Political moralism and the self-defeating impulse toward totalitarian 'purity'

Carl Milsted on a meaningful distinction:

Liberty. Some love it because it provides wealth, opportunity, and other good things. Others declare that any denial of liberty is unacceptably evil, that liberty is a fundamental right of man. Both call themselves libertarians, and so they gather together at political conventions, seminars, and blog forums -- to call each other nasty names and do battle over the meaning of a word.

Read the rest, which is from the December issue of Liberty, which has been advertising on the sidebar for a couple of weeks.

Milsted makes a distinction between what he calls "consequential" libertarians and "moralist" libertarians, a distinction that replicates itself everywhere in politics. Some people are just natural-born fanatics who turn to politics in a search for totalitarian purity.

Fanatical demands for ideological purity in politics represent a totalitarian impulse, and are the bane of any really practical program for political action in a democratic system. To gain an effective governing majority requires the building of a coalition organized on fundamental principles and shared interests.

Zealous fanaticism can be useful in politics, boiling issues down to their stark fundamentals. I still remember the evening in 1995 when, having slipped the moorings of my Democratic upbringing, I sat down to dinner with a Republican Party official and the conversation turned to abortion. I mentioned my (small-L) libertarian opposition to taxpayer-funded abortion -- why should Catholics, for example, be taxed to pay for what is contrary to their expressed doctrine? -- and my host responded bluntly: "Abortion is murder and it ought to be against the law."

The Litmus-Test Trap
That statement has the virtue of simplicity, and has radical implications. Those who agree with it have a clear mandate for political involvement and it is thus scarcely surprising that pro-lifers remain the unbreakable backbone of the GOP today. Nothing makes me more furious than those "sophisticated" Republicans who sneer at pro-lifers. Without hard-core pro-lifers, there might never have been a Reagan presidency or a 1994 "Republican Revolution."

Yet the tendency toward fanaticism -- the radical certainty of the True Believer -- can have disastrous consequences in politics. There are many pro-lifers who make that issue a litmus test in such a way that it compels them to vote for bad politicians.

A perfect example of this problem is Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, the "pro-life" Democrat whose sellout cinched the Senate vote for ObamaCare. Many pro-lifers in Nebraska told themselves they could vote for Nelson because his partisan allegiance was negated by his declared pro-life principles.

Of course, many Republicans elected on the strength of their pro-life bona fides have proved incompetent, corrupt or politically untrustworty, which creates the environment within which the election of pro-life Democrats becomes likely. And it is the single-issue litmus-test approach of the True Believers that is both cause and effect in such a scenario: They elect a bad Republican because he's "right" on their single issue and then, when he disappoints them, they replace him with a Democrat who is clever enough to position himself as pro-life. Whether this pattern ever actually results in the enactment of pro-life policies . . . well, that's an interesting question, isn't it?

'Anarchy Next Wednesday'
Let us return, now, to Carl Milsted's attempt to deal with libertarian fanatics, in which he describes a platform fight at the 2006 Libertarian Party convention:

At the time I was leading a major effort to reform the LP (the Libertarian Reform Caucus) to widen the LP's definition of "libertarian" so as to include a large fraction of voters who say they support both personal liberties and economic liberties, and to soften the party's platform away from its call for anarchy next Wednesday.

If you've ever attended a Libertarian Party gathering, you either smile at that description or become enraged by it. There are some Libertarians who oppose even the mildest concesion to pragmatism. They want an LP that is fanatically pure and, as an inevitable result, politically impotent.

Purity is one of those ideas that have consequences and I made a reference to LP fanatics when describing those consequences after the November 2008 election:

LGF -- which lately has been trying to purge Pam Geller as a Nazi (!) sympathizer -- doesn't mind saying "we blew it." And I agree: You blew it. And in fact, you still blow. Purge-happy partisan fanatics! Purge the Buchananites! Purge the libertarians! Purge the creationists! Purge the pro-lifers! Bobby Jindal is "political suicide!"
Purge, purge, purge, until the Republican Party is only you, and then maybe people will understand that this was your objective from the very beginning, you intolerant assholes. I am reminded of Bob Barr's description of the more fanatical Libertarian purists -- they don't want to belong to the Libertarian Party, they want to belong to the Libertarian Club.
Let these purging purists have their way, and you can plan to hold the 2012 Republican convention in Charles Johnson's living room. And I'll vote Libertarian again.

