Intelligent Conservatism Seeks A Bailout

By way of Wonkette, Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor of National Review Online, strapped for cash, goes all AIG on us, putting out a suntanned hand, begging for chump change:

Re: Cruising [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

I’m getting a number of e-mails from people who complain that we have some nerve asking for money after spending on a cruise last week. I totally understand how that looks bad. But here’s what you need to know: The reason we do these cruises is they bring in money. It’s another fundraiser. And rather than tanning in the Bahamas, we do work — panels, interviews, dinner, lunch, and other discussions. I tell you that not to whine — its a nice thing to work with a little sun in the cabin window vs. the usual Lexington Avenue noise. But we don’t do these as staff vacation perks. The time spent is an investment in the conservative future — because it supports NR and because real conversations happen, with policymakers, with young people, with supporters.

And like I said in my pitch today, National Review in all its forms has always and I suspect will always, rely on readers. Thank you again.

According to its pledge drive page, a donation of $2500 or more gets you the following:

A) “Thank You” letter and token of appreciation
B) Quarterly Publisher update
C) Listing in Annual Report
D) Monthly e-mail from NR editor/writer
E) Quarterly donor newsletter
F) Early access to cruise reservations
G) Quarterly conference call with NR writer/editor
H) Invitation to exclusive event during NR cruises
I) Lock of Sarah Palin's hair
J) Trig Palin

I'm joshing around on some of these: cruise reservations are made only on a first-come-first-served basis. Oh, and (J) is redundant: Trig is the mysterious "token of appreciation" in gift (A).

"The Perils Of 'Populist Chic'"

Mark Lilla of the Wall Street Journal proffers "what the rise of Sarah Palin and populism means for the conservative intellectual tradition" and mourns the death of the conservative elitism:

So what happened? How, 30 years later, could younger conservative intellectuals promote a candidate like Sarah Palin, whose ignorance, provinciality and populist demagoguery represent everything older conservative thinkers once stood against? It's a sad tale that began in the '80s, when leading conservatives frustrated with the left-leaning press and university establishment began to speak of an "adversary culture of intellectuals." It was a phrase borrowed from the great literary critic Lionel Trilling, who used it to describe the disquiet at the heart of liberal societies. Now the idea was taken up and distorted by angry conservatives who saw adversaries everywhere and decided to cast their lot with "ordinary Americans" whom they hardly knew. In 1976 Irving Kristol publicly worried that "populist paranoia" was "subverting the very institutions and authorities that the democratic republic laboriously creates for the purpose of orderly self-government." But by the mid-'80s, he was telling readers of this newspaper that the "common sense" of ordinary Americans on matters like crime and education had been betrayed by "our disoriented elites," which is why "so many people -- and I include myself among them -- who would ordinarily worry about a populist upsurge find themselves so sympathetic to this new populism."

The die was cast. Over the next 25 years there grew up a new generation of conservative writers who cultivated none of their elders' intellectual virtues -- indeed, who saw themselves as counter-intellectuals. Most are well-educated and many have attended Ivy League universities; in fact, one of the masterminds of the Palin nomination was once a Harvard professor. But their function within the conservative movement is no longer to educate and ennoble a populist political tendency, it is to defend that tendency against the supposedly monolithic and uniformly hostile educated classes. They mock the advice of Nobel Prize-winning economists and praise the financial acumen of plumbers and builders. They ridicule ambassadors and diplomats while promoting jingoistic journalists who have never lived abroad and speak no foreign languages. And with the rise of shock radio and television, they have found a large, popular audience that eagerly absorbs their contempt for intellectual elites. They hoped to shape that audience, but the truth is that their audience has now shaped them.

In the wake of a good walloping by the Democrats, there remains considerable (albeit surprising) clamor on the right for a Palin run in 2012. Word of advice: Think long and hard about your next nominee, Republicans. Don't rush to judgment with the wounds of the election still fresh. Take some time to convalesce. Embrace the back bench for a spell, react and dissent, play the watchdog, then methodically and pragmatically form your shadow cabinet. Each passing day brings a different world and a different political milieu. Be reflexive, yet patient - you cannot defeat Obama today or tomorrow.

Most important, in the words of Bobby Jindal, be "authentic." Denounce greed and graft without hesitation. Be loyal to the American people, not partisan obligation. Earn our trust back.

Supporting A Left Turn For The Right

Right-thinker Andrew Sullivan offers ten reasons permitting conservatives to vote for Obama:

10. A body blow to racial identity politics. An end to the era of Jesse Jackson in black America.

9. Less debt. Yes, Obama will raise taxes on those earning over a quarter of a million. And he will spend on healthcare, Iraq, Afghanistan and the environment. But so will McCain. He plans more spending on health, the environment and won't touch defense of entitlements. And his refusal to touch taxes means an extra $4 trillion in debt over the massive increase presided over by Bush. And the CBO estimates that McCain's plans will add more to the debt over four years than Obama's. Fiscal conservatives have a clear choice.

