The limousine liberal

de Steve Fraser

"No political metaphor in recent American history has enjoyed the impact of the "limousine liberal." It has managed to mobilize an enduring politics of resentment directed against everything from civil rights to women's liberation, from urban renewal to the war on poverty, from gay rights to the welfare state, from affirmative action to environmental regulation--and everyone from FDR to Hillary Clinton and Alger Hiss to Ben Afleck. Coined in 1969 by Mario Procaccino, a Democrat running for the mayoralty of New York City, the term took aim at what he and his largely white ethnic following considered the repellent hypocrisy of well-heeled types who championed the cause of the poor, especially the black poor, but who had no intention of bearing the costs of doing anything about their plight. In The Limousine Liberal, the acclaimed historian Steve Fraser argues that it is impossible to understand the perseverance and passion of right-wing populist politics in America without coming to grips with this metaphor, where it originated, how it evolved, why it persists, and where it may be taking us. He shows that the limousine liberal had existed in all but name long before Procaccino gave it one. From the ravings of Henry Ford in the 1920s to the ravings of Tea Party favorite Glenn Beck, it has served as the animus binding together right-wing populism in America. And it is responsible, in Fraser's view, for the modern conservative coalition of libertarian industrialists, technology impresarios, heartland evangelicals, and don't-tread-on-me small businessmen. Yet Fraser does not dismiss the limousine liberal as a phantasm conjured up by right-wing paranoids. To him the limousine liberal is a real figure on the American political landscape"--