Republicans Blunder Into The Immigration Minefield-Again

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A political cautionary tale

Stinging from an electoral defeat that saw Barack Obama win 71% of the Hispanic vote, Senate Republicans (they tend to be 15% less crazy than House Republicans) have embarked on another legislative push to enact comprehensive immigration reform.  This is not based on any sense that immigration reform is important, or would be good for the country, the economy or their constituents, but rather on a strict political calculation.  The operative assumption is simultaneously that Mitt Romney lost the election because of the Hispanic vote differential, and that all they need to do to win the support of the Hispanic community in America is to somewhat change their position on immigration.

While it certainly isn't obvious that the Republican Party's only problem with Hispanics is their position on immigration, it is also true that any moderation of their most extreme views would help them expand their base of voters.  But therein lies the real problem.  Much of the Republican base, particularly in the South, has shown themselves to be driven by bigotry, racial hatred, nativism and tribal resentment.  The loudest voices in the conservative movement tend to be the most hate-filled, and repeatedly say offensive and ugly things in public venues.

Now that the immigration debate will once again occupy the network news, front pages, magazines and cable tv, led by the odious Fox News, those voices will once again rise in unison, shrieking messages of hatred, divisiveness and intolerance.  In the end, it won't really matter if some watered down immigration reform bill eventually passes - what started out as a political outreach effort will end by setting back the Republican brand among Hispanic Americans by another ten years.

See, the thing is, by definition, voting is limited to American citizens.  They have varying levels of empathy for immigrants, both legal and illegal, and varying public policy preferences.  But the Hispanic-American citizens very much tend to be part of Mitt Romney's '47%', poor, uninsured, incarcerated, high-school dropouts.  They are disproportionately at the bottom of the socio-economic scale, and so, like their fellow fortyseven percenters, the ideology and policy goals of the Republican party, even without the bigotry and nativism, aren't going to resonate with that community.  What difference will it make to a family from El Salvador if they are devout Catholics who are pro-life if they are unemployed and their children are sick? Which message is going to earn their support - "you're on your own" or "government has a role in helping you to succeed"?

So, once again, the Republicans find themselves in a self-inflicted lose-lose debate.  Any support for legalizing the immigrants already in the US, for anything that might lead to citizenship for them, for any kind of moderating policy, even one as common sense as a Guest Worker Program will bring out the worst of the Republican messages on race and ethnicity, from Rush Limbaugh to Michelle Malkin to Tom Tancredo.  And those messages of hatred and intolerance will poison the well for immigration reform yet again.  And even if some cobbled-together coalition of Democrats trying to fix a broken system and Republicans trying to fix a broken party is ultimately able to pass something, it won't change the basic political and economic calculation, and Hispanics will continue to support the party that is obviously working to help them, not imprison and deport them.
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Not Even With a Whimper...

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How I saw it all playing out in '06

Living through the ugly brutality and breathtaking hubris of the GW Bush years, I increasingly became convinced of one thing.  Though it was hard to say when it might happen, it was crystal clear to me that the American people were being pushed to the breaking point, that the rise of the authoritarian surveillance state that eviscerated the fourth amendment and assumed everyone was a criminal to be watched and regularly interrogated alongside the aggressive militarization of the United States, the blatant, unapologetic, almost gleeful corruption and an intentional rush toward massive inequality would eventually cause the people to rise up and reassert their values.  I took it as nothing less than an article of faith that, at some point, protest and civil disobedience would lead to violent clashes, and as the authoritarian state grew increasingly brutal in its defense of its own privilege, that violence would lead to some kind of open revolt, as the people, seeing their future and that of their children stolen from them, waged war against those who were so clearly stealing it.

Part of the basis for my certainty around this future was the incredible availability of powerful, lethal small arms in American Communities.  That, coupled with what can only be described as the institutionalization of two "tribes" in America, loosely described as "Liberal" and "Conservative" and the rise of ideological hatred and intolerance, seemed to direct all roads to a clash of ideas, of ideals, of values, of hope vs. power.

