Right Wing Nut House

Oh, we’re meetin’ at the courthouse at eight o’clock tonight
You just walk in the door and take the first turn to the right
Be careful when you get there, we hate to be bereft
But we’re taking down the names of everybody turning left

Now there’s no one that we’re certain the Kremlin doesn’t touch
We think that Westbrook Pegler doth protest a bit too much
We only hail the hero from whom we got our name
We’re not sure what he did but he’s our hero just the same.

(”John Birch Society” by Michael Brown)

Upon hearing that the John Birch Society was going to co-sponsor the Conservative Political Action Conference, I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or put my fist through a wall.

The very first thing that came to mind was this hysterically funny Chad Mitchell Trio song from 1962 that captured the JBS perfectly:

A family favorite for more than 40 years, we never tire of singing it at reunions. “We’re Your Friendly, Liberal, Neighborhood Ku Klux Klan” was another CMT family favorite.

You’ll never recognize us, there’s a smile upon our face,
We’re changing all our dirty sheets and a-cleaning up the place.
Yep, since we got a lawyer, and a public relations man,
We’re your friendly, liberal, neighborhood Klu Klux Klan

Yes, we’re your friendly, liberal, neighborhood Klu Klux Klan
Ever since we got that lawyer and that public relations man.
“Course we did shoot one reporter, but he was just obscene,
and you can’t call us no filthy names. What does Anglo-Saxon mean?

As far as I know, the Kluxers have not as yet, been offered a booth in the exhibit hall, but you never know.

After laughing at the idea that responsible, mature, sane conservatives would invite into the mainstream this nest of kooks, crazies, and paranoid loons I then broke down in tears. The callousness of this move is unbelievable. Don’t these fools know what it took to wipe the stench of these freaks off of the conservative movement?

Why stop with the Birchers? Why not have a few seminars and panels on the birther issue? After all, news out of New York is that the birther convention went quite well last week:

Dear Friends:

Welcome to the Second National Conference on Barack Obama’s Missing Birth Certificate and College Records. Our meeting begins tomorrow in New York City! I am delighted to provide you with this second progress report.

[...]

3. Videotaping/Internet posting cancellation

Unfortunately, our plan to videotape the conference and post the proceedings on the network is stalled. We did not receive enough financial support to hire a professional videographer to tape the conference, so we have cancelled our reservation for a videographer. If late-in-the-day financial support still arrives, we will see if someone is available to tape. We can’t do more than the budget allows.

[...]

5. Obama: The Hawai’i Years

I had hoped we could finish editing our Hawai’i movie by early December but we are swamped with work and preparations for the conference. We will definitely show a rough cut of the movie on a laptop at the Conference and finish the film up for New Year’s.

The organizer and head honcho of this bunch is Andy Martin, perennial candidate for something or other, and an internet gadfly.

Mr. Martin, making a Quixotic run for the senate here in Illinois, claims his life story is “inspirational.” Indeed, it inspired me to almost lose my lunch. Careening wildly between right and left, the only constant in his life appears to be an overpowering ambition. In the end, it’s hard to tell whether he is sincerely nuts or has simply latched on to the birther movement for attention and a little cash.

No matter, this is a fellow that conservatives should embrace. After all, he’s only “asking questions” - like, where’s the “ribbon copy” of the birth certificate, Barry?

What I have asked Hawai’i officials to do is produce their original “ribbon” copy of Obama’s 1961 birth certificate. (For those of you not old enough to know what a “ribbon copy” is, ancient devices known as “typewriters” used “ribbons” to make impressions on paper. Cormac McCarthy’s original 1963 typewriter is about to be auctioned as an antique. The original copy of a document, i.e. the one which the typewriter ribbon actually touched, was known as the “ribbon copy.”)

Hawai’i officials have never released Obama’s ribbon copy of his birth certificate, despite many demands, lawsuits, etc. I am continuing my litigation for access. Because I am currently a candidate for U. S. Senator [www.AndyforUSSenator.com], I was unable to actively pursue the litigation in August-November, but we are gearing up to go back to Hawai’i to pry loose the original, 1961 document once funds are available.

Of course, if state officials ever released the “ribbon copy,” Martin and his ilk will probably want to see the actual typewriter ribbon on which the document was produced. You just can’t be too careful when you’ve got a reputation for truth and honesty.

Unlike some of Obama’s critics, I have been scrupulously honorable and honest in seeking only the truth about him, and trying to find only the facts about his past. Because of my passion for the truth and the facts, I seem to get under Obama’s skin, whereas his critics who float unsustainable theories are ignored. Obama wants to hide the truth; help us in our search for the facts.

Please help support these projects financially.

How can anyone resist someone so “scrupulously honorable and honest?”

I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Andy shows up at CPAC with his hand out, piping his story all around the venue while the conspiracists follow him like rats leaving a sinking ship.

The birthers are only the latest paranoids on the far right. The Birchers have them beat by nearly 50 years. In addition to accusing Eisenhower of being a “conscious agent” for the red menace, over the years, the JBS has topped that lunacy by seeing goblins in globalization, and Communists everywhere, not to mention firmly opposing teh gay, as was made evident in this meeting sponsored by the JBS earlier this year in Oklahoma City:

Among the items in the agenda, Kern said, was getting the public to view homosexuality as a matter of taste, like a preference for strawberry or vanilla ice cream. She quoted the text: “The masses should not be shocked and repelled by premature exposure to homosexual behavior itself.”

“You know,” Kern said. “I’ve done a lot of reading on this. I wish I could describe to you their behavior. I will not because I would be redder than this suit. It’s their behavior that we oppose.

“This theme of equality and freedom is the approach that the homosexuals are using today — totally perverting the true intention of what our Constitution meant. … The homosexuals get it — it’s a struggle between our religious freedoms and their right to do what they want to do.”

Around the banquet hall, Kern’s speech met with applause and calls of “Amen!” from a crowd stoked in a crucible of conspiracy and intrigue. For the whole day, the “Clouds Over America” conference, run and organized by the John Birch Society, held lecture after lecture Jan. 23 and 24 dedicated to explaining their various conspiracy-laden tenets. Here’s one — that a godless secret society, the Illuminati, has been battling against the founding of the United States of America and decent citizens to live in peaceful, worshipful freedom.

Kern called for a new “Great Awakening,” referring to a period of religious revivals from the 18th century considered precursor to the American Revolution.

“The solution is another Great Awakening, folks,” Kern said. “We need a spiritual revival, and that will only come if God’s people, especially you pastors, will stand in your pulpits and vocally preach the word of God and thus declare the Lord this sin, and preach it in love, only then does our nation have a chance of overcoming the scourge of AIDS, HIV and the devastating destruction that the homosexual lifestyle is bringing on your children and our grandchildren.”

The world is too complex to give these idiots a seat at the table. Let them rant on the internet. Let them spew on their tiny radio stations. Let them meet in the dark, exchange their secret handshakes, glance furtively over their shoulders for the government bogeyman, and run up their psychiatric bills.

People wonder why I think Glenn Beck is a dangerous clown. When you lie down with rabid dogs, people are going to think you’re one of them. Beck has spoken approvingly of the JBS on a number of occasions over the years, which only feeds the perception that his mindless meanderings about fascism coming to America with Woodrow Wilson’s presidency and other lunatic conspiracies are not aberrations but rather an entrenched part of his character.

But if you were to go to CPAC in February and take a poll, Beck would be wildly popular. I will never understand it, nor will I ever get used to it. A sizable segment of the right has lost its mind and embracing the John Birch Society is just one more indication that they are not going to find it anytime soon.

It would do no good to call for a boycott of CPAC. But I would hope that some principled activists and members of Congress would take that step. As for me, I will probably be covering the conference in some capacity but I already have my storyline:

We’ll teach you how to spot ‘em in the cities or the sticks
For even Jasper Junction is just full of Bolsheviks
The CIA’s subversive and so’s the FCC
There’s no one left but thee and we, and we’re not sure of thee

Oh, we’re the John Birch Society, the John Birch Society
Here to save our country from a communistic plot
Join the John Birch Society holding off the Reds
We’ll use our hand and hearts and if we must we’ll use our heads

Jonathan Chait at The New Republic:

In reality, both parties have plenty of ideas that they would like to implement if given the political power to do so. Republicans’ policy ideas primarily involve cutting marginal tax rates and regulations. The question isn’t whether the Republican Party has any ideas. The question is whether the party has any relevant ideas.

