Right Wing Nut House

They might want to call it “Death Wish 2010,” or perhaps, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace Disaster.”

Just don’t call it “The Way Back.”

The Florida senate race, featuring moderate conservative Governor Charlie Crist being challenged in the GOP primary by former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, is shaping up to be a cage match between the party pragmatists and the litmus test conservatives. The contest will be played out before the entire nation and with the media gleefully watching as their newest made for television spectator sport — a real time broadcast of the Republican party’s destruction — comes to an HD flat screen near you.

Rubio, an attractive, dynamic, true blue conservative is the kind of candidate for which the right has been praying. John McCormick of The Weekly Standard got a little carried away in this panegyeric to Rubio, comparing the 37 year old to Barack Obama:

In some respects, Rubio is a little like another state legislator who ran for the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama. Like the president, Rubio points to his biography as a testament to the American dream. The son of Cuban immigrants who fled Castro’s regime, Rubio grew up in a working-class home–his father was a bartender and his mother a factory worker, casino maid, and Kmart stock clerk. He spent a year at Tarkio College in Missouri on a football scholarship before transferring to earn his bachelor’s degree at the University of Florida and his law degree at the University of Miami. He married his longtime girlfriend Jeannette, once a Miami Dolphins cheerleader and now the mother of their four young children. Raised and confirmed a Catholic, Rubio worships with his family at an evangelical church.

A compelling history indeed. Moderate Reihan Salam describes Rubio as something of a Republican Atlas with his “square-jawed all-American looks,” and a “deep belief in the healing power of tax cuts.”

Meanwhile, Crist had been the target of an intense lobbying effort by several top level GOP pols who believed that the governor would have the best chance of holding the seat being vacated by Mel Martinez. They convinced Crist to drop his re-election effort and enter the senate race thereby assuring the enmity of many conservatives in Florida and around the country.

To make matters worse, National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman, Senator John Cornyn, flip flopped on his promise to remain neutral in the senate race and 15 minutes after Crist’s announcement, he threw the resources of the NRSCC behind the governor. No doubt the endorsement was part of the deal to get Crist to run for the senate but it still makes the NRSCC look weak and untrustworthy.

Already, calls for Cornyn’s head are making the rounds in the conservative blogosphere and Eric Erikson of RedState started a Facebook Page “Not One Penny to the NRSCC.”

Rubio himself has already drawn blood by releasing an ad showing Crist with President Obama and a voice over of doom accusing him of being in favor of spending trillions of dollars and piling up debt for our children and grandchildren. It is very effective and gets to the nub of why conservatives are angry with Crist, who participated in a dog and pony show with President Obama, appearing with him at a town hall meeting supporting the stimulus bill.

But that’s not the only problem the base has with Crist. The guy is a political chameleon who a decade ago found it advantageous to portray himself as a Reagan conservative when it was kewl to be a man of the right. He even earned the nickname “Chain Gang Charlie” for his tough law and order personae during his stint as Attorney General.

Now, the political winds are blowing left and Crist is blowing with them. Salam has some choice words for Crist in his Daily Beast article:

One of the key conservative charges against Crist is that his decision to back President Obama’s stimulus package was utterly bankrupt. Crist seemed more interested in currying favor with the state’s army of public-sector workers than keeping the faith with conservative principles. And honestly, that’s exactly right. Crist is not a conservative. With his permanent tan and slick white mane, he’s more like a kinder, gentler Latin American caudillo, who wants nothing more than to be cheered on by adoring throngs. Crist would be right at home with Juan and Eva Peron, dancing the night away and promising free T-bone steaks to the impoverished masses. As governor, Crist has enjoyed tremendous popularity—he has Obama-like job-approval numbers—and he’s done it by hardly ever making tough calls.

There’s no question that Florida is trending Democratic, and it doesn’t help that the state’s economy is sinking into the marshy deep from whence it came. Crist is keenly aware of this, and he’s moved accordingly. In flush times, a decent number of Florida’s must-win Latinos, notably Miami’s highly influential Cuban-American community, were open to small-government Republicans. A punishing wave of foreclosures—which hit Latino families particularly hard—has changed all that. Earlier in his political career, when hard-edged conservatism was on the rise, Crist was known as “Chain Gang Charlie” for backing extreme punishments for convicted felons. Now he’s better known for his efforts to fight climate change and save the Everglades. There’s little doubt that Crist looks himself in the mirror every morning and sees a future president. So why not run for reelection as governor?

Why not, indeed, Salam points out that the next Florida governor will have to make some very tough calls as the tax base shrinks and needs grow. Crist decided to get while the going’s good in order to remain “the most popular political figure in Florida.”

Of course, his wooing by the NRSCC and establishment Republicans did not take into account that his run for the senate would leave a huge vacuum in Talahassee that a Democrat is very likely to fill come election time. Crist was a near sure thing for re-election and his playing musical chairs with GOP politics in Florida could very well cost the Republicans a governorship in a crucial swing state.

So instead of re-election, Crist will rain on conservative’s parade by elbowing Rubio aside. This is sure to anger Rubio’s mentor and cheerleader Jeb Bush who, despite being out of office, still maintains a great network of fundraisers and political operatives across the state. Will Jeb join in the civil war and choose sides, backing Rubio by steering money and political know how his way? I think it will depend on whether Jeb Bush wants to run for president himself some day. Going against establishment Republicans and openly supporting Rubio would anger the very people he would depend on for a presidential run down the road. Prior to Crist’s entrance in the race, it seemed a foregone conclusion that he would give a boost to his disciple. Already he had steered some fund raisers his way, resulting in a haul of about $360,000 in a couple of weeks. But the smart money says that Jeb will play a behind the scenes role while urging his supporters to do all they can to help Rubio.

What kind of a chance does he have? Better than you’d expect. A recent poll showed Crist far ahead with 54% to Rubio’s 8%. But that same poll showed only 23% of Republicans in the state who would “definitely” vote for him in the primary. And more than 65% of the state’s Republicans don’t know enough about Rubio to make a judgment.

With a solid base of support among Cuban Americans, Rubio may surprise - if he can raise the millions of dollars to compete with Crist’s proven fund raising acumen. Florida is a very expensive state to run a race and Rubio’s challenge will be to raise enough money - not as much as Crist but enough to be competitive - and hope that the anti-establishment attitudes that some pollsters are already seeing in the electorate will translate into victory for him in the August, 2010 primary.

The new conservatives have the race they say they’ve always wanted; one of their own versus a “moderate.” If the evangelical, family values, small government, low tax Rubio pulls it out it will shake the party establishment to the core. Not a bad thing necessarily although if Rubio gets slaughtered in the general election, where will the new conservatives be then?

