I almost never agree with anything I read on Stephen Bainbridge’s blog, but I feel his pain:
Let’s tick off ten things that make this conservative embarrassed by the modern conservative movement:
1. A poorly educated ex-sportwriter who served half of one term of an minor state governorship is prominently featured as a — if not the — leading prospect for the GOP’s 2012 Presidential nomination.
2. Tom Tancredo calling President Obama “the greatest threat to the United States today” and arguing that he be impeached. Bad public policy is not a high crime nor a misdemeanor, and the casual assertion that pursuing liberal policies–however misguided–is an impeachable offense is just nuts.
[….]6. The anti-science and anti-intellectualism that pervade the movement.
7. Trying to pretend Afghanistan is Obama’s war.
8. Birthers.
9. Nativists.
I like this too:
Patterico says the foregoing are “reasons that conservatives should not support the Republican party,” not reasons for being embarrassed about being a conservative. Fair enough. I’d accept that as a friendly amendment, but we’re not friends.
Heh indeed.
(updated to h/t burnspbesq)
Daddy-O
I am so copying and pasting this…great catch, DougJ.
DougJ
@Daddy-O:
It’s from a commenter, but I can’t remember who.
The Dangerman
From the link:
What is … they’re all dead, Alex.
Their movement (both in and not in a bowel kinda way) now is anti-smart, anti-well-read, and articulate only up to the point of shifting peoples money into their own pockets.
Mark S.
Patterico is tedious and obsessive, but he’s a lot better than most of the assholes who have conservative blogs. I wonder what caused this particular bitch fight.
Mark S.
@DougJ:
Burnspbesq.
handy
I got a chuckle out of the “rebutting” comments. They fall into either the “getting my fee fees hurt” category, or the “hey don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Neither even come close to the substance of his points, reinforcing the toxic tribalism that infects the conservative movement.
mai naem
The problem of course is that they aimed their sales pitch to stoopid people and now, oops, they have a bunch of stoopid followers. Like, duh. What did they expect?
DougJ
@handy:
I did too except they made me feel bad for Bainbridge. He writes something honest and a bunch of assholes show up to scream Wolverines! at him.
LongHairedWeirdo
I dunno. I think we should start gathering up collections of what “conservatives” believe and use that to embarrass people. Don’t let them say “No, those aren’t *conservatives*, those are only *Republicans*!” That’s a variation of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy at this point.
Violet
@handy:
Yeah, the comments pretty much sum up what’s wrong with the Republican party.
handy
@DougJ:
If I’m Bainbridge, it’s just evidence in favor of my original point–mainstream conservatism doesn’t have a thoughtful, reflective bone left in its body: it’s a movement built on BS.
demimondian
There’s a deeper problem with Bainbridge’s argument: it’s not fundamentally honest.
Fundamental honesty would entail coming to terms with the deeply anti-American Southern strategy upon which post World War II “conservatism” is based. It would entail coming to terms with the intellectual inconsistency of a “Libertarian” movement which simultaneously preaches the sanctity of voluntary association — while arguing against trade unions. It would entail coming to terms with a non-interventionism which led to the creation of the American security state (through the national Security Act of 1955). It would entail coming to terms with an American political movement which spawned McCarthy and John Birch as avatars of freedom.
American movement conservatism has been a malignant tissue of lies and hypocrisy since before Goldwater. I feel no sympathy for those who have sowed the wind, and must inherit the whirlwind.
beltane
We need an updated list of defectors from the Great Conservative Paradise. It was David Stockman last week, and Bainbridge this week. Who will be the last man standing in the loony bin? My guess is Bill Kristol.
handy
Yeah then there’s that.
Bobbo
He’s too kind to Palin. She is an ex-sports anchor, not writer. The idea that she could have written her own copy is ludicrous.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
“even” Rush LImbaugh? “take that bone out of your nose and call me back”? the guy who did the mocking dance of a man slowly dying of Parkinson’s? Beck is stark, staring mad, but I don’t think he comes close to being as personally hateful and rage-filled as the third-world sex tourist. And isn’t Hewitt just a garden-variety buffoon? I could be wrong, I don’t monitor the nut-cases.
burnspbesq
@beltane:
My money is on Erik son of Erik. He’s not smart enough to figure out that he’s in the loony bin.