And when that populist fury exploded with the 'Occupy' protests, I could sense it was beginning.  Sure enough, the mechanisms of the state fought back with excessive violence, and the hate from the 'tea-party' Right was palpable.  All the pieces were in place for the expected paroxysm that would remake America into something different than what it had become.  Then the weather turned cold.  The new TV season started.  People lost interest, wandered off, went home.  Occupy found itself abandoned, without occupants.  Once again, Americans found things just weren't bad enough to sustain real effort, real sacrifice.  They could make it another year, probably, if they didn't get sick and the car didn't break and the rent didn't increase TOO much.

And now we see the rabid, spittle-spewing tea-partying right wing threatening violent revolution, blood in the streets, but not over inequality or an opaque, authoritarian government, but over...proposed firearms regulations.  They say THIS is the tyranny that we have these guns to resist.  THIS is the liberal government overreach that will push us beyond our limits.  Fear us, they say, for we are legion. But you know what?  If we have learned anything from our experience in the last 25 years, it's that this is all talk, no matter how much the individuals believe the fantasy.  When confronted with the stark choice of violent, armed revolt or a couple beers and a barbecued tri-tip, the revolution begins to look less inviting.  And when life, even as it is today, is measured against prison or death, the choice becomes simple, and the talk trails off to a self-conscious silence.

Make no mistake, we can certainly expect to see right-wing acts of violence and domestic terrorism in the four remaining years of the Obama era.  The rhetoric has gotten far too overheated, the issues framed in such apocalyptic, existential terms, that there are those with the right combination of mental illness and ideological indoctrination who will break things and hurt people.  Oklahoma City and Waco and Ruby Ridge have taught us all we need to know about that toxic cocktail.  But will their friends and fellow travelers rise up with them, beginning a fight for the soul of America?  No, of course not.  Their friends will read the newspaper, shake their heads and head off to another day at work.  Because Americans just aren't suffering in large enough numbers, the future is insufficiently bleak and there is still far too much hope for any real popular rebellion.

But there is no hope of ever fixing the system from within.  The electoral system is bizarre, the system of governance is an obsolete oddity, and the entire process is deeply corrupt at its very core.  Either the wealthy will find a way to keep the system in some kind of equilibrium, with enough people earning enough money to keep a lid on the fear, frustration and hopelessness over the long term, or, much more likely in my estimation, they will continue to follow the edicts of their own greed and hubris, and at some point Americans will burn it down and start over.  But if we have learned anything, it's that a reckoning like that is a long way off.
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Intervention in Mali - Who's the Enemy?

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French Freedom Fighter

The narrative reads just the same as it did in Afghanistan and Iraq.  The West needs to intervene in Mali because the North was captured by groups of al Quaeda influenced and supported Jihadis who will launch regional and even international terrorist attacks from any secure base they can take.  But I'm not sure that's the real reason, even as I am certain it should not be.  It seems likely that it has been judged to be the most effective marketing message supporting intervention, like selling laundry detergent on the basis of how it smells, rather than how well it cleans your clothes.

Mali is just the latest epicenter for the argument over international humanitarian intervention.  But it shouldn't be.  Mali is not like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Syria.  In general, I support the theory of humanitarian intervention.  I believe that wealthy, powerful nations have some responsibility to the rest of the world, and to sit idly by and watch thousands of innocent civilians be slaughtered by powerful military or para-military forces, as they did in Rwanda and Bosnia, is just as much a war crime as any prosecuted at Nuremburg.  The key, however, must be a realistic assessment of the benefits and shortcomings of such an intervention.  It is clear, for example, that military action against the regime in Syria would widen the conflict and result in more death and suffering, while making any post-conflict rapprochement more difficult.

Mali is different in a number of ways.  By tradition, the Malian people are colorful and inclusive, a community of merchants, farmers and traders who love music, dancing and celebration.  While 90% Muslim, Mali was not one of those dark grey nations of fundamentalist brutality and vicious misogyny. The population in the south, outside the harsh environment of the Sahara, is African, largely descended from slaves captured farther south.  In the North, the population - about 10% of the country as a whole - is more Arab and Berber, with stronger historical ties to Egypt and Arabia than with Africa.  So when the latest in a series of Tuareg separatist revolts was co-opted by Arab Jihadists, primarily funded by Wahabbi fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia, the Malian population had every reason to fear.  And sure enough, the foreign occupiers imposed a savage interpretation of Shari'a Law, requiring beards and veils, banning music and dance, destroying ancient Sufi shrines and mutilating those it found to be criminals.