Maybe they’ll say that Rubio wasn’t “conservative enough” and try again. One thing’s for sure, if the new conservatives can’t win in Florida, the question will be asked how they can possibly pull off a victory anywhere else?

I suppose it could have been worse. Instead of passing a resolution officially branding the opposition the “Democrat (sic) Socialist Party,” the RNC might have voted the GOP out of existence.

In the end, the one will hasten the day that the other is realized.

This may be the silliest thing a political party has ever done in American history. I’m with Allah 100%:

More than anything, this reeks of impotence, operating almost as a concession that the right’s argument on the merits that the left is evolving towards socialism isn’t working to shift public opinion. So now they’re going to up the ante by trying the hard sell: Just repeat “socialism” as much as possible to try to drive it into people’s skulls, never minding the fact that that term’s already lost some of its taboo and might well lose more as it goes further mainstream. Or at least, I hope that’s the GOP strategy here. The alternative, that they’re simply sticking their fingers in their ears and repeating “socialist” over and over out of spite like a five-year-old, is too depressing to contemplate. What’s next, a formal resolution declaring french fries “freedom fries” in the Republican Party henceforth and forevermore?

Unfortunately, I believe their reasoning for passing this resolution is more attuned to the latter rather than the former. There is no sense, no rhyme, no reason to “officially” branding the opposition socialists. It is nothing more than a cry in the wilderness; a pathetic ploy (and a childish one at that) to inititate a round of name calling and finger pointing when what is needed are policy alternatives.

This is truly the party of Limbaugh now. The casual use of the word “socialism” on talk radio, the internet, and anywhere the “new conservatives” gather is an affront to common sense not to mention proof positive that the party is in the control of ill-educated, anti-intellectual brigands. Since around 99.9% of American businesses are NOT being taken over by the government and a similar percentage of workers are NOT having their salaries and bonuses manhandled by the feds, one wonders where the idea that the Democrats want “socialism” came from in the first place.

What Obama is doing should be opposed with every fiber of our beings. But Obama is corrupting the free market, not eliminating it. Here’s George Will today:

This is not gross, unambiguous lawlessness of the Nixonian sort — burglaries, abuse of the IRS and FBI, etc. — but it is uncomfortably close to an abuse of power that perhaps gave Nixon ideas: When in 1962 the steel industry raised prices, President John F. Kennedy had a tantrum and his administration leaked rumors that the IRS would conduct audits of steel executives, and sent FBI agents on predawn visits to the homes of journalists who covered the steel industry, ostensibly to further a legitimate investigation.

The Obama administration’s agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of “economic planning” and “social justice” that somehow produce results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail. The administration’s central activity — the political allocation of wealth and opportunity — is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.

Not a peep about socialism from a man who was fighting the expansion of the federal government when most new conservatives weren’t even a lacisvious gleam in their father’s eye. If you wish to call what Obama and the Democrats are doing “socialism,” then petition Webster’s to change the definition. And what is that definition?

1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.
2 a: a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state

3: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done

Considering that a minuscule part of the economy is, at the moment, being run by the Feds, the grossly exaggerated (and, I would add, hysterical) notion that the Democrats desire to close Wall Street, seize all private property, convene an industrial production board to set targets for economic activity, prevent the creation of new businesses, and control capital on a much grander scale than they do now - can only be explained by a shocking ignorance of politicl theory and the lack of even a beginner’s overview of the nature of the political economy shown by new conservatives from the RNC down.

Are Obama’s moves troubling? You betchya. Not because he is instituting socialism but because he and the Democrats are ignorantly corrupting the free market. The more they fiddle with it the more they screw it up. That much should be obvious even to the Keyenesians at Treasury and the White House. But the basic principles of the free market as it relates to the macro economy are still well in play. If you doubt me, pay a visit to the Chicago Board of Trade where capitalism - real devil take the hindmost capitalism - still rules the roost.

The laws of supply and demand still propel our economy despite the Fed’s best efforts to muck things up. And that’s what makes this move by the RNC to brand the Democrats as socialist so silly. Not only are they tarring tens of millions of Americans (and potential voters) with the slimey appellation, but they are lowering the bar on the definition of socialism to the point that about the only people in the US who wouldn’t be considered socialists are pie in the sky libertarians and corporate Republicans like Limbaugh and his ilk on talk radio.

And what of our illustrious leader, RNC Chairman Michael Steele? A cigar store indian has more influence with the RNC than he does:

A member of the Republican National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the “Democrat Socialist Party.”

When I asked if such a resolution would force RNC Chairman Michael Steele to use that label when talking about Democrats in all his speeches and press releases, the RNC member replied: “Who cares?”

Which pretty much sums up the attitude some members of the RNC have toward their chairman these days.

Steele wrote a memo last month opposing the resolution. Steele said that while he believes Democrats “are indeed marching America toward European-style socialism,” he also said in a (rare) flash of insight that officially referring to them as the Democrat Socialist Party “will accomplish little than to give the media and our opponents the opportunity to mischaracterize Republicans.”

I can hear my new conservative friends already: “We shouldn’t care what the media and the opposition will say about us. Anyone who does is a cowardly wretch who willingly plays into their hands by accepting their characterization of conservatives and Republicans.”

Okay, you win. I totally and completely reject the characterizations of conservatives by the media and the Democrats. I’ll even agree that even thinking about the subject should be cause for being kicked out of the Republican party. We don’t want pantywaists who wet themselves if the media and the Democrats successfully paint conservatives as a bunch of loony tunes nitwits who smear 60 million potential voters by calling them socialists. Be a man. Stand up. Look like an idiot, go ahead.

Lord deliver us.

Michael Gerson calls it “A Driving Desire to Lose:”

Witness the reaction to the National Council for a New America — an anodyne “listening tour” by Republican officials recently kicked off at a pizza parlor in Northern Virginia. Social conservatives attacked this forum on education and the economy for the offense of not being a forum on abortion and the traditional family. Neo-Reaganites searched the transcript for nonexistent slights: How dare former Florida governor Jeb Bush criticize “nostalgia” for the “good old days”? Why didn’t he just spit on Ronald Reagan’s grave? Other conservatives criticized the very idea of a listening tour, asking, “What’s to hear?”

During a recent conversation, Bush described himself as “dumbfounded by the reaction.” He added: “I don’t think listening is a weakness. People are yearning to be heard. Perhaps we should begin with a little humility.”

[snip]

Each of these policies — carbon restrictions, universal health insurance and immigration reform — could eventually be important to the Republican recovery. But would a candidate carrying these ideas transform the Republican Party, or be destroyed by it? The hostile reaction to the pizza parlor putsch provides one answer.

