More nonsense from the Corner, this time from Jonah Goldberg, responding to Byron York:
Reading Byron’s post about Kos wanting to crush the conservative movement (“Bring it on!” I say), not to mention the absurd ruby-slipper-clicking nonsense from Harold Meyerson, it occurs to me that liberals should be more careful about what they wish for. I agree with John Hood entirely (and T.S. Eliot) that the cause cannot be truly lost because no cause can truly be won.
But, what if these guys got their wish? What if the free market chorus was crushed and discredited entirely? Pelted from the public stage? Do these people really think there would be no “rightwing” in America? No Republican Party? That is moronic. What would happen if you got rid of the free marketers and fusionists is you would have an unadulterated party of populist, rightwing, progressives competing with a party of poplist, leftwing, ones. Our politics would be worse, not better, by liberalism’s own standards because the GOP would be taken over by Buchananites to the “right” of Buchanan who would make Mike Huckabee look like Milton Friedman. If everyone agreed on pervasive economic interventionism then politics becomes a question of who gets to benefit from intervention, elections become a contest to pick winners and losers, or beneficiaries and shakedown victims. In such an evironment, cultural factors become more central, not less.
Putting aside the bullshit assertion that Democrats oppose free markets (has Jonah missed the Bush administration nationalization binge?), the Corner argument for voting for McCain and Republicans has now devolved from “The Democrats are worse” in 2004 to “You can not completely destroy us, because it would create a power vacuum in which even worse right-wingers will come to prominence.” It should be interesting to watch them work this into slogan form so the base and right-wing bloggers can understand it. I would suggest- “Sure, we suck, but you will miss us when we are gone.”
Actually, Jonah, we really won’t.
Dave
What is not surprising at all is that Cheetos-Boy got it exactly wrong.
What Kos wants crushed is not "small-c" conservatism but the low-wattage neo-con BS that has seized the title of "conservative." And then the Doughy Pantsload immediately shifts that to a desire to destroy the free markets. As if the Republicans have been actually creating a free market instead of something approaching state capitalism.
Have any of these asshats ever read "Wealth of Nations?" Adam Smith would weep over the way these guys have twisted his ideas.
Comrade Incertus
If the ideological battles move from things like "should we have universal health care" to "how much universal health care should we have," I’m cool with it. My goal isn’t to crush conservatism so much as it is to crush this particularly loathsome version of it.
hypusine
Where were you from 2000-2004 asshole? Certainly not bemoaning "This is our due". pfffft. Get off the stage.
Jon H
Jonah is the even-worse right winger he’s been waiting for.
Cris v.3.1
I can’t think of a more appropriate phrase for Goldberg to co-opt. His presidential hero said the same thing when he had no idea how far in over his head he was.
Joshua
Guys like Jonah Goldberg will always be around, because there will always be some rich asshole that thinks he doesn’t deserve to pay a cent into the society that made him (or, more likely, his father) rich. Those guys are willing to spend a lot more money than they do on taxes to advance that viewpoint. That’s who pays Goldberg, that is who will always pay Goldberg.
However, we are hoping that their repulsive ideas, the ideas that have come to prominence in the right wing, are fully discredited, and those who espouse it are relegated to the same wilderness that anyone to the left of Bill Clinton (and that is a LOT of people) has been wandering around for the past 3 decades.
aimai
The idea that Jonah Goldberg and the Corner were all that was standing between us and the neo-nazis and militias seems strange to me, somehow…I had understood that the violent kookery was all on the left side of the spectrum. I read a book about it, I think, that put it right in the title.
aimai
Zifnab
If? What’s the if? Did he see the bailout votes? This isn’t a question of "if" or even of "when". It’s a statement of "now that". And sure enough, Doughy’s hindsight prophecy has come to pass. The only question now that
$700$850 billion is on the table is who gets paid and who gets to pay out.Of course that last bit about "cultural factors becom[ing] more central, not less" is where he dizzies off into being completely wrong. Ask the majority of America what they’re voting on right now. Taxes or abortion? I think I know where I’m placing my bets.
MattF
"You might have to deal with people who believe what they say". Um, OK.
Danton
Jeez, I’m looking at the last several posts of the morning and John, you’re absolutely on fire. What did you have for breakfast?
scarshapedstar
Bow before Obi-Wan Goldberg!
Sadly (for him, not me), I don’t think the Force is strong with this one.
The Other Steve
My god, that guy is just dumb.
Svensker
This is one of my favorite’s from The Corner this morning, from Kirkorian:
Herr Doktor
Jonah: "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine…"
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
@Dave:
No. SATSQ.
And they won’t read it. Poor brown people brought AIG to its knees. End of story.
Balconesfault
I thought we were just crushing the Republicans. Are we crushing all convervatives now, too?
Damn, that’s going to be really hard on the Democratic majority, given how many Dem congressmen are conservatives who could easily have been Rockefeller Republicans, back when such critters existed.
