The Sounds of Conservative Silence

Dennis Sanders

Dennis is the pastor of a small Protestant congregation outside St. Paul, MN and also a part-time communications consultant. A native of Michigan, you can check out his writings over on Medium and subscribe to his Substack newsletter on religion and politics called Polite Company.  Dennis lives in Minneapolis with his husband Daniel.

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42 Responses

  1. Damon says:

    Frankly, I see this as a generalized, local issue. I’m not sure how “national” news it is. Don’t get me wrong, I share some of your concerns. I’d have thought it would be a good opportunity to highlight the issue of the gov’s actions and such while at the same time zinging the democratic admins that helped put the city in the crisis in the first place.

    Given all the other “local” new: freddy grey, etc. in the new, the stuff going on overseas, perhaps it’s just not been on the radar?Report

  2. Kim says:

    How much of the “ragging on Detroit” is simply conservative media carrying water for their employers and Wall Street in general? It’s easy enough to get a steal of a deal on buying up a whole town when everyone is saying how horrible it is and that there’s no end in sight. Of course this theory goes with Rick Snyder getting elected by Wall Street to “right the ship” (naturally, after wall street is finished with its buying spree).

    I’d appreciate Republicans being a bit more honest about who’s running the show, and how they’re bringing investment back into the Rust Belt. I know, everyone hates wall street, but if you at least say “here’s what we’re going to do”, well, that’s a plan to run on. (and if your plan comes with significant interest from commercial/financial ventures, that’s worth considering when I cast a vote).Report

    • LTL FTC in reply to Kim says:

      Would “buying up a whole town” really be so bad if large swathes of it were abandoned and carrying the fiscal weight of an infrastructure built for a much, much larger population?

      What are the alternatives? A few hipsters who want to open up bicycle shops and bespoke woodworking incubators? Community gardens?

      If Wall Street wants to pump money into a city*, I’d rather it be a place where it’s not already exorbitantly expensive to live.

      *with a hive mind, as alwaysReport

      • Kim in reply to LTL FTC says:

        Of course it’s not a bad thing… except for the newly minted renters. But renters always get the short end of the stick.

        The alternatives are well shown in Pittsburgh (which I will grant has gotten some investment by the Germans — oh they of fifty year business plans).Report

        • LTL FTC in reply to Kim says:

          Pittsburgh was benefited by its higher ed institutions to an extent that Wayne State simply can’t achieve.Report

          • Kim in reply to LTL FTC says:

            Truth indeed. Also by it’s persistent lack of sprawl, which gives the entire city a more European vibe (of the more mountainous towns there, surely) and appeal.Report

        • Kolohe in reply to Kim says:

          Was continuously faking the results of emissions tests part of a fifty year plan? Buying Chrysler? Spying on everyone? (more precisely, getting caught?)Report

          • Kim in reply to Kolohe says:

            For the first: Dunno, suspect that was some institutional control blown completely through.
            For the second: yes, but I’m not certain what it was (probably increasing the amount of plants in America, while decreasing the need to ship around cars, which will be getting expensive as oil increases in price).
            For the third: that’s government. Does gov’t ever plan anything? I’m not certain how much sense it makes for a parlimentary system to plan things out more than ten years into the future… (Japan excepted, their plans are thirty years at minimum — but that’s what you do when you’re in full on demographic crisis).

            http://www.pittsburghregion.org/PDFs/InternationalStrengths/IntlStrengthsGermany.pdf

            What I mostly mean is that when German companies invest, they invest for the long term. Not the auto plants in Atlanta that literally came on wheels to be rolled into the next town when they got a better bargain there.Report

        • Brandon Berg in reply to Kim says:

          As a renter, I seem to recall weathering the housing crash pretty well.Report

  3. Kolohe says:

    I’m surprised reason hasn’t covered this. Beside the large bore police reform (started when Balko worked there), small ball urban stuff is a lot of what they have done in the Gillespie/Welch era. (e.g. the classic hairdresser licensing battles)Report

  4. pillsy says:

    It has been interesting to see a white Republican governor involved in urban areas the way the governor has. It has not been perfect and yes, the state did drop the ball. But in a time when most GOP leaders are not focused on urban issues, Snyder’s attempt, however imperfect it maybe (and it was very imperfect) is noteworthy.

