Another putative conservative organization that, on the executive level at least, is hoping to redefine conservatism as mush RINOism.
This is Jeb Bush. A man who utterly rejects principle when principle becomes difficult to stand on. Or, as he tries to frame it:
we must not layer onto our fundamental beliefs thick black lines of ideology — black lines that we do not allow ourselves to cross. Those black lines can be comforting, I understand. They provide certainty and stability and ideological purity. But they also restrict the way we think about problems, and make more difficult the kind of reform-minded free thinking that has defined the conservative movement for the last 50 years.
This is precisely the kind of thinking that animates the new Rovean “Conservative Victory Project,” and that ran like diarrhea through the National Review Summit on Conservatism. And now a dissertation on the necessity of pragmatism and pandering will envelop the American Conservative Union’s signature event for conservative activists.
Followed by snacks and cheap white wine!
Why, if I didn’t know better, I’d say our professional political operatives in the ruling class are wearing our clothes, first in order to blend in, then to appoint themselves to positions of power. Like the long march through the institutions, kind of — only by those who don’t admit to watching porn, and who generally style their hair in the manner of televangelists.
The message? That America has a thirst, and that thirst can only be quelled by a big swig of Jeb! Along with a fat chaser of New Jersey governor.
The pieces are being put in place. Squint and you’ll see it.
Spit.
(h/t newrouter)
A party without core principles they are unwilling to compromise on is nothing more than a weathervane spinning whichever way the political wind blows.
If Americans have to pick between knob-polishing the Bush dynasty or the Clinton dynasty what they will do is pick the Clinton dynasty.
Hillary has a bigger dick is why.
I guess we know of which kind of conservative the ACU is comprised.
(Everyone should give that Jeffrey Lord piece of read)
Hillary has a bigger dick, and many of us will not vote for a statist again. That ship has sailed. If they put up Jeb and/or Christie, I will vote third party or write in Mike Rowe.
I like the way Jeffrey Lord put it in the linked article from last post’s update: Cotton Whigs.
There’s a difference between compromise for compromise’s sake to appear “collegial” (Jeb et al.) and settling for less in a deal than you’d like (the anti-slavery founders at the Convention), provided what you’re settling for moves in the right direction in a significant way.
And no, Boehner, eliminating the debt ceiling and agreeing to hectobillions in new spending in exchange for dekabillions in cuts sometime, somewhere over the next decade is not compromise, it’s caving. Or as Mrs. Darth puts it, being a mewling little gutless pussy.
Mrs. Darth is my kind of gal-pal.
Grand Solutions makes me think dissolving, and dissolving to think of a splash of acid to the face, though acid is admittedly good for dissolving stuff. If, on the other hand, the problem is like a felted-mat and mere solutions are the resort, it isn’t at all certain any of the fiber will be maintained intact. Seems more like a lousy blob of goo would be the result — just not any sort of decent political order.
Key bit from lord, translated into the local idiom, with added emphases:
If the right-thinking Right still refuses to accept this as fundamentally true in the next year, a repeat of the 1998 sixth year midterm in the offing. And that’s probably the best case scenario.
I love how they declare that now is not the time to have black lines, then literally demand that everyone stop talking about even the concept of black lines.
This works great for the last, feckless generation guys. Except for the fact that they decided losing slowly is awesome. I see it all the time in corporate life.
It’s just going to be cheap wine, snacks, and destruction in the next twenty years if this is your play.
Yup. They make us think of problems as something to solve, not something to talk about every two years to get votes.
Christie/Bush 2016!
Bush/Christie 2016!
Kark Rove is salivating at the prospect of blowing a billion dollars in another unsuccessful run of the rino’s.
Apparently Jeb demanded CPAC pay him thirty pieces of silver.
Wildly OT: So I’m designing a thing for a client, and doing some minor wordsmithing along the way, and I see that it in their original text it refers to this thing (that happens 2-3 times per month) as occurring ‘bimonthly’.
This is wrong, of course: the correct word is semimonthly, but as errors are unforgivable on my part, I look it up on Merriam-Webster.
Maybe it’s just me, but you just can’t have contradictory definitions for the same word. It’d be like “HAT: 1) a thing you wear on your head, 2) a thing you never wear on your head”.
Lexical post-modernism. Democracy in action: “Why shouldn’t stupid people be allowed to redefine words unwittingly? Who are we to say that their idiotic misuses of language are ‘wrong’?”
On Topic: Why can’t Jeb Bush, Karl Rove, Bill Kristol, and the rest of them take a nice long underaged buggery tour of the Dominican Republic, and leave the rest of us alone. I’ll kick in a donation, if it’ll help.
Bimonthly means every two months. At least that’s what they taught us in B school.
“Grand Solutions makes me think dissolving, and dissolving to think of a splash of acid to the face”
D.C. could use a good dose of alkahest, that’s for sure.
yes in magazine terms bimonthly means it comes out every other month
occurring twice a month is “biweekly”
Isn’t that like Unobtanium?
For people who never wear hats #2 can still be correct…
Ahh, but are people who never wear hats truly ‘people’ at all?
One could argue that the desire to design and wear hats is what separates us from the animals. Pablo’s bunny, merely the exception that proves the rule.
Only if they know the difference between bimonthly and semi-monthly.
Nouveaux modérés. Oui?