Rick Moran and the Comatose Nuthouse

by Smitty

Shorter Moran: 'passion' == 'bad'.

In The Anti-Reason Conservatives, we're treated to a post that only Bob Dole could love. Let's review a few points:

• The country is broke.
• Incumbency is killing us.
• Entitlements are a mike foxtrot.

And now on to Moran:

In the case of far right conservatives who think that they can turn their meager numbers into a ruling majority all by themselves, the disconnect from reality would normally call for an intervention - except they reject anything from anybody who doesn't agree with them 100%. Nor can they seem to grasp complex political realities that would complicate their simplistic, ignorant view that their idea of what constitutes a "conservative" reigns supreme all across the land.

Whose goal is this 'ruling majority' again? What if Federalism reigned contra-supreme across the land, hm?

The recent Gallup poll showing that 40% of Americans see themselves as "conservative" was leapt upon by these morons as "proof" that their brand of anarcho-conservatism dominates the political landscape. Would that it were true. The fact that there are a dozen different definitions of "conservative" depending on where you live doesn't seem to penetrate. And the pogrom they wish to carry out against "moderates" who agree with them on 90% of the issues they hold dear but fail their ever more spastic "litmus tests" guarantees Democratic dominance for the foreseeable future.

No, Moran: the argument is that centralization has been the downfall of the country. Follow the links at the top of this post: the dollars are relatively honest on this one.

Why the name calling? Why the harsh, unyielding language? Because I too, believe this country is in enormous trouble. But the way the base is going about trying to overcome the political deficit that George Bush and his cronies placed the Republican party will only lead to permanent minority status for conservatives. In truth, the gloating being done on the far right over the ravaging of Scozzafava has led to a belief that the template used to stick it to the establishment in NY23 can be grafted on to other districts where "RINO's" are running - GOP incumbents be damned.

Why are you blaming Bush, Mr. Moran? The problems go to 1913. The very education problems you cite for ignorance of the definition of 'conservative' are rooted in this inability to analyze history. The Sixteenth Amendment, The Seventeenth Amendment, and the Federal Reserve Act have been the triptych of destruction over last century. Face it: Progressivism has been an ugly baby, along with the bathwater. Incumbency sucks. Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy has born its inedible fruit.
Skipping past the Gellar quotation.

A couple of hundred thousand conservatives fill up the mall on September 12 and Gellar thinks conservatives have been "driven underground?" What kind of utter nonsense is that? Gellar is a full throated member of the Anti-Reason Conservatives - those who reject reality in favor of persecution complexes, wildly exaggerated hyperbole, and a frightening need for vengeance against their imagined "enemies" - despite the fact that those imagined foes agree with them on virtually everything they think they stand for.

The idea that Newt Gingrich should be "relegated to the dustbin of history" - a not uncommon sentiment I've read over the past week - demonstrates a determined refusal to objectively analyze the political realities of the unique situation in NY23 and deliberately remain ignorant of the consequences that would have accrued if the Republican party had failed to support the Republican candidate in the district.

I can nearly track you here. I think that Newt, and, by extension, the rest of the GOP brass, should be put on a re-habilitation plan. The essential problem is that all the professional pols have forgotten they work for the people.

You can blame the people, to a degree, for having been spectators these decades. Pre-internet, it was arguably less easy for information to swirl around. The shock felt high and low is about:

1. The people realizing that the professional politicians have an elitist view of the situation, and
2. The politicians realizing that the people are wide awake and rejecting that elitism, resulting in incontinence.

It's a national come-to-Beavis meeting. Between your Hamlet-esque navel-gazing and Pamela's sheer adrenalin, we'll get there. If we blow out a few GOP headz, so what? There is plenty of leadership below. It's the principles, not the personalities, silly.

A good case can be made that Gingrich especially could have kept his mouth shut about conservatives rightly gravitating to Hoffman. His petulance with national conservatives who sought to replace the liberal Scozzafava with a more palatable choice was uncalled for and further demonstrates his unfitness for the presidency.
But kick him out of the party? Marginalize one of the only public intellectuals on the right who can speak to a broad cross section of America with authority and credibility? Perhaps that’s Newt’s real problem; the anti-intellectualism on the far right that sees any independent thinking deviating from their worldview as suspect. Or perhaps it’s just the idea that Gingrich, through his years of service to the conservative and Republican causes, has become a part of the establishment and hence, a target.

Newt needs to sweat a bit. He needs to be taken to the edge and shown the seriousness of the people.

Who do these louts think the party establishment should have supported in NY23? There would have been no real difference if the DC Republicans had supported Hoffman or the Democrat Owens over Scozzafava. The result would have been exactly the same; the national party spitting in the face of local Republican organizations who chose Scozzafava - regardless of her admitted liberalism and regardless of whether her candidacy was rammed through by powerful New York state GOP bigwigs.

The pragmatism demonstrated by the national Republicans in giving Scozzafava the support they felt necessary for her to win is lost on the ideologues who can't seem to wrap their heads around the idea that majorities are crafted by addition, not subtraction. Scozzafava would have been a beastly congresswoman, as unreliable a Republican vote on the issues as could be imagined. But Congress is governed as much by procedure as it is ideas, and when the whip is cracked by the leadership, she probably would have been with the party most of the time.

I'll presume you wrote this ahead of her going into full-on Arlen Specter mode.

In effect, the base is criticizing the Republican establishment for acting like a political party and not a college debating society. The advantage of belonging to the latter is that you can pick and choose members based on whatever subjective criteria you wish. Don't like the cut of a man's suit or women with red hair? Fine. But don't apply your ridiculous litmus tests to a political party trying to fashion a majority.

See, here's the question: is the Constitution more important than the Party? If the Party (Democratic, Republican or both) is a major component of the problem, then what are you going to do? You can't bargain with cancer, Mr. Moran! And cancer is exactly what the last century of American centralization has been for the country.

Now, whole people are certainly more intelligent than lone tumor cells. So there can be room for getting people to re-examine their principles in ways that you just aren't doing with that lump in the lung.

But the crucial point is that More Of Same Will Not Do. Awake from your coma, Right Wing Nuthouse!

Update: American Power liked Pamela's post.

Update II: Linked at Daily Pundit