Yesterday I discussed an article which notes that Democrats are heavily influenced by moderates and even conservatives while the Republican Party is dominated by the extremes. This has been a common observation made by many political observers. George Packer recently expressed similar views, noting the paranoia often seen from the right. Packer was criticized by Jonah Goldberg who cited what might be comparable degrees of paranoia from some on the left. Packer responded, pointing out the fact that those on the far left are outside the mainstream of the Democratic Party while the more paranoid views from the right are seen in mainstream conservative and Republican belief:P
There’s plenty of criticism of Klein, Moore, Nicholson Baker, and other paranoid stylists of the left in my book on Iraq, “The Assassins’ Gate.” I didn’t mention them in discussing Hofstadter and the current reaction to Obama for this reason: Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck have far more power in the Republican Party (it sometimes seems to include veto power) than Klein, Lee, and Moore have in the Democratic Party. The views of right-wing commentators in the grip of the paranoid style (Obama is a stealth radical, the Democrats are imposing socialism) are much closer to mainstream conservative and Republican belief than the views of their counterparts on the left (the levees in New Orleans were blown up by the government, the White House had something to do with 9/11) are to mainstream liberal and Democratic belief. The reasons are complex, but I would list these: the evangelical and occasionally messianic fervor that animates a part of the Republican base; the atmosphere of siege and the self-identification of conservatives as insurgents even when they monopolized political power; the influence of ideology over movement conservatives, and their deep hostility to compromise; the fact that modern conservatism has been a movement, which modern liberalism has not.
