…mainstream DC “conservatism” — which I’m going to christen, here and now, as you all watch semi-live, “con-servatism” — has outlived its sell-by date.
Ponnuru:
Even though nobody has yet cast a vote in the primaries, Republicans are increasingly resigned to Gov. Mitt Romney’s winning the party’s presidential nomination. Every week he gets a few more endorsements from Republican officeholders. He has never had a commanding lead in the polls, but one by one the other candidates who have occupied the top tier with him — first Rep. Michele Bachmann, then Gov. Rick Perry, then Herman Cain — have fallen back out of it. The current surge for Newt Gingrich looks like one last fling before Republicans settle down with Romney.
Republicans should not be gloomy about this prospect. Romney isn’t merely the candidate who is likely to win the Republican primaries. He’s the candidate who should win them.
Yes. Because nothing quite says “we reject the very notion of statism as anathema to our founding principles” quite like championing the architect of socialized medicine — a big government technocrat who once ran to the left of Ted Kennedy and who believes that it is the job of the government to fix every “problem” it first creates, be it through bailouts or the various bureaucratic agencies whose regulatory impulses reside beyond the reach of a voting public.
We’re being sold the curdled milk of establishment GOPism and told it’s the best great hope for conservatism and classical liberalism.
It isn’t. It’s a bait and switch. And I for one am no longer interested in what the GOP’s con-servative thinkers tell me I owe to the long-term prospects of the cause to embrace.
Check, please.
(h/t JHo)
both Gingrich and Romney are promiscuous global warming whores
maybe someone should ask about that in the debates betwixt the immigrant questions
I heard a comment from squish Michael Medved the other day I thought revealing … He said Newt would be the better President, but Romney is the better candidate.
Oh, and this is why the TEA Party should just skip the top of the ticket and concentrate on getting as many of its candidates into the House and Senate.
A raucous ostentation of peacocks…
If Romney was to McCain’s right then, he is still. He’s to George W. Bush’s right, too.
Talk about damning with faint praise! Try harder, Ramesh. You can do better, and so can we.
I have been a little implicit in this threat so let me make it explicit. Do you all remember in 2010 when the more conservative candidate beat the Establican in the primary, and then the “moderates” proceeded to sit on their hands during the election, costing us Harry Reid’s seat (among others)?
Now it’s like this. If you nominate someone like Romney, a Democrat with R-Branding, we’re NOT GOING TO SUPPORT him. We are not going to lose more slowly, we are going to split, go 3rd party, and take our chances. We will write-in Palin and prepare for the long hunker-down.
So if your main argument for Romney is that he’s electable, you better give that another think.
Representative Bachmann may, unlike some of the others, wish to abolish the EPA, but no conceivable Congress within the next eight years will grant her wish.
No conceivable Congress, Ramesh? Is your imagination so dulled by Beltway cocktails that you can no longer conceive of a Congress that takes its Constitutional duties seriously?
You can do better, Ramesh.
Ramesh isn’t NR. Just one writer. For a magazine that very often doesn’t march in lockstep. I saw the article and skipped it. Like I find myself increasingly doing with his articles for the last I don’t know how many years.
The fact that conservatives do not regard him as the leader of their movement tightens this constraint on him. A Republican president with more capital among conservatives would be able to deplete it.
“He’s the weakest leader of the bunch! He’ll totally do what you say! You have to vote for him!”
I can’t remember the last time I saw so much assertion, handwaving, and willful blindness wrapped into a single column. Certainly not since I quit reading the Puffington Host.
That’s a good piece, Richard. Read it yesterday. Everyone should click over.
With a few notable exceptions, it really does seem that National Review has mostly succeeded as a venue in which aspiring journalists can slum around while they discover their voice.
Isn’t abolishing the EPA also part of the Cain, Perry, Santorum and Paul platform? Why does Romesh single out Bachman?
On the flip side, where does Romney, Gingrich and Huntsman stand on the issue of the EPA? Arguably, the EPA is the single greatest job killer in America today and should be on the chopping block.
What motionview said.
no he’s not my choice but I’ll vote for Romney if he’s the nominee… he’s a cowardly whore but that is sort of where we are as a little country… people are getting hurt by Obama’s war on jobs – really genuinely hurt – you can’t just let America’s piece of shit president keep raping and raping and raping just cause Team R nominates a cowardly whore again
Romney will keep raping and raping and raping. But with the Team R brand on it.
