And that’s because — and I hate repeating myself, but it needs to be done — these are big government technocrats who hold the American people in the same disdain as do the progressive Democrats.  They are part of a self-appointed ruling elite, and they know how best to run DC and your lives.  Of course, that’s going to involve a bit of a sacrifice on the part of the private citizen, be it to his or her liberty and autonomy, property rights, independence, conscience, etc.  But then, to make the country a smoother-running funnel of revenue to the political class — from which we all benefit (our light bulbs and toilets, for instance, are so much more eco-friendly, and our children enjoy an homogenous public education, at least in terms of content) — we, the People, have to be willing to surrender quaint notions of liberty and individualism that were en vogue back when the country was an open wilderness waiting to be exploited.

Now that we have a society to run, we can’t expect that to happen organically and privately, or even on a state-by-state basis.  We need a centralized plan. And while the GOP establishment’s version of such a plan involves lowering taxes and corporatist policy — a far cry from the complete Marxist overhaul of the free market system being pushed by the progressives — the song remains the same:  the Constitution is an impediment to the designs of our betters.  And if we wish to “progress” as a society, we need to give up on the crazy idea of self-reliance and self-sufficiency, and replace the religion of a higher power with the religion of the state, just as we need to replace the civil society with a carefully-managed, government-run social engineering apparatus.

For freedom.

And to do that, we need to get rid of these crazed wacko bird throwbacks whose extreme extremism is threatening to keep the GOP from moving into the spot vacated by erstwhile Democrats, whose party has moved so far left that it may as well trade it its flag lapel pins for a hammer and sickle badge.

Bush speech writer Michael Gerson, taking to the pages of the WaPo (Politico was probably already overstuffed with GOP surrender monkeys clamoring to surrender publicly), to advocate for that shift leftward.  Where we can capture all the “moderates” that the Bush/Rove east coast Rockefeller Republicans chase more aggressively than the late Senator Ted Kennedy chased Hooter’s waitresses.  “The tea party’s revolt against reality”:

If you can judge people by the quality of their enemies, one quality shared by many opponents of the tea party is their conservatism. Like many ideological factions, tea-party activists display a special intensity in fighting the “near enemy” — other elements on the right that don’t share their tactics. President Obama may be their ultimate foe, but conservative pragmatists are their rivals. And rivals are the more immediate problem.

— Note:  he said “conservative pragmatists,” not me. But he forgot to italicize it.  For the irony. Also, note the headline.  It’s as if it could have been written by Obama or Reid or Pelosi or McCain.  And it is a position no doubt shared by Chris Christie and Jeb Bush — whom the GOP money men will try to force on us in 2016.

[…]

During the Obama era, Republican ideological conflicts have intensified. The latest round began with a typical, largely healthy revolt against leaders such as House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who were viewed as tired and uncreative (though easier to criticize than replace). The young guns — including Reps. Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor — would finally take on Medicare reform and push big questions about the role of government in American life. This involved political risk but had the virtue of intellectual seriousness.

Tea-party populism, however, moved quickly beyond this point. We are no longer seeing a revolt against the Republican leadership, or even against the Republican “establishment”; this revolt is against anyone who accepts the constraints of political reality. Conservatives are excommunicated not for holding the wrong convictions but for rational calculations in service of those convictions.

Caveat:  if you accept constant surrender to Democrats as part of “political reality,” you’ll buy what this douche is peddling.  If you don’t, what he’s arguing is completely self-serving and tendentious:  it is smart not to fight, because fighting means losing, and losing is a constraint of the political reality in which we find ourselves, being feckless, pragmatic “conservatives” ever in fear of losing. QED!

[…]

“If we’re going to fight,” says Michele Bachmann, “we need to fight now.” Few believe any longer that Republicans will be able to defund Obamacare in this session of Congress; it is the fight that counts. This is a word that crops up frequently in tea-party discourse. Not winning. Not strategy. Not consequences. The fight.

Under normal circumstances, this faction — composing less than 20 percent of the House Republican caucus — might exercise a marginal influence. But we have the peculiar situation of a divided Congress and a weak president. The tea-party faction holds the margin of victory in a slim Republican House majority. Boehner has kept some semblance of order by appeasing it — an approach of diminishing utility. And now, in a series of budget showdowns, the interests of tea-party activists have suddenly aligned with those of Obama (who needs a dramatic reshuffling of the political deck). Both sides prefer a powerless, discredited Republican leadership.

The problem for Republicans (as Democrats found in the 1970s and ’80s) is that factions are seldom deterred by defeat. Every loss is taken as proof of insufficient purity. Conservatives now face the ideological temptation: inviting an unpleasant political reality by refusing to inhabit political reality.

Note that it doesn’t even occur to Gerson that the reason the “faction” is holding such sway is that it represents the overwhelming worldview of the base, who reject the presumptuous “pragmatism” exercised by GOP establishment types, who mistakenly conflate nuance with refusing to engage in a fight they can’t win.

But as I’ve noted here repeatedly, it isn’t a fight if the outcome is pre-determined. It’s theater.  And that’s what Gerson and the establishment want:  the appearance of a two party system that actually performs like a slightly dysfunctional one-party system, where government grows and grows, either rapidly (under progressives) or incrementally (under Republicans).

What’s happening now is that the GOP’s base is telling the majority of establicans in office that it is they who are really the “faction” that is creating difficulties — and Gerson, here, proves their point:  rather than show a united front, he is so concerned with the GOP old guard’s position of influence within the party structure that he goes to the pages of the WaPo to condescend to the would-be “purists” whom he so despises.

Here’s the thing, though, Michael:  all you’re doing is proving to us yet again that you put your own consistently failed strategy above that desires of the people the GOP is supposed to represent; and you are willing to make sure their efforts fail by sabotaging them at every turn, after which you’ll sigh and suggest that the conservatives have had their chance, and that it’s time to get the “populists” (read:  the people) out of politics and turn the job back over to the professionals.

Who have done such a bang up job that we’re facing the specter of socialized health care, a 17 Trillion dollar debt, a weakened dollar, a depleted military, and — soon — the bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicaid, as well as inflation brought on by a result of egregious monetary policy.

Meaning it’s time to be clear here:  Go home, Mr Gerson.  If you aren’t part of the solution you are part of the problem.  And you aren’t part of the solution.

The fact that you are actively seeking to be part of the problem, rather than just finding yourself in that position thanks to your silly ideas about “conservative pragmatism,” marks you as something even worse than just wrong:  you are a saboteur. And you don’t represent us.

(h/t Mark Levin)