I personally have little stomach for crushing Bill Clinton, who I’ve always thought of as a little right of center.
TR
Rightwing progressives? Are they the opposite of liberal fascists? Or the same thing?
Jonah Goldberg. Proudly putting the "moron" into "oxymoron."
lutton
Obi-wane Jonahbi – " You can’t win, Kos. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."
ThymeZone
Wow. So the greatest threat to the American Experiment in crushing (the current version of) the right wing is …. more cultural manipulation? The cornerstone of their appeal is the worst potential effect of getting rid of them?
Holy fuck, these people can fashion backwards arguments better than anybody I have ever seen.
Up truly is down in their world. Just, wow.
SpotWeld
To paraphrase Douglas Adams:
Comrade Stuck
OT
OMG they found the Whitey" tape. And it was just made yesterday, NOT.
The smell of desperation in the morning smells like, like Wingnut.
chuchundra
Awesome, informative blogging this morning. Kudos to you both Tim and John. Thank you.
RoonieRoo, dontcha know
I wonder if he just sees the train that is bearing down on him and this is his mad flailing in the hopes he doesn’t get smacked off the tracks.
Seriously, what we are "crushing" is specifically this bunch of neo/theo-cons that flatly destroyed the GOP and ran off the reasonable people.
I still maintain, as a Democrat, that it is important to the health and future of the left-wing that we have a functioning right-wing. I don’t know how that is going to come together in the future. It will either be the recovery of the GOP brand/party by the states rights,small government, fiscal conservatives or the growth of a third party consisting of those conservatives that the "party left".
kid bitzer
what a fucking loser that goldberg is.
but he’s wrong about kos anyhow (as well as everything else).
the goal is not to crush the conservative movement.
the goal is to crush movement conservatives.
as soon as the mythical "honest conservatives" materialize, they will be welcomed back to america.
but as long as it’s karl rove, steve schmidt, tom delay, bill frist, rick santorum, and all of the unholy spawn of saint reagan, i stand with kos: crush them.
ThymeZone
Word.
pablo
I kinda like some conservatives, and a little bit of the conservative philosophy, but I have absolutely no interest in these yahoos who now call themselves conservatives, it’s the con part of neocon. Big spending, big borrowing Trotskyites. Go back to whatever rock you have crawled out from under.
kth
I doubt anyone wants to "banish the free-market chorus", certainly not me, nor Kos, nor very many of the commenters here. I would like to banish the "brown people suck" chorus, the "Earth is 6000 years old" chorus, and the other choirs with their varieties of screeching, atonal fear and loathing.
Then the free-market chorus would have to align itself with bands really concerned with freedom, like those against the unitary executive, against unrestricted wiretapping, against no-knock warrants, for civic equality for gay people, etc.
fecapult
I’m going to ignore the concept of progressive conservatism, and talk instead about how these clowns would still have to get elected before anyone had to pay any sort of attention to them. Also.
o kanis
Goldberg is expressing a real anxiety that the conservative remnants of Huckabee and Robertson and Paul will not be quite so eager to bomb Iran , leaving it to the (possibly) unreliable Democrats alone to suck AIPAC tit.
The horror, the horror….
Punchy
Not a expert on logic, but I think this is pretty FAIL. Just because the Bush Admin seems to oppose free markets doesn’t mean the Dems don’t oppose. IOW, making light that Bush is acting like Democrats, doesn’t allow one to logically conclude that therefore, it’s bullshit to assert the Dems oppose regulation (the insinuation being that the two sides must always be at idealogical odds?).
Just my $0.02
jvill
Agreed.
Oh, he was talking about something else.
libarbarian
My favorite is that he thinks this will work
I dare say he is seriously out-of-touch.
Comrade The Moar You Know
I would have a day-long orgasm and then smoke a metric fuckton of pot.
Comrade Tax Analyst
Well, OK…but can we crush them reeeeeaaaallll sllooooooowww? I’m not usually into sadism, but I think these guys qualify as a "Special" case. I want legs first, so we can hear as their usual plaintiff whines turn to frantic pleading and screaming.
I don’t think that’s too much to ask, considering all the shit these ass-hats pulled and how badly they’ve fucked up our Republic.
Napoleon
Did anyone see the Smith post from Politico where, in so many words, in a focus group some people said they didn’t care if Obama was a terrorist, they would vote for him any way before the Republicans? That is why Jonah is $!!tting bricks, because people (like joe sixpack) do want to destroy the Republican party.
Janefinch
My current favourite re Ayers from The Pantload, just posted on The Corner:
You have to love that sort of incisive criticism.
Comrade The Moar You Know
My lord, this is rich. Nothing wakes these people up like the realization that they’re about to lose it all.
Day late, dollar short, assholes.
Notorious P.A.T.
Wouldn’t it be a super duper shame if the Republican party got taken over by the extreme right wing? Why, they might nominate someone for vice president who thinks women should pay for the investigation of their rape, believes in witches, and denies evolution!
Notorious P.A.T.