It's an interesting thing about fundamentalist religious law.  It is always something that is desired by a minority, and must be imposed on the larger population.  People very seldom want their leadership to control their lives at that level, and they aren't typically overjoyed to have such a stringent set of rules enforced in such a violent and uncompromising fashion.  So the Malian government asked the world for help.  And their former Colonial master, France, had fortunately maintained close economic and diplomatic ties to the government in Bamako.

So keep these distinctions in mind when you read about the conflict in Mali, and think about yet another Western intervention.  First, the West isn't acting to topple the existing regime, they are defending it.  Sure, the coup makes that somewhat problematic, but certainly not so much as an arbitrary decision to impose "regime change".  Second, the government ASKED for help.  This isn't an invasion, but welcome assistance to a government and a people who are not powerful enough to protect themselves and their way of life.  And this isn't, no matter what they tell you, about "terrorists".  Islamic fundamentalists, Jihadis and terrorists are all completely different things.  But the foreigners are the ones who invaded Mali, with the intention of imposing an unwanted and primitive theocratic government, one that is the antithesis of democratic governance and human rights.  And finally, for once, the US is not taking the lead.  The French are perfectly capable of handling this intervention, are better suited to it culturally and linguistically, and they are the ones with all the history in the region.  If they want airlift, intelligence or air tanker support from the US, I can't see why that would be a problem.  The US should take the support role rather than the lead much more often, and this is a very good opportunity for America and the world to learn that lesson.

But most of all this is a clear-cut case of a weak nation in need of help, and the wealthy and powerful nations recognizing their obligation to provide that assistance.  This time it's not about oil, not about terrorism, not even about American Exceptionalism - it's just an opportunity to defend the powerless against the powerful, and the world could use a little more of that these days.
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Free-Floating Angst

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It's amazing, when you start to think about it, how much of our current political dysfunction is predicated on fears that don't seem to be based in any sort of observable reality.  On the right, there is this constant fear that we stand on the precipice of Socialism, and that at any moment the "Liberals" in Washington will confiscate the guns in civilian hands.  On the other side of the aisle, there is a constant refrain that everybody is trying to cut social insurance programs.  And everybody is convinced that the deficit is the primary challenge to American governance.

Of course, everyone actually knows that regulated free-market capitalism with some social insurance programs is not anything like Socialism, but the unfocused trepidation the generally misunderstood word creates is useful to the proponents of theory.  As long as there have been communities, the political leaders have understood that if their policy goals were popular, they would be cheerfully implemented, but if they were unpopular it was necessary to frame them in terms of something even worse.  Thus, the messaging goes, we must accept the sickness and death of millions of uninsured Americans because the alternative is the complete destruction of America as we know it.  Is this logical?  Does it pass even the most careless empirical test?  Of course not - but therein lies the true power of ideology - play on people's fears, hatred, bigotry and resentments, and they will willingly believe whatever outrageous story you choose to tell them, because they understand that the outcome will harm those they hate and fear.

And then there is the ridiculous panic that swells up from the fever dreams of the American Political Right every time someone tries to have a common sense conversation about reducing gun violence in America.  The uncharitable interpretation would be that conservatives don't care about the thousands of deaths caused by the easy availability of deadly weapons, but that can't be right, can it?  After all, they have rushed to spend trillions and abrogate whole swaths of the Constitution and basic American values in the aftermath of the 3000 lives lost over a decade ago in the 9/11 attacks.  So why, then, do so many on the Right conflate basic regulation with outright bans and even confiscation?  There are several reasons, but they are so tightly bundled and tangled it has become impossible to tell where one stops and the next begins.  First there is the rise of apocalyptic rhetoric.  In American politics, with a near-perfect parallel in entertainment, it has come to be viewed as necessary that every problem be an existential one.  The conclusion seems to be that only by increasing the stakes to an unacceptable level can they expect to persuade people to accept their ideologically favored "solution", whatever it might be.  There is also undeniably an essential American-ness about guns, from John Wayne and Audie Murphy to Arnold Swartzeneger and Sylvester Stalone.  To many, guns are part of their identity and they actually do fear any reduction in their access to them.  And there is the evolution of the NRA from an organization representing gun owners to one representing gun manufacturers and sellers, with the attendant rise in highly professional marketing communications that enlist their customers in the protection of their profits.  And they are very, very good at it.

