Right Wing Nut House

No less than 5 recent articles (and a spirited debate between two very smart conservatives in David Frum and David Horowitz) have taken on the question regarding the demise of intellectual conservatism and the rise of movement or “populist” conservatives.

The intellectuals go under several names, depending on which side of the divide you sit. They are “reformers,” or RINO’s, or “Elders,” or “squishes.” And to varying degrees, they have either died off, disappeared, or been marginalized by the populists.

Or not.

With such a huge divide between the two camps in even trying to define conservatism, much less agree on what the public face of conservatism should look like, it is apparent that there will not be a meeting of the minds anytime soon. Nor will the two sides be pooling their intellectual capital to fight the liberals on the battlefield of ideas where it would do the most good, rather than in the arena of soundbites and bitter, exaggerated denunciations that only makes the right look like angry kooks or worse.

I will examine each of these articles and critique them, beginning from the premise that the intellectual right is not dead, but made quiescent by the surge of the populists and their ability to dominate the discussion through the sheer brutality of their critiques which drown out the far more reasonable, and reality based analyses of - what should they be called? I guess “reformists” is as good as any moniker although it doesn’t exactly speak to the critique of movement conservatives whose whole idea of reform seems to be kicking the reformists in the teeth.

Let’s start today with an excellent defense of Glenn Beck and the populists tactics by David Horowitz, who took part in an informal “Symposium” at FrontPage.com:

There are two issues here. One is a remarkable conservative outburst against the broadcaster Glenn Beck which includes you, Mark Levin and Pete Wehner among others, and which collectively wishes for his early self-destruction. The message from the three of you is that for the good of the conservative cause he should be silent — and the sooner the better. Wehner expresses the judgment I detect in all three of your blasts in this sentence: “The role Glenn Beck is playing is harmful in its totality.”

More than anything else, it is this is that I am reacting to. I think this attitude is wrongheaded, absurd, destructive to the conservative cause and a blatant contradiction of the “big tent” philosophy which you otherwise support.

[...]

Glenn Beck is daily providing a school for millions of Americans in the nature and agendas and networks of the left – something that your fine books do not do, and Mark Levin’s fine books do not do, and Pete Wehner’s volumes of blogs and speeches and position papers – all admirable in my estimation, also do not do. How are conservatives going to meet the challenge of the left if they don’t understand what it is, how it operates and what it intends? And who else is giving courses in this subject at the moment?

Now I have to confess my own vested interest in this. Because the fact is that I have been attempting to do this from a much smaller platform than Beck’s for many years. Five years ago I put an encyclopedia of the left on the web called Discover the Networks. It details the chief groups, individuals and funders of the left and maps their agendas and networks. Since I put it up five years ago, 20 million people have visited the site, many of whom have written articles and even books from its information. So far as I can tell, this site has never been mentioned by you or Wehner or Mark Levin or National Review or the Weekly Standard or the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. But it has been read by and profoundly influenced the producers and anchors at Fox News. Among these no one has used it so systematically and relentlessly and to such great effect as Glenn Beck.

Horowitz gives David Frum what has become the standard attack on moderates and intellectual conservatives:

It seems to me you are suffering from a kind of political Stockholm syndrome. You inhabit a mental universe shaped by media like Newsweek and the New York Review of Books, in which you are a hostage of the Left. As a result you’ve absorbed some of their attitudes, and look at Palin and other non-U conservatives through their eyes, instead of your own.

Spoken like a true believer. Of this argument, I will say this; Hogwash!

Horowitz presupposes that all news media is biased and that only he and his band of intellectual dilettantes can see it. That notion, by itself, is ignorant. It rejects the idea of professionalism of any kind in the media, while insulting the intelligence of the American people who, sheeplike, are led to feed at the liberal trough without a clue that they are being “indoctrinated.”

I prefer to take my biases one reporter/writer at a time, thank you. There are good, solid, objective (as possible) correspondents and then there are biased ones - both liberal and conservative. To lump them all into a liberal universe is ridiculous - as is the notion the only good source of news is Fox or some other conservative outlet. It seems to me that people who accuse me of being held “hostage” by a liberal media are themselves in thrall to a one note, equally biased media where they get most of their information from Fox News and ranting talk show hosts.

Come back and see me when you are able to discuss an issue from all angles, thus proving to me that you have taken the time to truly understand the subtleties and nuances - the clash of interests and ideology. It is my belief that unless you can argue both sides of an issue effectively, you don’t know it and should keep reading. Those who see only black and white, good or evil, suffer from one dimensional thinking - a disease far too prevalent among Horowitz and those he is defending.

I am not an intellectual - obviously. But I think it important to rigorously examine both your own biases and predilections as well as your opponents before coming to any conclusions. Any other approach is shallow sophistry, knee jerk emotionalism which has become the hallmark of the Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs, and Sean Hannity’s of the right.

David Frum says something important about this that Horowitz doesn’t address:

It is true that I have criticized some famous conservative talkers like Rush Limbaugh and now Glenn Beck, just as I have previously criticized right-wing opponents of the war on terror like Pat Buchanan and Lew Rockwell. But my “crusade” as David Horowitz calls is not a crusade to criticize. It is a crusade to repair and modernize a very troubled conservative movement.

I agree with David’s implied point that a thriving conservative movement needs a variety of talents: politicians and academics, thinkers and activists, intellectuals and popularizers.

Both have their appropriate roles. But it seems to me that latterly the conservative intellectuals have not properly fulfilled theirs.

And the result is that the conservative intellectual movement has become subservient to the political entertainment complex – with seriously negative consequences for conservative political success. It’s very sobering to compare how much conservatives got done in the 12 years before the creation of Fox News in 1996 with how little they have achieved in the 13 years since. And the problem has only intensified since the election of 2008, with the conservative entertainment complex helping to trap conservatives in a cycle of shrillness, rage, and paranoia that radically off-putting to the centrist voters who will choose the next president and Congress.

We are still a center-right country - but with the emphasis on “center.” People may be of a mind to reject Obamacare but are in no mood to embrace the extremely ideological conservatism that posits the left as minions of Satan and that anything Obama does is not only wrong, but inimical to freedom. It justifies opposing him and the left using the most outrageously exaggerated rhetoric that, if you really believe it, marks you as a paranoid, or more often, uninformed and illogical.

