Spoiled Whiny White Boys and GOTV

If you caught some of last autumn's posts, you may recall my ill-mannered term for libertarians, those SWWBs. I'm unhappy with those folks because they're like a person who instead of fixing his broken car insists the solution is for everyone to stay home. They systematically work to weaken the social structures that undergird human society. And they provide shelter for some of the worst antisemitic, racist, misogynist, Birch Society rejects.

Today's Backyard Birds By Jan

One of my beefs with the "shrink the government" crowd is how lazy they are. If parts of the government don't work right, fix them. Reform is harder to do than abolition. But when you throw the baby out with the bath water, you're left with no water - and no baby.

Speaking of throwing babies, what about the Right's increasing attention (again) to controlling reproduction? Let's look at who we're talking about. Overall, the Democratic majority in our country has been thwarted by the decades-long triumvirate of

• Fiscal Conservatives (servants of big business and big finance)
• Social Conservatives (the dictatorial religious right)
• Libertarians (government is always the problem, never a solution)

This winter we're seeing the beginning of the end to this coalition. The best reflection of the change is in the weird alliance between Ron Paul and Mitt Romney. Both assail the social conservatives, neither mounts a significant attack on the other.

Libertarians and the religious right have always had a flimsy alliance. Libertarians/Birchers like Ron Paul want to reduce government to just a few functions that they've decided are worthy, while eliminating the laws and social functions that don't interest SWWBs all that much.

This philosophy of government atrophy über alles, imported from Austria, is in direct conflict with the social conservatives who want increased government power that forces others to submit to their religion. The religious right wants laws requiring women to have sonograms before an abortion, or restrict access to birth control, and a whole long list of other determinations about how people use their bodies in sex, marriage, and child bearing. They also want their views on education, evolution, climate change and other topics imposed on the majority.

In the Republican primaries this time around, we've witnessed a subterranean tension rising to the surface, as Paul and Romney have consistently supported each other to weaken the religious zealots.

The media love to characterize Romney's luke-warm reception in his own party as emanating from his personal flaws, and there's data to support this. But another reason for Republican Romney hatred is the growing antipathy of the religious right for the other two members of the Republican coalition.

The religious right has substantial electoral power because its troops are well organized, and because those troops are already conditioned to pony up for causes they're told are important. To the extent that the religious dogmatists stay away from electoral politics when it fails to measure up to their exacting standards, this can make for substantial differences in outcome. Even Romney's very conservative LDS religion fails to mollify many on the religious right who require lock-step adherence to their own quirky version of Christianity.

Since I think it's true that elections these days turn on the preferences of the undecided middle, we should think about how all this Republican drama plays out with that group.

As a baby I was suckled on milk and left-wing politics, I've never heard of anyone in my extended gene pool ever once voting Republican. But nowadays, the tradition of consistent political leanings, along with party affiliation, is by every measure steadily weakening. While the polarizing tendencies of modern politics tend to shrink the political middle, the lack of interest in party or even ideological affiliation makes it expand.

The demographics of the political middle are skewing away from the white skinned, white haired middle class. Some young people, having not yet outgrown adolescent rebellion, drift towards Ron Paul. Overall, however, the middle political group is less tolerant of the religious right's promotion of homophobia, overt misogyny, marriage restrictions, and medieval versions of science. Some numbers of them will vote Republican anyway, and some who are uncomfortable with Romney will likely sit out the fall election along with their religious zealot cousins.

Many others will find a home with President Obama.

We're in an extremely volatile year. If the structured default being arranged for Greece doesn't hold up in the short term, the recovering US economy could plummet again. If war with Iran starts this spring, gasoline hits $5 a gallon, or any of a number of other complex unknowns rears up, the President's reelection could be in jeopardy.

We only have to endure another month of winter, but we're going to be subjected to many more months of campaigning. From this still early vantage point, the Fall's election holds out increasing reasons for hope by progressives like me, but I've never felt the situation to be as fluid, dominated by a such powerful list of unknowns, as it is in 2012.

I'm planning on watching an extremely close race. Democrats are going to have to get under-represented demographic groups out to vote in very large numbers, and mobilize marginal voters whose political support may turn on rejection of alternatives more than support of the Democrats.

I have quite a number of complaints about Mr. Obama. I'm putting that list aside now to work hard for his re-election, and then after the celebrations are over in November, I'll happily turn attention back to fracking, the corrupt financial sector, DOMA, imperial foreign policy, and corporate domination of elections.

More than ever before, 2012 is the Year of GOTV, Get Out The Vote.