Never has the political culture of the United States seemed more alien than when watching it.

Andrew Bartlett:

For the last few months, I’ve found it hard to shake the idea that the Liberal Party’s overriding approach to politics and policy has deteriorated to a level little better than where the US Republican Party now finds itself. I think the reason why things have sunk this low has a lot to do with the perverted nature of the so-called culture and history wars which were embraced with such fervour by the Howard government.

The Liberal’s incoherent, self-contradicting approach on a whole range of policy issues – most worryingly even on economic and tax policy – might be sufficiently obscured by their continuing inchoate war on everything as to provide electoral benefits for them. But once rational thinking is no longer required – in fact becomes an impediment to launching the latest barrage – then there is no guarantee it will ever be returned to at some stage down the track.

Charles Richardson: [paywalled]

Fraser’s generation, having lived through the Second World War, could never forget the importance of liberalism; even down to John Howard?—?whose similarities with Fraser are often overlooked?—?it was understood that there were potential enemies to the right as well as to the left.

With the current generation, that realisation has been lost.

The Liberal Party of Fraser’s time, whatever its faults (and there were many), would never have flirted with torture, with creationism, and with the repudiation of international law over Tampa and later Iraq. There are still liberals in the party today, but they are outnumbered and outgunned by the acolytes of an American-style “movement” conservatism?—?militant, intolerant and anti-intellectual.

I’m not sure the Libs are the Tea Party equivalent; that movement has spun out of the Republicans’ control, as the victory of Rand Paul in the Kentucky Senate primary, Governor Charlie Crist’s defection from the GOP in Florida, and the results of the Utah convention show. Mark Lillia, writing in the New York Review of Books has a rather interesting take on the Tea Party – libertarian anti-politics, he suggests. But the Liberals have certainly taken over a huge slice of the Republican/Fox News/Noise Machine playbook. The soil for constructing an electoral majority on these lines may be more fallow in the US than many think – I’m not at all sure the expected Democratic wipeout in the mid terms will eventuate. But I do strongly suspect it’s even more fallow here in Australia. Rudd may be in trouble; but Abbott’s probably still unelectable. In the mean time, we have nothing like a sensible political debate on the issues confronting our country.

Of course, now that one of the two parties has started to act much more like the disciplined parliamentary caucuses found in Westminster democracies, not everyone is so enamoured of this notion.

But it’s interesting to see a bit of momentum building for a Question Time in the US, which would represent a distinctly different relation between the executive and legislature.

I wonder, though, whether many of its proponents have taken the time to watch Australia’s Question Time, or Britain’s Prime Minister’s Questions.

Writing in The Guardian, Michael Tomasky considers:

the degree to which, during the Obama era, American conservatism – already fiercely ideological and obstructionist, operating according to sets of “facts” produced and paid for by oil companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers and other corporate interests – has contrived to go completely barmy.

And the rhetoric of the Republicans often reflects the wider themes of the wingnut blogosphere and talk back radio:

Healthcare is socialism. Saving the auto industry is liberal fascism. Trying to halt global warming is both. Negotiating with Iran – I didn’t even get to foreign policy – is proof that Obama wants to obliterate the US. And to top it all off, the Great Obliterator isn’t even a citizen.

Tomasky implies that UK citizens are lucky that total lunacy hasn’t yet become mainstream in British conservative politics. I’m not so sure we can say the same in Australia. What lies behind all this? I mean, you can trace particular forms of irrationality to causal factors – for instance, the close relationship between polluter interests and climate change denialism. But what allows all this madness to find a receptive (albeit minority) audience? Speculate away!

Update: John Quiggin launches a “Sane Republican Hunt”.

Read all about it at Crooks & Liars.

There’s a big irony here. The right spent the campaign claiming Obama had some secret (Commie!) hidden agenda. But McCain’s Maverick persona masked Republican extremism as usual, and now we’ve got the Ron Paul factor – a bit of projection going on it seems to me.

But, while the possibility that the Republicans could win can’t absolutely be excluded, it certainly is worthwhile posing the question of what happens if they do in fact lose.