It’s not just a question of “manners,” although keeping debate within the boundaries of respect for others is necessary in a democracy. It is a question of detaching rank emotionalism from reason; it’s rejecting argument by demonization and substituting logic; it’s not employing paranoid exaggeration when realistic descriptions of what the president and the left are trying to do is easily done.

In each case, the former marks one as an unthinking, shrill, unbalanced ideologue who think Americans must be frightened into agreeing with them; the latter, someone who believes that Americans are persuadable without the histrionics employed by cotton candy conservatives on talk radio and elsewhere.

One face of conservatism is off putting to the majority; the other, indicative of a movement that takes itself seriously and doesn’t listen to clowns, and deliberate provocateurs who care more about ratings and ad money than whether conservative ideas triumph. If Rush Limbaugh actually believes that his hysterical view of liberals and Obama (as well as his shallow understanding of conservatism) contributes to conservatism’s popularity and the perception that our ideas should win out over those of the left, he is only kidding himself.

His audience, while huge by radio standards, is still relatively small compared to the number of voters at large. And considering his unpopularity outside of the right, he can’t possibly believe that his rants do anything except resonate with an audience that already agrees with him. The same holds true for the other pop conservatives who, while fulfilling a vital role of “popularizing” conservatism, nevertheless end up being a net minus for the right because of their antics and extraordinarily skewed version of reality.

I am not interested in purging the popularizers. I am interested in reducing their influence - as I am interested in reducing the influence on policy in the GOP by the religious right - and the perception that their methods and views reflect a majority of those of us on the right.

If so, it will be a long road to hoe for reformists who will continue to wander in the wilderness created by the scorched earth conservatives whose excessive ideology poisons the well of ideas from which so little has been drawn in recent years.

I finally did it.

Mediacom proved their incompetence once too often and I have made the switch to satellite TV - Direct TV to be specific.

The straw that finally broke the Three Toed Sloth’s back was the total breakdown in Mediacom’s automatic bill pay. After taking about 4 months to get set up - signing up time and time again to have them deduct the bill automatically from my checking account - auto pay finally kicked in last April. For exactly 4 months, it worked fine.

Then in July, Mediacom never deducted anything from my bank account. I probably should have noticed but didn’t. Neither did the company make a deduction in August. This time, I received a notice last week that we would be disconnected unless the July bill was paid.

I called and talked to three separate people - two customer service and one in the collection department - who swore that their records showed the bank had denied their efforts to elicit payment. When I offered to pay online, I was told not to bother, that the situation had been corrected and that auto pay would deduct for both bills last Wednesday. The collection employee was cross, argumentative, and treated me like dirt.

After calling the bank only to find out they were all either lying or incompetent boobs because the bank had absolutely no record of any requests for withdrawal from Mediacom, I decided to wait to see what would happen on Wednesday before doing anything.

Meanwhile, a collection call came every day - each time we had to explain all over again the problem. Each time the Mediacom employee said there was no record of anyone calling previously - including no record of my having called the week before to volunteer to pay the amount immediately.

Wednesday came and went without the amount being deducted from our bank account. When I called on Thursday, it was to inform them that I had paid the past due amount and that I was switching to the dish. The customer service rep was laughing under his breath at me. I could hear the amusement in his voice as I related the entire story of incompetence and lousy service.

With that kind of attitude, Mediacom better hope they can maintain their monopoly on cable TV in the areas they are licensed. Otherwise, they will disappear faster than you can say “Mediacom sucks.”

Today, Direct TV installed 250 crystal clear channels that have already left Mediacom in the dust. The introductory offer includes the whole NFL package - free for 5 months. Every movie channel - premium or otherwise - every sports channel, every artsty fartsy, science, history, news, channel known to the English speaking world.

The picture quality is jaw dropping. Just a few days ago I was saying to Zsu-Zsu that we must be getting too used to HD TV because watching the paltry 30 channels Mediacom offered in HD was getting boring. Well, it wasn’t that it was necessarily getting boring - it was that the signal from Mediacom was coming from 100 miles away. We also got extremely tired of pixelated screens on a regular basis, extremely poor standard def reception, and the constant frozen frames that would sometimes last for minutes.

I was not prepared for the difference in picture quality. It’s like we didn’t have an HD set for the previous year. With 130 HD channels, digital sound on every channel (Our Bose sounds incredible), I can see the follicles on Wolf Blitzer’s face. The nose hairs of Chris Matthews are brought out in stark relief. In short, I am going to watch football in a few minutes and I am sure that I am going to see the bloodshot eyes of Ray Lewis as he eats the opposing quarterback alive.

I was an idiot for not doing this within two weeks of moving out to Streator.

One other big change in our lives; a new arrival:

Meet Lucky. And yes, he is. Not just for finding a home with us but also for being alive at all.

It seems that lucky was born in the wild, child of one of the many strays who hang around, scrounging for food and looking for sex with kitties lucky enough to have their own slaves. Lucky and her littermates were fortunate enough to have been found by some special needs people who live in a group home down the street. Last weekend, one of the teens was going house to house looking to give the kittens away and we decided to take a chance and bring one into our home.

We have two grown cats, of course, who are very comfortable with each other.

So the new arrival was a chance to show their magnanimity and interpersonal skills in adopting the newcomer and welcoming him with open arms.

Wel,, Aramis and Snowball were perfectly willing to be friends but our wild little Lucky had other ideas. Every time either one would approach, he would let out the most ear piercing growls and hisses you can imagine. Yes, they will eventually work out living arrangements but it is so pathetic to see the two of them walking away in bewilderment after Lucky warns them not to approach. I really think they want to be friends but will just have to be patient with the little one until he gets his paws under him.

Meantime, get plenty of rest and we’ll go looking for more trouble tomorrow.

After feeling SO left out of the Twitter revolution because it all looked so…so…geeky, I found myself with some time on my hands this morning (I am on vacation from my PJ Media job), and decided to gird my tech loins and enter the dank, overpopulated, incomprehensible Twitter Universe.

I had signed up for Twitter back in April but contented myself with using the social networking button on my blog to update all 170 or so of my followers about my brilliant blog posts.