In the days following the 2008 election, some Republicans predicted that the party would retool itself in response to reality–not just political reality but the actuality of policy challenges. “Republicans,” wrote conservative Ramesh Ponnuru in Time, “will have to devise an agenda that speaks to a country where more people feel the bite of payroll taxes than income taxes, where health-care costs eat up raises even in good times, where the length of the daily commute is a bigger irritant than are earmarks.” Nothing like that rethinking has happened or will happen.

Whatever the merits of President Obama’s agenda, it is clearly a response to objectively large problems facing the country. The administration has selected three main issues as the focus of its domestic agenda: the economic crisis, climate change, and health care reform. The issues themselves offer a stark contrast with Bush’s 2005 crusade to reshape Social Security. While sold as a response to the program’s long-term deficit, the privatization campaign was actually motivated by ideological opposition to Social Security’s redistributive role. (Bush refused Democratic offers to negotiate a fix to the program’s solvency without altering its social-insurance character.) By contrast, it is impossible to dismiss the problems Obama has chosen to address. In all three areas, the Republican Party has adopted a stance of total opposition, not merely because it disagrees with aspects of Obama’s solutions, but because it cannot come to grips with the very nature of the problems of modern American politics.

Yahtzee!

I would take issue with Chait over the reason for Social Security reform - something the Democrats will now have to face in the coming years if, as I fully expect, they maintain their majority for a decade or so. Yes, my liberal friends, there is an unfunded mandate for social security that works out to about $17.5 trillion by 2050. By that time, the entire federal budget could be comprised of payments for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Don’t sit there and tell me that the only reason Bush wanted to reform Social Security by privatizing some of it was due to “ideological opposition” to the program. It was Republicans, I will remind Chait, who reformed SS in 1986 while he and his Democratic friends took potshots from the sidelines. Democrats have always, shamelessly, used Social Security fear mongering with seniors as an electoral club. And Chait is proving that nothing has changed.

As for the rest of Chait’s thesis, he is spot on. The GOP cannot meet the basic definition of a political party; a repository for ideas and principles that advance a particular political philosophy. Cutting taxes when we’re staring at a deficit of $1.5 trillion a year is not only irrelevant, it is reckless, suicidal, irresponsible policy. Claiming that government spending would be cut an equal amount as any tax breaks is ludicrous, not to mention a horrible idea in the midst of a deep recession. The cuts that would be necessary in discretionary spending - only about 28% of the budget (most of that in the defense sector) - would gash programs that benefit the poor and the middle class. It won’t happen so why discuss it? Any tax cuts enacted would add to the deficit substantially.

So much for “fiscal responsibility.”

Tax cuts aren’t the only idea that the GOP wants to implement but it seems that way sometimes. Cutting spending is another basic notion being pushed by the GOP, but so far, specifics have been lacking. Not so with the base of the party who not only can’t “come to grips with the very nature of the problems of modern American politics,” but would have trouble “coming to grips” with 19th century American problems. This is where Chait’s ideological animus by the GOP to government truly resides (although eliminating Social Security and Medicare are ideas relegated to the fringe right). Entire swaths of the government would be on the chopping block if many in the base got their way. And I am not talking about some kind of “super-federalism” where many programs would be “transferred to the states.” There is a belief that much of what the federal government does, individuals should be able to do for themselves. I am not unsympathetic to this basic premise, but the scope and breadth of what many on the right would like to see eliminated are several bridges too far for most rational conservatives.

And this points up the major reason why the GOP is in the barren intellectual state that it is in; a stubborn, (I would say hysterical) refusal to see the world as it is and develop counter-proposals and ideas that reflect the realities of 21st century America.

What’s so hard about that? Well, for starters, perhaps admitting you have a problem dealing with reality in the first place might help:

The writers of The Daily Show, Colbert Report, and Saturday Night Live (although I’m not convinced they’ve even had writers lately) can have February 18-20, 2010, off. The hosts can handle it themselves. On those dates, the jokes will practically write themselves as the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) takes place — co-sponsored by the John Birch Society. Every liberal commentator needs to send a thank-you note to CPAC’s organizers for that monumentally stupid decision.

By having the John Birch Society sponsor it, CPAC can guarantee that 90% of the coverage regarding the conference will relate to JBS’ oh-my-god-look-a-conspiracy attitude rather than the heavy-hitters and rising stars of conservatism and libertarianism that speak there. Instead of focusing on politics, reporters will ask attendees for their response to the JBS controversy and will ask organizers whether they are in such financial distress that they had to embrace a fringe group for support.

This is beyond the “nihilism” Chait writes about with regard to what the GOP has become. I think a more technical term is in order to describe what is happening with the base and hence, with much of the Republican party.

Loony tunes.

You have to live in a different reality (or perhaps spend most of your time on another planet) to accept the notion that the John Birch Society today is much different than the bunch who questioned whether General Dwight David Eisenhower - American hero - wasn’t “pink.” Or that John Foster Dulles wasn’t deliberately hiding Communists in the State Department. (Yes, there were commies at state and defense but the idea that Dulles knew they were there is lunacy).

The JBS “core principles” include this gem:

The Society also labors to warn against and expose the forces that seek to abolish U.S. independence, build a world government, or otherwise undermine our personal liberties and national independence.

The problem as I see it isn’t necessarily that the John Birth Society is filled with kooks who think Obama is part of an international conspiracy to enslave America to the Communist ideal, it’s that they are a perfect fit for CPAC and the paranoid righties who are pursuing the birther matter, believe the president and the Democrats are out to “destroy the country,” believe there’s nothing much wrong with our health care system, and are not sure if Obama isn’t the antichrist.

Yes, that last is hyperbole but it’s easy to go over the top when you are trying to describe people who have tossed aside reason and embraced a kind of collective madness that is being promoted on talk radio, and some venues on Fox News. The world - the country - simply is not as it is described by Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the cotton candy conservatives who are cleaning up by playing to the fears of the ignorant and uninformed.

And then there are those who ape the worst of these:

It isn’t too much to ask for Byrd to step off for that great klavern in the sky before the Senate vote that may force this nation to accept government-rationed health care. Even a nice coma would do.

Without his frail, Gollum-like body being wheeled into the Senate’s chambers to cast the deciding vote, the Senate cannot curse our children and grandchildren with crushing debt and rationed, substandard healthcare.

I suppose some will be shocked and appalled that I’d wish for the former kleagle to die on command. I’d remind them that the party wheeling in a near invalid to vote in favor of this unread monstrosity of a bill is the one that should feel shame.

Yes, the health care bill as it has been so cynically and maliciously drawn up by Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the Democrats might easily be termed a “monstrosity.”

But it is grotesque, deformed thinking to wish for another human being to die for political gain. And not seeing that is a reflection not so much of Bob Owens, but of the casual, anti-reason, anti-rational thinking that has gripped the Republican party and made it an irrelevancy.

Can you govern without believing in the efficacy of government? I find it hard to imagine that, even if the Democrats and Obama screw things up so royally that the GOP wins a smashing victory and overturns both houses of Congress next year, that the Republicans are capable of doing anything to address the problems of 21st century America. Trying to reconstitute a nation that doesn’t exist anymore - a pastoral place where everyone was self-sufficient, went to church on Sunday, and dreamed the same dreams - does not equip a party or its members to deal with the complex, urbanized, less homogeneous country America has become.

To do that, one must actually live in the present rather than some ill-defined, half-imagined past that perhaps never was, but certainly will never be again.

If I ever find the time, and the motivation, I am going to peruse the archives of this site and pull out all of the posts that have landed me in hot water with one conservative faction or another over the years.

It will be an interesting exercise for a couple of reasons; 1) I can reread all those commenters who swore they’d never visit this site again and feel just awful about that a second time; and 2) I will be able to track the descent of conservatism into a riot of paranoid conspiracies, rigid ideological litmus tests, unreasonable devotion to idiotic personalities, and catalog how conservatives have become a frothing, hate-filled, imprudent gaggle of screeching, populist harpies who reject reason and logic for a crass emotionalism.

Other than that, I see nothing wrong with the right today.

Now, am I being unfair to my brothers and sisters on the right?

Apostasy pieces are never about delivering your former comrades from the grip of dreadful error. They’re about showing off how much more enlightened you are, using your misspent youth as a prop for credibility. I’ve read apostate tell-alls that I thought were true, but I’ve never read one that made me think I’d like, or trust, the author if I met him.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell what loyalty demands of you. Whether to turn your klepto brother into the police, whether to make a play for your best friend’s girl after they break up—these are tough questions. But if your old ideological compatriots ever did you a favor, ever took you into their circles or into their confidence, ever gave you a damn cake on your birthday, then you owe it to them not to write the hit piece. You owe them. That’s a no-brainer.