In the end, of course, CJ purged himself, but the fundamental point remains. It's this "club" mentality, the desire to act as membership chairmans of an exclusive sect composed entirely of one's fellow True Believers, that makes the fanatical quest for purity such a disastrous impulse in politics.

Big Boobs and Big Tents
Successful politics requires a gregarious attitude, what we might call the Sheila Mosely Principle. In fall 1976, Sheila was a candidate for homecoming queen at Lithia Springs (Ga.) High School. Sheila was a popular cheerleader with an impressive C-cup rack, but there were other popular cheerleaders running for homecoming queen, one of whom was at least a D-cup.

So one day a couple weeks before homecoming, I was walking down the hall and encountered Sheila, who flashed a friendly smile and said, "Hi, Stacy." Maybe that wasn't the first time Sheila had ever spoken to me, but it was certainly the friendliest she'd ever been, and it made an impression.

Of course, I knew this unexpected gesture was politically motivated, but it was nonethless impressive that Sheila had condescended to solicit the support of a stoner hoodlum like me. Impressive -- more impressive even than Kim Cantrell's D-cups -- and therefore Sheila got my vote.

Sheila understood that every vote counts. She wasn't going to let my stoner hoodlum status be an obstacle to her quest for homecoming queen. And that gregarious impulse, that willingness to solicit support from outside one's own social or political niche, was what made Ronald Reagan such an unequaled success in politics.

Reagan's "Big Tent" approach has been misunderstood and misapplied by many of his would-be successors, who have used it as an excuse for Clintonesque "triangulation," the politics of pre-emptive compromise. But Reagan was an unapologetic conservative, who did not feel the need to talk about being "kinder and gentler" or employ defensive modifiers like "compassionate."

From C-Cups to Tea Parties
Never renouncing his firm belief that liberalism was wrong -- a sound fundamental principle -- Reagan could nonetheless work with liberals and solicit their support for his agenda (rather than cooperating in a "kinder gentler" pursuit of the liberal agenda) because he had the same kind of winning self-confidence that permitted Sheila Moseley to smile and say "hi" to a hoodlum stoner.

The problem of fanatics who insist on purity is that their intolerance of dissent betrays a lack of confidence. If your ideas are so self-evidently true, what explains your totalitarian impulse to purge the impure?

Winners understand teamwork, and thus exhibit a cooperative, gregarious tendency in politics that rightly ought to be called populism. When I see intellectual idiots denouncing the Tea Party movement as "populist," I understand that they mean the term as a pejorative, a synonym for angry ignorance. But while Tea Party crowds are indeed angry about the current direction of policy in Washington, as individuals they are some of the most cheerful, friendly people you'd ever want to meet -- and certainly far less ignorant than their critics would have you believe.

Furthermore, the Tea Party people exhibit a very Reaganesque "Big Tent" attitude. Go to these rallies, and you'll find hard-core evangelical pro-lifers and libertarian bikers in happy coexistence, united by opposition to the big-government menace of Leviathan-on-the-Potomac. This is what I've called "Libertarian Populism" and -- despite the dismissive snobbery of Julian Sanchez -- it is wrong to suppose that such hostility toward the elite is mere ressentiment., when a two-decade bipartisan succession of Ivy-educated White House occupants (Yale, Yale Law, Yale/Harvard MBA, Columbia/Harvard Law) have led the nation to its current predicament.

If elitists can get over their fears of the populist mob, and if libertarians can get over their purist demand for "anarchy next Wednesday," there is a glimmer of hope for a real breakthrough. But we're not going to get there unless people start thinking like Sheila Mosely, whose friendly smile was enough to triumph even over a D-cup rack.