The Dangerman
I’m not sure which prospect is more amusing.
a) The Republicans failing to take Congress, thus causing the Right to go apeshit.
b) The Republicans taking Congress and being unable to repeal Health Care, thus causing the Right to go apeshit.
demimondian
@beltane: You know, the Stockman piece from last week didn’t say what a lot of people thought it said. It complained about the American departure from the Gold Standard, for instance, and the breaching of Breton Woods under Nixon. I don’t know any liberal — indeed, any sentient human — who doesn’t know that the Breton Woods peg had become unsustainable due to the inflation caused by Vietnam.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@beltane:
He may be the last man standing, but then Laura Ingram will take his lunch money and knock him down.
demimondian
@burnspbesq: It’s not exactly that he’s not smart enough. Rather, he looks around, and says “Yeah, these folks are just like me!” — and doesn’t have the good sense to wonder if, perhaps, six million henchman can be wrong.
Xecky Gilchrist
@handy: I got a chuckle out of the “rebutting” comments.
Me too. You know what they say, though – mess with the Stupid Anger party, and you get the Stupid Anger.
KG
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Bainbridge a couple of times. He’s a good guy and an honest conservative/libertarian. I agreed with most everything he said in his post and laughed my ass off at the comments basically telling him to go fuck himself. It really pretty much summed up my frustrations with the movement.
CaseyL
You know what boggles my mind?
What boggles my mind is that there are enough of these idiots to elect enough politicians to have an outside chance of taking back the House.
The question might not be whether the country can survive the ascendancy of parasitic plutocrats. The question might be whether the country can survive this epidemic of Stupid. (Without the Stupid, the Parasitic Plutocrats wouldn’t be so firmly in charge.)
Sturgeon’s Law will be the death of us yet.
KG
@CaseyL: there aren’t really enough. There are more low information voters on each side than there are high information voters. Low information voters on the GOP side tend to take fiscal issues (read their tax burden) into account more than just about anything else. I know quite a few of them, they think Obama and the Dems in Congress are bad, but not for any particular reason. They know they just don’t like them because it means their taxes are going to go up. I’ve pretty much given up on talking to my folks about taxes because all they know is that they pay a lot, when I try to explain things like marginal and effective rates or whatever, their response is “we don’t get all those deductions because we make too much money.”
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@handy: It’s always been a movement built on BS.
burnspbesq
@KG:
A large proportion of the honest, rational, I-could-do-business-with-this-guy conservatives are academics (not all – Bartlett is a think-tanker, and conversely there are conservative academics like Mankiw who are dishonest as all get out, and let’s not forget that Hugh Hewitt is a tenured full professor at Chapman Law). As such, they are not Real ‘Murkins, and have no standing within the movement. They’re about as useful as a beachball at a baseball game, and about as influential as a vegan on the Donner Party.
Mike G
If you dare to go after Obese Republican Jesus you have to qualify your remarks with an “even” to soften the Raging Stupid torrent of rancid bile and violent threats about to be directed at you. It’s the equivalent of the old cop-out, “Even the librul media…”
KG
@burnspbesq: please stop reminding me that Hewitt is a professor at my alma mater.
Brachiator
@beltane:
Probably a good guess. Wasn’t Kristol bending over backwards to kiss up to Palin last week?
But I wonder whether these others have the guts to fully free themselves from the wingnuts? Or will they hold their noses and continue to wallow in the sewer?
RadioOne
I’ve always been sort of amazed by how seriously the intellectual conservative elite takes itself as influential in the Republican party’s political success. That they’re dismayed by Sarah Palin, the anti science movement, and the birthers shows that they’ve been totally outplayed by the radio jocks and tv personalities who want to turn debate about policy into a sort of storm of rage and panic against the government. It’s almost funny, because if the intellectual conservatives had won and a discussion about the merits of public policy from both sides actually became the dominate debate in the country , there’s no question their arguments would have lost badly with the American people.
burnspbesq
@KG:
Would you rather I remind you that John Yoo was a visiting professor there last year?