First of all, I write what I write because I feel like writing it. Prior to writing an “apostasy piece,” rarely do I contemplate the consequences to my “standing” (such as it is/was) among conservatives, or how my diatribes will be received by the targets of my invective.

However, self-examination reveals that I probably should not get so personal in my criticisms, and that my juvenile name calling - while serving the purpose of allowing me to stretch my vocabulary and entertain myself - nevertheless impacts others in such a way that disqualifies my critique as mindless twaddle. If I were really interested in getting those who consider themselves “true conservatives” to embrace reason and logic, I would not write unreasonable tracts of spittle flecked tirades denouncing…spittle flecked tirades.

Except the effort to cajole, convince, or otherwise engage the minds of the true believers is something akin to pissing into a hurricane wind where one is likely to be splashed in the face no matter where the stream is aimed. It is impossible to reason with someone who believes Rush Limbaugh correctly ascertains the motives of Obama and the left when he spouts about the political opposition wanting to “destroy the country.” Not that their policies might have that result, but that its is their actual plan; to impoverish us so that we become dependent on government.

Limbaugh a couple of weeks ago:

It’s going to be a long, cold winter, ladies and gentlemen. “One Million Workers Could Lose Unemployment Benefits in January Unless Congress Extends Aid — More than 1 million people will run out of unemployment benefits in January unless Congress quickly extends federal emergency aid, a nonprofit group said Wednesday.” So the pressure being brought to bear — does anybody doubt that we’re going to extend unemployment benefits? I don’t. This is exactly the agenda. This is the point: Get as many people as possible depending on government. I’ll tell you, the more you extend unemployment benefits, the less — this is just human nature. The less people are going to look for work.

Gently pointing out that Rush is full of it doesn’t work. Trying to reasonably argue that Sarah Palin is a lightweight, intellectually lazy, and a fear mongering prevaricator gets you nowhere.

So why not chastise, berate, and attempt to rhetorically castrate those who reject anything reasonable you might have to say by referring to you as a “dupe,” or an “idiot,” or a RINO or a liberal?

Conor Friedersdorf - something of an apostate himself according to many true believers - has an interesting answer:

In her post, Ms. Rittelmeyer is reaction to Charles Johnson’s “break with the right,” as described on Little Green Footballs. I found it a weird piece for all the reasons that James Joyner mentions. The incoherence of the post is due to an underlying mistake in the way that Little Green Footballs, and the whole corner of the blogosphere where he operates, understand ideology and political argument: they regard it as a team enterprise, where orthodoxies of thought are to be enforced, positions are taken out of loyalty as often as conviction, and honest disagreement is tantamount to betrayal.

Though I’ve written against loyalty as it is sometimes understood in Washington DC — see here and here — I met some exceptional people during my time in that city, close friends to whom I am incredibly loyal. I imagine they know they can turn to me for help at any time in life, and count on me to cheer their successes and rue their failures. As I think about those people, who are different from one another in many ways, I am aware of one similarity. Despite the fact that I’ve often talked politics with many of them, and that we’ve been on the same side of certain arguments, none of them would dream of being offended were I to honestly disagree with them in print on some matter, or forcefully argue that they are mistaken on some question, even if we formerly agreed about it and I changed my mind.

Friedersdorf exists within a charmed circle indeed. In my case, I have discovered that most of my online friends are perfectly capable of throwing every bric-a-brac I toss toward them back at me - in spades - but that when all is said and done, most of us are still on speaking terms at the end of the argument. At bottom, we simply don’t understand each other - a fate that has befallen the major conservative factions who look across the divide and rather than seeing allies in a common cause, view their putative friends as obstacles to their goal of controlling the agenda/narrative/party.

I don’t think I’ve gotten any more or less reasonable over the years. But I have become more willing to dig in my heels at being pulled along when some of my fellow conservatives seek to hurl themselves over an ideological cliff. If I have changed, it’s recognizing that excessive ideology in politics, rather than illuminating or aggrandizing conservatism, forces a rigidity of thought and intransigency against reason that makes it easy to reject the logic of change.

When conservatives talk about “change” these days, what they are really promoting is more of the same, only believed with more conviction and said in a louder voice. The drive for “purity” is a reflection of their conviction that the reason conservatism is in disfavor is because their potential leaders and the Washington elites do not share their rock solid certainty in their own infallibility.

There is much wrong with many inside the beltway conservatives. I agree that they should be castigated for their hypocrisy; running as pious conservatives back home while playing fast and loose with conservative principles in DC. Such cynicism should be punished severely and I have no qualms about taking them to the woodshed for their sins.

But the world looks a little more complex to the “elites” than it does to most conservatives. In fact, many on the right reject complexity entirely, seeing it as just another excuse for a lack of adherence to principles among establishment conservatives, and others like Friedersdorf. It is their lack of fervency that is suspect, not necessarily any deviation from principle that riles the critics. That, and a slightly different interpretation of what “conservatism” is all about, convicts establishment righties of the crime of “not being conservative enough,” and thus a target of the true believers.

Not recognizing that this attitude is the gateway to permanent minority status is perhaps the primary beef I have with those who are so eager to throw most of the conservative establishment overboard. Sacrificing lock step ideology for victory at the polls is not a betrayal of principle but a pragmatic, and realistic assessment of how to throw Obamaism on the ash heap of history. That goal, however, is sacrificed on the altar of “purity” and fervid absolutism.

If my apostasy brands me as “disloyal,” so be it. If conservatives can’t take one of their own pointing out where this madness is heading, then there is little hope that President Obama’s leftist agenda can be slowed or halted.

And if that’s not the goal that we all want to achieve, what exactly do those who question my conservatism want?

I would hesitate to go so far as to say that the argument taking place in South Carolina by partisans for Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint is a microcosm of the debate between “moderates” and conservatives across the country. In the first place, someone with a lifetime rating of 90 from the ACU (Graham) can by no means be considered a “moderate” anything. Secondly, Graham’s difficulties have been heightened by his own potty mouth trashing of conservatives who disagree with him. Calling someone a “bigot” because they want tighter border security is not the way to win friends and influence conservatives.

Rather, the debate is over whether Republicans should assist the Democrats in governing the country. This is the real issue, at least in South Carolina, where Lindsey Graham has demonstrated a desire to reach across the aisle to work with Democrats on key issues like cap and trade and the Sotomayer nomination. In short, the difference is in what we used to call the “temperament” of the legislator. And there are many who believe a legislator cannot hold to any principles if they parlay with the enemy.

And DeMint? Anyone who claims allegiance to a political party and makes a statement that he would rather have only 30 true believing GOP senators as opposed to a majority who held varied positions on some issues needs to have an intervention by some adult, and be sent away where he can weave baskets until he comes to his senses. The prescription on the bottle of pills on which he has overdosed reads: “Take two every day and destroy the Republican party.” His idea is that rock solid stupid.

From a New York Times article on the South Carolina situation:

Their grievance list was long: it cited the senator for calling opponents of immigration law change “bigots,” holding the Republican Party “hostage” by participating in bipartisan maneuvers, voting for the Wall Street bailout and tarnishing the ideals of freedom.

It even criticized Mr. Graham, a Republican and the state’s senior senator, as having “stated on many occasions that his primary concern is to ‘be relevant.’ ”

The party had no such criticism for the other senator from South Carolina, Jim DeMint.

In fact, Mr. DeMint, a Republican in his first term, is the leader of a movement to pull the party in the opposite direction from Mr. Graham’s conciliatory approach. The political action committee he founded, called the Senate Conservatives Fund, backs only candidates who are rock-solid conservatives, and adherents to his views have led the efforts to censure Mr. Graham.

The two senators say they are friends whose differences are exaggerated by the news media, and Mr. DeMint has not personally criticized Mr. Graham or called for his censure.

But their contrasting strategies have brought home to South Carolina the struggle over the future of the Republican Party and have put them on opposite sides of important Senate primaries in states like Florida, where Mr. DeMint supports a vocal conservative, Marco Rubio, and Mr. Graham supports Gov. Charlie Crist.

In California, Mr. DeMint supports Chuck DeVore, in defiance of the national party leadership and Mr. Graham, who said he would campaign for Carly Fiorina.

Here in South Carolina, Mr. Graham’s vote to confirm Justice Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, among other positions, has cost him the support of many conservatives, as have his comments that voters want politicians to reach across the aisle and that Republicans need to do a better job of attracting younger voters and minorities.