I didn’t know what the hell I was doing of course. I just discovered today that a few people actually responded to these whispers in the Twitter wilderness, which REALLY made me feel like an idiot. A dozen or so Twitterers actually took the time to Tweet back about what I had posted.

For those of you who so kindly tweeted me these last few months only to have that response summarily ignored by a technological pea brain, I apologize. I plan on using the Krell mind expander a little later just so I can figure out how to get back to you.

For these last months, I was using the handle “roddy mcorley” instead of my name because when I signed up, the computer told me that someone else was using my name (imagine the gall!) and that I had to come up with another one. It never penetrated my vacuous skull that I could use a variation of my name and people would then be able to recognize my tweets.

(It should tell you something that I thought there was only one other “rickmoran” in the Twitter world and that I actually believed I might be able to buy the guy off and take my rightful place in Twitterdom, proudly using my real name. Today, using a simple search, you can imagine my surprise when I discovered about 50 “Rick Moran”s, most using variations of my name, all tweeting away happily, secure in the knowledge that people knew who they were.)

Who was roddymcorley? Roddy McCorley was an Irish patriot, who fought during the rebellion of 1798, and was later captured by the British and hung. The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem recorded a ballad about McCorley that was written at the turn of the 20th century, and is not only one of their more well known selections, but has also been a staple at Moran family gatherings for more than 40 years of campfire/living room songfests.

The song is both tragic and uplifting - as only the Irish can do it:

Up the narrow streets he stepped
Smiling proud and young
About the hemp rope on his neck
The golden ringlets clung
There is never a tear in his blue eyes
For glad and bright are they
As young Roddy McCorely goes to die
On the bridge of Toome today

Today, I killed off Roddy McCorley as my handle and adopted “rickmoran_rwnh.” In exploring the Twitter site, I accidentally found out how you can change your username. Imagine my sheer delight when I discovered I could use my real name so that my legions of blog fans can now follow me on Twitter.

Maybe sometime this weekend I will peruse the instructions (also discovered by accident today) so that I can actually get in on the conversation. No promises though. If it is any more complex than pointing and clicking, faggetaboutit.

Maybe I should just give it up. Readers of this site are probably giggling at the thought that I can say anything meaningful using 140 characters. Or 140 words for that matter. I am well aware of my propensity to babble, to digress, to wax poetic when simple declarative sentences will do. But then, how would you get to sleep at night without my somnolent scribblings to make your eyes glaze over and get heavy with sleep? I am better than Sominex and cheaper than Halcion, and I challenge anyone to a “sleep-off” to see which blogger - Andrew Sullivan or me - is a better sleep aid. I will bet $50 dollars that I can put you to sleep faster than Andrew.

Yeah…I still don’t get Twitter. And probably never will.

This gorgon of a bill isn’t dead - not by a long shot. But it has been stalled by the inability of Democrats to come together and pass it.

Blue dogs are beginning to talk with Republicans about overhauling the entire bill. Liberals think it isn’t going far enough and will vote against any bill that doesn’t have a public option. Fiscally responsible members are terrified of adding to the deficit. And even the president has acknowledged that his deadline of getting it done before the August recess may be impossible.

I might add that there is precious little from the White House except speechmaking. This president apparently doesn’t know how to govern. He has handed responsibility for getting this bill passed to Pelosi and Reid while he stands on the sidelines kibitzing.

Bottom line: No one is in charge. Committee chairmen have their own ideas about what should be in the bill while Blue Dogs and liberals are rejecting their formulations and want to substitute massively.

Here’s Jennifer Rubin this morning in PJ Media:

“Back to the drawing board,” announced Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer on health care reform.  Indeed, it seems that in one short week, the single most important item on the president’s agenda is in need of some critical care.

[...]

The president rushed to the microphone on Friday afternoon to assure the country the patient was fine, just undergoing some expected surgery and far from terminal. Absent was any mention of his August deadline, however. He appeared miffed at “Washington” and the “24-hour news cycle.” He took no questions, likely because he had few answers to the hard queries. (Why is his own party in revolt? Why would he raise taxes on small businesses? Why don’t people like the idea of a “public option” as much as they did a few months ago?) Despite Obama’s lecture and show of bravado (”this is going to happen”), all signs pointed to the demise of the House Democrats’ trillion dollar, soak-the-rich public option scheme. And it is far from clear what replacement plan might be offered.

Revolts are breaking out all over the place and both Reid and Pelosi are incapable of putting out the fires. Again, it should be stressed that Democrats may be  waking up to the fact that they have a pretty damned ineffective president - one who doesn’t lead and is beginning to sound like something of a whiner.

Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie writing in the Washington Post , actually use the “C” word to describe Obama:

From a lousy cap-and-trade bill awaiting death in the Senate to a health-care reform agenda already weak in the knees to the failure of the stimulus to deliver promised jobs and economic activity, what once looked like a hope-tastic juggernaut is showing all the horsepower of a Chevy Cobalt. “Give it to me!” the president egged on a Michigan audience last week, pledging to “solve problems” and not “gripe” about the economic hand he was dealt.

Despite such bravura, Obama must be furtively reviewing the history of recent Democratic administrations for some kind of road map out of his post-100-days ditch.

So far, he seems to be skipping the chapter on Bill Clinton and his generally free-market economic policies and instead flipping back to the themes and comportment of Jimmy Carter. Like the 39th president, Obama has inherited an awful economy, dizzying budget deficits and a geopolitical situation as promising as Kim Jong Il’s health. Like Carter, Obama is smart, moralistic and enamored of alternative energy schemes that were nonstarters back when America’s best-known peanut farmer was installing solar panels at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Like Carter, Obama faces as much effective opposition from his own party’s left wing as he does from an ardent but diminished GOP.

Carter never had a clue about how to govern in Washington and neither does Obama - something many of us warned about before the election. Anyone with an ounce of sense knew his grandiose promises about changing the way Washington does business were as empty as Harry Reid’s head. It wasn’t just his inexperience. It was his rhetoric being incapable of matching reality that was most telling.

And now, Obama has apparently dropped the idea of passing a health care bill before the August recess. What will emerge after Labor Day may be nothing like what is being talked about today - scaled back, no public option, a bigger small business exemption, and no real reform of Medicare. Instead, look for expanding Medicaid and S-Chip at the state level to cover the uninsured and perhaps some fiddling with Medicare payments.

