The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : Netroots to Falling Netleaves

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Reihan Salam makes an astute observation about the left's netroots. Once viewed as the rise of a new kind of political movement, one critically independent of those in power, they have become, with the ascent of the Democratic Party and Barack Obama, standard Beltway fare. Except for, of course, a 'Kos here and there.

In a sense, Moulitsas is striving to maintain a movement stance independent of the Democratic establishment. His interlocutors, who began as independent voices highly critical of said Democratic establishment, have come to see its virtues as they've gained access and prestige.... [I]t's a mark of the continuing evolution of a political movement that, it turns out, wasn't as distinctive or as important as advertised. As many conservatives argued at the time, the rise of the netroots didn't really represent a genuinely new ideological tendency. It was and remains a vehicle for the revival of 1970s-style liberalism, which holds northern European social democracy as its lodestar.

It's a convincing argument, and Salam identifies a few potential villains in the story, which always makes for a better read.

View all comments (5) | Leave a comment

c. j. acworth| 12.17.09 @ 5:24PM

Will the same thing happen to the Tea Party movement, I wonder? I hope not, but revolutions have a way of being eventually co-opted by the status quo. (See "Newt Gingrich, 1994 ff.)

dum&dummer;| 12.17.09 @ 6:22PM

c.j., exactly, newt is the prime example.

Ran / Si Vis Pacem| 12.17.09 @ 6:34PM

CJ, DD... There is a difference, and that difference rests in the character of the individuals in the movement.

The Tea Party phenomenon is an aggregate of people who would rather be left alone to solve their own problems with out government interference and confiscation. In contradistinction, the nutroots are a collective of statists demanding that the government - armed with someone else' money - stomp-in and "solve problems."

This is far more a libertarian phenomenon that the fundamentally conservative wave Newt rode... which is precisely why Newt is so irrelevant today. Newt doesn't "get" the libertarian drive, and so can't meet it's needs. Or he does and won't, but either way it matters not: Newt and his lot won't be able to hijack this wave.