[Jonathan Alter, author of the new book “The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies”, is joining us as a guest blogger this week in the Editor’s Blog highlighting and discussing some key findings and revelations in his new book. – jmm]
DAY FIVE
It’s always tricky predicting how historians of the future will react, but my guess is that they will be surprised by how a small group of rightwing extremists were able to wield so much power in a political system where the vast majority of the public didn’t share their views. Grover Norquist and Roger Ailes are among the Obama enemies I profile.
[Jonathan Alter, author of the new book “The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies”, is joining us as a guest blogger this week in the Editor’s Blog highlighting and discussing some key findings and revelations in his new book. – jmm]
DAY FIVE
It’s always tricky predicting how historians of the future will react, but my guess is that they will be surprised by how a small group of rightwing extremists were able to wield so much power in a political system where the vast majority of the public didn’t share their views. Grover Norquist and Roger Ailes are among the Obama enemies I profile.
“Consuming political tracts from all perspectives, Grover Norquist quietly adapted Lenin’s idea of a “vanguard of the proletariat,” by which a small group of zealous intellectuals would master power politics and execute choke holds on the old order. Norquist simply substituted “freedom” for “the proletariat” and moved to Washington to build his conservative vanguard during the “Reagan Revolution.” He later denied this was his goal but suggested that Straussians (disciples of Leo Strauss, a conservative political philosopher who celebrated elitism), neocons, and others on the right may have borrowed tactics from the left.
“In the mid-1980s Norquist traveled several times to Angola, where, donning the uniform of rebel leader Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA Army, he instructed the anticommunist guerrilla leader in free market principles. He ghostwrote articles under Savimbi’s byline in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere that suggest the Leninist influence on his own thinking about political struggle. “We are using Communist military and propaganda principles in order to defeat the Soviets and their political ideology,” Savimbi/Norquist wrote in Policy Review. Savimbi, whose movement had originally been backed by Mao, was described by Don Steinberg, President Clinton’s ambassador to Angola, as “the most articulate, charismatic homicidal maniac I ever met.”….
“Four decades later Ailes was a brilliantly successful entrepreneur surrounded by fiercely loyal acolytes to whom he was generous. But Ailes was also a merciless bully, tormented by inner demons that went back to a childhood of long, lonely hospital stays as he battled hemophilia.
“Tales of his paranoia had circulated for years. Two former News Corp. senior executives said that Murdoch routinely called Ailes “cuckoo,” “bonkers,” “nuts,” and “crazy,” but he also found Ailes’s behavior amusing. For instance, one Monday, Murdoch snickered to senior staff that Ailes was convinced that the whole News Corp. building was bugged: “Roger came in over the weekend to work in the only room that he thought was secure–a supply closet.” Ailes had a television monitor on his desk that showed video of the empty hall outside his office so that he would have warning if terrorists were coming to kill him….
“In the fall of 2011 Ailes hosted a small luncheon at his New York estate for Christie, who was now his choice. Limbaugh flew in on his private jet for the occasion. Christie gave the group three reasons for not running: It was too early in his tenure as governor; he had four kids and needed to make some money, which might not materialize if he ran and lost; and he admitted, “I still like to go to Burger King and I’m not going to lose it [the weight].” The Burger King line was intended to be funny but wasn’t received as such, according to a person at the lunch.”