Every bit as calculated and disingenuous is the insistence by so many on the left that just about everybody in Washington is working to reduce social insurance programs, primarily Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  This is taken as an article of faith and repeated endlessly, alongside breathless predictions of the impending end to the any government safety net expenditures.  The problem, of course, is it's pretty hard to find any actual evidence of this position.

In the ACA, legislators agreed to cut almost a trillion dollars out of Medicare, but it was entirely on the provider side - no cuts to benefits whatsoever.  And considering how much more Americans pay for health care services than any other nation, cuts to the providers are quite reasonable.  It's also true that President Obama offered a proposal during budget negotiations to reduce Social Security benefits, but everyone knew it was a red herring, an offer tied to a trillion dollars in tax increases that the Republicans would never accept, and so was nothing but a negotiating tactic.  For people to refuse to acknowledge that the proposal could never pass the House and therefore would never arrive on the President's desk for signature is to be intentionally obtuse, and that tends to signify an ideological agenda rather than an honest evaluation of the political environment.  Then there was the foul GW Bush, who unhesitatingly proposed a privatization scheme for Social Security.  Right Wing think tanks and pundits applauded loudly, but elected officials were notably less sanguine.  In fact, even with the President's cheerleading, no legislative proposal ever even went to committee.  It was President Bush's worst political defeat.  Even now, Republicans demand something they vaguely call "entitlement reform", but they are pathologically unwilling to present specific proposals.  That's because, if you'll recall, they used even the ACA's cuts to Medicare providers as a way to attack the President for "cutting Medicare".  Legislators know that to support specific cuts to social programs leaves them exposed to highly effective political attacks, because outside of Washington DC, social insurance programs are quite popular.   It is telling that even the noxious "Ryan Budget" has backed away from a strict voucherization approach to Medicare, and even so Republicans have suffered repeatedly at the polls for their budgetary fantasies.

And, of course, everybody reaches for that ready-made budgetary cudgel, deficit spending, to beat the other side about the head and shoulders in support of whatever political agenda they wish to demand on any given day.  Deficit financing, of course, is a perfectly normal and sound method of government funding, and is often even the preferred method.  But after decades of using the deficit as a boogie man, no one in Washington has the political courage to say that for fear of looking, quite rightly, like a disingenuous hypocrite.  By now, conventional wisdom has taken hold - people simply KNOW that the deficit is a huge problem that must be "solved", and if and when it is, there will be economic bliss and budgetary peace now and forever amen.  Meanwhile, all the talk of deficit reduction has hurt the economy and prolonged very high unemployment without addressing a single real issue.

It is true that the American system of governance is obsolete, deeply corrupt and dysfunctional, while the electoral system is antiquated and subject to all manner of manipulation and warped incentives.  But even so, there are problems we could be addressing, progress we could be making, people and communities we could be helping if only we were arguing about REAL problems instead of imaginary ones.  The problems we create in our paranoid fantasies and ideological manipulation can never be solved, because we can never imagine a world without them.  And so we occupy all the narrow ground our system allows us to govern ourselves screaming lies and slogans back and forth across the intellectual wasteland of our stunted discourse.
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Musings On the Gun Debate

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Everybody's an idiot.  This debate may be unique amongst all political arguments for its overwhelming bi-partisan stupidity, delusion and magical thinking.  Sure, the health care debate was incredibly annoying, but at least one side was thoughtful, compassionate, pragmatic and mostly honest.  It was the other side of the debate, with it's lies and paranoia and shrieking about everything from Socialism to Death Panels that provided the ignorance and stupidity that fueled most of the misery.  But now, in a post Sandy Hook political environment that opens the window to some kind of common sense action to reduce the horrific toll of gun violence and the associated terror, no one on either side seems capable of focusing on the basic truths and realities - instead, they all keep shrieking slogans and lies at each other without either thinking about the problem or listening to calm, logical voices.

