Search






Jeff's Amazon.com Wish List

Archive Calendar

November 2024
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
252627282930  

Archives

Jen Rubin explains me to you

Well, not me me. But you get the idea:

These are the voices of the perpetually aggrieved on the right who will oppose any deal because their aim is not conservative governance but confrontation and incitement of an anti-Washington base.

Got that? People like me — who have taken the position that Boehner’s entire play, from beginning to end, could only end with the GOP taking crumbs before ridiculously congratulating itself for what we all know to be a Pyrrhic “victory” — would have opposed any deal because, unlike the GOP “realists,” we “silly” purists don’t much care about conservative governance or classical liberal ideals. Hell, we don’t care about the the country at all. What we care about is rabble rousing and anarchism, incitement and confrontation.

We are “extremists.”

Well, that’s one way for the GOP to take power back from the TEA Party types: join with the Democrats in painting them as a loony, anti-American fringe group while re-defining as TEA Partiers those pragmatic Republicans who see in this poorly played GOP “compromise” reason for rejoicing.

This is what I long ago termed the losing more slowly crowd. And as they continue to pat themselves on the back for symbolic gestures, statistically insignificant accounting reshuffles, and fighting just hard enough to pick up the political cover they need to once again kick the can down the road, they simultaneously work not at lashing out against the progressives who rule them, but instead are busy reading actual conservatives out of the conservative movement.

Voila! The center-left is now the fiscally-responsible, hawkish (but soberly realistic) right. And actual conservatives? Well, Chuck Schumer and Jen Rubin will tell you just what those kinds are…

31 Replies to “Jen Rubin explains me to you”

  1. McGehee says:

    I can’t help feeling this is going to play out like McCain-Feingold, or amnesty for illegals, or Harriet Miers — where we yokels get proved right while the Establicans walk away pretending they weren’t wrong.

    They just don’t understand that it all adds up. Things like this are what led to the Tea Party in the first place. Things like this give the Tea Party sustenance and make it stronger and more formidable.

  2. DarthLevin says:

    Sorry, Jen dear, but I tend to oppose “deals” that subject me and my children to *very slightly less* tax slavery.

  3. Squid says:

    Like so many others, Jen’s fun to read when she’s tearing into the blatant lies and hypocrisies of our opponents, but not so much when she’s attacking us; doubly so when she so completely misses our point. I try to maintain a sense of serenity by imagining the columns she’ll be writing when her losing-less-slowly crowd is consigned to the lobbyist/speaker circuit, and she pretends she was on our side all along.

    Let them try to read the conservatives out of conservatism. We’ll keep busy reading the Establicans out of the GOP. See who laughs last.

  4. Seth says:

    Well, sometimes losing more slowly makes sense, if it’s a deliberate tactic to get to a desired endstate. However, this deal is like slowing down from 101 MPH to 100 MPH when the road you’re on clearly says “Dead End”…

  5. Jeff G. says:

    There’s a difference between playing 4-corners and losing more slowly. The latter just means you hope your timid ass ain’t around when it happens.

  6. ThomasD says:

    Rubin only ‘tears’ into the opposition on safe and/or obvious points. It is simply her, and her masters’ way of building credibility for just these types of occasions. While she may be a slightly more edgy version of Kathleen Parker or David Brooks, there is still no doubt she is but one of a select set. If she were legitimate what chance would she have of being featured in the Washington Post?

    The narrative is controlled.

  7. Seth says:

    Well, I liken it to fighting a delaying action: it can buy you precious time, but it’s a terrible strategy if that’s your only go-to move. Unfortunately, the Republicans have time and again proven that that is the breadth and depth of their strategic thinking: delay, then delay some more! It’s a non-starter, becuase there is no vision of an endstate.

  8. Entropy says:

    These are the voices of the perpetually aggrieved on the right who will oppose any deal because their aim is not conservative governance

    By which she means compassionate big government that controls your life by nudging you onto the path to Jesus rather than sexing you up the ass and billing your children for it.

    So yeah, my aim is not ‘conservative governance’ as Rubin would describe it. I just want less governance.

  9. McGehee says:

    it’s a terrible strategy

    That’s because it isn’t a strategy. It’s a tactic.

    Trouble is, the Establicans use it like it’s the mission objective.

  10. Spiny Norman says:

    Conservative governance = giving the Democrats 99.14% of what they demand, then claim you’ve stood up for the American taxpayer.

    Really?

  11. Spiny Norman says:

    That’s because it isn’t a strategy. It’s a tactic.

    Trouble is, the Establicans use it like it’s the mission objective.

    In much the same way that the State Department believes “diplomacy” is their objective, not merely a tactic.

  12. DarthLevin says:

    I don’t think it’s giving the Dems 99.14% of their demand, Spiny. It’s much worse.