    Well, his noteworthy attempt ended in disaster. Conservatives are left with either engaging critically with the way a Snyder tried to address Flint’s fiscal problems with disastrous results, figuring out some way the whole thing was actually the fault of some Democrats somewhere, or just ignoring the whole thing. Every incentive in partisan politics is going to push someone towards either shifting the blame or just not talking about it, especially if the problem falls affects a constituency the GOP has basically given up on anyway.

    As for why they gave up on it, well, Republicans can continue to do extremely well at the state level and hold onto the House indefinitely without voters from urban centers supporting them, and, well, it seems like the EM law is the best they had to offer in the first place. No matter what you think of the EM law, it seems like it would be a tough sell for the voters who are actually having their votes overridden.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to pillsy says:

      Conservatives are left with either engaging critically with the way a Snyder tried to address Flint’s fiscal problems with disastrous results, figuring out some way the whole thing was actually the fault of some Democrats somewhere, or just ignoring the whole thing. Every incentive in partisan politics is going to push someone towards either shifting the blame or just not talking about it, especially if the problem falls affects a constituency the GOP has basically given up on anyway.

      Yeah, and that sucks.

      This would have been a great opportunity to set a precedent of how government workers guilty of sufficient criminality be tarred and feathered.Report

  5. Burt Likko says:

    Dennis asks in the OP why right-of-center media is uninterested in Flint. Certainly it’s a newsworthy sequence of events. I see one of two things at play here.

    One, right-of-center media perceives that its principal audience are rural, exurban, or suburban dwellers. In their eyes, their audience thinks that a city might be a place to go to work occasionally, but it’s not a place to live and especially not a place to raise children. Consequently, for those media decision-makers, stories about particularly urban issues are not going to be a high priority compared to news that is either of immediately national scope or which touches an emotional vibe of the target demographic.

    Magazines, newspapers, and broadcast media exist to sell themselves, after all.

    Two, right-of-center opinion leaders (possibly but not necessarily politicians) believe that problems in urban areas, like those described in Flint with respect to water supply, are solvable only invisibly and by non-political subject matter experts — or not solvable at all. Moreover, a significant cadre of conservatives (not all conservatives, let me disclaim) find the task of actually governing to be uninteresting and not politically advantageous, and at least flirt with the idea that governing is contrary to ideology (e.g., “that government governs best which governs least” is a conservative refrain, not a liberal one). So rolling up one’s sleeves and solving an infrastructure problem is 1) an unappealing task, 2) not a job likely to result in gains if it succeeds but likely to result in taking a political hit if it fails, 3) dependent on a higher level of subject matter expertise than these leaders likely actually possess, and 4) difficult, these opinion leaders prefer to leave them alone, and the media responds accordingly. Since you can’t really take the position of “nuke the whole site from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure” as an actual means of dealing with a problem like this, a position somewhere between “silence” and “just go away and let the experts do their job” is the safe way to go.Report

    • greginak in reply to Burt Likko says:

      This is all correct i would say but misses one thing. A key part of the issue in Flint is pollution and the environment. Many in the R’s, especially in gov, don’t seem to treat either as an issue at all or side with industry. Environmentalists are a butt of R’s jokes and their concerns are opposed. Taking the Flint issue seriously also means accepting that polluting the environment can have serious and long term problems and might be really bad idea now.Report

      • Oscar Gordon in reply to greginak says:

        Was the issue one of pollution? The lead was coming from old pipes, not the water itself, and the water had a high salt or acid content, that was causing the lead to leech from the pipes. Was the high salt/acid a result of pollution, or just the natural state of the river?Report

        • Kim in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

          Bettin’ pollution. You don’t get naturally acidic rivers without pine or hemlock, and then the river runs reddish black with it.Report

        • greginak in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

          Per Dennis’s first piece on this he said “Anyone who lived in Flint knew that the river was suspect because of all the auto plants that probably leached chemicals into the river. ”

          Clean water and environment is an issue conservatives sadly seem to have ceded to D’s and liberals. There are plenty of faults with the environmental movement but at least they are focused on keeping the enviro clean. R’s seem to always side with industry even when long term bad results seem easy to predict.Report

        • Joe Sal in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

          Oscar if I have the facts straight the water was mildly acidic but not enough to have been any more a problem than the original source. The addition of chlorine to kill the nasties created a higher level of acid in the system than ‘normal’. And to be fair it wasn’t the chlorine itself but the by products after the residuals did their job that created the increase.

