George Packer: Why RW Fringe is Mainstream

George Packer blogs in The New Yorker on how and why the extreme fringe on the right has more influence on the mainstream GOP than their counterparts on the left do on mainstream Democrats.

Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck have far more power in the Republican Party (it sometimes seems to include veto power) than (Naomi) Klein, (Spike) Lee, and (Michael) 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.

UPDATE: Packer could not have asked for a better illustration of his point than GOP Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. As Eric Kleefield points out on Talking Points Memo, she gets nuttier with every public statement.

In an interview on Saturday with local right-wing talk radio host Sue Jeffers, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) warned that the Democrats could soon be requiring America's youth to attend "re-education camps," where they will imbibe the philosophy of the government.

The target of Bachmann's ire is a recently-passed national service bill, expanding Americorps. Although Bachmann said that the language in the present legislation makes service voluntary, she warned that a "Democrat colleague" was proposing to make it mandatory.

--Ballard Burgher