P.J. O’Rourke is having a bad case of reality handed to him.
Let us bend over and kiss our ass goodbye. Our 28-year conservative opportunity to fix the moral and practical boundaries of government is gone–gone with the bear market and the Bear Stearns and the bear that’s headed off to do you-know-what in the woods on our philosophy.
An entire generation has been born, grown up, and had families of its own since Ronald Reagan was elected. And where is the world we promised these children of the Conservative Age? Where is this land of freedom and responsibility, knowledge, opportunity, accomplishment, honor, truth, trust, and one boring hour each week spent in itchy clothes at church, synagogue, or mosque? It lies in ruins at our feet, as well it might, since we ourselves kicked the shining city upon a hill into dust and rubble. The progeny of the Reagan Revolution will live instead in the universe that revolves around Hyde Park.
Mind you, they won’t live in Hyde Park. Those leafy precincts will be reserved for the micromanagers and macro-apparatchiks of liberalism–for Secretary of the Department of Peace Bill Ayers and Secretary of the Department of Fairness Bernardine Dohrn. The formerly independent citizens of our previously self-governed nation will live, as I said, around Hyde Park. They will make what homes they can in the physical, ethical, and intellectual slums of the South Side of Chicago.
The South Side of Chicago is what everyplace in America will be once the Democratic administration and filibuster-resistant Democratic Congress have tackled global warming, sustainability, green alternatives to coal and oil, subprime mortgage foreclosures, consumer protection, business oversight, financial regulation, health care reform, taxes on the “rich,” and urban sprawl. The Democrats will have plenty of time to do all this because conservatism, if it is ever reborn, will not come again in the lifetime of anyone old enough to be rounded up by ACORN and shipped to the polling booths.
None of this is the fault of the left. After the events of the 20th century–national socialism, international socialism, inter-species socialism from Earth First–anyone who is still on the left is obviously insane and not responsible for his or her actions. No, we on the right did it. The financial crisis that is hoisting us on our own petard is only the latest (if the last) of the petard hoistings that have issued from the hindquarters of our movement. We’ve had nearly three decades to educate the electorate about freedom, responsibility, and the evils of collectivism, and we responded by creating a big-city-public-school-system of a learning environment. – More at The Weekly Standard
One thing that O’Rourke fails to realize is that the polices advocated by the Kristol’s that basically were the foundation for the “Bush Doctrine”; were, in fact, the reason that the Conservatives lost this election in the first place. Yes, the economy was factor, John McCain’s rather stupid campaign was a factor, but one cannot escape that the main underlying reason for the ass kicking that the Republicans received in this election, and that was the FAILED polices of the Bush Administration and the many scandals that came out of it. Neo-Conservatives tried like bloody hell to spin the scandals, but the American people are just not that stupid. They saw spin and they voted accordingly.
Until the Republican Party literally casts out the Neo-Conservatives out of their party and gets back to the old school Libertarian Conservatism of Barry Goldwater, of which O’Rourke tries to rather lamely dismiss; the Republican Party will become a thing of the past. Neo-Conservatism of the Bush stripe, just does not work in America and in the context of a modern Democracy; It has been tried and it has failed miserably. Further more the Republican Party needs to tell the Evangelical Conservative Christian movement to tend to their own affairs in the Church, and stop meddling in the affairs of Government. it is this writers opinion, that one of the worst things that ever happened to the Conservative movement, was the inclusion of the Religious-Right movement. It ended up costing us the election this time and was more of a liability than an asset.
It is time for the Republican Party as a whole, to rethink their message or face extinction. For the good of the Republic, we cannot afford the Liberals that victory.
Others: Little Green Footballs, Right Wing News and Jules Crittenden