          Now there was a secondary problem of a sewer leak upstream that created more nasties than probably anticipated. Of course the operators probably kept adding the chlorine until the residuals were at a level to make sure people didn’t get sick (thems’ the rules right?), but at that level pipes were eroding lead, iron, whatever the acid could attack.

          If I lived in that city, I would be gung-ho for replacing those lead pipes, with the iron ones close behind. But that means projects, which means money, which means surplus of capital that these folks probably don’t have because capital formation is a thing of the past…..etc.etc.etc..Report

        • Francis in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

          Any skilled water operator knows that any (ANY!) significant change in water supply can result in pipes leaching. In fact, any competent chemistry student knows this.

          All together now, the word of the day is “equilibrium”.

          I haven’t followed the Flint case all that closely. Frankly it’s just too depressing. So I don’t know exactly who was advising the EM about the risks associated with changing the water supply source. But it would not surprise me to learn that the EM had cut out the water department managers. After all, the whole point of the EM is to eliminate the dysfunctional city officials, wasn’t it? Bold new solutions needed, and all that.

          A standard liberal slur about conservatives is that conservatives believe that government is incompetent, and when in power they do their very best to prove the point.

          Snyder’s attempt is noteworthy, all right. He did a bang-up job of proving liberals right.Report

      • Lunaticllama in reply to greginak says:

        The issue was not pollution. It was standing idly by as the governor and local officials received credible evidence that the citizens were posioned. This isn’t some abstract “failure of government.” This involves failure to protect families and children from a well-known posion. This could have easily be solved, but that would have involved actually caring about the welfare of the people of Flint. Like Republicans all over, these officials just didn’t care, consequences be dammed.Report

        • DavidTC in reply to Lunaticllama says:

          This.

          The problem wasn’t that a switch in the water supply caused lead in the water, or how that happened.

          We can try tracking that acidity back to pollution, but that’s a whole different story…in reality, *any* change could have done this. Or hell, it could have happened by itself!

          The actual story is *the complete lack of response after a lot of evidence started showing up*Report

    • Kim in reply to Burt Likko says:

      Harriman, TN seems like a ripe place for them to be talking about then…. if they didn’t hate environmental concerns so. (I agree with greginak above)Report

    • Chip Daniels in reply to Burt Likko says:

      significant cadre of conservatives (not all conservatives, let me disclaim) find the task of actually governing to be uninteresting and not politically advantageous, and at least flirt with the idea that governing is contrary to ideology

      My take on it as well. The “significant cadres” in my opinion are the ones in charge now, the ones setting the agenda and garnering attention and votes. And geographically, their power is in the suburbs and exurbs.

      Its hostility, more than just neglect of the cities.

      What vision is there from the right? The “right” being the GOP candidates, Federalist, NRO, the pundits and shotcallers- when they dream, what do they dream of? I don’t hear anything hopeful or positive.

      Its all fear, indignation, outrage. I’m not talking about the trench warfare of campaigns- we expect that, and its always been that way.

      I mean the big picture of where the conservative movement would like America to go, their idea of what we as a society would look like if they had their way.

      The unspoken answer for the cities seems to be, if not “nuke them from orbit”, or at least treat the cities like some occupied, hostile foreign vassal state.Report

      • Roland Dodds in reply to Chip Daniels says:

        @chip-daniels “What vision is there from the right? The “right” being the GOP candidates, Federalist, NRO, the pundits and shotcallers- when they dream, what do they dream of? I don’t hear anything hopeful or positive.”