But this is a snapshot, not a prophecy. As the years pass, the kingdom of irrelevance seems less and less pleasant, even to its rulers. Policy shifts that seem incredible become inevitable. This is how a party prepares to win.

Fighting over who should rule this “Kingdom of Irrelevance” is all we have left. There are issues of vital importance to almost all Americans that the GOP continues to ignore not because there aren’t conservative alternatives to what the Democrats are offering but because the ignoramuses currently in the ascendancy in the party have deemed them “Democratic issues” and anyone who advocates conservative solutions to those problems is automatically branded a “moderate” - a virtual death knell in today’s purest atmosphere. The notion that addressing vital issues is nothing more than acting like a Democrat is so absurd on its face that it is little wonder serious people do not take the party seriously.

Steele has got to go. He’s been emasculated already so putting him out of his misery would seem to be the charitable thing to do. And as for the RNC members who want to make an irrelevant statement by passing an irrelvant resolution, from an irrelevant group representing an irrelevant party with irrelevant ideas - they should all be forced to take their pants down and a great big “I” for “Irrelevant” branded on their rumps. That’s my idea for “rebranding” the party.

That way, when they pass a resolution requiring Republicans to moon Democrats whenever they see them, people will know where they’re coming from.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

Former Tennessee senator Howard Baker used to quip that one could trace the beginnings of explosive growth in the federal government back to the day they installed a decent air conditioning system in the Capitol. It seems that Washington used to be a sleepy little southern town that moved at a leisurely pace, performing the people’s business with all the energy of a three toed sloth making its way to the ground for breakfast only to arrive around supper time.

One of the reasons for the lethargy was Washington’s oppressive climate.  Anyone who has spent a summer in Washington can tell you that the city is uninhabitable without modern air conditioning. When George Washington was scoping out a location for the Capitol city, he must have been a little tipsy, because the area he chose along the Potomac River for the city that bears his name has the climate of the worst Amazonian swamp you can imagine with mosquitoes the size of butterflies and stinging flies that recall the worst of Dante’s Inferno.

Diplomats used to receive hardship pay for being forced to serve in our nation’s capital. And Congress, unable to bear the life draining heat and humidity, would remove themselves from the city for much of the summer. This meant that the taxpayer’s hard earned coin was safe for a few blessed weeks. No Congress, no new schemes to separate the citizen from his property.

I was reminded of this little morality tale by Baker when it was revealed that the President’s director of the Council of Economic Advisors Larry Summers took a little nap during a meeting between the president and credit card executives a few weeks ago. Rather than make Mr. Summers the butt of cruel jokes, it struck me that here was perhaps the greatest idea for deficit reduction in the history of the United States. Damn near foolproof, actually.

Have Congress mandate a one hour nap every day for every federal employee, member of Congress, staffer, custodian, and cook. In short, close up the city and roll up the sidewalks for one hour every day.

Considering that the government spends about $65 billion every 24 hours, a savings every day of $2.5 billion or so of that money for the hour when Congress, the President, his staff, his department heads, and everyone (except military personnel actually on duty) is fast asleep on their burlap mats would go a long way toward reducing the deficit.

Of course, the government would probably find some way to botch it. No doubt Congress would mandate a certain kind of mat that every department would have to purchase. No cheap Wal-Mart mats for government employees. They would probably import mats made of the finest jute from Bangladesh or India thus contributing to our horrible trade deficit.

And almost certainly, every department would want their own “nap rooms” with senior bureaucrats being given their own space in which to stretch out. There will be the argument made that a whole new headquarters building would be required complete with state of the art enhancements like special glass windows to block the sun’s rays, custom made blinds in case the windows aren’t good enough, and outdoor louvres because, well…just because. The first rule in government spending according to the fictional H.R. Haddon in the film Contact is “why build one when you can have two at twice the price?”

Duplicating the effort to keep a department’s nap room dark enough is nothing more than bureaucrats exercising caution while guaranteeing increased budgets to make sure that the execrably constructed, useless, nonfunctional replication of building systems works the way it should — which is badly or not at all.

And what would nap time be without milk and cookies when you wake up? Here is where all our dreams of deficit reduction would be dashed as there would have to be a Congressional investigation into which cookies would be the least fattening and healthiest.

Government labs around the country would get busy testing each ingredient in every commercially available cookie for cancer causing agents, sugar and fat content, and perhaps even the percentage of free radicals although just about anyone could inform our scientists that the closer one gets to the White House,  the more free radicals one is to find.

No doubt, the recommendations returned by this investigation would mandate a whole new cookie made largely of sunflower seeds and wild grasses found on non-protected government lands, baked by union cooks, and distributed in trucks driven by Teamsters: After approval by AFSCME, of course.

Then there would have to be allowances made for the lactose intolerant which would set off another round of investigations and studies to find the best (and most expensive) alternative. In the end, organic products gleaned from the milk of Llamas will probably end up on the post-nap menu.

It is said we always get the government we deserve.  But really now, I would only wish this kind of government on my worst enemy. Too bad they’re the ones in charge already.

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

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Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

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Judge Richard Posner has written something of a vanilla essay, trying to answer the question “Is the Conservative Movement Losing Steam?”

I appreciate the fact hizzoner may have been a little busy since the November election and may have missed the 5,000 blog posts, articles, tweets, and books that not only noticed that very fact but have actually tried to find a cure for what ails the movement.

Nevertheless, any time someone of Judge Posner’s eminence and brilliance turns his attention to diagnosing the illness afflicting the right, we should pay attention if only to glean nuggets of truth from someone a whole helluva lot smarter than anyone reading this (or writing it for that matter).

No, we shouldn’t automatically accept as gospel what brainy people have to say. But given that Posner will no doubt be labled an “elitist” by the base for being cursed with the ability to view the world in an unemotional, analytic manner, I thought highlighting his views on the problems of conservatism would give them the exposure they deserve.

In essence, Posner makes the same point made by most pundits - conservatism is a victim of its own success:

By the end of the Clinton administration, I was content to celebrate the triumph of conservatism as I understood it, and had no desire for other than incremental changes in the economic and social structure of the United States. I saw no need for the estate tax to be abolished, marginal personal-income tax rates further reduced, the government shrunk, pragmatism in constitutional law jettisoned in favor of “originalism,” the rights of gun owners enlarged, our military posture strengthened, the rise of homosexual rights resisted, or the role of religion in the public sphere expanded. All these became causes embraced by the new conservatism that crested with the reelection of Bush in 2004.