P.S.: Don't forget to visit Liberty magazine. If they're smart enough to advertise here, they must be geniuses!

'I Ain't Got Time to Bleed'

Action-movie fans will remember that line spoken by Jesse Ventura's character in Predator, and it characterizes my attitude right now regarding the political situation in general and Doug Hoffman's NY-23 special election campaign specifically.

My friend Eric Dondero of Libertarian Republican has pointed out that, in 2006, my friend Erick Erickson of Red State (like many other conservatives) refused to support Libertarian candidate Bob Smither in Texas.

Like the NY-23 race, that 2006 Texas congressional election was a unique situation -- long story, no time to explain now -- and many people misunderstood it. My good buddy Stephen Gordon was on the Libertarian Party national HQ staff at the time, and he was in that Houston suburban district up to his eyeballs.

Gordo made it clear to me that the GOP's idea of running a hand-picked write-in candidate (lonnngg story) was a guaranteed loser, a harebrained scheme that would surely fail. If conservatives wanted to stop a Democrat from winning that seat, their only viable option was to support the LP candidate, Smither, who was a solid citizen, not any kind of radical wacko, and much preferable to the Democrat Nick Lampson.

However, unless you knew the specific on-the-ground details (which Gordo spent hours explaining to me in phone calls from Texas), any conservative Republican might reasonably think that Tom DeLay and the local GOP bosses knew what they were doing.

But they didn't, and Lampson stomped the crap out of DeLay's handpicked successor (who had a hard-to-spell hyphenated last name, a big reason why the idea of her as a write-in candidate was so ROTFLMAO ridiculous). The Democratic pick-up could have been avoided, if any influential conservative at the national level would have listened to Gordo. Three years ago, I was even less inlfuential than I am now, and no other conservatives of greater influence were listening to Gordo and so . . "For want of a nail," as they say.

Erick Erickson was not alone in making the mistake he made. So I have no problem with Erickson for not having backed Smither. A mistake is not necessarily a sin, and Erickson's willingness now to back the Conservative Party candidate Hoffman in NY-23 might indicate that he's learned from the mistake he and others made three years ago.

Whether there might be future occasions when similar calculations of principled pragmatism lead Erickson to back an LP candidate, who knows? We'll cross that bridge when we get there.

Whatever happens in the future, or whatever happened in the past, it is absolutely vital in this time of crisis that all friends of liberty focus laser-like on doing now the things that must be done now. I can't fix what went wrong in 2006 and, if there is still any bad blood between my friends Dondero and Erickson, I don't have time to negotiate an armistice.

Right now there is a battle being waged in upstate New York that may, to some important extent, determine the future of this nation. Meanwhile, in Washington, a tooth-and-nail struggle rages over the ObamaCare abomination. There is too much important work to be done now for anyone who is a genuine friend of liberty to be engaged in intramural score-settling.

There are now 17 days until Nov. 3. Let us lay aside everything incidental and focus all our efforts on doing what must be done now, or our common cause is surely doomed.

Like that squad of commandos in the jungle, faced with a deadly and relentless foe, we are in a fight for survival. And I ain't got time to bleed.

UPDATE: Rhymes With Right, a Texas GOP activist, puts a more detailed account of the 2006 Sekula-Gibbs fiasco in the comments. He makes mention of a meeting where the GOP "leadership" declared that it would be "out of order" to make a floor motion in favor of LP candidate Bob Smither who was already on the ballot. My man Gordo was on the phone telling me all about this, live from the scene, when that dirty little deal went down.

This is how the "Establishment Insider" crowd operates, see? Just like the House GOP "leadership" forced Jeb Hensarling to walk the plank for Scozzafava, the GOP "leadership" in Texas forced the local parties to walk-the-plank for Sekula-Gibbs. And this is just what Cornyn and the NRSC want to do by shoving Crist down the throats of Florida Republicans.

