The Siren's Song of Supply-Side Sodomy
Over at the imaginitively titled SpainMedia Dan thinks he has the prescription for how to put Spain's (right/center-right) Popular Party back on top: embrace homosexuals [I couldn't resist], abortion and cut out all the rest of the anachronistic popery:
All of which has worked so famously well for the Tories in the UK. When he's not begging the question, Nicholls rests his argument principally upon the success of Tony Blair at re-branding Labour to sop up the disaffected middling types whom the Tories had lost by, presumably, sliding too far to the right and putting on the strait jacket of values conservatism. But the real comparison of the PP is with the Tories and the cul de sac in which they find themselves for having followed too closely Dan's advice. After all the socially conscious mincing about by Ian Duncan Smith the Tories fell even further.
In the case of the PP, they are first off, a rightish sort of party with a platform that, after Aznar, owes much more to Ronald Reagan than to any of the avatars of the continental right. Looking to the left of the PP we see PSOE--commited champions of the dying EU--and IU ever poised to steal small scraps of the electorate that will never be in play for the PP anyhow. The "economically centre-right but socially liberal" voter invoked above is poorly cast. Among those for whom the social issues of gay "marriage" and abortion are righteous causes, there are far more credible representatives of these tribal identifications on the left vanguard than anywhere on the right, and no amount of supply-side reforms is gonna make them identify as traitors to the tribe. Given how low abortion rates are in Spain (although climbing at a horrifying rate), abortion is simply not a decisive issue even on the centre-left, to say nothing of the centre-right. Did Aznar need to mute his stance on abortion to achieve either his victories or his reforms? The minority on the left for whom these social questions were essential bolted to IU, and PSOE could never manage to raid the regional parties' bases to make up for the loss. At least not until March 2004. The PP did not come to power on their social platform, nor did they fall out of power on those grounds.
It's quite likely that, in the aggregate, the fractious Spanish electorate is somewhat to the left of the PP on abortion, but it is FAR to the right of the PSOE on gay "marriage" and regional separatism. Although conservatives in Spain, as everywhere, are loath to take to the streets, record crowds turned out in the past year for the two largest demonstrations in the history of Spanish democracy. These demonstrations were against: gay "marriage" and the education reform propounded by Zapatero. It was back in June when Zapatero's government suffered its first real slump in public opinion, just as the legislature took up his proposal to re-define marriage.
Now is hardly the time for the PP to abandon principles for votes that will never materialize. Ideas and policies matter, and as Greece's social security debt swells above 25% of GDP with other European nations' balance sheets not far behind, the economic ideals that Aznar enshrined in the PP will wear very well indeed. The cruel realities of demography too will play a part: at 1.1 children per fertile woman, the increasingly fewer native Spaniards, reluctant to throw their immediate pleasures over for family life, are going to be tough to persuade that they need to shell out at steeply progressive rates for the top-heavy mass about to join the pensioned ranks within the next ten years. A more disaffected north African immigrant population will be even less likely to opt for confiscatory taxation that must be diverted from other social programs to kafir pensioners.
Seen in the long term, Nicholls's suggestions become only more obtuse. In a little over a generation, Spain will have lost about 30% of its native-born population. Who is to make this up? This demographic decline is not irreversible, but will certainly accelerate with liberal abortion and the assault upon marriage. Since Zapatero loosened restrictions, an estimated 20,ooo more Spanish citizens have been dismembered in utero. In purely practical terms, Spain can ill afford to lose this many native-born citizens who would otherwise strengthen the warp and weft of its societal fabric. Will the sort of immigrants that Spain is welcoming be able to make this up?
Can a society that won't even welcome their own naturally born children welcome the world's least assimilable immigrants? Perhaps Carlos, Emilio's "wife," will welcome them with a Jell-O mold.
The PP will have its work cut out in trying to lessen the influence of traditional Catholic sectors within the party, but the religious right stalwart PP voter doesn’t really have anywhere else to go, and a new outlook will attract more forward-thinking voters from the centre right who are often turned off by the anachronistic views of a party dominated by well-dressed rednecks.
