Toby Keith, Lieberman Democrat
Eric Alterman's intrepid blue dog correspondent, Stupid (he's actually anything but) mentioned on Friday that Toby Keith -- THE Toby Keith, Natalie Maines' nemisis, 2002 Academy of Country Music Entertainer of the Year -- is in fact a registered Democrat. Stupid wrote:
In an interview last year he said, "People don't realize that I'm a registered Democrat. They automatically assume that I'm a chest-banging, war-drum-pounding Republican with my military stance." He continued that he was conservative like Joe Lieberman, but something inside of him still bristled at being seen as another GOP good old boy. In a Playboy interview this year he said, "Whether we should go from country to country, like with the Iraq thing, I don't know. This ain't as simple as Afghanistan. We're going to Iraq for what? For terrorism? Have we seen any terrorist training camps? I haven't seen the smoking gun. And they haven't found the weapons of mass destruction. He still visits Iraq, but his new album doesn't contain a single song about the war.
I Googled around on Keith's politics and, in fact, it's not quite as nice as all that. In the same Playboy interview, for instance, Keith said of the media:
"I think people have to be cautious about how they get their news. I'd always trusted CNN to be my source and never really thought about it. But now, to me, CNN gives a very liberal, slanted view of the news. I don't feel that Fox always gets it right, but I think it at least makes an attempt to give me a balanced show. The one thing the soldiers kept telling me was, 'Be careful where you get your news, man. They lie, lie, lie.' So I came back and started watching Fox, and it was more like what I saw over there, a more accurate report of what the soldiers felt was going on."
So Toby Keith isn't a closet liberal. And he endorsed Bush's reelection on the "can't change horses midwar" rationale. But he also endorsed Oklahoma Democrat Dan Boren (the old blue dog and The Agenda antihero David Boren's son) for Congress and has campaigned for Oklahoma's Democratic Governor Brad Henry in the past. But I was most intrigued by the Lieberman reference, and not just because it raises the remote possiblity that if you got Keith drunk enough he might admit he voted for Gore (talk about Natalie Maines' revenge!). I can't find the exact quote in which Keith compares himself to Lieberman anywhere online, but the phrase "Lieberman Democrat" has a very specific meaning in American political jargon. Slate's Will Saleton for instance, refers to himself as one. Being a "Lieberman Democrat" means being a fairly unnuanced hawk, and a culture warrior, and a water-carrier for American industy in its many forms. But it also means being an unabashed pluralist and usually voting with the ACLU and the AFL-CIO (but not making a very big deal out of it.) Basically, it means what "Scoop Jackson Democrat" used to mean. With the retirements of Bob Kerrey and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Lieberman is probably the only genuine elected Democratic neoconservative left.
What it doesn't mean is "Dixiecrat". Or, for that matter, "Zell Miller Democrat", which is the real successor to the Dixie conservative model Democrat. (Powerline's Big Trunk, for instance, is a "Zell Miller Democrat", and also a Bush-Delay-Frist Republican.) Though I wouldn't swear that Toby Keith knows the difference, I'd like to think he does. It is, after all, the whole point of Lieberman's schtick. Liberals might hate it; it might slip readily into opportunism and jingoism; but at some level it's good to know that hawkish, values-conscious defence-of-the-status-quo conservatism -- the sort that can tolerate and/or pander to both Fox News and the Human Rights Campaign, the sort that Toby Keith (and, apparently, lots of usually GOP-voting Floridians) might consider voting for -- doesn't have to be paired up with a general hatred of progress like it is in today's GOP.
Anyway, I guess this posting is more a defence of Joe Lieberman than it is a case for Toby Keith. Unlike Stupid and the Bull Moose, I think we can do better than trying to become "Toby Keith Democrats", or aspire to promote "tolerant jingoism". Afterall, Keith's attacks on Natalie Maines weren't especially "tolerant" of dissenting opinion. And "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue" was a heck of an ugly song to be chanting at Nascar audiences right after 911. (As for the suggestion about playing "Courtesy" at the 2004 Convention, maybe Bull Moose forgets the Kerry delegates chanting "USA! USA!" on the floor during his speech, something this latte liberal found vaguely disconcerting. An elite bit of post-grad coastal foppistry, Kerry's convention performance was not.)