In that form, it has a chance of passing with GOP help. But unless Obama can pull off a miracle, his big plans for health care reform are going to become as extinct as the dinosaurs.

It occurred to me this morning that I have not written a baseball post this year, a happenstance of which I’m sure most of you are profoundly grateful. No matter. I know full well that Americans have fallen out of love with the game and I could care less. For those few of us left who see baseball as more than a game, more than one more endless play for our leisure time dollars, we are charged with a sacred mission; keep alive that love in our breasts until the world is right side up again and baseball is restored to its proper place in the sports firmament.

In this respect, we are like Ray Bradbury’s old ones who, in Fahrenheit 451, memorize a classic to save it from the firemen, lovingly passing the words in the book from one generation to the next, hoping for the day when it will be safe to read Chaucer, Melville, Shakespeare, and Dickinson again. For us baseball fans - older, more conservative generally, and respectful of America’s past - there is the recognition that it is a classic game that achieved it zenith in popularity just as America was making its transition from a pastoral land to an urban industrial place. It was this change that perhaps condemned baseball to eventual decline although it was certainly hastened along by other, more destructive alterations.

Some consider the designated hitter rule to be emblematic of baseball’s self destructive tendencies. I wouldn’t go quite as far as all that. The DH was put in the game at a time when pitcher’s routinely won 20 games with ERA’s under 2.0 and baseball was a much more nuanced game. It is my opinion that owners misdiagnosed the problem back then, believing that the fans were leaving because of the low scoring games. The problem with the game was much more fundamental than that and no amount of tinkering would have prevented baseball from plummeting from the heights it occupied in the 50’s and 60’s.

The fact is, America was changing. And since baseball is a game built on tradition and history, it couldn’t change with the times. We tend to forget that until the NFL broke through in the late 1960’s with TV audiences to rival baseball’s, there was no other game in town - or the nation. Other sports were seen as diversions to mark the time until Spring training began in February. As popular as football is today, it will never capture the heart and soul of the country as baseball did in the decades immediately preceding and immediately after World War II.

No, Baseball couldn’t change. The game itself is draped in tradition, in memory. There is no other game seen through the prism of remembrance quite like baseball. Whether sitting on the back porch in 1950’s and 60’s suburbia listening to the hissing, static filled play-by-play on radio while the fireflies blinked to announce their presence and the sweet smell of Jasmine filled the nostrils with the scent of summer, of family, of a shared passion. Or perhaps in the city you sat on the front stoop with every other house on the block blaring out the call of the game, a broadcast legend conducting a city wide symphony of sound, mothers with babies, fathers with sons, and the young, the old, laughing, talking, arguing, loving. A neighborhood, a community united around a passion so intense that enmities were temporarily forgotten as “the boys” or “the bums” performed extraordinary feats of effortless athleticism with both the workmanlike attitude of the blue collar hero and the pizazz of a circus performer.

Yes, that America existed at one time. And while memory may skew some of the details and gloss over much of the unseemly realities from those times, there is no doubt that baseball for much of the country occupied a privileged position in the hearts and minds of the people. In a time before the total saturation of sports, before ubiquitous replays, before free agency made players into hobos, before steroids turned the players into Frankenstein monsters, before rape trials and murder trials and divorces and scandal after scandal there was the pitcher, the batter, and the lovely dance of strategy and possibility. To bunt or not to bunt. To swing away or hit and run. To pitch out, or put the rotation” play on, or simply to play “straight up.” This was actually part of the national conversation when baseball was king.

But America stands still for no one. Certainly not for a game that used to be known as “The National Pastime.” For that is what one did when a game was in progress; pass the time in other pursuits while the game itself functioned as the background to daily life. While we sat on the porch listening to the game, as a family we would be laughing, joking, carrying on, reading, knitting - all the things that families do together that cements the bonds of love and affection we hold so dear and make life itself fill up with joy and satisfaction. Of course, utter silence would reign when some pivotal point in the game was occurring. But otherwise, baseball was important for what it meant as a shared experience for the family, for the neighborhood, and for the larger community in which we lived.

It is Midsummer here in the Midwest. The corn has surpassed the “elephant’s eye” measurement and is almost ready for the harvest. Soon, little farmer’s stands will start springing up along Route 23 where you can buy corn picked within the hour, along with other crops that are so fresh and crisp you expect them to wiggle out of the paper bag in which the nice old lady or cute young teenage girl carefully packs your purchases. There may be no better meal on planet earth than any barbecued meat and fresh corn on the cob.

The temperature outside is at its usual July apogee, bearing down on 95 degrees with humidity that makes it feel as if a Swedish bath might be preferable. To escape the heat, Native Americans built steam rooms, probably figuring if they were going to be uncomfortably hot and damp, they may as well make a ritual out of it.

But there are some modern inventions that are not to be lightly dismissed. Central air conditioning is a fine example of the practical marrying with the sublime to create a luxury almost everyone can afford. And tonight, as I watch today’s incarnations of baseball heroes (or what passes for heroes in these cynical times), sitting in my air conditioned house, and watching the game on my 57″ HDTV (another good example of genius marrying up with necessity - you don’t know what you missed if you’ve never had an HD TV), I will remember All-Star games past and the now ancient Gods who walked among us; Mantle, Berra, Mays, Williams, Musial. Most of them I saw at the end of their careers. But that didn’t dim their luster or make them any less divine in my eyes.

The fireflies will be out early as they are this time of year. The owl will begin hooting at regular intervals while the as yet unseen hawk will screech out his warning from high above somewhere. Both owl and hawk help control the bunny rabbit population that exploded last year until they were overrunning the place. But nature, in its wisdom and in its need for balance, sent us the old barn owl last August and the hawk not long after. We don’t have a bunny rabbit problem anymore.

This is baseball’s all-star break, one of the hallowed traditions of summer and usually marks the period halfway between Independence Day and Labor Day. The older I get, the sadder I am that summer is half gone and soon - all too soon - the bitter Midwestern winter will arrive and baseball, the owl, the hawk, and everything I am enjoying this night will be but a distant memory.