In real terms if Romney is the nomney he will probably win and all that will come to pass anyway. But not with my vote.
How long til National Review comes out full-throated for the elimination of the Electoral College and replacement by direct votes? Democracy!
The point happyfeet, I think, is that Romney won’t do what needs be done either. I mean, he won’t fuck America so enthusiastically like Obama, but he’ll still do her.
Meh, Romney’s just a symptom, just as Obama’s a symptom. America fucks itself, after all. Has done and will do. It’s a choice thing.
Who knows? You can’t tell it from Ponnuru, and I quote:
Right. Romney will act in an utter defiance of all that is statist, which one assumes Ponnuru surely must agree with. QED.
Just as Ponnuru here assumes he knows the Romney mind and hence its effect on literally de-transforming the nation … as the not-Obama. This in strict accord with the proper authorities of office in dealing with the agency that has most of the land under its thumb per Obama.
Surely Mitt would never act with the bold temerity as that man Obama, we are to believe, except nowhere does Ponnuru itemize Obama’s assaults on everything from originalism to representative governance; from constitutionality to your and my rights and properties.
So Romney will act with gracious Republican propriety to not correct what it cannot be said Obama violated.
Probably Romney will take his lead from a Democrat Senate.
JHoward, I think you just went to the heart of the problem with Romney. Romney doesn’t see any problems with current regulatory state beyond regulatory overreach. Romney accepts the premise of the regulatory state and will work within that premise. Ramesh obviously agrees with existence of the regulatory state and thinks working around the edges will take care of the problem.
Whereas candidates like Bachman and Santorum reject the premise of the current regulatory regime.
The photo at the bottom of the peacock article is pretty nice. Saved it to my drive along with the LOLcats.
Also, if to be Republican means to be a big-gubmint booster with an R after your name, that makes the rest of us RINOs.
And damned proud of it.
Consider the implications here:
If di is correct, and the Democrats In All But Label are now the predominate faction within the Republican Party, so much so that Conservatives are effectively outsiders in the ostensibly conservative party, how does that not necessitate an immediate third party challenge?
Do they seriously think that it will be harder for Obama to get re-elected if Obamacare is off the table? Because that’s what will happen if Romney’s the nominee.
If he is, mark my words, there will either be a third party “Independent” candidate like Perot to siphon voters from the major party, or Republicans will stay home in droves. The fucking Tea Partyites in Congress will squish more than ever and end up back behind the counter at the law firms they came out of. We’ll end up with a liberal “consensus” that’ll regulate this country into 1970’s Britain as people and employers give up and go along to get along.
Shit, if Romney’s the GOP nominee, I’m joining a Union, because Obama’s going to win and I want as much of Ponururururu’s money as I can get. That fucker graduated Summa Cum Laude with a history degree. If that doesn’t say something about the decline of the liberal arts, I don’t know what does. People were clamoring for Romney over McCain not because Romney was “more conservative” than McCain, but because McCain was UNFUCKINGELECTABLE! Romney wouldn’t have looked like the Lucky Charms leprechaun on crack at the “Death of the Economy Grand Summit” at the Whitehouse in 2008, and probably would have made Obama look like the economic illiterate he is instead of the incarnation of confidence he seemed to be by napping through the whole charade. The economy would still have ended up in the shitter, but maybe, just maybe the behind the scenes bullshit wouldn’t have been so bad.
So, when do we take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them? It took a Civil War last time. Technology has certainly changed, but people are fundamentally the same.
the cowardly unprincipled bigoted and whorish Wall Street Romney should for sure not be the nominee in a just world but if he is he can count on my vote!
I hate them all. All except my beloved tongue-tied Governor from Texas who doesn’t have a snowball’s change in hell, short of Divine intervention of winning this thing. We’re doomed.
Governor Rick would have my vote in a fraction of the time it would take for him to articulate his position on the earned income tax credit and then quell the ensuing confusion!
I vow to polish Governor Rick’s cowboy boots and tack room if it will help him make the sentences.
Just as long as your not volunteering to polish his knob. That’s a no no for Republicans.
So, when do we take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them?
The sea of troubles does not require me to take up arms to end it. Simple arithmetic and human nature will take care of that soon enough.
My arms and I are not so much interested in ending the troubles as we are in surviving them.
