13 Replies to “Andrew McCarthy to mainstream GOP: you keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.”

1. daveinsocal says:

   November 3, 2013 at 5:07 pm

   I saw that Charles Krauthammer segment on the Daily Show shortly after it aired. And it was the last nail in the coffin containing any remaining desire I might have had to ever pay attention to his thoughts again.

   I’ve been growing increasingly disillusioned with Dr. Krauthammer for some time. I kept hearing that his was one of the leading voices of conservatism that we should be paying attention to. But as alluded to in the article, he has shown himself to be one of those statist “compassionate conservatives” that differ from progressives mostly in the amount of government intrusion into private lives and encroachment on our freedoms that they are willing to tolerate. For the progressives, the answer is “whatever it takes to achieve utopia”, while for the “compassionate” crowd it’s “only what’s ‘reasonable’ and necessary”. The correct answer being “none”.

   At least we still have Victor Davis Hansen. Don’t we?

2. newrouter says:

   November 3, 2013 at 5:14 pm

   dr k. should go back to writing speeches for mondale

3. palaeomerus says:

   November 3, 2013 at 6:09 pm

   ” I saw that Charles Krauthammer segment on the Daily Show ”

   He comes off as a bit of a narcissistic, muddle headed, empty, social-climbing boob in his biographic profile by Brett Bayer on FNC. And they re-run that thing more than discovery channel ran that cheesy documentary about how long it would take the modern infrastructure to fall apart, leaving no trace, if mankind suddenly disappeared from the earth. In fact when he sort of took credit for giving the Bush Administration an excuse to can the Harriet Miers (the Elena Kagen test run) nomination, before she could be blocked in the senate, he came off as a creepy, smug, unprincipled liar.

4. Bob Belvedere says:

   November 3, 2013 at 6:31 pm

   I thought I dectected signs in The Kraut Hammer that he was finally shedding his Ideological view of the world and becoming a true conservative, but methinks I let my wishes get in the way of my thinking.

   Damn sad, it is.

5. Bob Belvedere says:

   November 3, 2013 at 6:31 pm

   For the record, I also ‘detected’ signs, as well.

6. leigh says:

   November 3, 2013 at 6:47 pm

   I kind of liked Brett Baier’s interview with Dr. K, from a human interest standpoint. I have see-sawed for years between thinking he doesn’t know his ass from his elbow and thinking he has flashes of brilliance. I’ve now decided that he has embraced his inner beltway.

   It’s a shame.

7. Pablo says:

   November 3, 2013 at 7:17 pm

   I’ve now decided that he has embraced his inner beltway.

   Yup. You lie down with dogs and eventually you sprout a tail.

8. cranky-d says:

   November 4, 2013 at 6:25 am

   “Conservative,” to the GOP establishment and their leftist detractors, is just a word they throw around when they don’t know what else to say. Neither group has any clue what it means. The GOP establishment thinks it’s what they are, and the leftists think it’s anything that’s against what they are.

9. geoffb says:

   November 4, 2013 at 7:55 am

   McCarthy has more to say, here and here.

10. StrangernFiction says:

    November 4, 2013 at 8:14 am

    They didn’t just give us a “conservative,” they gave us someone who is “severely conservative.”

    STF

11. McGehee says:

    November 4, 2013 at 8:31 am

    The Beltway is Pinocchio’s Pleasure Island. That’s why everyone who goes there turns into a jackass.

12. Ernst Schreiber says:

    November 5, 2013 at 12:04 am

    Thank you for the reminder that NR hasn’t become entirely worthless under the hamfisted guidance of Rich Lowry.

    McCarthy concludes:

    What Dr. Krauthammer calls “the great achievements of liberalism” have undermined the Burkean intergenerational trust at the core of conservatism. As I argued a couple of years ago, in jousting with Pete Wehner, another very smart, mainstream Republican who seeks to redefine conservatism to accommodate the modern welfare state, conservatives revere an enriching cultural inheritance that binds generations past, present, and future. It obliges us to honor our traditions and our Constitution, preserve liberty, live within our means, and enhance the prosperity of those who come after us. The welfare state is a betrayal of our constitutional traditions: It is redistributionist gluttony run amok, impoverishing future generations to satisfy our insatiable contemporaries.

    The Republican establishment aspires to preserve [n.b an oft used synonym for conserve –E.S.] the Washington-based entitlement culture. Charles Krauthammer thus suggested that Jon Stewart look to Paul Ryan as the best exemplar of today’s “conservatism.” It made perfect sense. Representative Ryan, as I’ve observed before, has supported creation of the Bush prescription-drug entitlement (adding trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities to our burden), TARP, Keynesian “stimulus” spending, and the auto-company bailout.

    Ryan’s proposals are markedly better than Obama’s. Though AWOL on Social Security, he would restructure Medicare to allow younger people the option of transferring into a federally supervised private voucher system. He would also preserve Medicaid, but block-grant it to give states more spending autonomy. And he’d reduce the rate of projected federal spending such that we’d add “only” another $3 trillion to the national debt over the next eight years — less than half as much as the president proposes.

    This is not constitutional conservatism. It is moderate statism. Or, to repeat, the current Republican establishment “is more sympathetic to Obama’s case for the welfare state than to the Tea Party’s case for limited government and individual liberty.”

    I have one quibble with McCarthy. I think he’s wrong about Krauthammer being wrong about where the mainstream of conservatism is. I think what mainstream conservatives want to conserve is the New Deal, and to a lesser extent, The Great Society. And that’s in part because of the distance of generations. Fewer and fewer are alive who remember what America was like before the New Deal, and as time passes that becomes more true of the Great Society as well. For that reason, it takes an ever greater effort of imagination to envision an alternative way of doing things.

    Something I think we on the limited government side of the “conservative” divide are going to have to come to terms with is that the establishment seeks to lead where it thinks people want to go. That is, Mainstream Republicans are persuaded that the people like and want government “services.” Thus the whole, we can do it more efficiently through reform argument that the establishment thinks is a winner. Of course, that’s not leadership. That’s pandering. And it’s a loser for us because you can’t outpander the Democrats.

    And that’s why fundamentally unserious people like Jeff who obsess over how and why we find ourselves where it is that we find ourselves, are the only people truly serious about the basis (or fundament) of the problems confronting us.

    Because what’s the point of just winning! baby, if the only thing you’ve won is the right to preside over the ruins?

13. Bob Belvedere says:

    November 5, 2013 at 12:12 pm

    KARL: You’re right, Ernst – that Jeff Goldstein is a real mean meanie. If I was ever in the same cocktail party, er, room with him, I’d punch his lights out because he’s such a jerky jerkface.

    [someone knocks on the door]

    KARL: You may enter.

    [door opens and in walks Jeff carrying a dead pikachu]

    KARL: [gulp]

    JEFF: Hey Rove. [throws dead pikachu down at Rove’s feet] Man, it smells like crap and pee in here…

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