But as any good baseball fan can assure you - there’s always next year.

An interesting piece in yesterday’s Boston Globe by Drake Bennett on some youthful (so to speak) conservatives who are trying to inject some new blood into the right’s intellectual firmament that lately has seemed to be suffering from some kind of iron deficiency according to liberal critics.

To be sure, the idea that conservatism is “dead” (Tanenhaus), or “exhausted” (Borosage) has been a favorite hobby horse of liberals for a few years. But for purposes of dealing with the reality of what is happening with conservatism, I prefer the notion that we have simply lost our way - politically, intellectually, and as a social nexus.

Tanenhaus (who actually had some relevant thoughts about the too ideological nature of the conservative “movement”) believes that conservatism’s decline is actually a boon to the right because the philosophical framework had been hijacked by decidedly un-conservative forces.

This is actually recognized by a couple of Bennett’s up and comers:

Luigi Zingales says it’s time for conservatives to fall out of love with businesses, and fall back in love with the free market. In an argument that’s begun to catch the ear of a few conservative thinkers, Zingales suggests that it’s often business itself, rather than the government, that the market needs protection from.

“I’m very strongly pro-market and very strongly against business,” says the Italian-born economist, a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Separating the support of free markets from the long Republican alliance with business isn’t easy, says Zingales, but it’s important. As he and colleague Raghuram Rajan laid out in their 2003 book, “Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists,” powerful companies, given the chance, work hand-in-glove with government officials to craft laws and regulations that protect them while limiting competition and transparency.

Many conservatives have been sensing this for years but either through cowardice or simple practical politics, refused to recognize the fact that corporations have become as supportive of statism as any far left Democrat you can name. In this way, they stifle competition, give themselves unfair advantage through regulation, and give money to candidates from both parties so that they can mitigate the effects of unfriendly legislation - usually through the earmark process but sometimes by their congressional lackey slipping an amendment into a bill in the dead of night when no one is noticing that favors them to the exclusion of others.

The Bush administration invited corporate lobbyists into government in order to regulate the businesses they most recently were employed by. Mr. Fox, meet Mrs. Hen. Zingales believes such a set up contributed to the financial meltdown last fall as financial corporations developed rules and regulations favorable to themselves and not necessarily good for regulating their activities.

The Zingales critique is not new but some of his solutions should raise eyebrows on the right, like helping “workers” instead of businesses during he current downturn and dispensing any stimulus based on an algorithmic solution rather than the kind of cronyism we have seen to date.

Four years ago I would have wondered what Zingales was smoking in order to call himself a conservative and not support business. But the Democratic takeover of congress should have convinced anyone on the right that big business cared little about markets and more about being able to control government for their individual aggrandizement. The latest example: Wal-Mart hopping aboard the Obamacare train before it left the station. By supporting the public option and the insurance mandate for companies to supply health insurance to their workers, Wal-Mart gets to influence the final package so that it is tailored more to their needs.

Bennett also explores the efficacy of the blogosphere in acting as a feeder program for conservative ideas - a function reserved in the past for the few conservative mags like NR and Human Events as well as some think tanks like AEI and Heritage. He uses as an example, the Atlantic’s excellent Megan McCardle as someone who has slipped into the role of gatekeeper and facilitator of conservative ideas:

“[Blogging] is decreasing the power of being part of the feeder system and feeder schools, and of being part of the ecosystem, which I certainly wasn’t,” says Megan McArdle.

McArdle, whose politics make her more a libertarian than a classic conservative, is one of the most prominent voices in the political blogosphere. Also an editor at the Atlantic Monthly, she came to both journalism and blogging somewhat sideways, after working at a series of failed Internet start-ups and going to business school.

[...]

McArdle and bloggers like her, in other words, have created their own intellectual ecosystem. William F. Buckley was widely admired for his determination and ability to bring a diversity of conservative voices into National Review, and similarly, McArdle’s blog is among the best at organizing the cacophony of the political blogosphere into something closer to a conversation. Blog posts on the Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination or the outlines of the stimulus package alternate with links to the insights of artificial-intelligence expert Jim Manzi, who writes on science and environmental policy, or Daniel Larison, a politically minded scholar of Byzantine history.

For all the connections she creates, McArdle is an often vehement disagreer as well, and a believer in the blogosphere’s power to kill off wrongheaded arguments on the way to something new and important. “It can take a long time,” she says, “but bad ideas do tend to die.”

No, McArdle is not a conservative in the classic sense but her blog is one of the best at collating right of center ideas and disbursing them around the internet. Her own analysis of economics is the best “plain English” explanations you can find - certainly better than any MSM business section writer and surpassing the Wall Street Journal by plenty. She has a first class mind and an excellent sense of being able to cut through the chaff and find the essence of an idea. A rare bird indeed.

Bennett hightlighted a couple of other “new” conservative thinkers but the only other one I was interested in is Reihan Salam, a former research assistant for David Brooks and someone whose writings have influenced me over the last few months.

It’s hard to peg Salam as a true “man of the right” for many ideological conservatives today. That’s because he is not in favor of repealing the Great Society and the New Deal.

He and I came to the same conclusion independently of one another; that a more pragmatic, realistic conservatism is necessary for political success; that conservatives should embrace government in order to reform it and make it as conservative as is practically possible.

If big government is necessary, Salam asks, and can even help create a society more agreeable to conservatives, then what should it be doing? Drawing in part on the work of scholars such as Wilcox, Salam and Douthat craft a vision of a government that is activist in a different way, putting priority on stability and responsibility, along with opportunity. They push for child-care subsidies, market-friendly healthcare reform, more affordable housing, and for wage subsidies to boost the incomes of poor young men and make them more eligible for marriage and stable fatherhood.

“The idea is, let’s actually reduce the scope of government in some areas, where it’s kind of pernicious, but let’s increase its role in some areas, insofar as increasing the role can actually increase freedom,” Salam says.

Under the Obama administration, Salam has continued to press the case for big-government conservativism in articles and as a blogger for both the National Review and the online Daily Beast.

Salam was an early Sarah Palin supporter which should give anyone pause about accusing him of being anything other than a pragmatic conservative. His argument is the same I have been making for many months on this site; the road back for conservatism is not through the ideological terrorists who have set themselves up as arbiters of conservative dogma, condemning those they determine to have strayed from their extraordinarily narrow minded and confining definition of conservatism.

