anyhow, I’m not quite so sure that model works anymore. For one, the classic catholic/business model is difficult to maintain if it is on a volunteer basis. And as more pressure builds on the republicans for errors (percieved and real) of the administration, the cost/benefit analysis of blindly following orders the top sends down becomes more and more questionable.
(shrug) There’s a lot more I could write on this particular topic to flesh out the idea more, but ya – there’s the idea. I think as more and more pressure builds as we approach elections, we’ll see more and more republicans pulling away from the administration. I think we can effectivly say that for “Grand Movments” the republicans are dead in the water till 2008. Now, all of the backroom dealings and more “minor” changes (ie. the majority of them) the republicans want are still going on. But anything that is large enough to get public attention, again in my opinion, is going to die on the vine. Getting the supreme justices on-line was the last major push (pending all the current justices stay alive, not necesarrly a given at this point) of the republicans…