Wallerstein on Cheney's grand strategy

[Cain]

http://fbc.binghamton.edu/258en.htm

Since the election of 2008, both Bush and Rice have been extremely quiet, deliberately. So, to a remarkable degree, has been John McCain, the defeated presidential candidate. Cheney, on the other hand, has become a constant public speaker. He has assumed the role of the leading public voice of the Republican party. More than that, he has called upon the faint of heart to leave Republican ranks. He has applauded the decision of Sen. Arlen Specter to shift his affiliation from Republican to Democrat. He has publicly encouraged Colin Powell and even McCain to do the same. Perhaps George W. Bush will be on this list next.

Most commentators seem to think that, by doing this, Cheney is ensuring the permanent decline of the Republican party. Many Republican politicians, especially the "moderates," are saying so as well. Doesn't Cheney realize this? To think this is to miss the essence of his political strategy.

Cheney believes the odds are that Republicans are going to fare badly in elections for the next four to six years. He thinks the most urgent task is to stop Obama incrementalism from working. The way to do this, he thinks, is to turn U.S. public debate into a center versus (unremitting) right debate. Cheney reasons that, if he does this by shouting loudly and unreasonably, he can force policy outcomes to become a compromise between the already centrist position of Obama and his own. He thinks that this way if we come back in 2016 and look at the outcome, things won't have changed that much at all. He counts on the likelihood that, with a Republican victory in 2016, the country can then resume the ultra-right wing paths Cheney has long advocated and pushed during his years as Vice-President.

Who is right? Obama's incrementalist strategy depends on his continuing popularity. And that in turn depends on the wars and the economy. If the United States policy in the Middle East begins to seem to the American people like a losing quagmire, the left will abandon him. And if the U.S. and the world fall further into depression, and especially if unemployment figures go up considerably, centrist voters will begin to abandon him.

Both negative outcomes are possible, very possible. If either of them happens, and especially if both do, all of Obama's social change policies will go down the drain. And Cheney will have won, hands down. Of course, it is also possible that on the Middle East front and the economic front, results will be more ambiguous - neither great success nor obvious catastrophe. In that case, we may get the social change incrementally, but at best in a watered-down fashion. This is because, by situating himself in the center instead of on the left or at least on the center-left, Obama's tactics have given away a good part of the demands at the outset.

Politics is a tough business. It is also something else. His close political advisor, David Axelrod, recently acknowledged some of these possibilities of negative outcome. He told the New York Times that Obama is "willing to take his chances with the American people." And then he added, "I think he also knows that sometimes you prevail in your arguments and sometimes you don't." When it was suggested to Axelrod that the patience of Americans may not last, he admitted, "That may be. Politics is a fickle business."

Emphasis mine. 

[LMNO]

That makes sense; it also ties into the the observation that the "center" has become ever-more conservative in the past generation (or two).

[Cramulus]

That makes sense; it also ties into the the observation that Cheney is a high ranking Illuminati.

[Cramulus]

you know what this makes me wonder?

if this is correct, and the elite right wing is shaping the discourse by overshooting their mark,
does that suggest that they're actually moderate republicans? They're only acting extreme in order to arrive at a desirable midway compromise?

[Requia ☣]

It makes sense.  I know from my time working with environmentalists theres a tendency to push for extreme measures in order to get reasonable ones on the left.

[Jenne]

It makes sense and yet pisses me off no end into the bargain! 

[Cain]

you know what this makes me wonder?

if this is correct, and the elite right wing is shaping the discourse by overshooting their mark,
does that suggest that they're actually moderate republicans? They're only acting extreme in order to arrive at a desirable midway compromise?

Well, that depends how you're defining moderates.  Since the line between moderate Republicans and Democrats is so thin (see: McCain, Lieberman, Specter for more) and the sort of stuff Dick Cheney proposes is one step removed from something taken out of Czarist Russia, any "compromise" between the two positions falls in a pretty rightwing place anyway.  Maybe Pinochet-lite?  Which is still pretty far out there by the standards of most liberal democracies, for the past 100 years.