This kind of crass manipulation of the GOP mechanism by the insiders is absolutely deadly, in terms of destroying grassroots enthusiasm, and that's what Not One Red Cent is about: Fighting back against this kind of corrupt, crooked, backroom "kingmaker" crap.

As for the inside-libertarian-baseball criticisms from my friends Mr. Knapp and Mr. Dondero, it is beyond the scope of my influence to convince Erick Erickson or anyone else of what course of action they should take. Nobody in the GOP has ever solicited my advice, and on those rare occasion I've played armchair strategist by volunteering my advice, they always ignore me and do the opposite.

So none of this is my fault. If you're looking for a scapegoat, Blame Erik Telford. (I always do.)

'Community organizing' liberals don't like

TPM's Eric Kleefeld headlines an item about a North Carolina protest, "Tea Party Rage -- Rage Against The Dying Of The Right."

This is a very interesting twist. Kleefeld would have his readers believe that the movement which is putting boots on the ground -- organizing dissent, bringing out people for protest rallies, training voters as grassroots activists -- is thereby giving evidence that it is "dying."

Obama's declining approval ratings, voters opposing single-payer health care by a 25-point margin -- all of this, Eric Kleefeld wants you to believe, is about "The Dying Of The Right."

How encouraging it is to see that liberal elitists are now resorting to such counter-factual rationalizations, telling themselves that these phenomena -- clear indications of Obama's miscalculations and policy overreach by Democrats in Congress -- are actually proof of desperation by the defeated "Right."

Certainly, it is heartening to me personally, as these grassroots protests are evidence of the power of "Libertarian Populism," which I described last year as "an enduring populist conception of the government in Washington as a corrupt insider racket controlled by special interests, in which both Democrats and Republicans are out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Americans."

Libertarian populism was "The Spirit of '94," the mad-as-hell mood that fueled the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress. If the government in Washington is always by its nature an "insider racket controlled by special interests," both unresponsive and irresponsible, then effective opposition to the federal Leviathan is not about counting R's and D's in Congress, but rather about limiting the power of Leviathan.

And the failure of Republican leaders to live up to their limited-government rhetoric -- their seduction by David Brooks and "national greatness," which led to the discredited idiocy of "compassionate conservatism" -- is what has brought our nation under the thumb of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama.

The Tea Party movement appeals to a long and heroic tradition of "anti-government" activism in America. When John Cornyn gets booed in Texas, when union goons feel the need to beat up black man selling flags, in when Ben Cardin finds his town-hall meeting packed to fire-code limits in deep-blue Maryland, we are living in a moment that would bring a smile to the faces of those patriotic "angry mobs" who tarred-and-feathered royal tax collectors back in the day.

The Gadsden Flag has never been more in vogue. In April, I actually met a couple of college kids with Gadsden Flag tattoos, including a young Latina libertarian with a "Don't Tread On Me" tattoo on her lower back. ("Don't call it a 'tramp stamp'!" Ileana said. "I hate when people call it that!")

What is "dying" here, Mr. Kleefeld? Your "progressive" dream of omnipotent centralized authority, that's what. Like the lady said: Don't Tread On Me!

Megan McArdle ends the recession

Well, not exactly. That credit goes to the Koch Foundation, which just awarded a fellowship to Peter Suderman, paramour of the World's Tallest Lady Blogger. Thus ends Suderman's lame excuse for avoiding matrimony with the lanky libertarian lass.

Some bloggers may express concern about the so-called "ethics" of Suderman working for Koch cash. Ethics be damned -- what about the sin?

"Oh, we can't afford to get married -- I'm unemployed," the shamelessly cohabiting Suderman said the last time I cornered him at a Reason Happy Hour and warned him of the fiery eternal tortures that await fornicators.

How convenient that the Hindenburg-at-Lakehurst implosion of Culture 11 gave Suderman an opportunity to test an old adage of market economics, enjoying the milk without the responsibility of purchasing the cow, pleading poverty as an excuse for failing to make her an honest cow.