(Sorry, I couldn’t resist).
r€nato
that blog post gave me a sad. “O noes; they’re catching on to the GOP fail!”
But the comments made me happy again. “Oh joy; as soon as a conservative catches on to what the Republicans are doing to themselves, the torch-bearing mob will shriek, ‘a witch! burn her!'”
KG
@burnspbesq: heh. I try to ignore that one too. I did happen to go to a Fed Soc event last year that was a debate between Yoo and Bob Barr. It was actually kind of interesting, I had never really heard anyone so unabashedly preach the idea of a presidency with truly unlimited power. It seemed to me a very un-conservative point of view, yet it seemed to carry weight with most of the audience.
While I was there, they had Ken Starr as a visiting professor. I actually wanted to take his class, but couldn’t get it to work with my schedule.
r€nato
if you take away from the conservative movement the birthers… and nativists… and know-nothings… and teabaggers… and Fox News Channel fans… and Rush Limbaugh fans… and all the other rat-wing hate-radio/hate-TV media fans (Savage, Ingraham, Hannity, etc)…
what would you have left? It would be like having a Klan rally without the sheets, white supremacy and burning crosses.
shecky
I don’t know whether to feel sorry for Bainbridge, or laugh. The likes of him for decades now openly encouraged the morons, because it was good election politics. Now that they’ve taken over the asylum, he’s shocked, SHOCKED, to find these wackos that he’s encouraged all along are as crazy as they are clueless.
Maybe he’ll have an honest turnaround, accept the exile, and take a good, long look in the mirror when he wants to assign blame for the monster he helped create.
cat48
The oped in LAT that Bainbridge links to has an excellent paragraph describing the current conserv leaders as race baiters; demagouges; & hucksters. Very accurate & descriptive:
Redshift
@KG:
I understand that most people are “low information” about politics, but I think that believing you take your own tax burden into account more than anything else but not knowing that the Dems have cut it and just taking the word of conservative media that they’re making it worse crosses the line to actually being among the “stupid people,” not a separate category.
The reason the Republican tax scam (cutting someone’s taxes and telling the voter they cut theirs) works is because most people have no idea how much they actually pay in taxes, and how much of the changes from year to year are because of their income vs. tax law changes. I count myself in that category, so I’m sympathetic to it, but I’m utterly unsympathetic to people who claim that it’s their primary concern but still can’t be bothered to check their personal situation against the propaganda.
Redshift
@cat48:
Right, because the twaddle at NRO has nothing to do with the National Review…
asiangrrlMN
@demimondian: Ditto this. And, on a much baser level, right now being a conservative is alllll about supporting the demented Republicans so they are de facto one and the same. Even the so-called sane conservatives (Frum) are plain wrong in their ideas of what this country needs and doesn’t need.
It does seem to me that there is a slight increase in voices from the not-left voicing concerns about the Republican Party–which may indicate just how fucking batshitcrazy the GOP has become.
@Wile E. Quixote: I might agree with that. By the way, I loved your reviews of Inception and Salt. In fact, I quoted you on the latter in an e-mail to a friend. You should do a website of reviews.
Wile E. Quixote
@The Dangerman:
Bainbridge and I agree, the only good conservatives are dead conservatives.
asiangrrlMN
@Wile E. Quixote: You changed your post! Now my comment in response to yours doesn’t make quite as much sense.
asiangrrlMN
And, since it’s late-night and there’s no open thread, how is everyone? Anything exciting happening to anyone?
Martin
And you know what Ed? Even with guys like Frum and Bainbridge being mortified about what a fucked up party the GOP has become, they’re STILL GOING TO FUCKING VOTE, you stupid fucker.
asiangrrlMN
@Martin: That’s because they have no principles. Ed, now, he has principles, by gum, and he’s gonna pout and bellow if he can’t get others to stick to them.
YellowJournalism
@asiangrrlMN: Either that, or he’s lying and plans to vote Republican, since he actually used to be one.
asiangrrlMN
@YellowJournalism: Wait, what? Ed used to be a Republican? It all makes sense now–the way he blusters and bloviates, his rhetoric and all the unpleasantness I associate with the right.