On the fragility of the 2nd Amendment:
Of course, the leading madness and delusion comes from the Right, primarily due to their recent tendency to take the most extreme, absolutist position on every issue and refuse to consider anything less.  In this ideologically paranoid worldview, there are only two choices - Freedom and Tyranny.  Or in this case, unfettered access to all firearms by all Americans, with no limitations on the right to own, carry or use guns; or a blanket government ban on firearms, complete with criminalization and confiscation.  Now all absolutist and binary positions are stupid, because they prevent thoughtful common sense from entering into the discussion.  It's very easy to see a path to a set of regulations that would reduce the availability of guns in our communities while remaining broadly compatible with the Constitutional Guarantee.  For a group of people so focused on a constitutional provision, they seem to believe it is terribly weak.  In their fevered paranoia, they repeatedly make the claim that "the government" or "the President" is going to ban or confiscate their guns.  But they never seem to think through exactly how this might happen - which would bring them to quickly conclude it cannot.  The government cannot ban guns unless legislators could pass a bill through both houses, the President signed it and the Supreme Court found it to be constitutional.  Since this is a constitutional guarantee we're talking about, that obviously could not happen.  If the President ordered civilian firearms to be confiscated, that order would be illegal and would not be carried out, and the President would very likely be impeached.  The fact of the second amendment and it's broad interpretation by the courts stands as the protector of gun ownership rights, and as a very real practical limitation on those would seek to restrict those rights.  So it is within the terms of the US Constitution that we should all be able to agree on effective regulation.  That we can't is the result of greed, paranoia and delusion.

Nobody NEEDS an AR-15:
Meanwhile, over on the left we're having a pointless argument about banning some particular rifles, not because we have a particular problem with them - they're used in less than 1% of the shootings in America - but, we are informed, nobody needs an assault rifle.  I hear an important argument framed in such a dishonest and meaningless manner and it makes my head hurt.  The statement is true, of course, but then, you can't debate rights and regulations based on need.  What do people need?  Some food, a place to sleep, a pair of trousers.  We don't need golf, or a front lawn, or a ski boat, or carpeting or a flat screen teevee or running shoes or diamond rings or Cadillac Escalades or cigarettes or chocolate chip cookies.  What's need got to do with anything?  Why does anyone think they can frame ANY issue (beyond perhaps health care) in terms of need?  Nobody claimed to need an AR-15, so taking the position nobody does need one gets us not one tiny step closer to solving any real world problem.

Let's just ban semi automatic firearms:
You see an awfully lot of ink and pixels wasted with this idiocy.  Even setting aside that fact that it's both politically and constitutionally impossible - sometimes you have to discuss solutions that can't be implemented in the current political environment - it's also legislatively and practically impossible.  What does "semi automatic" mean?  At it's core, one could take the position that it refers to a gun that fires repeatedly with no user interaction but the pull of the trigger.  But that also includes revolvers and double barreled rifles and shotguns.  And even within the intended universe of self-loading rifles and handguns, there are a huge number of different mechanical implementations.  You couldn't write a law that would cover them.  But, just for fun, let's say you did.  Apparently, the assumption is that the gun makers, with thousands of brilliant designers and engineers would simply shrug their shoulders and run up the white flag.  As they would tell you on the rifle range, Maggies Drawers - clean miss.  They would design new actions that were compliant with the law.  And if you updated the law, they would design further changes.  It simply isn't a battle you can win if you start with a constitutional guarantee that has been broadly upheld by the Supreme Court.