LO freakin’ L. Post of the gosh darn year.
JGabriel
Pablo:
Question: In what way are these guys Trotskyites?
I mean, I may be wrong, but I don’t remember Trotsky as being the "Screw the poor, praise the rich, and get in as many wars as we can" type.
.
binzinerator
This lazy fatass, who did not feel the inclination or need to read anything substantive by English philosopher and intellectual Herbert Spencer while working on a chapter in his own fucking book that ‘requires’ him to be knowledgeable about Spencer, would not in any way or for any reason have any intellectual curiosity to exert himself to actually read anything substantive of someone like T.S. Eliot. Or any other serious, intellectual author for that matter.
Jonah Goldberg. A fraud. A fool. A fucktard. And a fatass.
dBa
Bullshit. Oh, and Jonah’s a moron.
binzinerator
Yeah, that one is pretty amazing. But if you have the kind of mind that can tolerate the intellectual dishonesty and cognitive dissonance of that concept, you have the kind of mind that can write a book titled "liberal fascism".
If you can do that, you would have what it takes to be a fraud. A fool. A fucktard. And a fatass. In other words, you’d have Johan Goldberg.
binzinerator
progressive conservatism: Standing athwart history, yelling ‘Stop!’. But only yelling it in a progressive way. Duh.
MLP
The image of Goldberg that I always keep in mind whenever I read anything about him is this:
Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism was conceived at some right wing think tank meeting in 2004. Of course as people know Goldberg indicts liberals for a multitude of "fascist tendencies." But what has really bothered me, and what I think is a perfect metaphor for conservativism, is that Goldberg came up with the premise of his during a time of conservative dominance both federally and statewide. Liberals were grasping at straws and conservatives were in control of all three branches of federal government. And its at the this time that we saw federal expansion, massive spending, torture, everything that is wrong with conservatisim now was in evidence then. But instead of dealing with any of this Goldberg thought it was more important to discuss the historical failings of LIBERALS. His book is what projection and transference look like in real time. Essentially, this is like Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burned. This is why I never take Goldberg seriously, he is not an intellectual (name dropping political theorist is not a substitute for intelligence). Goldberg is a political hack, a silly man, who was born on first and thought he hit a home run, trying to convince the rest of the world he’s Babe Ruth.
Snarki, child of Loki
Oh, he’s so right, you just can’t get rid of a political party, no matter how irrelevant they become.
That’s it, I’m voting for the Whig candidate this year.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
There’s more truthiness than truth to this charge, but it isn’t based on completely nuthin.
In a literal sense, a tiny handful of the intellectual forefathers of the present day neocons were in their youthful days actual honest to goodness Trotskyites.
In a more poetic sense, the neocons resemble Trotsky in wishing to overturn the existing power structure and replace it with a one world new order of their own devising, and are not shy about demanding that this goal be advanced using military force. In that respect their means resemble Trotsky’s concept of permanent revolution, although their goals are more than a little bit different. They both share a tendency to romanticize violence.
Lastly, the neocons resemble Trotskyites in their disdain for the mundane details of how to organize a program so that it actually has a chance of succeeding and their preference for spinning castles in the sky out of airy theoretical abstractions. Both groups are so utterly incompetent that if they were asked to run a lemonade stand they would totally fnck it up and probably end up making the lemonade out of used tires and gasoline, which is not conducive to a happy ending for anybody involved.
Llelldorin
You can see why the guy thinks that, though. He’s wilfully blinded himself to the huge number of (small-c) conservatives who call the Democratic Party home for the moment. The John Coles of the right simply don’t exist, in his tortured view.
It’s fairly clear where a new conservative party would come from—in a sane universe, Ben Nelson and Patrick Leahy wouldn’t be in the same party at all. They’re only fused together by the enormous pressure created by incredibly dense bodies like Goldberg.
Monty
It should be interesting to watch them work this into slogan form so the base and right-wing bloggers can understand it. I would suggest- “Sure, we suck, but you will miss us when we are gone.”
David Frum has already gone there, in a FP cover story titled ‘Why you’ll miss him when he’s gone.’
Dave Pooser
How about "You won’t have Jonah Goldberg to kick around anymore?"
binzinerator
I understand fat is quite buoyant, much less dense than water, and is of course an insulator. When the wingnut Titanic goes down, Goldberg is hoping he’ll bob like a cork and stay warm. It’s our job to make sure he gets sent to the bottom with a weighted harpoon in his blubbery ass before he can clamber to safety aboard some passing political vessel.
The ocean pressure 2 miles down is more than 300 atmospheres, some 4,500 pound per square inch of crushing pressure.
That’s the kind of crushing I want to see put these fucktards. That, and a crippling case of the bends if they ever manage to surface.
maxbaer (not the original)
At least have pity on the Walmart shoppers who will be greeted by Jonah in the near future.
Mandy
Never respond to Jonah Goldberg; reading him lowers the IQ.
SevenEleventy
Make sure you register your pets to vote! I’m sure ACORN can help!