The Wiki informs me that you are correct. Now I get Ed Schultz, unfortunately. Can they take him back, please?
Batocchio
But Bainbridge still believes in magic tax cuts, it seems – unless he’s clarified elsewhere. Bainbridge may be more sane than his fellow travelers, but that only makes him better, not wise. Frum is still a hack, he just occasionally states the truth, and there’s some value in him criticizing the more crazy conservatives, even if in many cases he’s simply echoing what liberals have pointed out for years.
Xenos
Ed is a populist first, second, and third, and a Democrat fourth. I suppose he is useful, because some people only respond to populist politics, and there is no point in letting the Republican claim all the white male populists.
So long as our constitution gives so much power to the hinterland, we might as well compete for it.
Cacti
@YellowJournalism:
I don’t think he ever got past the “used to be”.
He saw that the carnival barker field was pretty crowded on the right, and decided to try out the marks on the left.
Michael
@mai naem:
Fixted it.
And for a bit of off-topic brilliance, I have to share this gem – a trailer for Toy Story 3: Inception. Sheer genius.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHJwgA54Gqk
kommrade reproductive vigor
The embarrassment the modern day conservative feels is that of the mad scientist after his monster has escaped and eaten and/or laid eggs in half of the local townsfolk.
I’ve been hearing “I’m a conservative, but I’m not like those conservatives…” since college, so 20 years later this “Dear me, the lunatics are running the asylum” shit is a tad stale.
But hey, if these guys want to weep over their posters of imaginary Conservative Hero Ronald Reagan that’s fine with me. Their tears are like candy!
Gregory
Of course, Bainbridge wasn’t embarrassed to be a conservative when Bush, Cheney and company were running an obviously deceptive effort to lead the nation into war with country that didn’t attack us on 9/11, or when they decided to pay for said war with tax cuts, or when Bush turned the Clinton surpluses into massive deficits, or when Bush’s claim-government-doesn’t-work-and-then-get-elected-and-prove-it conservatism resulted in such a spectacularly incompetent response to Katrina. Despite the fact that the GOP was no more intellectually solid — save its elevation of the Quitta from Wasilla to national prominence — then.
No, he wasn’t embarrassed to be a conservative then — after all, at least they were winning. And he supported, to one degree or another, all of the above. So it’s a little hard to find sympathy for his belated realization that the Party he’s supported over the last decade is made up of hucksters and charlatans now. It always was.
ETA: Or, what demimondian said.
Sly
The short answer is that they’re all stone fucking dead.
The longer answer is that they turned their movement over to a bunch of racists, nativists, religious kooks, and snake-oil salesman in order to build a political constituency, thinking that they could ultimately control such a rough-hewed beast. Which wasn’t surprising, considering what pompous and paternalistic assholes the conservative elders were. They failed. Then they died. The end.
Joey Maloney
I don’t feel his pain. I revel in it. His tears taste delicious.
Lie down with asshats, buddy, get up with dingleberets.
Snarki, child of Loki
Re: Bainbridge, Frum, and other “reasonable” cons:
They’re all disingenuous hypocrites that will say whatever they think will return them to positions of power and influence.
When the crazy conservitards are running amok, and likely to deliver an electoral stomping, it’s all “Oh Noes! They so bad! Not real conserv, nonono!”.
But somehow all that doesn’t count when GWB was trashing the place, and it won’t again the next time the GOP gets a bit of power.
Disingenuous hypocrites.
Shalimar
@YellowJournalism: I suspect Ed is still as conservative as he always was and all of the faux populism is to get rich from the syndication gravy train. But he isn’t stupid enough to change his registration back to Republican now and he can vote for Republicans in general elections anytime without telling anyone, he doesn’t need this stunt for that. It might be a ploy to demoralize his Democratic audience though if he really still wants Republicans to win.
MTiffany
Wow, talk about missing the point.
“Conservatism wasn’t just a policy agenda, a set of partisan gripes or a football team seeking victory on the electoral field. Above all, it was a satisfying, sophisticated critique of modern, materialist culture, pointing a way out and up from liberalism. ”
I wonder if it ever occurs to Bainbridge and his ilk that maybe, just maybe, the problem is that conservatives define conservatism in terms of what it opposes – “liberalism, materialist culture,” and for f’s sake, “the modern world” – rather than to what it aspires.
