Is Kathleen Parker's evil underrated?

In a wee-hours Twitter rant this morning, after discussing whether the University of Alabama's No. 2 poll ranking was fair (it's OK, and the ranking will take care of itself if the Tide upsets the No. 1 Gators next Saturday), I shared my 2009 Evil Top 10 rankings:

Evil rankings are indisputable: 1. Satan. 2. Auburn.
-- rsmccain

No. 3 is a tie between Charles Johnson and Osama bin Laden
-- rsmccain

Which makes Fidel Castro No. 5, David Brooks No. 6, Kim Jong Il, No. 7, Charles Manson No. 8
-- rsmccain

10th Place (tie): Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Kathleen Parker
-- rsmccain

Naturally, this brought protests: What about Maureen Dowd?

Too bad. This year, Maureen Dowd got knocked off the Top 10 Evil list!
-- rsmccain

No, Kathleen Parker clearly managed to out-evil Dowd this year. Decisions of the judges are final.
-- rsmccain

Today, however, as if she had anticipated her emergence into the Evil Top 10, Kathleen Parker's column appeared on Memeorandum with the headline, "Ten 'principles' could keep thinkers away from the GOP." For some bizarre reason, the column itself has a different headline: "The GOP's Suicide pact," and begins:

Some people can't stand prosperity, my father used to say. Today, he might be talking about Republicans, who, in the midst of declining support for President Obama's hope-and-change agenda, are considering a "purity" pledge to weed out undesirables from their ever-shrinking party.
Just when independents and moderates were considering revisiting the GOP tent. . . .

All of which is in reaction to a proposed resolution -- note the emphasis -- that circulated via e-mail last week among Republican National Committee members. The fact that it was first reported by MSNBC tells you where Kathleen Parker gets her news nowadays, and look how the pro-Obama cable network framed the issue:

This comes on the heels of a rift in the party that was exposed in the once-obscure special election in Upstate New York's 23rd Congressional District, in which national conservative leaders, including Sarah Palin, clashed with national establishment Republicans. The so-called GOP civil war threatens to derail moderate Republican candidacies in heated 2010 Republican primaries already underway. Florida's Senate race is perhaps the best and most prominent example.

For the past year, the mere mention of "Sarah Palin" has been enough to inspire Sully-esque ranting by Kathleen Parker, and she does not disappoint:

The list apparently evolved in response to the Republican loss in the recent congressional race in Upstate New York, when liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava withdrew from the race under pressure from conservatives and endorsed Democrat Bill Owens, who won. Republicans had held that seat for more than a century.
James Bopp Jr., chief sponsor of the resolution and a committee member from Indiana, has said that "the problem is that many conservatives have lost trust in the conservative credentials of the Republican Party."
Actually, no, the problem is that many conservatives have lost faith in the ability of Republican leaders to think. The resolutions aren't so much statements of principle as dogmatic responses to complex issues that may, occasionally, require more than a Sharpie check in a little square.

And the pièce de résistance of Parkeresque evil:

The old elite corps of the conservative movement, men such as William F. Buckley and Russell Kirk, undoubtedly would find this attitude both dangerous and bizarre. When did thinking go out of style? . . .
As Kirk wrote in his own "Ten Conservative Principles," conservatism "possesses no Holy Writ and no Das Kapital to provide dogmata . . . conservatism is the negation of ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order."

You can be sure that when some latter-day elitist like Kathleen Parker cites Kirk and Buckley, the citation will always be used against conservatives. The elitist versions of Kirk and Buckley are revisionist mannequins, shorn of any unfashionable populism so as to obscure the fact that the conservatism of yore -- when Buckley defended Joe McCarthy and helped inspire the conservative insurgency that made AuH2O the Republican nominee in 1964 -- was thoroughly disdained by the soi-dissant elite of that time.

By the way, it is a myth that Republicans had held the 23rd District seat for more than a century. But Parker's elitist prejudice and her second-hand misperception of the Hoffman campaign derive from the same source: A willingness to accept at face value the spin delivered by the MSM, a gullibility that derives from a belief that conservative media are somehow inferior to their liberal counterparts.

And even though she doesn't mention Sarah Palin in this column, we know who was the target of Parker's ire. It was the hockey mom from Wasilla whose endorsement generated a one-day $116,000 haul for the Hoffman campaign. This is why Parker and other Palin-haters have so vehemently insisted that Hoffman is some sort of far-right extremist.

