This is where comparisons to the tea parties are instructive. As I’ve long argued, a major motivating passion of the tea-party movement was a long-delayed backlash against George W. Bush and his big-government conservatism. The Bush-Obama bailouts and Obamacare were the perfect excuse for a disaffected conservative base (as well as some independents and libertarians) to vent frustration about ballooning deficits, expanded entitlements, and other elements of Bush’s “compassionate conservatism.”
An iron law of politics is that parties out of power are more unified than parties in power. That’s because when you control the government, members of the ruling coalition squabble over who gets what. When you don’t control government, everyone can at least agree that the top priority is to win back control.
A corollary to that law is that it’s ideologically empowering to be out of power. When you don’t have responsibility for anything, you can afford the luxury of purity…
For Occupy Wall Street to enjoy similar freedom, it can’t be hobbled by having to defend the most powerful and important politician in America. You can’t declare war with the status quo and support the chief author of the status quo at the same time. Similarly, you can’t run for re-election and be joined at the hip with fringe revolutionaries.
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