The Limits of Legislation:
Between the constitutional guarantee (which can't be changed) and the legislative environment (which can) there are, tragically, very tight limits to what can be done about gun violence in America today.  I've spoken at length about the practical problems with type bans and magazine capacity limitations, but it's important to recognize that in spite of their virtually non-existent impact on firearms crimes in the US, it's unlikely that even these mostly symbolic actions will be enacted by Congress.  So a realistic approach would take three simultaneous directions.  First, work to keep effective, common sense gun regulations in the public dialog.  This should include product liability and insurance mandates, along with reassurances that the Second amendment guarantee of the right to gun ownership isn't going away in our lifetimes.  Second, we should encourage and support the Executive to take whatever actions they can take through commerce and import regulations.  Anything that can begin to reduce the nightly body count that doesn't depend on courageous congressional action should be done - but the President has to believe it is good politics, not just good policy.  Third, we need to do a better job of electing congresspeople who will stand up to the gun lobby and work to reduce the levels of gun violence, not simply to increase the profits of the gun industry.
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Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead - Maybe

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And then there's Sequestration, and then
there's the Continuing Resolution, and then...

I keep reading that the Debt Ceiling crisis is over.  That the Republicans had a retreat in which they "talked their membership down from the ledge", convincing them of the futility and self-destructiveness of putting the full faith and credit of the United States at risk.  Interestingly, reports out of the retreat also indicate that members were encouraged to stop saying stupid and hurtful things about rape.  There's something important to be learned about a political movement that has to tell it's most successful professional politicians that there is little advantage to be gained in saying offensive things about rape.

But the way it's being described, the Republican House leadership will bring a debt ceiling increase up for a vote, with most of their members voting no or "present" and allowing it to pass with overwhelming Democratic support, once again violating the increasingly pointless Hastert Rule.  But it's also being reported that this will be only a 3 month extension and it will come with legislation requiring Congress to pass a budget in that 90 day period on pain of the withholding of Congressional salary.

So far, I haven't heard a response to these positions from the White House, which is probably reasonable in that there has been no formal proposal or specific legislation, so an official response would be premature.  But a lot of the information available has me wondering if we have truly averted a debt ceiling crisis yet.  First of all, would Obama sign a 3 month extension, even if it was clean?  That doesn't really solve the problem of legislation by hostage taking - it's like letting the hostage free, but keeping him under house arrest with a GPS tracker around his ankle.  Obama could rightfully say that there's no kicking THIS can down the road, but he risks being viewed as the one who caused the crisis if it then leads to economic damage.

More problematic than that is the threat of attaching the Budget condition to the debt ceiling increase.  The President has been very clear that he will not allow any conditions to be imposed in exchange for increasing the debt limit, and that would violate the spirit, even if not the letter of that insistence.  There are a lot of people on the political left congratulating the President, exulting in their perceived proof that "Hardball Works".  An administration so often accused of negotiating with itself and preemptively capitulating, they say, has won its most important political victory by drawing a line in the sand.  It will not sit well if there is, ultimately, any condition attached to the "clean" debt ceiling increase they have been demanding.

The demand itself, for that matter, is more Republican political buffoonery.  It's true that Congress has not passed a budget in years, but that's just a matter of legislators not wanting to see their names attached to either unpopular spending or unpopular cuts.  And this years budget is determined already, under the terms of the Budget Control Act passed in 2011, so there's really no need for one, other than those quaint notions of transparency and accountability.  But it's the trigger they would impose that is the real head scratcher here.  If either House of Congress doesn't pass a budget in 90 days, we are told, the legislation would require the withholding of their salary.  Beyond the obviously questionable strategy of taking themselves hostage, it has been pointed out that under the 27th Amendment this is very likely not constitutional.  This from the very people who just last week spent a day reading the Constitution aloud on the floor of the House of Representatives.  I guess none of them was actually listening.

Ultimately, of course, it seems very likely that the President will get a debt limit bill he is willing to sign.  It just doesn't seem that the Republican leadership is willing to own the economic consequences of default.  But, based on what we know so far, it certainly seems as if pronouncements that the crisis has passed might be more than a little premature.
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Credit Where Credit Is Due

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Ladies and Gentlemen, The Doughy Pantload

One of the most relentlessly mocked characters in the ranks of the American Political Right is author, pundit and blogger Jonah Goldberg.  And he has earned every bit of that mockery and opprobrium.  He first came to prominence through the vile and grotesque actions of  his mother, Lucianne S. Goldberg in the Monica Lewinsky affair.  His most noteworthy accomplishment was writing the book "Liberal Fascism" in which the premise is so prima facie, indefensibly wrong that the entire thing reads more like satire than any scholarly political work.  And his near legendary laziness, coupled with a lack of physical fitness and a tendency to whine and snivel when challenged led the left-wing blogosphere to christen him with the moniker "Doughy Pantload".