8. A return to realism and prudence in foreign policy. Obama has consistently cited the foreign policy of George H. W. Bush as his inspiration. McCain's knee-jerk reaction to the Georgian conflict, his commitment to stay in Iraq indefinitely, and his brinksmanship over Iran's nuclear ambitions make him a far riskier choice for conservatives. The choice between Obama and McCain is like the choice between George H.W. Bush's first term and George W.'s.

7. An ability to understand the difference between listening to generals and delegating foreign policy to them.

6. Temperament. Obama has the coolest, calmest demeanor of any president since Eisenhower. Conservatism values that kind of constancy, especially compared with the hot-headed, irrational impulsiveness of McCain.

5. Faith. Obama's fusion of Christianity and reason, his non-fundamentalist faith, is a critical bridge between the new atheism and the new Christianism.

4. A truce in the culture war. Obama takes us past the debilitating boomer warfare that has raged since the 1960s. Nothing has distorted our politics so gravely; nothing has made a rational politics more elusive.

3. Two words: President Palin.

2. Conservative reform. Until conservatism can get a distance from the big-spending, privacy-busting, debt-ridden, crony-laden, fundamentalist, intolerant, incompetent and arrogant faux conservatism of the Bush-Cheney years, it will never regain a coherent message to actually govern this country again. The survival of conservatism requires a temporary eclipse of today's Republicanism. Losing would be the best thing to happen to conservatism since 1964. Back then, conservatives lost in a landslide for the right reasons. Now, Republicans are losing in a landslide for the wrong reasons.

1. The War Against Islamist terror. The strategy deployed by Bush and Cheney has failed. It has failed to destroy al Qaeda, except in a country, Iraq, where their presence was minimal before the US invasion. It has failed to bring any of the terrorists to justice, instead creating the excresence of Gitmo, torture, secret sites, and the collapse of America's reputation abroad. It has empowered Iran, allowed al Qaeda to regroup in Pakistan, made the next vast generation of Muslims loathe America, and imperiled our alliances. We need smarter leadership of the war: balancing force with diplomacy, hard power with better p.r., deploying strategy rather than mere tactics, and self-confidence rather than a bunker mentality.

Those conservatives who remain convinced, as I do, that Islamist terror remains the greatest threat to the West cannot risk a perpetuation of the failed Manichean worldview of the past eight years, and cannot risk the possibility of McCain making rash decisions in the middle of a potentially catastrophic global conflict. If you are serious about the war on terror and believe it is a war we have to win, the only serious candidate is Barack Obama.

Nothing left to say. Sullivan and his contemplative band of brothers and sisters, stalwart and steadfast against the ambling rank and file of the Grand Old Party, rests its case.

The Hannity Dilemma - McCain's Jane Fonda

I'm coining a new phrase - The Hannity Dilemma. From this pint forward, the Hannity Dilemma will be used to describe the situation where a standard developed by a hard line partisan hack like Sean Hannity, intended to be used only against those heathens with opposing political views, is instead applied to a member of the standard-setting hack's own political party. The horror.

The award is named for Master Hannity because of his wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonder____ (that's 5 1/2 for those counting - you'll see) near aneurysm after his own standard (paraphrased here) asserted against John Edwards - "people who lie to their families by having affairs can't be trusted by the American people" - was applied to John McCain by Hannity's own weak-kneed liberal pushover but awoken from his castrated slumber co-host, Alan Colmes. Hannity gets so fired up that the standard he developed is used against one of his own, that . . . well, he starts quoting math and yelling protest slogans.



In that clip, Sean Hannity was faced with the Hannity Dilemma. His response: Donna Martin Graduates! Donna Martin Graduates! Donna Martin Graduates!

Now that we have an illustration of how The Hannity Dilemma works, lets apply it:

The Standard: The personal acquaintances of presidential candidates are valid, especially when such acquaintances are or were anti-American.

The Intended Application: In applying this standard, just about every talking head on the right (and some on the left), as well as the Republican Presidential ticket, have been hammering the Obama-Ayers and Obama-Wright connections, and particularly the anti-America angle. Fine. As I've stated before, I think those topics are fair game. As long as the same standard is applied to everyone.

The Hannity Dilemma: Joe Klein draws a comparison today between the scrutiny given to Obama's "radical friends," as opposed to the right's absolute silence on McCain's friendship with his own personal Jane Fonda - David Ifshin. As Klein explains:

Ifshin, you see, had been a vehement anti-Vietnam radical. He had even gone to Hanoi at the height at the war and given a speech denouncing the American pilots dropping bombs on North Vietnamese civilians as “war criminals.” The speech was broadcast repeatedly in the Hanoi Hilton, where McCain was being held captive. More than a few people thought Ifshin was guilty of treason.