My theme is the intellectual decline of conservatism, and it is notable that the policies of the new conservatism are powered largely by emotion and religion and have for the most part weak intellectual groundings. That the policies are weak in conception, have largely failed in execution, and are political flops is therefore unsurprising. The major blows to conservatism, culminating in the election and programs of Obama, have been fourfold: the failure of military force to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives; the inanity of trying to substitute will for intellect, as in the denial of global warming, the use of religious criteria in the selection of public officials, the neglect of management and expertise in government; a continued preoccupation with abortion; and fiscal incontinence in the form of massive budget deficits, the Medicare drug plan, excessive foreign borrowing, and asset-price inflation.

Yes, that just about covers it. I would niggle a bit with the good Judge in his example of global warming as evidence that will has been substituted for intellect. While there is something of a knee jerk reaction to the idea of man made climate change among many conservatives, there is also a solid, growing body of scientific evidence that skepticism with regards to global warming is well founded - even more so when one considers the “solutions” being offered.

That said, Posner has a couple of very interesting, and original causes for conservatism’s decline as an intellectual force.

The realization that, for all our expensive military hardware, not very much of it is useful on the modern battlefield, may be the most lasting and best lesson learned from our troubles in Iraq. Only a fool like Saddam will challenge us in the future to a stand up battle which makes a lot of the equipment we designed and built to fight the Soviet Union obsolete - and a waste of defense resources at that. Given the unholy deficits we will be running in the future, a massive contraction of defense spending is in the offing. National defense is one of the only budgetary items where savings in the hundreds of billions can be achieved and given the trillions of red ink Obama will be running, you can bet he will cut there before he goes after entitlements.

But have we learned the lesson that military force has its limits - again? One would have thought that after losing 55,000 men in Viet Nam, the lesson would not have needed repeating. Alas, we may be condemned to repeat this exercise in wasting blood and treasure as long as we seek to maintain superpower status.

Another interesting point made by Posner was “the neglect of management and expertise in government.” For a variety of reasons - some good, some horrible - George Bush insisted on staffing his government with cronies.

If you are going to make appointments of cronies, the least you can do is appoint competent ones. While many of Bush friends and supporters were people he could trust, a legitimate question could be asked as to how competent were many of them?

The evidence suggests that Bush appointed people who were not up to the tasks assigned to them. By sticking industry hacks into regulatory positions (a long and shameful list), the president put the foxes in charge of watching the very henhouses they were supposed to be regulating. There was cronyism and partisan appointments everywhere in government during the Bush years and efficiency suffered as a result.

But Posner’s real gripe - and the gripe of many less ideological conservatives - is that “the new conservatism [is] powered largely by emotion and religion and [has]for the most part weak intellectual groundings.”

Amen and Hallelujah. What Posner refers to as “new” conservatism (a term I will be shamelessly stealing from now on), calls on such intellectual luminaries as Hannity, Limbaugh, Coulter, and Beck, for sustenance. In this, the leading lights of the new conservatism dole out philosophy and rationale the way a Baskin Robbins ice cream server spoons whipped creme on to his concoctions. The result are that ideas and concepts with the heft of cotton candy, but extremely palatable to the narrow minded, are passed off as conservative dogma.

Religion has been confused with “traditional values” in order to justify the infallibility of many positions on social issues. Posner points specifically to abortion but might have also included gay marriage, embryonic stem cell research, and the teaching of creationism in schools. And the slice of conservatism that also identifies itself as “evangelical” - influential beyond their numbers - makes these “values” the centerpiece of their political universe.

Judge Posner has correctly diagnosed most of what’s wrong with conservatism today. He makes mention in his article that the intellectual giants of the past or gone and few recognized public thinkers have stood up to take their place. That’s not to say they aren’t out there The question of when and how they will step forward to define a kind of “post-conservatism” that builds on the past while laying the groundwork for the future will be hard to answer as long as the right continues to wander aimlessly in the wilderness.

How Glennallen Walken got roped into playing a conservative boob who takes questions from “sincere” left wing readers at Salon I’ll never understand.

The money must be really good to prostitute oneself in such a way, playing the fool for a bunch of liberal swells. And I’m jealous as hell they didn’t ask me to do it first.

Regardless, Walken has a weekly “Advice to the Intellectually Challenged Liberal” column that answers questions from lefties who appear to get all their information about conservatives from Democratic party talking points or sites like Think Progress and Raw Story. I don’t know what’s more pathetic; Liberals asking questions that prove how clueless they are about the world around them or Walken feeling he has to answer their idiocies seriously. Either way, the unintentional comedic result goes so far over the head of Salon’s daily readers that it doesn’t even muss their hair on the way by.

Here’s a question from an earnest fellow who wants to know if conservatives have become a bunch of Luddites or if they’re just crazy:

Why has the Republican Party (and, it seems, a large portion of the conservative movement in general) embraced such an anti-science, anti-intellectual position? Growing up in a Republican household in the 1970s and ’80s, I was exposed to the likes of William F. Buckley, Jack Kemp and others who promoted the GOP as a party that could tackle issues intelligently. Basic sciences were supported, at least if seen as leading to improvements in business or defense.

Thirty years on, whatever intellectual elements that are left in the GOP seem to be drowned out by the likes of Limbaugh and Palin, who appear to be openly contemptuous of educated people. Senators such as James Inhofe sneer at any science that may challenge their worldview.

Is this mind-set now integral to the GOP and the conservative movement? Is there any path back to a party the embraces intelligence and scientific curiosity?

The second question along the same lines is equally bizarre - as if the questioners were asking about some weird species of slug that emerged from underneath a rotten log:

Are conservatives really anti-science? This would seem to be an odd position to hold, especially as you seem otherwise so keen on industry, commerce, business and enterprise. But this is what we conclude from attempts to restrict the teaching of evolution in public schools, denial (and outright denigration) of climate change, and the ridicule poured on anyone with any thoughts on how to minimize the damage being done to the environment. Sometimes it seems like Luddism; sometimes it seems like you haven’t even noticed that you are attacking the basic laws of biology and physics in order to keep the tortuous logic for some ideological convictions going.

As Walken patiently explains, the party that committed this country to SDI, renewing a push for nuclear power, using new technologies to drill for offshore oil while we fund research into alternative energy, and vastly increasing funding for the bread and butter of science; basic research, can hardly be called anti-science unless you ignore the facts and substitute an alternate narrative.

The meme “conservatives oppose funding for stem cell research” is a case in point. During the Bush years, there was no limit on federal funding for adult stem cell research and there was, in fact, funding of embryonic stem cell research based on lines already culled prior to the Bush decision of 2001.