So it was with substantial shock that I read his latest column in the online venue of National Review, pointed there by an equally surprised mention on The Atlantic website.  In the context of another typical bit of conservative myth-making, or more accurately perhaps "myth repeating", Goldberg actually comes out and says something that virtually no one in the movement Conservative intellectual leadership has been able or willing to acknowledge:

Nonetheless, conservatism is a mass-market enterprise these days, for good and for ill.
The good is obvious. The ill is less understood. For starters, the movement has an unhealthy share of hucksters eager to make money from stirring rage, paranoia, and an ill-defined sense of betrayal with little concern for the real political success that can come only with persuading the unconverted. 

A conservative journalist or activist can now make a decent living while never once bothering to persuade a liberal. Telling people only what they want to hear has become a vocation. Worse, it’s possible to be a rank-and-file conservative without once being exposed to a good liberal argument. Many liberals lived in such an ideological cocoon for decades, which is one reason conservatives won so many arguments early on. Having the right emulate that echo chamber helps no one.

Now, critically, he names no names, adopting a weird passive-voice format to point out that "the movement has an unhealthy share of hucksters".  It seems, at first glance, that if your core ideology were being negatively impacted by "hucksters", your primary obligation would be to call them out and have them driven from the ecosystem.  There is, admittedly, a bit of an agency problem here, when this sudden outbreak of honesty and self-awareness comes in the form of projection from a pathetic third tier huckster in his own right.  Jonah knows well the consequences of challenging the top tier, the Limbaughs and Becks and Hannitys that dominate the very conservative echo chamber he laments, and realizes clearly that any specificity in these allegations would lead to his own exposure as the worst of the those who "make money from stirring rage, paranoia, and an ill-defined sense of betrayal...".

To be fair, his challenge was that the very nature of modern movement conservatism makes the goal impossible.  There is no viable ideas left on the right, nothing that contributes to freedom or economic growth or the betterment of their constituency at large.  They have become nothing but the mouthpiece for the wealthy, a wholly owned subsidiary of Rich White Men Inc., playing on the bigotry, sectarian hatred and tribal resentments of a dwindling population for what remains of their power.  If they had anything of value to contribute to the discussion, this call for recognition for those ideas would serve a valuable purpose.  Instead it only offers us a view into a cynical political mindset, one whose leadership recognizes what they do and how they do it, and yet finds it too hard and too risky to change course.

When their leading budget wonk, Paul Ryan, supported wholeheartedly by their leading think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, devise a budget where non-defense discretionary spending falls below 4% of GDP, you know they aren't telling the truth.  When their candidate for President calls half the population of the nation he proposes to lead the enemy, to be defeated and silenced, you know whom they believe they serve.  They are all, from the very top, hucksters and con men, who recognize that their policy goals are toxic and destructive but still use every means at their disposal to implement them on behalf of those to whom they sold, not just their souls, but their minds too.

But kudos nonetheless to Jonah Goldberg.  He didn't try to solve the problem, and he didn't even identify it correctly, but he admitted it exists.  He said clearly what so many of his peers would stand and deny - that the opinion leaders of the American Political Right are dishonest, exploiting hatred and fear and resentment to make money for themselves and gain power for those who support them.  He even goes so far as to recognize the existence of the "echo chamber", that place where ideas without substance can gain currency among those who no longer even consider opposing arguments.  He's also right that the Republican Party is trapped and failing due to it's original successes - it's choice to defend the powerful against the powerless led to much early opportunity, but, having picked all the low hanging fruit, they are left to try to implement the least popular and most destructive portions of their agenda, in a nation that increasing grows exhausted at the inequality, brutality and dysfunction of its political leadership.
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