Must we? I don't know, but I couldn't resist clicking the above to read Patrick Ruffini's analysis (in a post tiled "Hands Off Palin") of Ross Douthat's warning to certain conservatives. Noting the negative reactions of the latter to the negative reactions to Sarah Palin by certain Big Media conservative intellectuals, Douthat said,
...if I were Hanson or Levin or Steyn I'd be devoting a little less time to ritual denunciations of heretics and RINOs and at least a little more time to figuring out how to build the sort of ship that will make the rats of the DC/NY corridor want to scramble back on board, however much it makes you sick to have them back.
I'd agree immediately with that, regardless of who is right (although I'm a regular reader of Hanson and I don't recall such recent ritual denunciations; FWIW I can remember him being denounced for supporting McCain, as if that matters with the election weeks away.)
Here's Ruffini:
I'm with Ross on the fact that we have bigger fish to fry than pundit-on-pundit action right now. But once the post-election recriminations begin, and when someone starts to bury Palin with blind NYT quotes, I'll stand firmly in the Palin camp. And here's why.
Ross underestimates the deep way in which movement conservatives have felt betrayed by their own establishment -- with which the likes of Brooks, Kristol, Will et al are aligned -- and never more so than in the last four weeks.
We have seen a situation yesterday in which the Republican Secretary of the Treasury acted as a handmaiden to socialism. I am not given to hyperbolic language, and I use the phrase not to pass judgment on the necessity of what happened, but the forced nationalization of banks is socialism by any grade school definition.
OK, I see his point. And before I get to the civil war, I'm glad at least one issue is out of the way. If the Republican Party leadership has become socialist, then surely the people calling Barack Obama a socialist can't be the bigoted bunch of illiterate morons they're supposed to be, can they? Thank God for that. Seriously, I know I'm a RINO and all that stuff, but my biggest worry involves creeping socialism, which seems to be galloping lately. A few socialistic programs here, a few socialistic programs there, and pretty soon you're talking about having the full-blown real thing. And while I know that by voting for the Republicans I'm supposed to be slowing the rate of socialism, if both horses are galloping towards the finish line, how enthusiastic am I supposed to be about voting simply for the slower horse? The semantic issue of whether Barack Obama is a "socialist" or is merely "socialistic" does not concern me at this point, because he is the faster horse, so I must vote against him in order to prolong the race. (Don't ask me why this matters so much to me; I might get depressed.)
Anyway, I very much understand Ruffini's point about Sarah Palin. By attacking Sarah Palin, the conservative cocktail party country club clique is seen as attacking the only good thing McCain has done for the "movement conservatives."
Yet that dichotomy doesn't quite make sense to me personally. Because, while I grew up in elite country club clique circles and like to think I understand them, I oppose them, yet I'm anything but a "movement conservative."
I'm not even sure "movement conservatives" is the right word but whatever. If there is a civil war, how the hell am I supposed to fit in? I'm not a conservative, and I've defendedSarahPalininmorepoststhanIcanpossiblycount. Yet to the people who are mad at the Republican defectors, I'm still a heretic and a RINO, simply because I don't go along with social communitarian Culture War stuff. I guess both "sides" (meaning the elite country clubbers and the read meat movement people) can agree to purge me and those who think like me.
(If they'd just kick me out in the streets and not tell me I "belong" in the Democratic Party, though, my brain would feel less insulted.)
Yes, I know. These endless ruptures, fractures, and schisms are hopeless. The Big Tent is so tattered that it might as well not be called a tent.
But do they have to have the intraparty civil war now? Is it too much to ask that it be postponed until after the election?
posted by Eric on 10.15.08 at 09:46 AM
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Comments
The eternal attraction of America is the idea that anyone can be anything, that the law of the land will protect us (those in pursuit of happiness) from those, who by accident of birth (nurture or nature), would deny us that right of pursuit.
I don't care that the argument used is-- for my own safety, or protection, or lack of common sense or intelligence. I don't fucking care. Leave me the fuck alone. Protect me only from enemies of the foreign variety, I am able to choose which domestic ones I need to worry about. Seems to me most of them have initials leading back to the Dept of Justice.
Those who have anointed themselves as my betters and leaders are using the law to protect the wealth they have already stolen, and to prevent us from outcompeting them.
Does anyone really believe the wealthy will pay more taxes under Obama? Or that they should? Have you seen the tax code? Have you considered which class of American writes it?
I choose not to participate, and to resist in any way possible.
dr kill · October 15, 2008 10:13 AM
I'm not sure you are fully aware of the irony of complaining of ostracism in a post about not wanting to see others ostracized.
That said, it's pretty clear that the coalition among economic, hawk, and social conservatives is all but gone. McCain had a chance to recover it when the Paulson Crisis happened, but he chose Nannyism over letting capitalism work. He should have gotten on his high horse and said, "I told you so, but now Barney, Obama and the Democrats have sold the country up the river."
For at least fifty years we've had Socialist Party A and Socialist Party B. The Republicans have been in the camp since they accepted the New Deal.
Brett · October 15, 2008 12:24 PM
This year has weeded the small-government aspects out of the top tier of both major parties, and so the discourse is becoming decidedly more European -- although perhaps more like Europe in the early 30s. The Democratic Party is becoming more overtly Socialist and the Republican Party is firmly focusing on Christian Culture. Not pretty.
Fritz · October 15, 2008 12:26 PM
You're on the "incorrect" side, meaning you aren't a socialist. We must all hang together, or assuredly we will all hang separately.
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There was a blonde driving down the road one day. She glanced to her right and noticed another blonde sitting in a nearby field, rowing a boat with no water in sight.
The blonde angrily pulled her car over and yelled at the rowing blonde, "What do you think you're doing? It's things like this that give us blondes a bad name. If I could swim, I'd come out there and kick your butt!"
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
The eternal attraction of America is the idea that anyone can be anything, that the law of the land will protect us (those in pursuit of happiness) from those, who by accident of birth (nurture or nature), would deny us that right of pursuit.
I don't care that the argument used is-- for my own safety, or protection, or lack of common sense or intelligence. I don't fucking care. Leave me the fuck alone. Protect me only from enemies of the foreign variety, I am able to choose which domestic ones I need to worry about. Seems to me most of them have initials leading back to the Dept of Justice.
Those who have anointed themselves as my betters and leaders are using the law to protect the wealth they have already stolen, and to prevent us from outcompeting them.
Does anyone really believe the wealthy will pay more taxes under Obama? Or that they should? Have you seen the tax code? Have you considered which class of American writes it?
I choose not to participate, and to resist in any way possible.