How this morphed into “conservatives oppose funding for all stem cell research” is a textbook case of how the media advances Democratic party talking points at the expense of the truth. In a society with an unbiased media, that talking point would have been shot down long ago instead of being accepted as conventional wisdom.

But Walken does miss the boat on two issues that show conservatives to be if not anti-science, then certainly anti-rationalist. On Climate Change, Walken rightly points out the abandonment of scientific objectivity by liberals:

To conclude, conservatives are not anti-science or anti-technology. If anyone is anti-science it is the global warming, excuse me, global climate change extremists who, ignoring the holes in their own theories and the inconsistencies in their own projections, are willing to cripple U.S. industrial manufacturing, energy production and the economy in an attempt to reduce carbon emissions.

What Walken doesn’t take on is the exact same attitude on the part of Climate Change deniers - most of whom are conservatives - who refuse to accept any data that contradicts their idea that man made global warming is a leftist conspiracy and a fraud. This attitude, personified by Senator James Inhofe, is as damaging to the scientific method as anything the Climate Change proponents have ever done.

I wish there could be a legitimate debate over evidence of man made climate change but that will never happen. Hence, we are all left describing what we “believe” about global warming, pro or con, rather than what the scientific evidence in its totality proves to us. Selective reading of media stories on climate change gives fodder to both sides and is worse than useless because it presents a false, misleading picture of the confusing nature of the scientific process.

It doesn’t help that global warming proponents in the scientific community have the backing of interests that care much less about future climate change than the fact that they relish the opportunity such a “crisis” engenders by allowing them to promulgate draconian measures that would give them virtual control of the west’s economies.

Being a climate change denier does not automatically make you anti-science - unless you have closed your mind to contradictory data that prevents you from examining the issue in a rational manner. And here is where I believe the excessively ideological conservative base gives conservatism as a whole a bad rep on science. Using global warming skepticism as a litmus test to determine who truly is a conservative, the base has abandoned rationalism in favor of seeing the issue of climate change through a political prism as skewed as their opponents.

And Climate Change isn’t the only issue on the right where litmus tests are administered instead of leaning on rationalism to examine scientific issues. There is a fairly small but very vocal minority of conservatives who go absolutely bonkers every time someone mentions “evolution” or “Darwin.” A smaller subset of this group wishes to turn our public schools into purveyors of myth masquerading as “science” by trying to get local school boards to teach creationism or, it’s poor relation “Intelligent Design” in the same curricula that teaches evolution.

“Letting the kids decide for themselves” whether evolution or creationism should be the accepted theory of how life arose on earth and how humans came into being is a little like asking the kids to decide whether the earth is round or flat. If you wish to believe in creationism, fine. Why the Christian belief in how the earth got started is any more viable than say, the Hindu belief or even Native American creation myths escapes me. Seems if we’re going to teach creationism, we have to include all the other religious creation myths as well if not to be fair then at least so that we can “let the kids decide for themselves” what they want to believe.

Mentioning evolution in a favorable way automatically brands one as a suspect conservative in some quarters of the conservative base. Not all, of course. But it is a sizable enough and vocal enough minority as to make it appear to the public at large (thanks to a media that blows these incidents out of proportion) that at the very least, conservatives have rejected rationalism and are promoting the naked advancement of the Christian religion in public schools.

Conservatives are not anti-science - not by a long shot. But by not recognizing that excessively ideological positions that reject scientific rationalism outright in favor of a narrow, rigid interpretation of data that feeds preconceived political notions, conservatives fall into the exact same trap that their equally ideological opponents have set for themselves.

Sticking to one’s principles is great. But doing so while abandoning rational thinking and substituting emotion for logic only shows that some in the conservative base are not only irrational, but anti-intellectual as well. For when you abandon critical thinking in favor of groupthink; when you toss away an open mind and substitute rigid ideology, you lose your most cherished possession - an independent, rational mind.

Today is the big day for Trekies of all ages as the newest installment in the film series opens in more than 3,800 theaters.

Entitled simply Star Trek, the film will fill in some blanks about the young adulthood of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the rest of the cast. There will also apparently be a satisfying continuity with the original series as Kirk’s mentor will be Captain Christopher Pike, a character in the original pilot as well as a two part episode in the first season based on the pilot.

Taking a look at the cast, except for Eric Bana who plays a character with the decidedly Trekie name of “Nero,” (Roddenberry loved classical allusions in his creation), the original Spock Leonard Nimoy, and Ben Cross, I am unfamiliar with the players.

This is just as well. It allows me to watch the film and not be distracted by wondering why what’s-his-name was cast in an important role.

It was 1966 when the original Star Trek series debuted. That’s 43 years of watching and internalizing an absorbing universe that has captured the imagination of people around the world. It is an astonishing record of longevity - a franchise, rivaled only by the James Bond series of films.

There have been 10 films based on the characters created in 5 television series that had varying degrees of success. (See John Nolte’s ranking of the films that he started today along with my own attempt at analyzing the best of them here.)

Why has the mythos of Star Trek endured? The original series with Captain Kirk and Spock was an uneven attempt to bring sci-fi to series television. I say uneven because few of the plots actually dealt with standard sci-fi themes. James Doohan, who played Scotty in that series once famously remarked that the original series resembled a western set in outer space.

But there were certainly several memorable shows written by legitimate sci fi authors like Harlan Ellison, Theodore Sturgeon, and David Gerrold (”Trouble with Tribbles”).

Subsequent incarnations of the show did much better with time-space irregularities and other staples of science fiction. But aliens were almost always humans with weird ears or noses - a handicap made even worse by the fact the English seemed to be the universal language of the galaxy.

No matter. Those of us who are fans suspended belief for the hour long episodes that portrayed a society that was something of a radical utopia: The elimination of most violence, no money, everyone does what they want, one assumes free food and medical care - all the stuff dreamed of by Utopians in America for more than 2 centuries.

This is where I believe Star Trek captures each succeeding generation and is the key to its hold on our culture.

Many say the universe developed by series creator Gene Roddenberry reflected his belief in radical leftist politics which, at the time, manifested itself in groups of young people setting up “communes” across southern California where experiments in communal living (including “free love”) thrived for a time in the late 1960’s.