I have taken pains in the past to point out that DeMint’s idea of conservatism and someone who lives in the northeast (where only 6% of the population have a favorable view of the GOP) may differ wildly - ON THE ISSUES. The fact that so many conservatives confuse “issues” with “principles” shouldn’t surprise anyone considering they get most of their information from people like Rush Limbaugh who make the exact same mistake. A northeastern conservative can hold to the exact same principles as a southern conservative but differ in the ideological lens through which they view the world. Why this makes a northeastern conservative suspect goes to the heart of the debate in the party today.

Issues and principles are not the same, have never been the same, and will never be the same. And someone like Graham who gets a 90% lifetime conservative rating and is seen as a “moderate” by many conservatives proves my point spectacularly. In this case, DeMint conservatives are confusing temperament with principles. Just as many on the right believe that criticizing their idols like Palin, Limbaugh, and other cotton candy conservatives makes someone, somehow, less beholden to conservative principles than they. Principles be damned - it’s whether you are sufficiently hateful toward the opposition that is the yardstick where someone’s conservative bona fides are measured. If conservatism was a philosophy today instead of a rigid, ideological religion, such nonsense would be laughed out of the room.

Madness.

I disagreed with Graham on Sotomayer, cap and trade, and the judges compromise. And I resented his intimations that he held a superior moral position on immigration reform - something that smacked of arrogance even if he was pandering to Hispanics by playing it that way. But Graham has been a reliable conservative vote on so many other issues, one wonders why his apostasy in these few cases would condemn him to be cast into the outer darkness by conservatives. It only proves that the DeMint notion of a party in lockstep and a prisoner of its own rigid ideology, will probably dominate the landscape in 2010.

At what cost? Let’s be frank and acknowledge that the DeMint idea of conservatism is much more ideological than pragmatic, more beholden to the holy writ of purity than reason and logic, and requires a plethora of litmus tests on issues to join his scowling band (ideologues have no sense of humor at all). Couple that with the belief that saying anything halfway nice about the president or the political opposition disqualifies one from membership and you have the perfect recipe for a permanent, minority party.

Perhaps this has to happen in order for a revival to take place. Perhaps the DeMints of the party have to be beaten so badly that they are once and for all, totally discredited in the eyes of conservatives in the rest of the country. Only then can a reasonable, pragmatic conservatism emerge that acknowledges adherence to DeMint principles, but lowers the ideological temperature to be more inclusive.

It may very well be that DeMint’s southern fried conservatism will do very well in 2010. Certainly the Democrats are helping out a ton there. But beyond that, the future is clouded by notion that events may very well play more into the Democrat’s hands in 2012 and whatever gains made at the polls in the Mid-Term elections would be washed away.

America is not an ideological country. And believing the route to majority status can be achieved by being more wild eyed and rigid than the opposition is a losing proposition. I’m not sure that Graham’s approach is 100% the way to victory. But it’s a damn sight closer to what’s needed than where DeMint wants to take the party.

Destination DeMint: Over a cliff.

When I was in grade school (St. Raymond, Mount Prospect, IL), there was a ritual that we looked forward to every Friday afternoon.

Along about two O’Clock, the nuns would herd us into the church so that the good priests (and they were good) could hear our confessions.

Now I don’t know how confession is done today in the Catholic church, having lapsed into first apostasy, then agnosticism, and finally atheism. But back then, you went into a closet sized little room with a wall separating you and the priest where you were supposed to spill the beans on all the sins you committed for the past week.

I should mention that if we were really lucky, confessions would last until three O’Clock which meant no more school for the day and an early start to the weekend. (In 8th grade, a few of us rowdies would make sure of this by spending 5 minutes listing our sins, thus assuring a glacial pace to the proceedings. One of the priests caught on and, although amused, asked us not to commit such sacrilege against the sacraments again.)

To be honest, I hated the whole idea of confession. I thought back then that it was one of those little tortures the Catholic Church invented to control their flock. The priest, after all, knew damn well who most of the penitents were - especially in my case since we lived 3 doors down from the rectory. What better way to control another than know their sins?

At any rate, the way I “confessed” was tell the priest stuff like “I sinned against the 2nd commandment 10 times, the 6th commandment 5 times, the 7th commandment twice…and I had impure thoughts 3 times!”

“Impure thoughts” at my age was making goo-eyes at Rene Russo and wishing I could see her with almost no clothes on while kissing her - on the lips! Our nuns (Sisters of Mercy) were very, very big on impure thoughts and constantly warned us how such could lead to hellfire and damnation.

It was all made up anyway. As a 14 year old, you probably have “impure thoughts” three times a minute much less in a week. And counting the transgressions against the second commandment of taking God’s name in vain would have required a room-sized computer to properly calculate.

Anyway, it’s a good thing some Republicans are on the ball when it comes to those in the party who might be thinking “impure thoughts” and thus transgress against the “principles” for which the GOP stands:

The battle among Republicans over what the party should stand for — and how much it should accommodate dissenting views on important issues — is probably going to move from the states to the Republican National Committee when it holds its winter meeting this January in Honolulu.

Republican leaders are circulating a resolution listing 10 positions Republican candidates should support to demonstrate that they “espouse conservative principles and public policies” that are in opposition to “Obama’s socialist agenda.” According to the resolution, any Republican candidate who broke with the party on three or more of these issues– in votes cast, public statements made or answering a questionnaire – would be penalized by being denied party funds or the party endorsement.

The proposed resolution was signed by 10 Republican national committee members and was distributed on Monday morning. They are asking for the resolution to be debated when Republicans gather for their winter meeting.

The resolution invokes Ronald Reagan, and noted that Mr. Reagan had said the Republican Party should be devoted to conservative principles but also be open to diverse views. President Reagan believed, the resolution notes, “that someone who agreed with him 8 out of 10 times was his friend, not his opponent.”

Looking over the list, I am happy to report that I support at least 8 and maybe 9 of the litmus test positions. (Long time readers might have some fun by guessing which one - or two - I can be considered “impure” for not supporting):

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run health care;

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.

A few quibbles; what is “effective action” against Iran and North Korea (#7)? I don’t support military action unless they are an imminent threat to us or Israel (or South Korea).

Also, “rationing and denial of health care” (#9) is already with us in private insurance company decisions. Is it the GOP position that it is ok for private industry to ration but not government? Tell that one to the old folks.

Of the rest, I think DOMA has got to go. Otherwise, I score well on this test and demand my copy receive a Gold Star and that I get an extra ration of chocolate milk at lunch.

But what’s the point? About 99% of Republicans support 8-10 of those litmus tests. Probably 90% support all 10. Instead of silly, stupid gimmicks, why not just come out and say, “Snowe, Collins, Crist, and the rest of you RINO’s get squat from us!” Why go through the rigmarole of pretending to weed out apostates by giving grown men and women a childish “test” of purity?

I will answer that by saying simply that we have a bunch of idiots in charge of the party. They - the elites - think they are being quite clever by trying to satisfy the base by showing that they are getting tough by denying funds to those who don’t quite measure up to “conservative principles.”

You want conservative principles” How about prudence? How “prudent” is it to brand the Obama administration “socialist?” What about “probity?” Integrity and honesty is lacking in a party that tolerates its members festooning bills with earmarks. What about “variety” which is a Kirkian principle of eschewing systems that promote a “deadening conformity?” What are these litmus tests but the very definition of conformity?

What about the principle “that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society.” I see quite a bit of “permanence” in those 10 litmus tests, but no room for the American virtue of “change.” It’s the same old, same old in this stale repetition of talking points, not a reaffirmation of the viability of conservatism in American society.

Yes, deny funds to those who make a mockery of party principles and conservative ideas. This isn’t rocket science. Everybody knows who they are and party leaders are only making the GOP look ridiculous by making candidates act like 10 year olds, forcing this kind of conformity in the form of a “purity test” on them.

The nuns at St. Raymonds would no doubt have approved, however. Nothing they liked better than sniffing out “impure thoughts.”

Perhaps the next missive from national party leaders will contain the “penance” that must be performed before the transgressors get back in their good graces.

Five “Our Fathers” and whole recitation of the rosary ought to do the trick.

Reading this interview of Sarah Palin by Rush Limbaugh was alarming if you care about the direction of the conservative movement and the Republican party.

It’s alarming because Sarah Palin is not living in this century. Example:

RUSH: You mean that you don’t even hear it (tax cuts) being discussed on the Republican side or within the administration?

GOV. PALIN: Within the administration, and as it is discussed on the Republican side, Republicans need to be bolder about it. Independents need to be bolder about that solution that has got to be considered and plugged in. This is the only solution that will be successful. We need to rehash some history that proves its success. Let’s go back to what Reagan did in the early eighties and stay committed to those commonsense free market principles that worked. He faced a tougher recession than what we’re facing today. He cut those taxes, ramped up industry, and we pulled out of that recession. We need to revisit that.

