With widespread American anxiety about foreign terrorists and oil dictators, the Republican strategy is to summon a nationalist reflex to kill and drill.

The choice of Gov. Sara Palin will mobilize a vast right-wing crusade against perceived threats to the “traditional” American way of life.

Most remember the paranoid and panicky public thirst for blind revenge that was exploited to launch the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The deep and predictable public need to lash out led to a 2004 presidential victory, new restrictions on civil liberties, expanded policies of torture and detention, and military quagmires which so far have cost nearly 5,000 American lives, and trillions of dollars in economic costs that foreclosed any investments on the home front. The peace movement was isolated and demonized in those first years after 9/11. The anti-globalization movement was derailed. The trauma gradually passed, but could recur with another attack on American soil.

The new American fear is a direct result of these wars for oil, but is being exploited as protection against the perceived threat of Arab oil dictatorships, terrorists in the world’s oil fields, and hostile powers like Venezuela, Russia and China. Prices at the pump already have been manipulated to the highest levels in history. It may not be shock and awe, but the public response has been confused and muted. With McCain leading the charge with his hysterical call to “drill here, drill now”, support for oil drilling has risen sharply. Even the Santa Barbara supervisors have voted 3-2 for the drilling option. Barack Obama has bowed to the pressure for offshore drilling along with Nancy Pelosi. Barbara Boxer is promoting nuclear power, as is Obama. Public anxiety over oil prices in the short run may trump public anxiety over global warming.

These twin fears rest on a perceived threat to the Western Judeo-Christian tradition, which Palin claims to embody and represent.  

Palin’s choice is a decision by McCain [and probably Karl Rove] to make the fight against Islamic terrorism a battle for the American center. Its leading ideologue is Norman Podhoretz, godfather of the neo-conservatives, a Sixties-hater, and author-advocate of a “fourth world war” doctrine.

Whether and how feminists will be able to pivot from their long engagement in the Obama-Clinton wars to address this new challenge from a far-different symbol of American womanhood, the frontier woman, remains to be seen. The so-called social issues — from abortion to holy war — now are guaranteed to be front and center in the campaign. Republican strategists are counting on these issues to awaken social conservatives and drive them to the polls in numbers rivaling 2000 and 2004.  

The environmental movement will be challenged as well. It has been unable so far to push back against the recent liberal retreat from thirty years of established environmental consensus. The organized movement, until now riding a majority consensus, has become comfortably institutionalized in the political culture over the years, and seems to be defensive in the face of so many betrayals by its political allies. Depending on Al Gore for political leadership may be extremely important, but not enough to stop the Democrats from accommodating to the pressures for drilling and nuclear. Believing that a Barack Obama presidency will reverse such campaign-driven setbacks may be an illusion.

The organized environmental movement might examine the recent dynamics of the anti-war movement for lessons. From its isolation in 2002 to political success in 2006, the anti-war movement in the beginning had to stand up and fight back against the neo-conservatives, Republicans, and many in the Democratic Party leadership. The environmental movement may need to follow a similar course today, in alliance with the anti-war and fair trade movements.

The illegitimate and unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan precipitated our budgetary crisis and unprecedented deficits, and opened the doors for the Cheney-Bush plan to restore access to Iraqi oil to the multinationals. The issues now are joined. The question is who will connect the dots and lead the opposition.