This may be so. There are certainly all the elements of pure socialism in Roddenberry’s human society of the 24th century as this excellent essay on Federation society points out:

Determinism: On the whole, biology dictates behavior. Humans are the race most capable of free thought and action, and have the most cultural diversity. Other races are stereotypical. All members of a given alien race share the same culture, beliefs, and personality traits. For example, all Ferengi are shifty and greedy, and believe in the Rules of Acquisition. Aliens who spend a lot of time with humans (example: Nog) sometimes acquire the human capacity to break stereotype. (Editor’s note: cultural contamination in in Star Trek is a one way street. Vulcans can learn to emote after enough exposure to humans (eg. Spock, Tuvok), but humans don’t become more logical after exposure to Vulcans. Klingons can become more ethical after exposure to humans (eg. Worf), but humans don’t become more aggressive after exposure to Klingons. Ferengi can become less materialistic after exposure to humans (eg. Nog), but humans don’t become more materialistic after exposure to Ferengi. After all, we’ve figured out the one true and righteous path, right? Sounds like the cultural self-satisfaction of Columbus and other murderous European conquerors).

F. Socialism. All people should work according to their abilities and receive resources according to their needs. Individual achievement is recognized socially but not rewarded materially. Individual freedom is not important. Economy should be centrally planned by the government, since they know best who needs what. Commerce and competition are necessary evils. The profit motive is evil. Social problems are caused by scarcity and/or unjust distribution of material goods, but modern technology renders competition for resources obsolete. Federation citizens have access to all the material things they need thanks to the Federation government, so they are free to be truly happy and to maximize their human potential.

But before we condemn Roddenberry for promoting Communism, let us examine another possibility - one based on history and all-American thinking - that would explain his vision in terms that are friendlier (although no less preposterous) than some addle-brained attempt to bring to life a Marxist paradise.

The “perfectibility of man” is a fairly recent concept in civilization, advanced by early Christian thinkers like St. Augustine who believed that the path to perfection was through God, an individualistic view of perfection. The Enlightenment philosophers didn’t reject that notion entirely but included the possibility that science and technology would eventually make the perfect society (Engel’s “scientific socialism” was related but a different animal).

Ideas on what defined “perfect” evolved also. But I think Roddenberry’s vision is informed more by Enlightenment thinking than Marxism. The society governed by the Federation echoes transcendentalist efforts at creating a Utopia at Brook Farm rather than Marx.

An atheist, Roddenberry was a near fanatic about keeping God out of his creations. But the philosophy Picard talks about in First Contact has a spirituality that cannot be ignored. He speaks of a world where there is no hunger, no poverty, no money, and that the desire for material goods has been replaced by a drive to improve oneself. This sounds almost monkish in its implications for a society.

Star Trek society is unreal because if given the opportunity offered in Federation governed earth, man would simply waste away in pursuit of the sensual. Indeed, it seems remarkable that we would have overcome the tendency to allow our baser instincts to prevail in a scant 400 years of evolution. First Contact tries to tie this fundamental alteration of the human condition to our making first contact with the Vulcans and realizing “we are not alone.” One would think that if the recently concluded nuclear war in that movie that killed hundreds of millions didn’t do the trick then why would meeting an alien have much effect?

But such inconsistencies and outrageous postulations about future humans don’t seem to stop Trekies from embracing the society created by Roddenberry and his successors. I believe this is because at bottom, Star Trek speaks to the adolescent in all of us who pine for a society where money is not necessary to enjoy luxuries, chores are optional, and everyone seems to have a teenager’s fantasy outlook on sex; everyone does it whenever they want with whomever they choose and with no messy consequences.

The serial alien girlfriends of Kirk in the original series, the love interests of many of the crew on Voyager, the Lotharian antics of Ryker on NextGen - the writers even going so far as to create a pleasure planet called Risa and a society of mental adolescents that engage in sex like rabbits — the attitude toward sex in Federation society is decidedly free and easy. This is not to say it is necessarily immoral, just that it bespeaks a society that any hormone addled adolescent would love to live in.

The attraction of Federation society does not bear up well if one were to apply critical thinking skills to the consequences of what such a community would mean if it were real. What about criminal behavior> Or a desire not to be educated, or even what would happen if one simply wants to strum a Vulcan lyre all day instead of contributing anything useful to the Federation?

Lacking these critical thinking skills, adolescents simply accept the premises of Federation society that are presented to them. And when we grow up, our fascination with the Star Trek world is partly due, I think, to taking a nostalgic trip back to our teenage years when we had no responsibilities and we weren’t stuck in jobs we hate because we had to make a living. Responsibilities on the Enterprise are not a burden, they are a joy. Who wouldn’t want to fly around in space, killing aliens, discovering fascinating new worlds instead of facing the day to day drudgery that defines most of our lives?

Transporting ourselves into the Star Trek universe then, becomes an exercise in adult fantasy. Who wouldn’t want to have a drink with Scotty or play a game of chess with Spock, or sit down for a discussion of archeology with Picard? And who wouldn’t want a date with Troi or Seven of Nine?

Yes, Federation society is based on simple minded principles. But that doesn’t make imagining living in that time and with those characters any less fun, does it? That will always be the basis for the eternal popularity of the series and the movies; visualizing an impossible future but living it with fun, interesting, and attractive people.

Judging by the slam bang opening predicted for the newest movie this weekend, the franchise appears to have rekindled enthusiasm for the whole Star Trek universe. And the adolescent in all of us is pleased.

TENTH AMENDMENT: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Does the US Constitution give the federal government the right to dictate to a state how long it must supply unemployment compensation insurance? Or where it must spend its money on health care? Or how it runs its welfare programs?

It’s called “The Forgotten Amendment” for good reason. While everyone waxes poetic about their love for the Bill of Rights - the first ten amendments to the Constitution - some of us are very selective in which of those amendments we actually recognize and support.

While the left can bore you to death telling you how much they adore the First Amendment and how only the most expansive interpretation of it can be accepted, something sticks in their throat when applying the exact same rationale to the Second Amendment. Here, only the narrowest of definitions should be used (”Militia” means militia, goddamnit!).

And when it comes to the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, liberals have thrown a cloak of invisibility over them. If they have to talk abut them, it is usually to accuse the proponents of these building blocks of federalism of being closet Kluxers. “States rights” has a malodorous stench attached to the concept due to the justification for Jim Crow by southern racists in pre-civil rights days where these misunderstood amendments were used to assert the sovereignty of the state to order its own affairs.

There is no denying this. But should this historical truth necessarily forever and in every circumstance delegitimize those who wish to assert the view that those powers not enumerated in the Constitution are reserved for the states and individuals? Should this be the only definition of states rights — that it means a roll back of civil rights gains?