Well, no more excuses now, eh, buddy? June is a traditional month for weddings, so Suderman's now got a full week to take his acromegalic inamorata to the courthouse and close the deal on this particular livestock transaction.

She took him under her roof when the alternative was for him to live under a freeway overpass and stand beside the on-ramp with a tin cup and a hand-lettered cardboard sign: "Unemployed Cultural Critic, Will Snark For Food."

Koch is a 501(c) non-profit -- "The mission of the Foundation is to advance social progress and well-being . . ." -- so Suderman's gone from being McArdle's rent boy to being Koch's charity case.

Koch is all about capitalism ("social progress," my butt) which means that this is an extremely lucrative fellowship for Suderman, even more lucrative than being McArdle's gigolo. So if Megan is abandoned at the altar, while Fishbowl DC is gossiping about reports that Suderman has been seen wheeling around Dupont Circle in a sporty new convertible full of scantily clad 22-year-old Cato Institute interns . . .

Well, don't say you weren't warned.

Libertarians in the hands of an angry God!

P.S.: If you want to congratulate the soon-to-be Mrs. Suderman on the good fortune of her fiance's Koch bailout, the wicked fornicators are expected to be in attendance at Wednesday's Reason Happy Hour.

P.P.S.: Megan McArdle has never once linked me. I get more linky-love from Sully. NTTAWWT.

The luxury of 'liberaltarianism'

Ross Douthat weighs in with a commentary on "liberaltarianism," the proposed fusion of liberalism and libertarianism that started getting kicked around a bit on the blogosphere a couple of years ago. (Cf., "Obamatarians," a more recent expression of the same impulse.)

The problem with this concept was never really on the part of liberals, except insofar as they either (a) misunderstood libertarianism, or (b) simply lied about their openness to libertarian ideas. Confusion and deceit among liberals is a given. But the liberals always knew what they wanted from such a transaction: Elect more Democrats.

What did the libertarians want from the transaction? It is here that the ridiculous folly of the enterprise is found. Most of the Will Wilkinson types are intellectuals who are embarrassed by what Hunter S. Thompson called the "Rotarian" instincts of the Republican Party. That flag-waving God-mom-and-apple-pie stuff just doesn't light a fire under the American intellectual class, which is not now, nor has it ever been, enamored of religion, patriotism and "family values."

As a political impulse, the sort of libertarianism that scoffs at creationism and traditional marriage wields limited influence, because it appeals chiefly to a dissenting sect of the intelligentsia. It's a sort of free-market heresy of progressivism, with no significant popular following nor any real prospect of gaining one, because most Ordinary Americans who strongly believe in economic freedom are deeply traditionalist. And most anti-traditionalists -- the feminists, the gay militants, the "world peace" utopians -- are deeply committed to the statist economic vision of the Democratic Party.

There is no natural political constituency for the sort of libertarianism that considers marijuana legalization and the flat tax as equally estimable objectives. When it comes to the basic electoral calculus of 5o-percent-plus-one, this theoretical equation has never been shown to add up in terms of real-world coalition politics. (Maybe the stoners just forget to vote?)

During the "long boom" unleashed by the Reagan revolution, it was possible for libertarian intellectuals to believe that the arguments for economic freedom were now so blindingly vindicated that even their progressive peers must admit the obvious truth. All libertarians needed to do, they fancied, was to shed the unfashionable baggage of the GOP coalition -- the Falwells and Buchanans and Dobsons and other such lowbrows -- and the progressives would eagerly sign up for this new project: Free-market gay marriage! Free-market abortion! Free-market environmentalism! Free-market transhuman biotechnology!

If that idea ever made sense, it only made sense in a context of Republican political dominance. When the Democrats were putting up losers like Mike Dukakis and John Kerry, when Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay were crushing progressive dreams like so many ants underfoot, free-market intellectuals could attempt to inveigle their progressive friends: "Don't worry about those hayseed holy rollers, saber-rattling jingos and suburban Rotarians. They make a lot of noise, but they don't really call the shots. Look at your 401K balance. The market works."