He was also a close friend of John McCain until he passed away in 1996.

Klein's telling of this story is quite personal and worth the read, as Ifshin was also a friend of Klein's. It also shines a very favorable light on McCain (or, rather, the man McCain used to be). Their friendship was forged out of a respect for each other, despite their polar-opposite opinions so many years before. Ifshin was vocal about his regret for giving the above-referenced speech, and McCain forgave him. The McCain-Ifshin friendship was also detailed with admiration by the NY Sun in 2006. It's really a great story.

But as much as he regretted it, Ifshin did give that speech, just as Jane Fonda gave similar speeches attacking American soldiers. Guess what the right wing pundits think about Jane Fonda? Well Sean Hannity's guests, like Ollie North, think she's a "traitor" for her actions during the Vietnam war. I don't think it's a stretch to claim that that view as common among the right.

Now here's the dilemma: If Fonda is a traitor, so was Ifshin. So if Obama's associations with people like Ayers who, as John McCain described Ifshin "a long time ago, in the passions and resentments of a tumultuous era in our history, I might have considered my enemy," are fair game that must be examined, shouldn't the right wing pundits be examining McCain's association with this person who was a "traitor" by their own standards? Who is the real John McCain? Can we tolerate a president who palled around with traitors? Donna Martin Graduates!

Classy Enough to Leave Him at the Footstep of the Woodshed - Round 2 All Obama

I was hyper-critical of Senator Obama's performance during the first debate at Ole' Miss. He was diffident, impassive and projected an "aw shucks, don't say that" vibe that infuriated me and must have trigger unhinged bellicosity in the true believers of liberalism. He was playing "not to lose" - a tremulous, pussy-footing performance.

Not tonight.

And probably not for the rest of this election.

Barack Obama was downright presidential this evening. John McCain was a spent force eight years removed from the window's closing. A loyal soldier who served his country for 70 years, but retired in 2006. Please go with grace.

We can debate nuances until the bovine, partisan cows come home. That's not what tonight was about, suprisingly - not the issues. It was about appearances. And, strangely, for the first time since President Clinton, a Democrat - a wonderful Democrat, his smile, oh that smile, did he just wink at me, oh my god, there are the little starbursts in my living room, I'm mesmerized, I am definitely sitting up straighter on my couch. Does this make me gay? - DAMMIT LOWRY, GIVE ME BACK MY KEYBOARD. GO BACK TO THE NATIONAL REVIEW AND ATTEND TO THE LAST SHRED OF ITS DIGNITY. Barry Goldwater has placed a coffin above his own coffin and Ronald Reagan's coffin. By the end of this thing, lots of coffins to go around. A funeral pyre for Karl Rove would be a nice closing ceremony.

Ahem.

As I was saying, a Democrat looked like next year's prototype, rakish and cherry, right off the factory line. The new model. The crusty, starchy Republican was a refurbished product, a collection of misfit parts, held together by spit and glue and the faint whiff of 20th Century cognition.

Obama sat there casually. Casually confident. And the "straight talk" express blew a tire and desperately needed a figurative and literal oil change (please see the previous post). The message was stale and message is king in presidential elections. The scuttlebutt is that Palin tried to storm the set with a life-sized poster of Bill Ayers, but secret service confused her for Cindy Sheehan and used the taser.

And you could smell the fear on the right-wing pundits in the post game. They see it slipping away. The Republican fembot on ABC conceded McCain didn't score "the knockout blow" or submit "the game changer." Yeah, no kidding. Even the conservative assassins on FoxNews tonight adopted a defeatist air. Glenn Beck, the very foundation of Goldwater's revolution, could only offer "we don't mind losing, but at least we want to lose fair" in the wake of McCain's lackluster turn and voter fraud allegations in Ohio from the RNC (losing like the Detroit Pistons in the 1990 Eastern Conference finals I see - not even shaking hands, walking off the court with time left in the fourth).

Voter fraud - we have no comment. But I (unlike some) can name a Supreme Court case: Bush v. Gore.

Let me remind you this playful parry comes from a registered independent. Check the rolls. I voted Nader in 2000 and Badnarek (be still my Libertarian heart) in 2004.

As things stand at 10:13 pm PST, I will vote for Barack Obama for President of the United States of American on November 4.

The man and his core beliefs are certainly big factors, but more so: I vote for the future. I vote for my family (my girlfriend now 10 weeks pregnant). I vote for the former glory of America and may it return as the erstwhile beacon of light that guided a world. I vote for tolerance, intelligence and foresight.

Unbelievably, without a scintilla of mockery or hyperbole (can't believe I'm saying it) - I vote for CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN.

Who am I voting for you ask?

"That one." Thanks for pointing him out, John McCain.

Posted by Warm Apple Pie.