An email from Bruce Moomaw, a keen observer of politics:
There seems to be some kind of honest-to-God showdown brewing, in the
current situation, between the fascist and non-fascist Right -- and the former has always been much bigger, even in modern democratic societies, than any of us would like to think.
Indeed. Of course the fascist right doesn't call itself "fascist," any more than it calls waterboarding and sleep deprivation "torture." It's not entirely clear which side would wind up in control of the Republican Party machinery, given the indifference (at best) of many "social conservatives" to the rule of law and how weak-willed some of the non-fascists have proven to be. Who can forget Arlen Specter proclaiming that allowing arbitrary detention would "take our civilization back 900 years," and then voting for a bill doing precisely that? Not exactly the man you want at your back in a knife-fight.
Of course, that's only one split. There are several cross-cutting splits within the current coalition that calls itself "conservative" but includes libertarians and traditionalists, along with an unsavory mix of plutocrats, theocrats, neocons, nativists, and imperialists, in addition to the usual crooks and opportunists. (Only the anti-imperialist libertarians and traditionalists could be safely counted in the anti-fascist camp, and by themselves they don't constitute a majority of Republicans.)
In addition, and perhaps equally important, is the eternal division between those willing to learn from events and those who merely scan the morning newspaper looking for texts on which to hang their favorite sermons. Steve Teles is correct: Even those of us who aren't conservative ourselves have a big stake in having the reality-based right, the people who try to conform their ideas to the world, win out over the people who insist that the world must conform to their ideas.
Update Matt Yglesias has related thoughts. And Andrew Sullivan makes it clear which side he's on"
I think the right is currently divided between those who hate the American left more than the Islamist right and those who take the opposite view. I'm afraid my dislike of anyone to the left of Joe Lieberman is not as intense as my dislike of religious terrorism. Which is why it's getting lonely out here.
Good luck to him!
Second update If you think Sullivan might be exaggerating when he says that some on the authoritarian right hate liberals more than they do Islamic terrorists, consider this choice bit of dialogue from Hannity and Colmes, featuring talkmeister Neil Boortz:
BOORTZ: Look, Al Qaeda, they could bring in a nuke into this country and kill 100,000 people with a well-placed nuke somewhere. Ok. We would recover from that. It would be a terrible tragedy, but the teachers unions in this country can destroy a generation.
HANNITY: They are.
BOORTZ: Well, they are destroying a generation.
HANNITY: They are ruining our school system.
BOORTZ: They're much more dangerous. We worry about al Qaeda and we should. But at the same time let's not let the teachers union skate.
Is Boortz some sort of fringe figure, safely ignored? Not hardly. He's important enough to rate face-time with the President.