The "Lieberman Democrat", and its namesake, on the other hand, is something that liberals, IMO, ought to learn to, if not love, at least grin and bare.
In an interview last year he said, "People don't realize that I'm a registered Democrat. They automatically assume that I'm a chest-banging, war-drum-pounding Republican with my military stance." He continued that he was conservative like Joe Lieberman, but something inside of him still bristled at being seen as another GOP good old boy. In a Playboy interview this year he said, "Whether we should go from country to country, like with the Iraq thing, I don't know. This ain't as simple as Afghanistan. We're going to Iraq for what? For terrorism? Have we seen any terrorist training camps? I haven't seen the smoking gun. And they haven't found the weapons of mass destruction. He still visits Iraq, but his new album doesn't contain a single song about the war.
I Googled around on Keith's politics and, in fact, it's not quite as nice as all that. In the same Playboy interview, for instance, Keith said of the media:
"I think people have to be cautious about how they get their news. I'd always trusted CNN to be my source and never really thought about it. But now, to me, CNN gives a very liberal, slanted view of the news. I don't feel that Fox always gets it right, but I think it at least makes an attempt to give me a balanced show. The one thing the soldiers kept telling me was, 'Be careful where you get your news, man. They lie, lie, lie.' So I came back and started watching Fox, and it was more like what I saw over there, a more accurate report of what the soldiers felt was going on."
So Toby Keith isn't a closet liberal. And he endorsed Bush's reelection on the "can't change horses midwar" rationale. But he also endorsed Oklahoma Democrat Dan Boren (the old blue dog and The Agenda antihero David Boren's son) for Congress and has campaigned for Oklahoma's Democratic Governor Brad Henry in the past. But I was most intrigued by the Lieberman reference, and not just because it raises the remote possiblity that if you got Keith drunk enough he might admit he voted for Gore (talk about Natalie Maines' revenge!). I can't find the exact quote in which Keith compares himself to Lieberman anywhere online, but the phrase "Lieberman Democrat" has a very specific meaning in American political jargon. Slate's Will Saleton for instance, refers to himself as one. Being a "Lieberman Democrat" means being a fairly unnuanced hawk, and a culture warrior, and a water-carrier for American industy in its many forms. But it also means being an unabashed pluralist and usually voting with the ACLU and the AFL-CIO (but not making a very big deal out of it.) Basically, it means what "Scoop Jackson Democrat" used to mean. With the retirements of Bob Kerrey and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Lieberman is probably the only genuine elected Democratic neoconservative left.
What it doesn't mean is "Dixiecrat". Or, for that matter, "Zell Miller Democrat", which is the real successor to the Dixie conservative model Democrat. (Powerline's Big Trunk, for instance, is a "Zell Miller Democrat", and also a Bush-Delay-Frist Republican.) Though I wouldn't swear that Toby Keith knows the difference, I'd like to think he does. It is, after all, the whole point of Lieberman's schtick. Liberals might hate it; it might slip readily into opportunism and jingoism; but at some level it's good to know that hawkish, values-conscious defence-of-the-status-quo conservatism -- the sort that can tolerate and/or pander to both Fox News and the Human Rights Campaign, the sort that Toby Keith (and, apparently, lots of usually GOP-voting Floridians) might consider voting for -- doesn't have to be paired up with a general hatred of progress like it is in today's GOP.
Anyway, I guess this posting is more a defence of Joe Lieberman than it is a case for Toby Keith. Unlike Stupid and the Bull Moose, I think we can do better than trying to become "Toby Keith Democrats", or aspire to promote "tolerant jingoism". Afterall, Keith's attacks on Natalie Maines weren't especially "tolerant" of dissenting opinion. And "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue" was a heck of an ugly song to be chanting at Nascar audiences right after 911. (As for the suggestion about playing "Courtesy" at the 2004 Convention, maybe Bull Moose forgets the Kerry delegates chanting "USA! USA!" on the floor during his speech, something this latte liberal found vaguely disconcerting. An elite bit of post-grad coastal foppistry, Kerry's convention performance was not.)
The "Lieberman Democrat", and its namesake, on the other hand, is something that liberals, IMO, ought to learn to, if not love, at least grin and bare.
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