Rather, it is through advocating the reasoned and pragmatic application of conservative principles to government as it exists today that will bring the right out of the darkness. And a couple of the conservatives mentioned in Bennett’s article will probably be leading the way.

By the way, that may be the first article I’ve read on conservatism in a while that made no mention of Ronald Reagan. Many ideological conservatives have deified Reagan while failing to recognize where The Gipper’s true genius lay.

Ronald Reagan did not create a conservative government during his 8 years in office. Government grew substantially (although at a slower rate than the previous decade) during his two terms as president. Neither did Reagan always stand fast on his principles as the 1986 tax increase proved - the largest tax increase in history at the time. He also made several other compromises including cutting deals on social security and numerous budget items.

When one considers that he ignored the vital principle of not negotiating with terrorists when he exchanged arms for hostages, it is difficult to understand why conservatives today can say that they wish contemporary politicians were “more like Reagan” in adhering to principled stands on issues in Congress.

Selective memory when it comes to Reagan and his actual governance gets in the way of returning to a more pragmatic conservatism that The Gipper supported in practice, even though his rhetoric sometimes belied his realistic approach to governing.

Ronald Reagan was a pragmatic ideologue who tried to make government as conservative as was possible during his time in office. Striving but falling far short of the kind of government those who invoke his name so reverently today envision as “true” conservative government. This continuously angered the conservative purists in and out of government - a fact long forgotten by those who see the historical Reagan as a civic saint and who believe conservative politicians should emulate everything from his personae to his agenda in order to find success at the polls.

The conservative mentioned in Bennett’s article - along with a few others like Conor Friedersdorf, Ross Douthat, (who collaborated with Salam in writing a book about how the right can make a comeback) and because he’d probably feel bad if I left him out, David Frum - are on the cusp of the new media’s attempt to recalibrate conservatism so that it reflects a more dynamic, and pragmatic, reality.

The ideologues dismiss their ideas at their own peril.

Hard to see this as anything else. Yeah, she may still run for president in 2012 but, if anything, this makes her an even longer shot. I hate to say this — and I know it will rile some — but I see this as a retreat. She is, to be blunt about it, running away from the savaging she is receiving in the press and from liberals. It’s not exactly cowardice because the press targeted her kids and husband too - something new and despicably low in American politics. But it suggests an inconstancy that presidential candidates shouldn’t have.

She may be doing it for her family now. But if she then shows up in Iowa and New Hampshire asking people for their vote, what are people to think? It’s only going to get worse if she runs in 2012 and people will rightly wonder if she can stand the gaffe. Such doubts will keep the mega money men in the GOP from kicking in. This is not an insurmountable obstacle but it sure makes it harder in those early states for a breakthrough.

If she began her campaign in the fall, she would be eating Romney and Huckafool’s dust. Romney especially has been locking up key personalities in early states and creating a national organization. He has been visible and effective as a spokesman outside of government against Obama’s heavy handed interference in the economy. In short, he is in very good shape. Huckaloser is far behind but has a national TV show on Fox and is effectively presenting himself as Mr. Populist alternative to Romney’s establishmentarianism.

This leaves Palin in an very bad situation. If she had remained as governor, she would have had no chance as Chris Cillizza pointed out a few months ago.

Being from Alaska is a HUGE hurdle for Palin’s national ambitions from a logistical point of view. Alaska is four hours behind east coast time and takes the better part of a day to travel to or from. That means that Palin, if she is committed to running for reelection, can’t simply pop into Iowa or New Hampshire for the day — she needs to take at least two days away from Alaska (a fact her Democratic opponents are sure to take note of) to do the sort of soil-tilling in these early primary and caucus states that is absolutely necessary for a presidential candidate. If she announces some time soon that she will not be running for a second term, she will not only be more free to travel to key states between now and 2010 but will be able to devote full time to campaigning in the critical year between January 2011 and January 2012.

The logistics alone present enormous challenges for even a sitting governor from Alaska. Hence, the clean break that could be followed by a very low key effort to build a national team for a run in 2012. At least, that appears to be her intent. Here’s Michelle Malkin with some excerpts from her press conference that seems to point to some undefined effort to advance her pet issues of energy and national security:

Palin: “I love my job. I love Alaska. It hurts to make this choice. But I’m doing what’s best for Alaska.” Tears in her eyes.

Says she will be able “to effect change from the outside.” America needs protectors of individual rights now more than ever. Promises to always be there for Alaska. Wants to work not just for Alaska, for the rest of the country. Taking a fight for Alaska in a new direction. Quotes MacArthur: “We are not retreating, just advancing in a different direction.”

Lt Gov. Sean Parnell says he receives announcement with a “heavy heart.” Thanks Sarah for inspiring so many.

More from press conference: After touting Alaska’s accomplishments, Palin laments “politics of personal destruction.” Notes attacks. $500,000 in legal bills. “Life is about choices. I choose a path of fruitfulness and productivity. Life is too short to compromise time and resources…I will work very hard for others…I will support others…”
***

Chuck Heath, Palin’s brother, on FNC talking about incessant attacks. Very emotional. “It’s weighed on her a long time.” Couldn’t effectively govern when having to defend herself against attacks.

I have been following politics very closely for 30 years and a decade before that as a fan and the only thing comparable to the rabid, frothing, hateful, exaggerated, off the wall kind of media attacks against Palin I have seen was toward the end of the Nixon administration. And we have never, ever in American political history seen attacks on a politician’s children as we have seen with press and media savagery directed against Palin’s kids. (Spouses are fair game - to a point.) These people are incapable of feeling shame because in order to experience that emotion, one must possess a soul and a conscience.

Jim Geraghty had the best explanation for this extravagant, unprecedented hatred directed against Palin:

Hugh suggested it tied to the contrast between her lifestyle and her critics: “She is the embodiment of the anti-choice, the opposite of every choice that lefty elites have ever made — as to going back home instead of moving to the west coast, having children, having a child with Down’s, staying married to one man the whole time, choosing rural or suburban over urban and living a generally conservative lifestyle, working with her hands . . . That everything she is is the antithesis of everything that liberal urban elites are, so it’s not just enough to say, ‘I disagree with you,’; she has to be repudiated and crushed.”