Well, we passed the sell-by date of that argument somewhere between "Mission Accomplished" and "the fundamentals of our economy are strong." And all the libertarian intellectuals who've been sucking on the Koch tit over the past 25 years find that their progressive friends are as unpersuaded about the virtues of economic freedom as they ever were. Lending libertarian support to progressive causes -- the driving impetus of the gay-rights movement is egalitarian, not libertarian -- has strengthened progressivism, while doing nothing meaningful to advance the free-market cause.

With their Democratic friends now holding supreme power in Washington, progressives now openly celebrate Keynesian pump-priming and redistributionist economic schemes in a way they never would have done when Tom DeLay held the whip. Chuck Schumer can laugh that the American people don't care what's in the stimulus, and no one can effectively refute him.

At the apex of Republican power and at the zenith of the "long boom" ignited by Reaganomics, the "liberaltarian" impulse was a luxury that foundation-subsidized intellectuals could afford to indulge. The era of respectable intellectual luxury is now over, and serious people must now ponder the rude realities of coalition politics.

UPDATE: "Like the Higgs Boson, the liberaltarian is a phenomenon that hasn't yet been directly observed but that everybody hopes to find someday."

UPDATE II: Welcome, Instapundit readers! (Guess this means I'll hit the 1-million hits mark a bit early, huh?)

UPDATE III: A slight diversion, to take aim at the false dilemma (either tax cuts OR Keynesian spending) argument as put forward by Newsweek's Daniel Gross:

Adherents of the tax-cuts-only strategy are suspicious of free-spending Democrats, old-fashioned Keynesians, and big government. They believe -- no, they know --that tax cuts are more efficient than government spending, since people and businesses make better and quicker decisions about spending than government does. . . . The current, somewhat extraordinary circumstances, and the nation's changing economic geography, should make us wonder how effective tax cuts will be in stimulating new spending and investment.

Now, I addressed this either/or fallacy Monday, with reference to Megan McArdle's suggestion that marginal rates are now low enough that major Laffer-curve effects are not to be expected from further tax cuts. (Argue amongst yourselves.) What kills me is that Gross is allowed to make an expressly political argument under the guise of an economic expertise that he does not, in fact, possess:

Mr. Gross graduated from Cornell University in 1989, with degrees in government and history, and holds an A.M. in American history from Harvard University (1991). He worked as a reporter at The New Republic and Bloomberg News, and has contributed hundreds of features, news articles, book reviews and opinion pieces to over 60 magazines and newspapers. Areas of expertise include: economic and tax policy, the links between business and politics, the rise of the investor class, the culture of Wall Street, and business history. (Emphasis added.)

The man is a journalist, not an economist, and his echoing of Obama administration talking points ought not be disguised as economic analysis. Nothing wrong with being a journalist, you understand, it's just that Newsweek is doing a bait-and-switch by presenting Gross as an economic "expert." But if Paul Krugman can win a Nobel Prize, I suppose we're all experts now . . .

UPDATE IV: Linked by The American Catholic.

Mark Thompson says I'm "somewhat hyperbolic." Dude, you're just now noticing this tendency?

RELATED STUFF:

• Helen Rittelmeyer, "Oh, I'm sorry, did we get our movement in your status quo?"
• Jonah Goldberg, "Whither Liberaltarianism?"
• Austin Bramwell, "The Two Faces of Libertarianism"
• Reihan Salam, "The Point of Liberaltarianism"
• Matt Welch, "Liberaltarianism in the Age of Obama"

Rosslyn gets stimulated

"What do you think a stimulus is? It's spending -- that's the whole point! Seriously."
-- Barack Obama

A huge crowd at the Continental Lounge in Rosslyn, Va., Thursday for Stimulus Happy Hour. Young right-wingers were seriously priming the pump with a Keynesian fervor Paul Krugman would admire. At this bleak moment of utter despair, these patriotic Americans did their part to restore Hope by promoting full employment in the hospitality and distilled spirits industries. They're not only economic libertarians (they spend it freely) but they are also extreme social conservatives (they socialize extremely often).

