2. People have asked me why I'm obsessed with the late historian Richard Hofstadter (1916-1970). The short answer is that he's emblematic of the two paths American liberalism can pick: towards social democracy or towards an alliance with moderate Republicans.
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13. Hofstadter's widely influential anti-populism encourages an elite complacency that has repeatedly led to disaster. More thoughts here:https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/richard-hofstadter-library-america-review/ …
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Probably an effect of the differing political environments, but hearing Bush being called a centrist is very weird. And even from a US perspective, Hacker and Pierson describe him as pandering to kleptocrats, using religious extremists, and paving the road to Trump.
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He wrote about the Iraq War being centrist but I see no mention of W, or other policies. W was extreme, but post 9/11 there was bipartisan i.e. centrist support for retaliation via the US war machine. I agree, W led to Tea party, led to MAGA. The FreeDUMB party
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Huh!!? The COVID response is the greatest disaster of our times, dwarfing anything in decades. And the response has failed due to an incompetent populist POTUS and a large % of population deluded by anti-elitist/expertise populism, refusing to take even the most basic measures.
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It is the greatest disaster of our times, but its massive scope can't be laid at the feet of the 'populist' Trump alone, but has been able to wreak such havoc precisely bec of decades of neglect, hollowed out public health infrastructure, the fruits of solid bipartisan austerity
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It was centrist but it was also populist. The Iraq War was fueled by mass anger after 9-11. The opposite of populism isn't centrism, it's technocracy.
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What makes these centrist policies as opposed to extreme policies supported by people who call themselves centrist or people who are centrist in certain spheres but not in others
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Who was to the right of the neocons in foreign policy then? This doesn’t make much sense.
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Yes, Trump was in large part a creation of neocon centrists in the Republican party, but not that alone. It was also due to centrists in the Democratic party, including Obama's 2 terms, right up to the 'Pied Piper' election strategy of Hillary Clinton - another centrist debacle.
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Austerity was a function of right-wing intransigence and nihilism, at least in the US. You have a better case for it having been centrist in like, the EU.
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