And now, I would submit a slight refining of that idea, that the seeming happiness of Palin’s life is a 24-7 irritant because it challenges the way some liberals see the world.

Liberals believe that their ideas, philosophy, worldview, and policies liberate believers, and that the conservative equivalents limit people. Liberals see themselves as rejecting outdated beliefs and obsolete ideas, overturning established orders, and discarding traditions established by superstitious and ignorant forebears who weren’t as enlightened as we are. Conservatives, in their minds, are runaway cultural superegos, always wagging their fingers about individual responsibility, dismissing excuses, reminding people that they can’t always do what they want because of the consequences to themselves and to others.

Conservatism, they suspect, will leave you in a marriage that doesn’t satisfy you, burden you with children you don’t want, repress your passions, and trap you in a empty, boring, and unfulfilled life, with no hand of government able to help.

In toto, that may be a little too pat. But I think the gist of the argument rings true. It isn’t enough for liberals and the media to oppose Palin. It isn’t enough to attack her. She must be destroyed, left emotionally drained and gagging at the obscenity of the attacks on her children because she is a danger to their one dimensional, shallow view of conservatives and Christians.

Geraghty also believes this move by Palin makes any success in 2012 a long shot:

Not finishing her first term will provide a major, major, major obstacle to any presidential bid. I thought a 2012 campaign would be a mistake; from today’s comments, it’s not clear whether Palin is still interested in that option.

But the moment she expresses an interest in a presidential bid, every rival, Republican and Democrat, will uncork the ready-made zinger: “If elected, would she serve the full four years, or quit sometime in the third year again?”

But as noted, Palin is 45. Life will go on, after this upcoming presidential election, and the next. People thought Richard Nixon was through after the 1960 election. When Ronald Reagan failed to dislodge President Ford in 1976, people thought he had blown his best chance at the presidency. People thought Bill Clinton destroyed his political future with an endlessly long-winded speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention.

If Palin decides to seek the presidency at the age that Hillary Clinton was when she ran in the 2008 cycle, she will be running in… 2024. That’s a half a generation, and several political lifetimes, away.

Perhaps by then, both conservatives and liberals will have stopped talking about how gorgeous she is.

UPDATE

Allah quotes Geraghty and Ace who believe this is a career ender.

Update: Says Ace, “It’s over. You can’t resign from a governorship and then run for higher office.” I agree. Placing your ambition over your commitment to the state looks shady, especially for someone who won’t have a single full term as governor under her belt for the primaries.

Ordinarily, I would agree with that sentiment. Except, we live in wondrously strange times in American politics and I’m not sure that many of the old verities still hold true. Allah rightly dismisses the Obama comparison Palinites could use to defend her as far as serving time in an important office. But there is the possibility that by the time 2012 rolls around, American politics will be upside down with government at all levels being in such bad odor that running as an “experienced” candidate may be the kiss of death.

Who knows?

I started watching here in the middle of it.

4:38 AM: So far he has blamed “terrorists” who are present in the huge crowds for the violence.

The crowd sounds like it wants blood. . Chanting “Down with opponents of the revolution.”

4:40 AM: He is issuing a direct warning to the protestors. It is their fault if the protests turn violent and they will suffer the consequences.

4:42 AM - Criticizing west for putting out false election results. Khamenei acknowledges “new situation” in Iran.

4:45 AM: The West - “removed their masks” after election. Made some comments that revealed their true nature. Criticizing Obama for encouraging street protests.

4:46 AM: Protest violence carried out by western agents? That’s what the translator seems to be saying.

4:47 AM: Ah, memory. “Death to America” chant by crowd. Khamenei IS blaming “intelligence services” for violence.

4:48 AM: Strong criticism of US for Afghan, Iraq wars and support for Israel.

4:49 AM - OH MY GOD. Khamenei brings up Branch Davidian crackdown - “do they know anything about human rights?”

4:50 AM: Addressing the 12th Imam. “We are doing what we are obliged to do.”

4:52 AM: ” I am ready to put all on the line for the revolution. The revolution belongs to you (12th Imam). We will continue the path with full force. We ask you to support us with your prayers along the way.”

4:53 AM: Speech ends with crowd chanting that they would be willing to give their lives for the revolution.

Wrap up by pro-regime English speaking reporter fills in some of the blanks. He thinks it was a good speech, a “sensitive” speech. If that’s the guy’s idea of “sensitive” I’d hate to be married to him.

Khamenei insists on going through channels - the Guardian Council - to protest election.

Khamenei feels for shopkeepers and others who suffered property damage as a result of the protests.

The election “showed the people’s trust in the Islamic system.

Praised Rafsanjani but criticized him for siding with Mousavi.

Summary: Not as bombastic a speech that one would expect if a Tianemann style massacre was in the works. Khamenei seemed at one point to heavily criticize the Basij for attacking students in their dormitories (Allah has video of the attacks.) But clearly, he has called for an end to the street demonstrations and has ordered Mousavi to get with the program - after he and the other candidates meet with the Guardian Council tomorrow.

He laid the groundwork for a crackdown but stopped short of threatening one outright. He may have put a roadblock in front of the Basij - or it could be hypocrisy on his part. In short, we don’t know much more now then we knew before the speech.

UPDATE

The Guardian confirms what I thought I heard from the translator above and fills in some of the early parts of the speech I missed.

They take a much dimmer view of the possibility of a crackdown. They believe Khamenei’s warnings were clear and pointed. We’ll see. I think Allah is right and he will wait until after tomorrow’s sham meeting between the candidates and the Guardian Council about election complaints.

Sullivan Ballou, taken a few weeks before he died in battle.

This blog post originally appeared on May 28, 2007

A week before the battle of Bull Run Sullivan Ballou, a Major in the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteers, wrote home to his wife in Smithfield. The letter, made famous on Ken Burn’s landmark documentary Civil War, should really be read while listening to the haunting Ashokan Farewell that accompanied the reading on the show. Such timeless love and heartfelt patriotism makes this letter so American in form and meaning that it should not only move you to tears but make you proud of your heritage.