This recession is far different than the one faced by Reagan in 1980 when he took office. First, this recession is much deeper. The labor market has totally crashed. Whereas in 1980, most workers were laid off or furloughed, with the promise they would be called back eventually, not so this time.

This piece on the Reuters blog points out that there are several reasons why unemployment may top 12% before it begins to come down and why recovery will be incredibly slow - no matter how many tax cuts you can come up with:

1. For the first time in at least six decades, private sector employment is negative on a 10-year basis (first turned negative in August). Hence, the changes are not merely cyclical or short-term in nature. Many of the jobs created between the 2001 and 2008 recessions were related either directly or indirectly to the parabolic extension of credit.

2. During this two-year recession, employment has declined a record 8 million. Even in percent terms, this is a record in the post-WWII experience.

3. Looking at the split, there were 11 million full-time jobs lost (usually we see three million in a garden-variety recession), of which three million were shifted into part-time work.

4.There are now a record 9.3 million Americans working part-time because they have no choice. In past recessions, that number rarely got much above six million.

[...]

6. The number of permanent job losses this cycle (unemployed but not for temporary purposes) increased by a record 6.2 million. In fact, well over half of the total unemployment pool of 15.7 million was generated just in this past recession alone. A record 5.6 million people have been unemployed for at least six months (this number rarely gets above two million in a normal downturn) which is nearly a 36% share of the jobless ranks (again, this rarely gets above 20%). Both the median (18.7 weeks) and average (26.9 weeks) duration of unemployment have risen to all-time highs.

7. The longer it takes for these folks to find employment (and now they can go on the government benefit list for up to two years) the more difficult it is going to be to retrain them in the future when labour demand does begin to pick up.

Sorry, Sarah. Tax cuts alone ain’t gonna fix this. Millions of jobs have been permanently lost - millions. You are living in a dream world - or time warp - if you believe that a little Reagan-like tax cutting will lift all boats.

(The fact that it was Reagan/Volker monetary policy that most economists credit with taming inflation which allowed the tax cuts to work their magic seems lost on Palin.)

And I am all for “common sense” whether it be applied to free market principles or anything else. But as far as “ramping up industry?” Would someone please inform our uninformed former Alaskan governor that the manufacturing sector has shrunk by 2/3 since 1980 and “ramping up” a disappearing sector of the economy is something akin to ramping up the horse and carriage industry?

Yes, it is a time warp - tired, old solutions to problems that sound as grating and tinny on the ear as a wax disc being played on an old gramophone. Almost since this blog’s inception, I have been agitating for the GOP to drop this 1980’s mantra of “cut taxes, cut spending, shrink government, strong defense.” There is nothing much wrong with any of those ideas except they need to be refashioned to reflect 21st century realities.

How much can you cut taxes when the deficit is at $1.7 trillion and climbing? When the national debt is soaring over $12 trillion? Without corresponding cuts in the budget, it would be the height of irresponsibility to add to the problem. And if memory serves, when the GOP was in the majority the last time, they weren’t enamored of cutting anything from the budget.

Shrink government? Fine idea, I’m all for it. Where to begin? Whose services do you cut first? The old? The poor? The Middle Class? Entitlement reform is a good place to start but since bi-partisanship is out of the question (so I am told), how do you accomplish that politically suicidal manuever?

We’re already spending half a trillion on defense while engaged in two wars. Perhaps we could amend the “strong defense” goal with a “smart defense” battle cry. I don’t think we’ll be fighting the Russians on the plains of mittel europa for the foreseeable future. But much of our defense spending is geared in that direction. A reordering of priorities is desperately needed if we are to fight the wars of the 21st century.

The long and short of it is Palin and most of her supporters believe you can slap the template used to achieve victory 30 years ago and win going away in 2010-12. What’s eerie is that the 1980-era Democrats offered New Deal solutions to the recession, making the exact same mistake today’s conservatives are proposing. Trying decades-old remedies for what ails us is myopic. The world has moved on, conditions have changed, the economy is as different as can possibly be imagined today compared to 1980 and yet Palin wants to graft those ideas onto the today’s economic problems.

And if you want more evidence that Sarah Palin is out of touch with the modern world, here she is again:

GOV. PALIN: I think just naturally independents are going to gravitate towards that Republican agenda and Republican platform because the planks in our platform are the strongest to build a healthy America. We’re all about cutting taxes and shrinking government and respecting the inherent rights of the individual and strengthening families and respecting life and equality. You have to shake your head and say, “Who wouldn’t embrace that? Who wouldn’t want to come on over?” They don’t have to necessarily be registered within the Republican Party in order to hook up with us and join us with that agenda standing on those planks. In Alaska, about 70% of Alaskans are independent. So that’s my base. That’s where I am from and that’s been my training ground, is just implementing commonsense conservative solutions. Independents appreciate that. You’re going to see more and more of that attraction to the GOP by these independents as the days go on.

“Who wouldn’t embrace that?” Oh, say about 65 million voters.

And there are plenty of commenters who point out that Palin has abandoned her “independent” personae and is now fully engaged as the tribal chieftain of right.

Larison:

Everything she has done since arriving on the national stage has involved steadily distancing herself from her short record as governor. Reihan has already given up on her as a viable political leader, and I’m not surprised. Reihan is a smart writer interested in policy ideas and their application in reforming government, and there would not be much call for that in Palin’s GOP. Continetti has embarked on a project of rehabilitating the national political fortunes of someone who dropped out of elective office in her own state mostly because she could not put up with the tactics of her opposition and the scrutiny of the media. Why should we take such a project seriously? If arguments in support of Palin’s political future don’t deserve to be dismissed pretty quickly, no argument ever should be.

I would have thought that anyone interested in promoting reasoned, thoughtful discussion would shudder at the thought of a Republican Party led and defined by Sarah Palin, whose national political career has been one episode of inflammatory, uninformed agitation after another. That is the kind of party and the kind of conservatism Continetti is working to create. Fortunately, his preferred candidate is so politically radioactive to most of the country that it will never take hold.

“[I]nflammatory, uninformed agitation,” you say? How’s this?

Palin blamed a culture of political correctness and other decisions that “prevented — I’m going to say it — profiling” of someone with Hasan’s extremist ideology. “I say, profile away,” Palin said. Such political correctness, she continued, “could be our downfall.”

OK - so is that “reasoned thoughtful discussion,” or “inflammatory, uninformed agitation…?”

The point isn’t that it is better to risk the caterwauling from CAIR about placing an emphasis on searching Muslim men at the airport. The point is the incredibly cavalier manner in which she offered her opinion. How can anyone take someone like that seriously as a potential president?

Reading the Limbaugh interview proves that she is better at articulating talking points and that the talking points themselves are a little better. But one is still left with the impression that she is a depthless wonder with an understanding of the issues that’s a mile wide and an inch deep. This is fine for your run of the mill congressman or even if you want to aspire to the senate. Joe Biden got by on such shallowness for a couple of decades and look where it got him.

I fully realize my opinion of Sarah Palin is not that of a majority of true conservatives. But then, it appears that the majority would rather go down in flames with Palin than take down Obama in 2012:

A new national poll suggests that the Democrats may be the party of pragmatism and Republicans may be the party of ideological purity.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey’s release on Tuesday comes just two weeks after internal party divisions led to the GOP loss of a seat in the House of Representatives that it had held since the 19th century.

The poll indicates that a slight majority, 51 percent, of Republicans would prefer to see the GOP in their area nominate candidates who agree with them on all the major the issues even if they have a poor chance of beating the Democratic candidate. Forty-three percent of Republicans say they would rather have candidates with whom they don’t agree on all the important issues but who can beat the Democrats.

I would vote for Marco Rubio even though I disagree with him on a few issues. But would a majority of Republicans vote for Charlie Crist if he were to beat Rubio in a primary? I also disagree with Crist - probably more than I disagree with Rubio - but would vote for either man because our agreement on issues far outweighs any disagreements.

And this is “unprincipled?” Some conservatives are acting like spoiled brats who, if they don’t get absolutely everything they want out of a candidate, are going to take their vote, go home, and sit on it. This is not responsible citizenship. There is nothing “principled” about it either. It is childish to act in this manner.

This is not to say there shouldn’t be primary challenges from conservatives to some GOP incumbents. There are a few who deserve it. But if conservatives take the position that anyone who doesn’t agree with them on 100% of “their” issues should be tossed aside, there will indeed be a bloodbath that will weaken the party at a time when opportunity is beckoning.