Maybe if conservatives had ideas that they fought for, rather than ideological enemies they fought against, the conservative movement might be a less welcoming home for the Limbaughs, Malkins, Becks, and McCarthys of this world…
NonyNony
@MTiffany:
But if that’s a problem, then there’s no hope for conservatism at all. Because at its best conservatism can only be defined in terms of other movements that are pulling or pushing society along. The best and most useful forms of conservatism are the ones that slow society down for a bit and make it think about what its doing, rather than running headlong into wherever it’s headed.
The problem is that that form of American conservatism is only practiced by the Democratic Party these days. The American conservative movement is a reactionary movement that has been working very, very hard to drag the country back to the policies of an earlier era – not just hold the handbrake and make things slow down (or even stop), but actively putting the engine in reverse and taking things back to the way they were.
For someone who styles themselves a conservative, the reactionary politics of the conservative movement should be as much an anathema as liberal politics. In many ways worse, actually, because while the liberals want to push the country into directions where the outcome is unknown and possibly scary for the conservative, the reactionaries want to drag things back to an era where things were provably worse in many ways.
This is why the Democratic Party has seen an influx of conservatives in recent decades – because the folks who are conservative but not reactionary slowly glom onto what the Republicans have been doing and when they realize it they jump ship. And once the tribalist blinders are off it becomes obvious that the real “conservative” party (i.e. the party out to maintain the status quo and ride the brake hard to make sure we move forward slowly) is the Democratic Party, not the Republican Party.
(This is also why liberals are constantly frustrated by the Democratic Party’s lack of desire to push a liberal agenda. The Democratic Party is a party that has liberals in it, but it isn’t a liberal party. Much like it has Hispanics, blacks, gays, union members and environmentalists in it but it isn’t a Hispanic, black, gay, labor or green party either. It’s a status quo party – making it the best kind of conservative party a country can have. Too bad we don’t have a liberal party to pull it to the left the way we have a reactionary party that pulls it to the right. That might almost make our politics functional…)
Liberty60
The only conservatism that made sense was the “conservatism of doubt” that was a posture of caution about the wild radicalism of socialism, a doubting of govt’s ability to transform society;
The modern conservative movement is itself a radical movement that embraces unlimited govt power for its ends; Kristol is “conservative” yet has absolute faith that the gov’t can create a civil society in Afghanistan.”Conservatives”cling to Supply Side theories with a zealous faith without a shred of evidence or data.
And underlying it all, they view the world through the prism of ethnic tribalism that is the antithesis of reason and moderation.
mem from somerville
How embarrassing for the Professor. The guy creates this list, including #6–anti-science, anti-intellectualism. But he’s riffing off an article by a creationist to do it?
And he wonders why this is happening…?
Tonybrown74
I know what makes me a liberal/progressive: a fair and honest tax system. Uplifting the poor in the believe that we as a society cannot achieve greatness if we cannot provide for and protect our most vulnerable. My belief that war represents a failure of diplomacy, and must only be engaged after serious deliberation. Personal liberties must never be infringed upon without due process. I could go on and on …
So, here’s the thing that bothers me: what exactly makes someone a conservative? What, specifically, are the ideals that would define a person as such? I really want to know.
grumpy realist
Well, I argue for a progressive tax code from the viewpoint of prudence. This is the modern version of Noblesse Oblige and occurs for the same reason: insurance against revolutions and getting hanged from lampposts by the lumpenproletariat.
Tone in DC
The Dangerman
I’m not sure which prospect is more amusing.
a) The Republicans failing to take Congress, thus causing the Right to go apeshit.
b) The Republicans taking Congress and being unable to repeal Health Care, thus causing the Right to go apeshit.
Hasn’t that already started?
I thought the Right already went (and is still going) utterly and completely apeshit over the election of one B. Hussein Obama Jr.
Just sayin’.
dj spellchecka
just wanna remind folks that william f buckley famously opposed both “brown v board of education’ and the “civil rights act.” and today’s conservatives wonder where all the racists came from?