‘sides, there’s probably an illegal immigrant who’ll gladly do the job. Polishing the knobs Americans won’t polish, and all.
How do you propose to do that, Squid?
You’re in it for the filthy lucre, what with the Squid Brand Torches and Pitchforks.
The sea of troubles does not require me to take up arms to end it.
This morning, Beck fantasized about building a huge wall around Texas and parts of the mountain west, so substantial it can be seen not from orbit but from the next effing galaxy, asking the entirety of Austin to leave, and installing no doors—just one-way mirrors so that the morons outside the wall can see what it looks like to be prosperous and happy.
I think I can get behind that.
oh dear
Dicentra, I don’t think Texas needs to build a wall. Rather, Texas just needs an entrance exam.
Want to move to Texas? Fine, step right up to the firing line and qualify. What, no firearms and don’t believe in them? Rejected! Next!
The forum is being organized by Newsmax, the conservative media group. It’s unclear yet whether any candidates have agreed to participate.
Oh noes.
Screw it.
I have been a little implicit in this threat so let me make it explicit. Do you all remember in 2010 when the more conservative candidate beat the Establican in the primary, and then the “moderates” proceeded to sit on their hands during the election, costing us Harry Reid’s seat (among others)?
Now it’s like this. If you nominate someone like Romney, a Democrat with R-Branding, we’re NOT GOING TO SUPPORT him. We are not going to lose more slowly, we are going to split, go 3rd party, and take our chances. We will write-in Palin and prepare for the long hunker-down.
So if your main argument for Romney is that he’s electable, you better give that another think.
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So your idea of “winning” would be to hand Barrack Obama a second term ?!?!
I’m not particularly fond of either Ginrich or Romney in the absolute, but I do know both of them are less dangerous to the future of the US than Obama. By orders of magnitude.
Good to know you are willing to tell us that you plan on helping the Democrats win.
Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell were horrible candidates. I’m not sure who should take the lion’s share of blame in those cases, but my advice is – find real conservative candidates that don’t also suck. Just a thought
On the flip side, where does Romney, Gingrich and Huntsman stand on the issue of the EPA? Arguably, the EPA is the single greatest job killer in America today and should be on the chopping block.
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I agree. Only problem is, unless the Senate abolishes the filibuster, it isn’t going to matter. You think there is a Democrat alive on this earth that is going to vote to allow a bill ending the EPA to reach the floor of the Senate ? Please.
Opposing the very existence of the EPA is a bit of a Republican touchstone at the moment, but is never going to happen no matter how much constitutional duties voodoo you want to invoke. NOT.GOING.TO.HAPPEN.
Reform at the EPA ? Now maybe that has a chance. But what kind of reform ? So many people are so busy claiming they will abolish the EPA (that will never happen) that nobody has time to talk about realistic reform OF the EPA.
Winning would be not nominating a Progressive. If the choice is Obama and another Progressive, we’ve already lost.
So the EPA is just another fact of nature, like gravitation, say. Just as rocks don’t float up when released from the hand, so the EPA will go on forever. This is what has become of our politics, it is sad to say.
I think the Democrats are going to have a hard time hanging on to 34 seats in the Senate, let alone 41.
Or they would that is, if the Republicans were less concerned about the “optics” of calling a spade a spade and more concerned about winning the argument.
Or maybe they’ve decided that, like the Democrats, they benefit too much from policies that have this country on the wrong track to be bothered by the fact that the track is running out. Plenty of time to stop the speeding juggernaut.
“Plenty of time to stop the speeding juggernaut.”
Paul Ryan, for one, thinks not.
Paul Ryan is about as helpful as Toto.
The dog, not the band.
Huh, why the hostility Ernst?
Pulling back the curtain is so unhelpful
Kinda like saying we’re running out of time to stop the juggernaut when all the right sort of people say otherwise.
is was toto what showed us that the great and powerful oz was a fraud
oh crap yes I should’ve refreshed
ah, so it’s an action you’re comparing, and not a dog to a man. Very well.
I tend to indicate irony via italics.
Except when I don’t.
National Review’s motto used to be “Standing athwart history yelling ‘Stop!'” Now it’s “Standing athwart history yelling ‘Thank you sir, may I have another!'”
I think a lot them over there feel like Progress ran them all over and now they’re stuck to the history.