I might also add that with that kind of attitude, even if the Republicans experience massive gains in 2010, the chance to take the White House and hold on to those gains in 2012 will be a big question mark. Even if the economy is still horrible in 2012, this desire to eat our own will fatally weaken the party and it is likely that a lot of winners from 2010 will go down to defeat in 2012.

In total, I would have to say that the Sarah Palin phenomenon is poison for conservatism and deadly to the Republican party. But blinded by an inexplicable attraction to this polarizing, ill-informed, political Svengali, it is quite possible that the movement and the party will go down to defeat to the sound of thunderous applause.

I have been criticized on this site, sometimes for good reason, for being too general in trashing the left. This was especially true earlier in the history of this blog when I was enamored of the possibility that total victory by the right was ultimately necessary and possible. I have grown up a bit since then, intellectually speaking, tightened my reasoning and dropped the idea that any of us have a corner on truth. In a real sense, this was liberating as well as satisfying; it describes the world more accurately while allowing the objective examination of all ideas regardless of their source, thus contributing to understanding and knowledge.

But I still admit to a certain intellectual laziness in this regard. It’s always easier to generalize and readers would recognize my rather caustic comebacks to commenters who lump me together with the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

In truth, there are a liberals out there who I read who resist their own impulses to generalize about conservatives, and who offer cogent, logical arguments advancing their positions on issues and countering the arguments from the right in a thoughtful, civil manner. Just a few I can name off the top of my head would be Matthew Yglesias, Ezra Klein, Josh Marshall, David Weigel, Jonathan Cohn, Marty Perez and a gaggle of lefties at The New Republic. Most of these gentlemen and ladies I have disagreed with - violently at times - over policy. But they are far above the average lefty blogger whose gross exaggerations and oversimplifications of conservatism really rankle me.

I was pleased today to discover another liberal who I will be able to read without my head exploding. In this reprint of an article in The American Conservative from last December, conservative author Patrick Allitt introduces us to George Scialabba, a liberal “public intellectual” who reflects what is termed a “neo-liberal” point of view on economic matters, while delivering a hearty critique of industrial capitalism.

Scialabba’s views, as they are described by Allitt (I am off to Amazon later to buy his book), sound more Von Mises or Hayek than John Maynard Keynes. Allitt describes him thusly:

Scialabba is a rare bird among serious nonfiction writers in that he’s not a professor or a foundation fellow. In some ways reminiscent of the longshoreman-philosopher Eric Hoffer, he comes to the work of Plato, David Hume, Matthew Arnold, and Karl Marx not on the basis of a life spent in university seminars but from his own experiences as a social worker and office clerk. He can always produce an appropriate insight from John Stuart Mill or a scintillating quip from George Bernard Shaw. He keeps alive the ideals of the Enlightenment, dares to think utopian thoughts, and still feels the romantic pull of the Left, but hardly ever succumbs to wishful thinking. This collection of his essays and reviews from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s makes surprising reading, not least because Scialabba, from a principled position on the Left, makes so many assertions with which conservatives will readily agree.

Those of us on the right who identify with Burke rather than Locke will see a conflict in Scialabba. There has always been more “romance” with liberal ideas and personalities because in many ways, these concepts speak to the longing for if not a perfect world, then certainly a more livable one. There have been very few conservative Utopians - at least not in the traditional sense of the word, because the right realizes such schemes always come with a price; someone’s idea of “Utopia” might not match everyone else’s. The germ of coercion is plainly evident in any practical realization of a “Utopian” society.

Surprisingly, while Scialabba recognizes this by reluctantly accepting the fact that that the world is far too complex for any realistic hope for creating a perfect society, he nevertheless still pushes the idea because something so good is worth striving for anyway:

But must increasing complexity and the sinister reach of propaganda end the dream of a better world? In a meditation on utopianism, Scialabba says no. He understands the intellectual progress of recent centuries as a joint venture undertaken by skeptics and visionaries, who challenged ancient falsehoods and dreamed of a finer world: “The skeptics can be seen as clearing a space for the utopian imagination, for prophecies of a demystified community, of solidarity without illusions. The skeptics weed, the visionaries water.” He is not ashamed to outline his own utopia, a world in which everyone will sing in harmony at least once a week, in which folks will know plenty of great poems and speeches by heart, have useful and stimulating work, enjoy civil arguments with one another, won’t depend on consumerism for a feeling of self-worth, and will be able to hike in unspoiled wilderness. I would be glad to join him there.

Heh - sounds pretty good to me too.

Scialabba also has some thoughts about most modern liberal intellectuals, taking them to task for being too “academic” and not getting into the trenches with other activists to effect change:

Scialabba regrets that most leftist intellectuals have given up on utopia and retreated completely into academic life. They deceive themselves, he argues, when they claim that their esoteric work in critical theory has political significance. Their ventures in multiculturalism, he adds, are often mere academic empire building, which do little or nothing to aid the actual disadvantaged members of society. Worse, by asserting that their academic work is “political,” they feel absolved from doing the hard and joyless work of organizing and agitating that their predecessors generally undertook.

Equally, he regards the Left’s politicization of high culture as “misguided and counterproductive,” and he deplores the “staggering amount of mediocre and tendentious” art that has been produced on behalf of political correctness. In an essay about The New Criterion, he notes that its editors, Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball, find it difficult to specify the exact aesthetic and moral criteria by which all art should be judged. Never mind, he says, it is enough that they “muddle along, employing and occasionally articulating the criteria that have emerged from our culture’s conversation since the Greeks initiated it, and showing that what used to and still usually does underwrite our judgments about beauty and truth is inconsistent with giving Robert Mapplethorpe a one-man show … or Toni Morrison a Nobel Prize.”

This is a liberal who actually values substance over form, and recognizes that modern liberalism (as much of modern conservatism) has degenerated into a riot of personal conceits where a strict ideological construct prevents freedom of thought: Where forms like “political correctness” and multi-culturalism” stifle independent thinking in attempting to shoehorn art, politics, and cultural conformity into an “accepted” narrow, definitional framework.

No, it is not as “conservative” as it might sound. What Scialabba appears to be after, above all, is an intellectually honest, liberal critique of modernity that, while recognizing the market as a far better mechanism for spreading and creating wealth than any other system, nevertheless takes as dim a view of the right as he does with some of his friends on the left:

Scialabba opposes the standardization and facelessness that often accompany modernity. In an essay on Michael Walzer, he speaks up against abstractions and in favor of particular, usually national, loyalties. “The minimal code of near-universally recognized rights that underwrites international law is too thin to support a dense moral culture. Only a shared history—which usually means a national history—of moral discourse, political conflict, and literary achievement can generate values of sufficient thickness and depth.” Again, conservative readers would nod in agreement.

Moreover, Scialabba resists the temptation to think that the end sometimes justifies the means. He praises Lionel Trilling for his chastened sense of progressivism, his insistence that moral scrupulosity always matters, no matter how desirable the political objective. Trilling’s view, he argues, was “yes to greater equality, inclusiveness, cooperation, tolerance, social experimentation, individual freedom … but only after listening to everything that can be said against one’s cherished projects, assuming equal intelligence and good faith on the part of one’s opponents, and tempering one’s zeal with the recognition that every new policy has unintended consequences, sometimes very bad ones.” Insights like these, scattered throughout this collection, offer a welcome reminder that the distance between at least some parts of the Left and Right is far smaller than our more irritable pundits would like us to believe.

Most conservatives today would take exception to the idea that our differences with the left - on some issues at least - are indeed “far smaller than our more irritable pundits would like us to believe.” But why shouldn’t that be so? After all, we share pretty much the same Enlightenment values (with admittedly a different emphasis on which ones are important), and there are areas of agreement to one degree or another on the value of liberty and human dignity.

Where we part company are on the means to achieve common goals. I am not sure what kind of bridges can be built with most of today’s liberals. But perhaps seeking out areas of commonality is a good place to start.

Interesting reactions from left and right to the passage in the House of health care reform.

A bill nobody has read, that contains nobody knows what, that no one has a clue of what kind of impact it will have on the current health care system, with a cost known only to God, has been passed with no formal hearings, extraordinarily limited debate, and in a totally partisan manner (minus one Republican who doesn’t have a prayer in 2010).

That’s the “reality” I would say to my friends in the reality based community. Can you argue with any of those points above? Only if you spin so hard you are in danger of flying off into orbit.

If we had a rational government, any one of those realities would have derailed health care reform long ago. But rationality has left the building, as has common sense, proportionality, wisdom, and that fine old conservative virtue, prudence.