To chronicle this pivotal moment in our nation's economic history -- "the direst financial catastrophe since the Panic of 1857," according to R.J. Lehmann -- they called upon the neutral, objective services of The Man With the Pink Camera.

Jim Antle and Philip Klein of the American Spectator, Moira Bagley of the New Majority, Liz Mair of New Media Strategies, and American Spectator managing editor J.P. Freire.

Liz Mair, David Weigel of The Washington Independent, and Republican strategist Sean Hackbarth.

Jessica Cantelon of the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute and Amanda Carpenter of Townhall.com.

Republican strategist Nathan Martin and Liz Mair. (Yeah, I know, she's such a camera hog, isn't she?)

Thankful to have escaped the Hindenburg-at-Lakehurst crash of Culture11 -- "Kuo, the humanities!" -- James Poulos now earns a surprisingly lucrative living as a postmodern pool hustler.

American Spectator advertising director Catherine Ruddy congratulates mom-to-be Courtney Poulos after Mr. Poulos sank the 8-ball on a three-bumper shot to win $20 from . . .

. . . Jillian Bandes, who's wondering how to explain to J.P. that, in addition to losing $20, she also promised Poulos an assignment as Athens bureau chief for the Spectator.

Jeremy Lott (right) in a rare moment of good cheer, shortly before plunging back into his accustomed Stygian gloom.

Nathan Martin, Brooke "The Jefferson 1" Oberwetter and noted economist R.J. "We're SO Doomed" Lehmann.

While Phil Klein and John Tabin discuss the geopolitical significance of Iran's missile launch, David Weigel checks his iPhone for Facebook updates from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Obama's in the White House, the economy's in the toilet and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is about two-thirds of the way to having an ICBM. So why is Scott Hogenson smiling?

Soren Dayton can't figure it out, either.

American Spectator editorial director Wlady Pleszczynski, far right. (Ba-dum-BUM! "I got a million of 'em folks. I tell ya, I just flew in from Cleveland, and man, are my arms tired! I'll be here until Tuesday, folks, but it's OK -- you can start laughing tonight. So, anyway, an Irish guy, a Jewish guy and a Polish guy walk into a bar . . .")

Socialism on trial

"The 2008 campaign was never an honest choice between conservatism and liberalism. Really, it was just a referendum on George Bush . . . What Republicans want to do and need to do is put socialism on trial. Socialism has been a conservative talking point since the late 1880s. . . . As a populist anti-Washington party, we’ve always done best."
-- Craig Shirley, Reagan biographer

Sounds a lot like my idea of "Libertarian Populism."

UPDATE: Linked by Stephen Gordon at the Next Right. (Or should that be "the marginally despicable" Stephen Gordon?)

Palin: 'We don't need no stinkin' stimulus!'

Well, something like that:

Governor Sarah Palin again today expressed her serious concerns with President Obama’s proposed stimulus package. In a joint letter sent to Alaska's congressional delegation, Governor Palin, House Speaker Mike Chenault and Senate President Gary Stevens cautioned that unrestrained spending, initiation of new programs that the states may be asked to continue after the federal stimulus is gone, and the borrowing of hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for it may result in serious economic problems in the future.
Governor Palin recently traveled to the nation's capital to personally express her concerns with the stimulus package with business, economic and political leaders. The trip was not an effort to endorse or lobby for the current stimulus package now before Congress.
"I agree with the decision of Senator Murkowski and Congressman Young to vote NO on the package," Governor Palin said.

Hmmm. "Libertarian Populism"? "It Won't Work"? "The Bible vs. the Bailout"? Nah, she'd have to actually be able to "read and write" to know anything about that stuff. Certainly those "ordinary barbarians" at Conservatives4Palin don't go in for any of that fancy high-falutin' book learnin' crap.