Parker makes a big point of arguing for intellectual nuance, when she's the one reacting viscerally to even the slightest evidence that the Republican Party might embrace a Palin-style populism.

Well, 2009 is not over yet. At least Charles Manson remains safely behind bars and Ahmadinejad has been quiet lately. Kathleen Parker's evil ranking may require re-appraisal.

(P.S.: If you're wondering why the Gators didn't rate inclusion in my 2009 Evil Top 10, it's because their evil is a transitory phenomenon. If Alabama beats Florida next Saturday, their evil will be vanquished, whereas Auburn is permanently evil.)

To Ann Coulter: Thank you, ma'am

Chairman Ann eviscerates Kathleen Parker:

Fresh off her mainstream media tour as a Sarah Palin-hating "conservative," Parker is now a self-proclaimed Southerner blaming opposition to Obama's policies on the region's reputed racism.
Uncannily, this claim struck a chord with Northern liberals!
Throughout the presidential campaign last year, liberals were champing at the bit to accuse Americans of racism for not supporting Barack Obama.
Inasmuch as Obama was just elected and his policies have turned out to be the most left-wing the country has ever seen, it wasn't going to be easy to claim the electorate suddenly decided they didn't like the mammoth spending bills or socialist health care bills because they just noticed Obama is black. But Kathleen Parker has leapt into the fray to explain that the opposition to Obama's agenda is pure Southern racism. And she's from the South, so it must be true!
As she put it on Chris Matthews' "Hardball": "One word, Chris -- one word. 'Confederacy.' . . . I want to make that clear, too, because I'm not bashing Southerners."
No, she was certainly not bashing Southerners. This she made clear in her Washington Post column calling for the Republican Party to "drive a stake through the heart of old Dixie."
How one gets from "we don't want socialized medicine" to "we hate black people" was a tough equation. As my algebra teacher used to say: "Please show your work." . . .

Be sure to read the whole thing. Because Chairman Ann is from Connecticut, I'd always thought of her as a Yankee, until she revealed that her late mother was a Martin from Kentucky. I've told Ann she needs to get together whatever geneaological records she can find and get in touch with the United Daughters of the Confederacy. I'm sure there must be rebels somewhere in her family tree. She's just too good to be all Yankee.

(Note to offended Yankees: My wife's from Ohio, so back off with that "we won the war" stuff. If y'all won the war, how come I'm sleeping with your best-looking woman?)

SEX! SEX! SEX!

Mark Sanford sex scandal!

John Edwards sex video!

Everything Kathleen Parker knows about love!

(All via Memeorandum.) If you're in a hurry, guess which one is the shortest item?

Can someone tell me . . .

. . . why TownHall.com continues to publish Kathleen Parker? If a "conservative" site is going to publish Parker, why not also publish Michael Moore, Barbra Streisand and Katrina vanden Heuvel?

Dear Kathleen Parker . . .

Tempted as I am to write a short post ("bite me"), your dishonest attempt to walk back your "oogedy-boogedy" slur deserves more. Much more.

In seeking to evade responsibility for your studied insult to millions of Americans, you describe a "broad perception among centrists, moderates, conservative Democrats, renegade Republicans, etc. . . . that the GOP is the party of white Christians to the exclusion of others."

What you call a "broad perception," Ms. Parker, would more accurately be called a stereotype, and it is your lazy willingness to solicit favor from liberals by demonizing this stereotype of Republicans that has put you in such odium among conservatives.

It is an unfortunate fact that many conservative activists seem incapable of objectivity about the Republican Pary's image problems. Your "oogedy boogedy" slur obscures, rather than illuminates, the real sources of Republican brand damage. You are therefore part of the problem, not part of the solution.

The GOP's image problems are multifaceted. There is, for example, the broad perception of Republicans as the party of inherited wealth and privilege, a perception aggravated by having a scion of the Bush dynasty in the White House for the past eight years. There is also the broad perception of Republicans as the party of warmongering jingos . . . er, ditto.

Furthermore, there is the perception of Republicans as the party of grumpy old fuddy-duddies, a perception aggravated by the recent candidacy of a 72-year-old bald guy with a notoriously bad temper. A party that rejects the magnificently handsome millionaire Mitt Romney in favor of a grouchy geezer like Crazy Cousin John isn't really serious about trying to win elections in the TV age.