Such men as this fought to save the union. And they fight to save us today.

My very dear Sarah:

The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days—perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write again, I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more . . .

I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans on the triumph of the Government and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and sufferings of the Revolution. And I am willing - perfectly willing - to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt . . .

Sarah my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me unresistibly on with all these chains to the battle field.

The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them for so long. And hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and seen our sons grown up to honorable manhood, around us. I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me - perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar, that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battle field, it will whisper your name. Forgive my many faults and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless and foolish I have often times been! How gladly would I wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness . . .

But, O Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the gladdest days and in the darkest nights . . . always, always, and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath, as the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by. Sarah do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again . . .

Sullivan Ballou was killed a week later at the first Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861.

There was a very interesting and instructive conversation between This Week host George Stephanopoulos and California Governor Arne Schwarznegger broadcast yesterday that exposed some troubling attitudes on the part of some politicians who see nothing wrong in having the federal government expropriate your property to subsidize failure, incompetence, and in California’s case - government overreach.

First, it must be said that even though I am a “Big Tent” Republican, anyone who would abandon their principles in order to accede to the wishes of the mob isn’t much of a conservative. I don’t know what Schwarzenegger is, or what he believes - if he truly believes anything at all and not just blows with the winds of popular discontent - but one thing he isn’t is a conservative nor is he any kind of Republican that I can compare him to:

Schwarzenegger said Republicans in Washington must put aside their ideology and work with President Barack Obama on solving the economic crisis.

“You know, you’ve got to go beyond just the principles. You’ve got to go and say, ‘What is right for the country right now?’” he said. “I think that, if they — they should make an effort to work together and to find what is best for the people, because by derailing everything, it’s not going to help anybody, and it creates instability and insecurity.”

Stephanopoulos describing what Schwarzenegger said reveals a supposedly experienced and educated man who doesn’t know the difference between “ideology” and “principles.” Ideology can be defined as how we see the world through the prism supplied by our principles and defines where we come down on important issues like taxes, government spending, abortion, etc. One can change their position on issues - ideology - as long as you remain true to basic principles.

Principles, on the other hand, are virtually immutable philosophical concepts that form the underpinnings of ideology and are “true” to the extent that they are informed by logic and reason rather than emotion.. An example of a conservative principle is the belief that in a well ordered society, government is required to take from the people in taxes only that which it needs to function. Ideological conservatives transform that sensible principle into the issue of cutting taxes, feeling that the government has taken too much. It is an arguable point that I happen to agree with and which ideologues from the other side might see differently. But there is no conservative “principle” that specifically holds that cutting taxes is always the right thing to do in every situation nor even that it is necessary at all. It is this notion among others that ideological conservatives have conflated with “conservative principles” to the detriment of the movement.

As I have written previously, conservatism has become excessively ideological where instead of conservative principles informing ideology, a mindset has developed that equates ideology with principles, abandoning Burke and Hayek for Hannity and Limbaugh. Until conservatives can sort out and redefine for the modern age what our traditional, classical, view of man and his relationship to government and society means, it is probable that people will continue to listen to Rush rather than Russell Kirk (among others) and believe they are being exposed to conservative “principles” rather than the entertaining ideological slants of show biz personalities.

So I would agree that a little less ideology in these times is a good thing. But what about Arne’s call to set aside principles and do what’s best “for the country?” This presupposes that conservatives who are violently opposed to Obama’s bail out culture are only doing so out of spite or for political gain. Obviously, I vigorously reject that notion. What Mr. Obama is up to is such a total and complete anathema to my conservative principles that opposing him where I believe his subsidies and bailouts go beyond what is “best for the country” by my own definition becomes a necessity. Why should conservatives accept Mr. Obama’s notion of what is “best for the country.” Why should conservatives “put aside” their principles to support what every fiber of their being is telling them is wrong?

No doubt elections have consequences. But Mr. Obama did not run a campaign where he promised to fundamentally alter the relationship between the citizen and the government, where Washington was going to reward bad behavior by forcing the people to subsidize failure and bad decisions by their fellow citizens . If he had, he would have been roundly defeated. His campaign oozed moderation not radical left nostrums of bank nationalizations, trillion dollar stimuluses (when a sizable number of economists think half the spending in the bill would have been enough), and other radical surgery proposed for an economy that is in recession.

The left, the Democrats, and the media are advancing the narrative that we had no other choices available, that it was this or economic collapse. But that simply isn’t true. In fact, there is an entire school of economic thought that believes what the Obama Administration is doing is ruinous to our future, won’t stimulate the economy, and has thrust the federal government into the role of arbiter, choosing who wins and who loses when such decisions should (for the most part) be left to the market. These economists don’t hate America, aren’t glad to see people suffer, but follow a basic premise that government intervention in the economy of the size and scope proposed by the Obama Administration is wrong. This is not based on ideology but rather on their informed, scientific opinion. To dismiss or ignore this opinion because other economists say differently while pretending there was no other option than to chart the course being followed is pure, ideological politics - exactly what the Obama Administration accuses Republicans of doing.

Schwarzenegger and others may be willing to abandon principle in these uncertain times. How this is doing what is right “for the country” escapes me. It would seem to me that if everyone acted on their principles and did what they thought was best for the country, the nation would be well served, indeed. Yes, one side would win out over the other. That’s how democracy works. But we would be left with the satisfaction that we maintained our adherence to our fundamental beliefs and, as many of us believe, when it is shown that President Obama’s plans have done little to revive the economy, the American people will be more willing to listen to alternatives from those who opposed doing what was popular or politically viable in favor doing what we know from experience and the principles that inform our opinions was right.

There is no doubt that all GOP governors will take most of the money being proffered by the federal government. It won’t make them hypocrites any more than Democrats who voted against every defense spending bill that ever came down the pike are hypocrites for enjoying the freedom and security that spending buys or liberals talking down tax cuts and then not giving the money back when it shows up in their paychecks. Schwarznegger’s call to abandon principles and work for “the good of the country” is different. It is apparent the governor has little in the way of principles to abandon in the first place and that rather than doing what is best for all, he is doing what is best for himself. Unprincipled politicians are a dime a dozen and Schwarzenegger has proven himself to be the worst example in the Republican ranks.