Obviously, the left wishes to pimp that notion till it cries uncle. Here’s Ed Kilgore doing just that in a post yesterday:

As someone just old enough to remember the last time when politicians in my home southern region made speeches rejecting the Supremacy Clause and the 14th amendment, I may take this sort of activity more seriously than some. But any way you slice it, Republicans are playing with some crazy fire. For all the efforts of its sponsors to sell the “sovereignty resolution” idea as a grassroots development flowing out of the so-called Tea Party Movement, its most avid supporters appear to be the John Birch Society and the Council of Conservative Citizens, the successor to the White Citizens Councils of ill-fame. And given the incredibly unsavory provenance of this “idea,” it’s no surprise that these extremist groups are viewing the “movement” as an enormous vindication of their twisted points of view.

If John C. Calhoun offered the definitive articulation of the nullification theory, his nemesis, President Andrew Jackson, offered the definitive response, which holds true today. He said the doctrine was “incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.”

This wildly exaggerated notion that the Tenth Amendment Movement is largely the creation of Birchers and Kluxers is ridiculous on its face. Neither of those groups has the organization or wherewithal to ramrod an effort that has seen resolutions asserting state sovereignty introduced in 35 states.

Further, bring up Jim Crow is a gigantic strawman. The drive to pass these measures is animated largely by the Democratic Stimulus Bill that is mandating wholesale changes to state law and in some cases, violating state constitutions with mandates for which there will be no funding once federal money is cut off.

Looking at the stim bill last March, Ronald Rotunda writing in the Chicago Tribune pointed out that the federal government was reserving for itself almost unlimited power to dictate to the states:

Because some governors might not accept the money, Congress added a unique provision, in subsection 1607(b): “If funds provided to any State in any division of this Act are not accepted for use by the Governor, then acceptance by the State legislature, by means of the adoption of a concurrent resolution, shall be sufficient to provide funding to such State.”

If state law does not give the state legislature the right to bypass the governor, how can Congress just change that law? Where does Congress get the power to change a state constitution?

It might appear quaint to note that the U.S. Constitution does not create a central government of unlimited powers. Congress only has those powers that the Constitution gives it either expressly or by implication. That’s a lot of power, to be sure, but it’s not unlimited.

Kilgore and his ilk are throwing around terms like “nullification” when in actuality, the states only wish to continue to exercise authority in those areas that they have traditionally been granted the power to do so by the Constitution.

It is the federal government that is trying to change things, not the states.

This is not about civil rights, or nullification, or secession, or any other bugaboo with which liberals are trying to smear and besmirch the efforts of state sovereignty supporters. And since the left is positing the ridiculous notion that the exercise of 10th amendment rights by the states threatens the republic, then one is left with the real reason for their gripe; they object to the concept of federalism as it was envisioned by the Founders.

We all know about “enumerated powers” expressed in the Constitution itself. No one is arguing with those. It is the “reserved powers” justified by the “necessary and proper” clause in the the Constitution that are at issue. What “implied” powers does the federal government possess? Liberals seem to be saying that those powers are defined by Congress and the feds alone — anything Congress wants to do relative to the exercise of state powers, it can do.

This is what the Tenth Amendment Movement is seeking to fix; a constitutional basis for the exercise of state authority in matters clearly not the business of the federal government.

Can Congress mandate that states increase the number of weeks that an unemployed worker can receive benefits without also paying for it? Whether you happen to think this is a good idea or not (and I think it was necessary in these hard times), the question of whether Congress can mandate such a change in state law - especially since once the stim bill money is cut off, the states are responsible for increasing taxes to pay for the measure - becomes a matter of state power versus federal power.

Wasn’t the Tenth Amendment designed to keep the federal government from dictating in such a manner to the states while preventing the feds from overriding state law? I am not a constitutional scholar but it makes sense to me that even an expansive, broad minded reading of the Constitution would get into trouble when trying to justify such actions.

I accept the notion of federal primacy where civil rights are concerned, as well as regulatory authority relating to the health and safety of Americans. But as Professor Rotunda mentioned above, this authority has its limits. And the supporters of the Tenth Amendment Movement are seeking to define those limits to prevent the power grab being made by this Democratic Congress and Administration, using the excuse of an economic crisis to aggrandize power unto themselves at the expense of the traditional rights of the state and individuals.

There are several angles that the Tenth Amendment Movement is beginning to play out across the land. In Montana, the state legislature is seeking to assert sovereignty over a limited interpretation of gun rights:

In a bill passed by the Legislature earlier this month, the state is asserting that guns manufactured in Montana and sold in Montana to people who intend to keep their weapons in Montana are exempt from federal gun registration, background check and dealer-licensing rules because no state lines are crossed.

That notion is all but certain to be tested in court.

The immediate effect of the law could be limited, since Montana is home to just a few specialty gun makers, known for high-end hunting rifles and replicas of Old West weapons, and because their out-of-state sales would automatically trigger federal control.

Still, much bigger prey lies in Montana’s sights: a legal showdown over how far the federal government’s regulatory authority extends.

It is fighting federal mandates on state spending that is driving this movement forward, not Bircher paranoia or hopes by the Klan to return to the days of Jim Crow. And how this issue is finally settled will decide the fate of federalism and with it, the limits on power we wish to see on the federal government.

We are a federal republic. It’s about time we started acting like one again.

Richard Hofstadter was once referred to by George Will as “the iconic public intellectual of liberal condescension,” largely because one of his more popular works, the essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” took direct aim at flyover country and some of the more outlandish conspiracy theories that flourished at the time. (The essay still makes good reading, if only because Hofstadter was an excellent writer and captured the essence of the “Red Scare” so well.)

In truth, from what I know of Hofstadter and his work (largely through criticisms penned by conservative historians), he had that maddening tone in his writing that he was privy to a great truth and that only those who accepted his premises and agreed with his reasoning could grasp it. (If you are truly interested in tracing the history of conspiracy, Daniel Pipes excellent study Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From is a must read.)

Conspiracies flourish among the ignorant, the uneducated, and the oppressed according to Pipes. The Arab world lives on conspiracy. Governments find it advantageous to promote them in order to deflect criticism for the wretched conditions of their citizens.

For a while, the conspiracy culture in America was little seen or heard. Following the banishment of the John Birch Society from mainstream conservatism, modern paranoids were left without a mouthpiece to reach the population at large. They were indeed confined to the fringes where they argued incessantly among themselves in their little known journals and magazines while the world moved forward.

It is unfair to confine the paranoid style to the right as Hofstadter tried to do. Even while he was writing his essay describing it, there was the left wing fringe that saw Nazis in Washington and tried to connect the Rothschilds and the Jews to a shadowy international finance conspiracy that used the now debunked Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a factual text. (Both right and left loved that one.)