....the PP also needs to shake off its Alf Garnett image in social issues: strongly influenced by the church, the party continually fires off tirades against homosexuals, abortion, secular education and anything deemed to be ‘politically correct’, leaving any economically centre-right but socially liberal voters desperately scrambling round for an alternative.
All of which has worked so famously well for the Tories in the UK. When he's not begging the question, Nicholls rests his argument principally upon the success of Tony Blair at re-branding Labour to sop up the disaffected middling types whom the Tories had lost by, presumably, sliding too far to the right and putting on the strait jacket of values conservatism. But the real comparison of the PP is with the Tories and the cul de sac in which they find themselves for having followed too closely Dan's advice. After all the socially conscious mincing about by Ian Duncan Smith the Tories fell even further.
In the case of the PP, they are first off, a rightish sort of party with a platform that, after Aznar, owes much more to Ronald Reagan than to any of the avatars of the continental right. Looking to the left of the PP we see PSOE--commited champions of the dying EU--and IU ever poised to steal small scraps of the electorate that will never be in play for the PP anyhow. The "economically centre-right but socially liberal" voter invoked above is poorly cast. Among those for whom the social issues of gay "marriage" and abortion are righteous causes, there are far more credible representatives of these tribal identifications on the left vanguard than anywhere on the right, and no amount of supply-side reforms is gonna make them identify as traitors to the tribe. Given how low abortion rates are in Spain (although climbing at a horrifying rate), abortion is simply not a decisive issue even on the centre-left, to say nothing of the centre-right. Did Aznar need to mute his stance on abortion to achieve either his victories or his reforms? The minority on the left for whom these social questions were essential bolted to IU, and PSOE could never manage to raid the regional parties' bases to make up for the loss. At least not until March 2004. The PP did not come to power on their social platform, nor did they fall out of power on those grounds.
It's quite likely that, in the aggregate, the fractious Spanish electorate is somewhat to the left of the PP on abortion, but it is FAR to the right of the PSOE on gay "marriage" and regional separatism. Although conservatives in Spain, as everywhere, are loath to take to the streets, record crowds turned out in the past year for the two largest demonstrations in the history of Spanish democracy. These demonstrations were against: gay "marriage" and the education reform propounded by Zapatero. It was back in June when Zapatero's government suffered its first real slump in public opinion, just as the legislature took up his proposal to re-define marriage.
Now is hardly the time for the PP to abandon principles for votes that will never materialize. Ideas and policies matter, and as Greece's social security debt swells above 25% of GDP with other European nations' balance sheets not far behind, the economic ideals that Aznar enshrined in the PP will wear very well indeed. The cruel realities of demography too will play a part: at 1.1 children per fertile woman, the increasingly fewer native Spaniards, reluctant to throw their immediate pleasures over for family life, are going to be tough to persuade that they need to shell out at steeply progressive rates for the top-heavy mass about to join the pensioned ranks within the next ten years. A more disaffected north African immigrant population will be even less likely to opt for confiscatory taxation that must be diverted from other social programs to kafir pensioners.
Seen in the long term, Nicholls's suggestions become only more obtuse. In a little over a generation, Spain will have lost about 30% of its native-born population. Who is to make this up? This demographic decline is not irreversible, but will certainly accelerate with liberal abortion and the assault upon marriage. Since Zapatero loosened restrictions, an estimated 20,ooo more Spanish citizens have been dismembered in utero. In purely practical terms, Spain can ill afford to lose this many native-born citizens who would otherwise strengthen the warp and weft of its societal fabric. Will the sort of immigrants that Spain is welcoming be able to make this up?
Can a society that won't even welcome their own naturally born children welcome the world's least assimilable immigrants? Perhaps Carlos, Emilio's "wife," will welcome them with a Jell-O mold.
posted by Don_Marcelino at 9:09 PM
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