    The House leadership (for lack of a better word) *agreed* with 97.6% of what the Dems wanted, and compromised (again, for lack of a better word, like “bent over and took it”) on 1.7% of what was left.

  13. newrouter says:

    dan riehl

    As far as I can tell, this would be her via the California State Bar Association, given the DreamWorks connection.

    jrubin@dreamworks.com – Undergraduate School: Univ of California Berkeley; Berkeley CA – Law School: UC Berkeley SOL Boalt Hall; Berkeley CA

    Wow! From Berkeley undergrad and Berkeley Law, to Kerry supporting liberal Democrat as recently as 2004 – to conservative thought leader, now telling the Tea Party, conservative base and Reagan conservatives what to think, or to shut up and sit down because they’re irrelevant via her new platform at the Washington Post? And all based upon what must be a relatively recent, if still somewhat mysterious, conversion. Imagine that!

    link

  14. newrouter says:

    andy mccarthy

    The GOP’s $61B in cuts was serious in only one sense: It was something they promised to do — a meager promise, but a promise nonetheless. When push came to mild shove, they abandoned it. And what’s especially pathetic is the rationale for abandoning it: $61B was such an inconsequential promise as to be a pittance not worth fighting for in light of the vastness of the debt. But don’t you worry: next time, why, they’ll really, really fight to the death — or until the mainstream media says nasty things about them, whichever comes first.

    link

  15. newrouter says:

    i’m thinking jen’s a rockefeller rethuglican statist

    Conservatives may pooh-pooh this as the work of a liberal court that is frequently reversed by the Supreme Court. So I will focus on the concurrence by Judge John Noonan, a respected conservative judge (not to mention a former law professor of mine.) His opinion, I would suggest, is compelling and should cause conservatives to rethink their fondness for state solutions to a federal problem.

    link

  16. Jeff G. says:

    They didn’t teach her about the 10th Amendment at Berkeley. Well, except to point out that it’s the amendment racist extremist militia types like to bring up.

    I can’t wait to hear Levin skewer her this afternoon, frankly. Some of us have been fighting for classical liberalism back when she was all up in Al Gore’s jock.

  17. deadrody says:

    Come on, Jeff. Nobody that writes for the Washington Post is an “actual” conservative. Please. Like David Brooks is a conservative ?

  18. Entropy says:

    Yeesh. The opinion she’s endorsing on the AZ immigration case is that by enforcing immigration law, AZ is dicking with US foreign policy.

  19. Entropy says:

    Also she says Coulter is ‘unhelpful’ (I SHIT YOU NOT!), and “the republican party” should tell her she is unwelcome, as if it’s name were Bob and it could call her up and chat with her about seeing other parties or something.

    Someone has to set the limits of civil debate, y’know.

  20. Entropy says:

    At the moment I’m leaning toward Medvidette, not Moby.

  21. Pablo says:

    Come on, Jeff. Nobody that writes for the Washington Post is an “actual” conservative. Please. Like David Brooks is a conservative ?

    There’s Krauthammer. But the Post is the place that tried to sell Dave Weigel as a conservative, perhaps because they thought he actually was one.

  22. newrouter says:

    hughhewitt likes her. me: more warmed over conventional wisdumb with rethug spin.

  23. Blake says:

    Hewitt supports Mitt RomneyCare.

  24. newrouter says:

    hughhewitt wrote the book on mittens i’m sure michaelmedved will correct him.

  25. newrouter says:

    so we got rubin, hewitt, medved, barnes, krystal, krauthammer, et al doing the karlErover “super genius” gig with moving 5% of the electorate strategy. if that is what i’m fighting for see you in galt valley. not this neo clowns.

  26. Jeff G. says:

    Just heard this from a caller on Levin: take ALL profits for 2011 from Fortune 500 companies and confiscate them; tax every last dime over $250K made by any American family at 100%, effectively confiscating all wealth over $250K; assume we never went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, so remove the 2011 cost for those wars from the proposed budget. Do all that, and the proposed budget still comes in at about 1/4 of a trillion in the red.

    Think about that.

  27. newrouter says:

    “take ALL profits for 2011 from Fortune 500 companies and confiscate them;”

    bill whittle has the video :

    Bill Whittle – Taxes can’t Solve the Deficit (Mathimatically Impossible)

  28. Blake says:

    Iowahawk did the original Whittle used in the video: Feed your family on 10 Billion a Day.

  29. SmokeVanThorn says:

    Rubin refers to advocates of the Arizona law as “immigration exclusionists.” She’s an arrogant lightweight poseur. But I thought she was good as Rhoda’s sister.

  30. newrouter says:

    i wonder if jen rubin understands the damage to her brand today? lost alot here.

  31. […] budget compromise all you sensible pragmatic conservatives championed, Jen Rubin — labeling those of us disappointed with the crumbs silly extremists who Just Don’t […]

Comments are closed.