Jonathan Freedland is one who has been thinking about where the GOP goes under an Obama presidency, and he makes quite an interesting case that Sarah Palin could position herself as a potential 2012 frontrunner. This is interesting for at least two reasons. First, Palin’s selection – among all the other obvious reasons – was a reflection of the failure of the “conservative movement” to produce a convincing Presidential candidate in the first place. One of the real stories of the swing away from the Republicans is the exhaustion and fracturing of many of the activist factions that were on a roll from the late 90s until just a few years ago. Secondly, it might explain some of the stories about friction between McCain himself and Palin over her tactics in this race recently.

Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama on Meet the Press was based on a form of public political reasoning reasoning that addresses issues not personalities, and engages in analysis not demonization. It is a thoroughgoing critique of McCain’s issue-free, fear-mongering campaign and a rejection of the politics of scapegoating and bullying that have defined the Bush years.

As Sauer-Thompson observes, Powell’s response to the constant invocation of Obama’s “Muslim” middle name is also equally as significant (and there can just be no doubt that the McCain campaign’s linking of Obama to “terrorists” is meant to reinforce such suspicions – which have been put about all year by the noise machine). Powell has joined an increasing number of prominent moderate Republicans – such as Susan Eisenhower and Lincoln Chaffee, to name only a few, who have rejected the political tactics of division and emnity which have characterised recent GOP campaigns. While the wingnuts would no doubt live to shriek another day under an Obama presidency, a popular rejection of the poisonous culture wars would be a very significant event indeed.

(1) Polling is much less reliable in the US than in Australia because of the voluntary voting factor. Polls tend to try to sample either registered voters or use various metrics to sample those whom they predict will vote, but all this is quite difficult and it’s worth remembering that in most states, registration is open until October. In some states you can register on voting day itself. So one result of this is often significant disagreement between various polls, which you can see in spades at the moment. But one conclusion you can draw is that there’s a lot of volatility around at the moment. Many voters won’t make up their minds til after the various debates, and some won’t until Election Day itself, and the same for whether to vote at all. The Gallup tracking poll I mentioned actually gives us two numbers – 50/46 to McCain among registered voters and a much bigger gap of 54/44 among likely voters.

(2) The Presidential election is not a national election. It’s the aggregate of 50 state elections which are more or less important depending on the number of electoral college votes each state has and whether they’re hotly contested or not. So national polls might be misleading, although they can show where the momentum is. For instance, at the moment, while the Gallup poll shows McCain with either a slim or a huge lead, Republican strategists have the McCain/Palin ticket behind or at par in most of the swing states.

(3) There isn’t as homogenous a “swinging vote” as there is in Australia. Partly again it’s voluntary voting. Many of those who aren’t enthusiastic about the choice won’t choose. But each state also has its own demographics and local political culture. So there are multiple groups and demographics “in the middle” campaigns have to appeal to – Obama’s problem is that he doesn’t necessarily have enough of the “Reagan Democrats” in some of the rustbelt states that returned to the Democrats in the Congressional elections in 2006. And “it’s the economy, stupid” doesn’t mean the same thing as it does in Australia. Remember Bill Clinton’s big promise was a middle class tax cut. American voters are – on the whole – far more resistant to state intervention than Australians are, and very open to a narrative of getting the state out of the way – so McCain is cleverly mounting a conservative critique of the Bush administration, incoherent as big tax cuts and being a deficit hawk is. But the opposition to “earmarks” is a feather in his cap. I’m not so sure what Obama’s economic narrative is, aside from the supply side human capital stuff, but he’s going to have to define it better and do that soon.

There are also a stack of other factors that both intersect with and trump economic troubles.

Update: There’s a good discussion of the latest polls at Salon.

Why then are so many people falling over themselves to make po-faced remarks that, oh, well, yes, *cough, cough*, of course Steve Sarah is the perfect candidate – that ol’ maverick magic – and anyone who thinks otherwise is obviously being sexist…