National Health Care Reform represents a new way of governing; the blind, leading the deaf and dumb, toward an unknowable future - driving the engine of government at full speed, and without any brakes. Can’t see that break in the tracks up ahead? Ooops! My bad. We’ll pick up the pieces later.

Of course, this is only the first step. Something approximating the House bill is going to have to pass the senate - by no means a foregone conclusion, but made more likely by last night’s vote. And the conference committee to reconcile the two versions while hanging on to enough votes in both houses for passage will be something akin to trying to put a round peg in a fractal hole.

But the momentum appears to favor getting something passed before the end of the year. If the House vote proved anything, it is that the Democrats are fully capable of coming up with solutions that will allow their huge majorities to win the day regardless of the issues. They have proven adept at papering over their differences, finessing the insoluble, and coming up with imaginative gimmicks to make national health care reform a reality.

The question then arises; where to, conservatism?

There has been more than one liberal pundit who has speculated that the passage of national health care reform would mean the death of conservatism. Holy Jesus! If communism couldn’t be killed by it’s massive internal contradictions, I hardly think conservatism is in any danger of going the way of the Dodo bird because national health insurance has become a reality.

But perhaps the chocks will be pulled out from underneath the kind of “small government” conservatism that believes rolling back the Great Society, the New Deal, and taking America back to a fiercely literal interpretation of the Constitution, is the path that conservatism should follow.

I put “small government” in quotes because the reality is that most who adhere to that brand of conservatism are actually proponents of “no government” conservatism. All conservatives look in askance at the welfare state. But there is a difference in seeking to destroy it willy nilly and substitute a pre-Constitutional environment more in keeping with the Articles of Confederation, than in drastically reforming both the programs and ideology that undergirds the culture of dependency that has taken control of government. But the “no government” conservatives will become even more irrelevant now that we are on the road to nationalized health care. Government as the “enemy” may still be a potent call to arms for these conservatives, but their impact on actual public policy will be close to zero.

If national health care becomes a reality, history tells us that it will never be repealed, that one sixth of the American economy will be permanently controlled by Washington. There will be successful efforts to play around at the margins, bringing efficiencies and changing some of the more odorous aspects of what is to come. But politicians have never taken away an entitlement in history, and I am extremely skeptical that it can be done in this case.

Once the independent health insurance industry is gone, how to you get it back? How do you reconstitute a private health care system? The answer is you can’t. Once national health care has had its way with the system and we see single payer insurance, and a health care bureaucracy that dictates treatments, costs, eligibility, as well as rationing what care is left, it will be impossible to ditch that system in favor of a market based, private entity. It is much easier for government to destroy private industry than it is for government to actually create a free market for health care. The very act of government creation would, by definition, not allow the market to determine the parameters of its operation.

So, do conservatives deal with this reality and work to affect it, or do they cling to the irrational belief that they can turn the world upside down, repeal a middle class entitlement, and resurrect an entire industry? I believe that, along with other entitlements, conservative principles can be applied to governance so that it’s costs are kept from rising too quickly, while choices can be broadened. In short, if there must be national health care, conservatives can run it far better than liberals.

Not very satisfactory but real world options are rarely as palatable as those we imagine when clinging to dreams of Jeffersonian (or Randian) utopias. John Galt may be a folk hero, but even he is going to need to see a doctor at some point. So, from where I’m sitting, (given the strong probability that national health care will be a reality by the end of the year) you can either work to radically improve what the Democrats have so carelessly tossed into the people’s laps, or you can continue thinking that it is possible to create a government that doesn’t do much except kill terrorists and give out tax break like pieces of candy corn on Halloween night.

That’s an exaggeration, of course. But my purpose - groping, feeling my way in the dark though it seems - is to think about what conservatism means facing this new reality. Those who wish to continue living in a fantasy world where “no government” or “small government” (rather than “smaller government”) dominates, I congratulate you on your efforts. It is more than the rest of us who wish to advance the cause of conservatism in the real world are capable.

There is no way to adequately explain how royally delicious the irony that can be found in this post by Jon Walker at Firedoglake.

To those of us on both sides who look in askance at the excessively ideological fringes of both right and left, the echo that can be heard in Mr. Walker’s piece from conservatives is eerie:

Bill Owens is a conservative Democrat. He is arguably more conservative than the official Republican candidate was (Dede Scozzafava dropped out over the weekend). For example, his opposition to the public option puts him not only far to the right of the bulk of the Democratic party, but significantly to the right of the majority of Americans. He was selected because he fit the Rahm Emanuel philosophy that the only way for Democrats to win right-leaning districts is with conservative Democratic candidates.

The theory is that a center-right Democrat will win the entire Democratic base, most of the independents, and a few of the more liberal Republicans. That theory is getting blown out of the water in NY-23rd. Bill Owens’s remaining competition is the ultra-rightwing Conservative party candidate Doug Hoffman. The vast majority of the district should be ideologically much closer Owens than Hoffman, yet Hoffman is leading in the polls.

If Hoffman wins it will be a big loss for the misguided ideal among some Democrats that the only way to win right-leaning districts is by diligently staking out bland center-right positions. Having a candidate that seems “real” and can really fire up the base is very important. People often vote because they feel elected officials are ignoring them and they want to send a message. Right now, there is a real populist rage out there directed at Washington in general.

Yep - even though the “vast majority” in the district should be supporting Owens because they are closer to his more moderate ideology, somehow, someone is playing a trick! Hoffman is leading in the polls? How is that possible?

Well, maybe the district is closer to Hoffman in their ideology than Owens. But that’s not possible because Hoffman is a radical, far right, loony tunes, ass-upside-down drooling righty.

Or, Mr. Walker has a hole in his head and his cranial matter has been leaking lo these many years.

Now read this from Mac Ranger:

The Republican Party wins ONLY when Conservatism is it’s core. Willy-Nilly RINOISM got us shalacked in 2006 and 2008. Trying to out liberal the liberals, quasi-Republicans made deals with the devil and got burned in the process.

Is that too remarkable for words? One state, two state, red state, blue state - it doesn’t matter. Those in thrall to ideology see things exactly the same only coming at the issue from opposite ends of the spectrum.

Politico had this piece of cheery news today; the True Blue Conservative Brigade will fan out across the country and attack those they see as too “moderate” to be Republicans - even incumbents!

Activists contend that the only way back to majority status is to embrace the conservative principles that the party jettisoned during the past decades once it became too enamored of power. To them, the issue is less about ideological purity than about the compromises they see the party’s Washington establishment making and what they contend is a lack of support for conservative candidates who are deemed unelectable by GOP solons.

“New York 23, on some scale, is the first battle of a larger internal Republican debate over how to define the party,” said former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, a conservative who is challenging Crist for the Senate nomination. “They want us to vote for their candidates, but they don’t want us to run for office.”

Imagine the cheering going on at the DNC upon reading this. Millions and millions of Republican dollars being spent to kill each other off. Brilliant! And then bloodied and nearly broken, some poor senator or congressman goes into a general election nearly broke and facing a well funded, attractive Democratic challenger. The result? Pelosi and Reid laugh all the way to January and the swearing in of even bigger Democratic majorities.

As I’ve repeatedly said, the circumstances in NY23 are unique and serve the valuable purpose of telling those mossbacks in Washington to recruit good conservatives who will remain that way once they get to Washington. But sharpening the long knives for incumbents? To what purpose? It’s not a question of “victory at all costs” but rather “Who’s side are you really on when these actions will help only the Democrats?”

Now Mr. Walker does not go so far as to advocate the targeting of Blue Dogs although that has been suggested numerous times on liberal blogs. But I’m afraid he is dead wrong about Doug Hoffman - who apparently committed the cardinal sin of supporting Glenn Beck’s “9 Principles and 12 Values” which include such radically right wing subversive notions as “1) America is Good.” And for good measure, Mr. Hoffman informed Glenn Beck on his show that he was his “mentor” - a very polite response from an affable, polite man.

Actually, Hoffman is a nice, pleasant, gray little man who’s about as radical as a chicken breast, and a lot less loony than some of his national supporters who want to imbue the nondescript Mr. Hoffman with qualities that would have made George Washington blush. I like the fellow - especially the fact that he is an accountant. Just think of a Congress full of accountants instead of lawyers.

Now that’s a conservatism I would pledge my undying devotion.

But note the chilling similarity in the thought processes between Mac Ranger and Jon Walker. The “key to victory” is ideological purity. Never mind that the district had little interest in voting for Scozzafava once they found out she was not much of a Republican - even for a reasonably moderate conservative district like NY23. And the voters up there are apparently ready to reject a moderately left Democrat like Owens.