So, Ms. Parker, with all these image problems for Republicans to overcome, why your "oogedy boogedy" fixation on white Christians? Answer: Because it is easy -- as easy as reaching a "compromise" with Ted Kennedy on No Child Left Behind, as easy as deciding that the solution to illegal immigration is a "path to citizenship," as easy as selling out the GOP to Jack Abramoff's casino clients.

So much for the GOP's problems. Your biggest problem, Ms. Parker, is that you think you're so smart that no one who disagrees with you can ever catch on to what you're doing. Let's go back to your column of Nov. 19:

To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn't soon cometh.

I call specific attention to your use of the term "evangelical," by which you actually mean, conservative Protestants. Do you not see this? And do you not see what is wrong with your analysis? You are not the first to do this, Ms. Parker -- you follow a path previously trod by Christopher Caldwell and Ryan Sager, among others.

It is an indisputable fact that conservative Catholics are the solid backbone of the Christian pro-life movement. (If you doubt this, come to Washington, DC, for the annual March for Life next month, and witness the crowds of Catholic students packed into the trains at Union Station.) Conservative Catholics also are staunch opponents of same-sex marriage and embryonic stem-cell research, and are the leading activists on the kind of end-of-life issues dramatized by the Terry Schiavo case. And yet you, Ms. Parker, say not a word about Catholics.

When critics of social conservatism single out "evangelicals" as the source of the GOP's woes, what they actually have in mind is TV preachers like Pat Robertson and the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, as well as (a demeaning stereotype of) their followers. "Poor, undereducated and easily led," as a Washington Post reporter once summed it up.

If your concern is about the Republican Party's stance on abortion and other social issues, Ms. Parker, why do you specify "evangelicals" and not conservative Catholics? Answer: Because smearing Catholics still carries the taint of prejudice, whereas conservative Protestants are a favorite target of ridicule among the enlightened elite whose esteem you covet. And when you narrow it down by specifying that you mean white conservative Protestants, this allows you to disguise your appeal to bigotry as a call for diversity! (Neat trick, that.)

We are not stupid, Ms. Parker. We know what you mean by "oogedy-boogedy." It's those hillbilly holy-rollers, the Bible-thumping hicks and their slick-hair preachers you mean to hold up for universal scorn as the source of the GOP's woe.

Your column today indicates you have not yet realized your error, Ms. Parker. The reason liberals single out "evangelicals" for particular scorn can be summed up in three words: Divide et impera. By identifying social issues with hayseed Baptists and Pentacostals, liberals mean to drive a wedge into the conservative coalition, to try to embarrass Catholics, Orthodox Jews and other non-evangelical conservatives by associating their issues with an unfashionable crowd of (supposed) troglodytes.

You, Ms. Parker, claim that your lazy emulation of this liberal tactic was motivated by sincere concern for the Republican Party. You will excuse the eye-rolling disbelief of conservatives, especially after your contemptuous dismissal of Sarah Palin's prayer that God would lead her to "an open door."

A woman earnestly seeking God's will for her life is what's wrong with the Republican Party?

I searched your latest column for any evidence of contrition for that remark, and found none. This absence of remorse on your part tempts me to make reference to a supernatural conception of the afterlife, Ms. Parker. But rather than tell you to go to hell, I'll stick to my Bible-thumping hayseed ways, and turn the other cheek. Or is that too "oogedy-boogedy" for you?

UPDATE: Linked at Conservative Grapevine. Linked at Ace of Spade HQ.

UPDATE II: Shannen Coffin takes a swing at the Parker pinata:

At bottom, the fundamental problem with Kathleen Parker's argument is that leaves to Kathleen Parker the decision as to what is too "oogedy-boogedy” for the public square. She even quotes the indecipherable legal standard proffered by Justice Potter Stewart for cases involving pornography: "I know it when I see it." . . .

Parker, like Stewart, has failed in intelligibly defining a standard. But she's failed even more in defending her characterization of the Religious Right as made up of "oogedy-boogedy" fundamentalists who put off moderates.

The problem with the term "moderate" in politics is that it posits some happy medium between equal extremes. Well, then, what's "extreme"? Planned Parenthood nurses acting as accomplices to statutory rape -- is that "extreme"? If so, then I make the "moderate" proposal that we prohibit federal funding of Planned Parenthood. It's Humpty Dumpty from Through the Looking Glass:

"When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's all."

You either acknowledge Kathleen Parker's authority to declare what is disreputable "oogedy-boogedy" extremism or you don't. And I'd like to know where she derives that authority, other than being published by The Washington Post, by which standard E.J. Dionne and Richard Cohen can likewise boss us around at will.