No doubt they’ll be derided as elitists by the plump manatee. Real Americans don’t think, they follow blindly.
[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he’d rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn’t think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I’m afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.
Neither McCain nor Palin would dare mention Obama’s middle name, Hussein, but they can play up Obama’s past associations and let others connect the dots. Terrorist. Muslim. Dangerous. Other.
It is legitimate to question character and dubious associations — and William Ayers is certifiably dubious. The truth is, Obama should have avoided Ayers, and his denouncement of Wright was tardy. But this is a dangerous game.
The McCain campaign knows that Obama isn’t a Muslim or a terrorist, but they’re willing to help a certain kind of voter think he is. Just the way certain South Carolinians in 2000 were allowed to think that McCain’s adopted daughter from Bangladesh was his illegitimate black child.
Talk radio deserves much of the blame for the GOP’s embrace of populist anti-intellectualism. The blowhards are dictating the party’s agenda now, and the proof is indisputable. Why else would McCain follow the lead of those who, just months earlier, vigorously opposed his nomination?
The Republicans have been “Hannitized,” and they’re going to pay a stiff price.
I disagree, but it is your blog and your opinion.
David Brooks is no conservative, John McCain definitely is no conservative – he isn’t. George Bush Jr and Sr sure as heck aren’t either and it has nothing to do with Sean Hannity or any other talk show host.
America is about to see what it is like when the hard left run things – Barack, Nancy and Harry (with 60 votes). It is going to be a huge disaster, but Bush Jr will still be blamed.
Sometimes it has to go the extreme for the pendulum to swing back the other way. The past 8 years have been unreal (2 wars, but it doesn’t really seem like it) and unparalleled out of control by both parties spending. We all voted for them – we are getting what we accepted.
Welcome to 1994.
Articles like these, and the Palin nomination itself, make me wonder exactly what threat was issued (or reality realized) the week before the RNC.
Buckley and Reagan are rolling over in their graves at the farce that is the modern GOP. Are they not true conservatives? No, I guess Hannity and Limbaugh own that mantle now.
*requesting permission to fire*
The house republicans got too big for their britches and did not follow through with their 1994 promises. Bush Jr dropped all ideas of being fiscally conservative with all of his overspending bills = the fraud that is medicare, the prescription drug plan, no child left behind, the farce energy bill, the agriculture giveaway etc.
Reagen was a man of the people and got things done despite Tip O’Neil. There might be 50 conservatives left in Washington today – Saxby Chambliss is not one either.
Buckley was friends with Limbaugh and appeared on his show in an in depth interview when he retired from National Review.
[...] Some conservatives get it, argues ATLmalcontent. But others do little more than mouth the agenda offered by the Sean Hannity’s of the world. [...]