Hoffman probably wins because he got a boost from conservative activists who trashed Scozzafava (sometimes unfairly. As I said in this post, she is far from being a “radical leftist”), and propelled the GOP candidate to the front by dint of sheer enthusiasm and successfully portraying him as the only “real” Republican in the race.

If he loses? Well then it’s back to the drawing board. Maybe they’ll be able to find someone even more conservative than Hoffman because, after all, the reason he will lose is because he “just wasn’t conservative enough.”

Unless the GOP is very, very careful, that may be an epithet on the tombstone of many an incumbent when all is said and done in 2010.

What is it that possesses certain conservatives to fool themselves so spectacularly into believing that they can create a majority out of a minority?

That kind of alchemy hasn’t been seen since Nostradamus tried to turn lead into gold. In the case of far right conservatives who think that they can turn their meager numbers into a ruling majority all by themselves, the disconnect from reality would normally call for an intervention - except they reject anything from anybody who doesn’t agree with them 100%. Nor can they seem to grasp complex political realities that would complicate their simplistic, ignorant view that their idea of what constitutes a “conservative” reigns supreme all across the land.

The recent Gallup poll showing that 40% of Americans see themselves as “conservative” was leapt upon by these morons as “proof” that their brand of anarcho-conservatism dominates the political landscape. Would that it were true. The fact that there are a dozen different definitions of “conservative” depending on where you live doesn’t seem to penetrate. And the pogrom they wish to carry out against “moderates” who agree with them on 90% of the issues they hold dear but fail their ever more spastic “litmus tests” guarantees Democratic dominance for the foreseeable future.

Why the name calling? Why the harsh, unyielding language? Because I too, believe this country is in enormous trouble. But the way the base is going about trying to overcome the political deficit that George Bush and his cronies placed the Republican party will only lead to permanent minority status for conservatives. In truth, the gloating being done on the far right over the ravaging of Scozzafava has led to a belief that the template used to stick it to the establishment in NY23 can be grafted on to other districts where “RINO’s” are running - GOP incumbents be damned.

The RNC, the NRCC, and other conservatives like Newt Gingrich erred in trying to foist a liberal Republican onto the people of the 23rd congressional district. On this, we can all agree. But when I read bullsh*t like this, a cold chill goes up my spine:

This showed just how bad things have become. The Republican Party has been hijacked. Conservatives have been driven underground by the RINOs and the DIABLOs (Democrats in all but label only). This leftish creep was insidious until we got clubbed over the head when the ultra liberal media picked our presidential candidate — the Gang of 14 tool John McCain.

We all sucked it up. We went along. We embraced the ticket in the spirit of AROO — (any Republican over Obama) — and we held our noses until Sarah Palin came along. Ah, just a spoonful of Sarah helped the medicine go down.

But now it’s time to clean house. Newt and his ilk will be relegated to the dustbin of history, and deservedly so. Enough with the old, in with the true!

A couple of hundred thousand conservatives fill up the mall on September 12 and Geller thinks conservatives have been “driven underground?” What kind of utter nonsense is that? Geller is a full throated member of the Anti-Reason Conservatives - those who reject reality in favor of persecution complexes, wildly exaggerated hyperbole, and a frightening need for vengeance against their imagined “enemies” - despite the fact that those imagined foes agree with them on virtually everything they think they stand for.

The idea that Newt Gingrich should be “relegated to the dustbin of history” - a not uncommon sentiment I’ve read over the past week - demonstrates a determined refusal to objectively analyze the political realities of the unique situation in NY23 and deliberately remain ignorant of the consequences that would have accrued if the Republican party had failed to support the Republican candidate in the district.

A good case can be made that Gingrich especially could have kept his mouth shut about conservatives rightly gravitating to Hoffman. His petulance with national conservatives who sought to replace the liberal Scozzafava with a more palatable choice was uncalled for and further demonstrates his unfitness for the presidency.

But kick him out of the party? Marginalize one of the only public intellectuals on the right who can speak to a broad cross section of America with authority and credibility? Perhaps that’s Newt’s real problem; the anti-intellectualism on the far right that sees any independent thinking deviating from their worldview as suspect. Or perhaps it’s just the idea that Gingrich, through his years of service to the conservative and Republican causes, has become a part of the establishment and hence, a target.

Who do these louts think the party establishment should have supported in NY23? There would have been no real difference if the DC Republicans had supported Hoffman or the Democrat Owens over Scozzafava. The result would have been exactly the same; the national party spitting in the face of local Republican organizations who chose Scozzafava - regardless of her admitted liberalism and regardless of whether her candidacy was rammed through by powerful New York state GOP bigwigs.

The pragmatism demonstrated by the national Republicans in giving Scozzafava the support they felt necessary for her to win is lost on the ideologues who can’t seem to wrap their heads around the idea that majorities are crafted by addition, not subtraction. Scozzafava would have been a beastly congresswoman, as unreliable a Republican vote on the issues as could be imagined. But Congress is governed as much by procedure as it is ideas, and when the whip is cracked by the leadership, she probably would have been with the party most of the time.

In effect, the base is criticizing the Republican establishment for acting like a political party and not a college debating society. The advantage of belonging to the latter is that you can pick and choose members based on whatever subjective criteria you wish. Don’t like the cut of a man’s suit or women with red hair? Fine. But don’t apply your ridiculous litmus tests to a political party trying to fashion a majority.

If you wish to deny membership into your ever shrinking club of “true” conservatives to those who you think don’t live up to your narrow, parochial, rigid definition, that is your problem. But if you care one whit about the United States of America, you would swallow your excessively ideological outlook on politics, take off the blinders, and realize that a party made up of lockstep righties who think like you is not only impossible, but the effort to realize that goal would be monumentally stupid.

The childish view that most of the base has of what it takes to turn politics into a governing majority would be amusing if they weren’t so obstructive in realizing that goal for the GOP. And even if Hoffman goes down to defeat, the wrong lessons - as usual - will be drawn from the effort to elect him. Sending the establishment a message to work harder to find and support good conservative candidates who can win in different regions of the country is one thing. That is an effort worth making, and I applaud activists who are seeking to send that message to the powers that be.

But sending the message to not only seek out conservatives for office but also replace those who fall short of being “true” conservatives in the estimation of the base is loony. It is this kind of gunslinging that guarantees a Democratic majority. It would be a huge waste of resources to attempt such madness. But that is the goal of many in the base who can’t stand the thought of “moderates” calling themselves “Republican.”

I believe in party reform. I believe the GOP should be a friendly place for conservatives - however they define that label. I believe that good conservatives should be running the Republican party and the conservative movement.

But above all of that, I believe in victory. And if that is not paramount in your mind, then you might as well switch parties and vote for the Democrat.

WHAT ANTI-REASON CONSERVATIVES? WHERE?

Bill Quick:

All you need to do to keep track of the thinking in the credentialist, careerist (yes, that describes Moran to a tee - he’s been trolling for some sort of DC establishment GOP job for, like, ever) nuthouse wing of the faux GOP, is read Rick Moran - or as much of him as you can stand to swallow without retching.

I wouldn’t drum anybody out of the party over abortion (though it isn’t my issue) or gay rights, (which I’ve supported for ages), but I would like to see these phony Republicans and fake conservatives remove themselves to the party that mirrors their views.

As to the charge that I want a job in DC - been there, done that and have absolutely no desire to go back. Obviously, Mr. Slowwitted believes DC is the destination of choice for people who wish to make a living writing about politics. For a fellow who never tires of telling us (it’s on his blog’s masthead) that he coined the term “blogosphere,” he seems not to have heard of the internet. This marvelous invention makes working from the comfortable confines of my office here in Streator, Illinois (”Smack dab in the middle of Middle America”) for companies located in California a pleasant reality.

No matter. Quick, like most of the excessively ideological, rabid right, didn’t bother to read what I wrote and simply spouted that I was horrified at the prospects of “conservatives finally asserting themselves in the party that ostensibly claims to represent them.” That must have been in the bits I edited out because I don’t see me writing that anywhere in this particular post, nor do I agree with that notion generally. In fact, lo and behold, there is this:

Sending the establishment a message to work harder to find and support good conservative candidates who can win in different regions of the country is one thing. That is an effort worth making, and I applaud activists who are seeking to send that message to the powers that be.

I dunno, Bill. Sounds like I approve of “conservatives asserting themselves,” but what the fu*k do I know? I’m only the writer.

Quick suggests I change the name of my site. Before I do that, perhaps he should change his to “Idiot Child Pundit” since he gibbers like a two year old without making any sense about anything.