But for many years, it really didn’t matter because the fringe of both right and left were never given the opportunity to reach the public at large due to the control of media by the few. You might hear some Kluxer spouting nonsense on a small radio station somewhere or find a copy of The New American littering the floor of some public restroom. But by and large, the fringes were relegated to the, well, fringes.

All that changed with the advent of the internet, of course. Now, every manner of conspiracy nut has crawled out from underneath their rocks and polluted our discourse. Their ranting forms the background of internet chatter. A decade ago it was Vince Foster and Ron Brown, cocaine cartels, murder for hire, and other malfeasance by Bill and Hillary Clinton that garnered unwarranted attention.

Then it was Bush’s turn; war to enrich Bush’s cronies, Haliburton, the draft, detention sites for liberals - all made the greatest conspiracy hits on the left. Whether it was because the internet had become more pervasive, these lefty memes actually hit mainstream sites like Daily Kos, Oliver Willis, MyDD and the like.

Indeed, there are now two conspiracy theories that have gone nearly mainstream and have actually entered the consciousness of American citizens. The 9/11 Truthers - despite enormous evidence to the contrary that debunks every single one of their theories - are coloring people’s attitudes about that event. The pushback against the Truthers has been very heartening to see and it may be that the tide will eventually turn toward rationality.

But what do you do about a conspiracy theory like the Obama “Birthers?” Or the “Trig Truthers?” The former doesn’t believe Obama is eligible to be president because he hasn’t released a “birth certificate” stating he is a “natural born citizen.” The only possible conclusion that can be drawn, according to the Birthers, is that Obama was born elsewhere and there is a gigantic coverup to keep the information under wraps.

As with the 9/11 Truthers, facts don’t matter to these people and indeed, only serve to enrage them. Neither do facts seem to matter to the Trig Truthers whose most prominent booster, former conservative supporter of George Bush Andrew Sullivan, has labored long and hard to “prove” that little Trig Palin is not the child of Sarah Palin but of her 17 year old daughter Bristol. (This hilarious Vanity Fair timeline ices the case, that Trig is Sarah’s baby but Sullivan, weirdly, continues his quest to award the child to Bristol).

Lots of folks are enraged at Sullivan. But Sully has shown his unfitness for rational thought on a variety of subjects besides his obvious disdain for common sense in the Trig matter. Others, like torture, I believe he has been spot on.

But Sullivan telling conservatives that they have to totally cut themselves loose from talk show hosts and pop conservatives like Ann Coulter in order to regain their soul is downright strange. And it shows why he is so oblivious to the fool he is making of himself over the Trig Truther issue:

Take yours truly. I’m not a Democrat and if pushed, I’d have to say right now I’m a libertarian independent. I’m uneasy about Obama’s long-term debt, to say the least, but I’m intelligent enough to know it’s not Obama’s as such, but mainly Bush’s, and I’m also cognizant that the time to cut back may not be in the middle (or beginning) of a brutal depression. On most issues, I side with what used to be the center-right, but the GOP is poison to me and many others. Why?

Their abandonment of limited government, their absurd spending under Bush, their contempt for civil liberties, their rigid mindset, their hostility to others, their worship of the executive branch, their contempt for judicial checks, their cluelessness with racial minorities and immigrants, their endorsement of torture as an American value, their homophobia, their know-nothing Christianism, and the sheer vileness of their leaders - from the dumb-as-a-post Steele to the brittle, money-grubbing cynic, Coulter and hollow, partisan neo-fascist Hannity.

I’m waiting for the first leading Republican to do to these grandstanding goons what Clinton once did to the extremists in his own ranks: reject them, excoriate them, remind people that they do not have a monopoly on conservatism and that decent right-of-center people actually find their vision repellent. And then to articulate a positive vision for taking this country forward, expanding liberty, exposing corruption, reducing government’s burden, unwinding ungovernable empire, and defending civic virtue without going on Jihads against other people’s vices.

If today’s “conservatives” spent one tenth of the time saying what they were for rather than who they’re against, they might get somewhere. But the truth is: whom they hate is their core motivation right now. That’s how they define themselves. And as long as they do, Americans will rightly and soundly reject them.

Sully is “uneasy” over Obama’s long term debt but blames Bush? He is blaming Obama’s predecessor for deficits 10 years down the road?

See what I mean by strange? I believe any reasonably informed individual could easily correct Sullivan by pointing out that the $11 trillion in debt (best case scenario) - the “long term debt” that Andrew is “uneasy” about but that he blames on Bush - is a direct result of the president’s budget proposals for which he, and he alone, is responsible. But Sully’s Obama worship has unbalanced him to the point that he apes the worst blindness to incompetence of the Bushbots he railed against for years. It can’t be his hero’s fault.

Sullivan’s wildly exaggerated, insulting, misinformed, and I suspect deliberately misconstrued critique of Republicans is typical of someone who ignores facts, eschews logic and reason, and abandons rationality while embracing a kooky conspiracy theory about the origins of a baby.

His rant defines Hofstadter’s other major contribution to paranoid political analysis by revealing Sullivan is suffering from the idea of the “First Party System” where fear that the “other party” will destroy the country dominates. Calling Sean Hannity a “neo-fascist” is remarkably silly, on the order of calling Bill Clinton a murderer. Sullivan isn’t just exaggerating. He has allowed hysteria to overtake his faculties so that what appears to any rational human as gross hyperbole strikes him, I’m sure, as reasonable analysis.

He is asking for a “Sister Souljah” moment from leading Republicans who listen to Rush, Coulter, Hannity (a neo-fascist? C’mon Andrew), and the rest of the cotton candy conservative brigade. I take a back seat to no one in urging my conservative friends to wean themselves from these pop conservative’s idea of “conservative philosophy” but neither do I believe it necessary to castrate them. All I and other pragmatists are asking for is putting these jokers in their proper place and take them for what they are; entertainers. Their popularity is a symptom of the dearth of leadership on the right at the moment. And I suspect once that situation is resolved, Limbaugh and his ilk will fade in influence and importance.

Sullivan is not interested in saving the right from itself, of course. His rhetoric has now wholly devolved into the childish mutterings of leftist paranoids who see “Christianists” on a par with Islamists and “hate mongering” from those who criticize liberal policies. It has brought him fame, a good living, and a seat at the table with the big boys.

I wonder if they realize how far out there on the fringe he truly is?

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, it’s another all American Thinker night as my friends Rich Baehr and Ed Lasky join me to talk about the recent AIPAC gathering and some political pastiche.

The show will air from 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available for streaming or download shortly after the end of the broadcast.

Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

The Chat Room will open around 15 minutes before the show opens,

Also, if you’d like to call in and put your two cents in, you can dial (718) 664-9764.