{"id":14836,"date":"2009-10-04T08:36:18","date_gmt":"2009-10-04T13:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=14836"},"modified":"2009-10-04T11:04:30","modified_gmt":"2009-10-04T16:04:30","slug":"is-conservatism-brain-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=14836","title":{"rendered":"Is Conservatism Brain-Dead?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I opened up the Washington Post this morning and Steven Hayward’s opinion piece this morning jumped out at me. The title is “Is Conservatism Brain-Dead?<\/a>” – a subject which always pegs my anger-meter. But as I read it, I found that I agree with Hayward – in fact, I’ve made many of the same comments here and in private. For example;<\/p>\n

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Consider the “tea party” phenomenon. Though authentic and laudatory, it is unfocused, lacking the connection to a concrete ideology that characterized the tax revolt of the 1970s, which was joined at the hip with insurgent supply-side economics. Meanwhile, the “birthers” have become the “grassy knollers” of the right; their obsession with Obama’s origins is reviving frivolous paranoia as the face of conservatism. (Does anyone really think that if evidence existed of Obama’s putative foreign birth, Hillary Rodham Clinton wouldn’t have found it 18 months ago?) <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Conservatives are sufficiently charged up to win elections – but who are we going to elect? When Gerald Ford lost the 1976 election, he faded into the background and Ronald Reagan positioned himself at the head of the party. He became the anti-Carter and struck out with counterpoints to virtually everything Carter said for four years.<\/p>\n

So who is trying to remake the Republican Party now? John McCain<\/a> – the candidate we got saddle with by the Democrats last election. For some reason Republicans believed Democrats when they said “Oh, I’d vote for John McCain”. Dumbasses.<\/p>\n

The Democrats denigrated Ronald Reagan as a crazy whacko who could never bring the country together – they portrayed him like they did Goldwater in the ’60s. A war mongering crazy old man who would nuke the world as soon as he got near the “red button”. Yeah, that didn’t happen – but the point is that Democrats use hyperbole to scare us away from picking a candidate who could win an election. <\/p>\n

They did the same thing to George Bush. Remember how he was going to bring back slavery? That Black churches were going to be burned under his direction? No hyperbole about John McCain, though, huh? Because Democrats knew they could beat McCain.<\/p>\n

The Tea Parties are great…but what do they accomplish without someone walking in the front LEADING the movement. We’re disparate voices shouting at clouds. <\/p>\n

If we’re going to have Sarah Palin at the head of our movement, she needs to get to the front right now. If Fred Thompson wants the mantle, seize it NOW! At this point, we look like millions of cranks shaking our fists at the moon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I opened up the Washington Post this morning and Steven Hayward’s opinion piece this morning jumped … Is Conservatism Brain-Dead?<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14836\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}