        I agree. Listening to the establishment talk about the future of America, you would think it begins and ends with tax cuts. I am surprised they haven’t brought up this example in Flint through that guise. “What are we paying for with our taxes? We might as well have them lower if our water is going to still suck!”Report

        • Joe Sal in reply to Roland Dodds says:

          Just to be clear, who would we be taxing here? (in lieu of not taxing?)Report

        • Chip Daniels in reply to Roland Dodds says:

          Going up a level of abstraction, there is a positive and hopeful aspect to every political philosophy and religious theology, and a negative corrosive one. Sometimes the positive vision leads, other times the negative one does.

          Right now, honestly, I think the negative one is leading the charge for both, but the liberal vision still has its core mission intact, a vision of a cooperative society where everyone gets a fair shot.

          Depressingly, the split right now on the Right is between those whose vision begins and ends with tax cuts, and the ethnic nationalists.

          Given that the mantra of the former is “every man for himself!” and the dream of the latter is revanchism, to “take back our country”, the only hope I would have is that the mile long train of cattle cars that Trump dreams of would be too expensive for Wall Street to bear.Report

    • Related to your second point is that it is an article of faith for the national GOP that urban problems, particularly in the northeast quarter of the country and California, are all due to Democrats’ mismanagement. For all sorts of reasons, right-of-center media are going to tend to support that dynamic. If the Rs do well, it will get lots of coverage. For example, back in the 1990s, CATO was pushing the pension plans for the City of San Diego and San Diego County as miracles of applying conservative principles to city and county government. When it turned out that the rosy numbers were all due to cooking the books, the CATO articles disappeared from their web site. TTBOMK, no formal retractions or apologies for getting the story entirely wrong were ever issued.Report

    • Damon in reply to Burt Likko says:

      Something you did’t touch on, unless I missed it since I scanned your post, is that “they just don’t give a damn. The position of “the other side caused that mess, let them rot/fix it themselves” wouldn’t be that hard to envision.Report

    • Magazines, newspapers, and broadcast media exist to sell themselves, after all.

      You left out “to the highest bidder”.Report

  6. Dan Scotto says:

    This is a useful challenge. I am with the writer here in that I would like to see (and read) more conservatives taking up the issues of cities in general. It’s an important topic as the country continues to urbanize, and an unwillingness to discuss these issues–and the specifics of governance–alienates potential voters and makes conservatives look out of touch. Arguments against centralization sort of need to be followed through to their lived implications, and that implies greater engagement with the local.

    (For my own part: I haven’t written about it for the simple reason that I haven’t done enough research on the specifics to have anything worth writing on it.)Report

    • Dennis Sanders in reply to Dan Scotto says:

      I don’t think we’ve formally met, so take this as my hello. Thanks for the thoughtful response.Report

    • haven’t written about it for the simple reason that I haven’t done enough research on the specifics to have anything worth writing on it.

      And The Federalist hasn’t written about it because PJ O’Rourke hasn’t written about it.Report

    • Joe Sal in reply to Dan Scotto says:

      I don’t know how well that conversation would go. Cities typically have a first order problem of lacking the capacity to be self-sustainable. The subject of a partial sustainable suburbish type layout is typically trounced in short order.

      Add to that, probably less than 15% of urban folk would wish to do the type of work to move towards a more sustainable model.

      Further on, there exist regulation problems. Even if a community identified lead pipes to be replaced, some of those lines ‘belong’ to the city. So even if the community hired a contractor or ‘free traded’ solutions, they would still be funneled through various regulation regimes.

      Not that regulation is inherently a problem, but it can (and often does) create multiple barriers to direct action solutions. If the regulatory/inspection regime is in the back pocket of consultants and contractors, your looking at another set of barriers.

      It’s a hell of a lot more comfortable to keep switching out politicians that say they can fix these problems. Unless those politicians have boots in the fray experience with multiple utility systems, they will be clueless, doesn’t matter which party they come from.

      Of course this doesn’t even touch the slow march out of a financialized economy and getting back to some basic tangible capitalism economy.Report