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Katrina vanden Heuval tweeted a link to this essay by Mr. John G. Taft at the New York Times of October 22, 2013, titled The Cry of the True Republican. Ancestor worship is quite a marvel to confront in such a heavy dose, it makes one feel an acquaintance with a  feudal mentality utterly foreign to the American notion of the self-made man. The essay itself is kind of potted history of the Taft contribution to the American Story, of the necessity of political dynasties and family largess. It does seem to manifest an arrogant and self-congratulatory tone that grates against the American Grain, a kind of inappropriate royalism? Continue reading →

Is adoration the wrong word? Some examples of the questions:

‘While your opinions are are delectable to read…’, ‘Is your favorite one-liner still the ­sausage one?’, ‘Fifty years from now, which decisions in your tenure do you think will be heroic? ‘

One wishes that a real interview with Justice Scalia might be conducted by an intellectual antagonist or at the least a more  tenacious inquirer. Continue reading →

Douthat Chatter and Frum Chatter are as twin expressions of the self-destroying elan of the American Republican Party. Although, Frum Chatter, in this instance, opts for a shift of focus to his proclaimed victory of British Conservative governance, and the fading of the blight of Socialism: the favorite strategy of American Conservatism when confronted with failure or looming failure is to change the subject. Misdirection a favorite rhetorical strategy.

In Mr. D.’s argument American Conservatives are frustrated by the political fact that The New Deal and The Great Society are permanent fixtures of the American political landscape. The Republican Nihilists , with the aid of Koch,Rove and Club for Growth money, have attacked, by means of of a government shutdown, the very practice of governance. Is it  mere tautology to call it a Pyrrhic victory?  Underneath the avalanche of words, Mr. Douthat does not practice brevity in his blog posts, the reader confronts, at the essay’s end, what looks something like cynical resignation or even nihilistic fatalism. 

Political Cynic   

Read this essay by Daniel Pipes on what I can only call a kind of  Sophisticated Xenophobia, on the question of the Syrian Refugee,  that he argues must be- the title expresses his singular idea: ‘Let Refugees Remain in Their Own Culture Zone’. Does this even meet the lowest standard of humanitarian concern? Should a reader of this essay be surprised at the brazen expression of  Islamophobia voiced by the notorious Neo-Conservative, Mr. Pipes? Based on the cultural/religious differences between the ‘West’ and the ‘Arabs’ as presented by Mr. Pipes: the specter of Mr. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations re-appears in an even more morally/intellectually pernicious form. Continue reading →

I posted a comment on a Financial Times essay by John McDermott, this morning. And asked as part of it, Where are the Eisenhower Republicans?, to speak out against the Republican Nihilist.  As I was driving to the gym this morning, I listened to Letters and Politics hosted by Mitch Jeserich. He was interviewing Geoffrey Kabaservice, author of Rule and Ruin, and Mr. K. commented that the reason that Republicans didn’t criticize the leadership was that The Club for Growth, come the next election, would run a candidate, farther to the right of the incumbent, of their own choosing, against any obdurate incumbent who criticized the leadership i.e. Tea Party zealots . That seems to answer my question in a very succinct manner. Continue reading →

Why is the Republican Party headed straight to a permanent status as the party of daft plutocratic apologists, and craven imperial war mongers?(It almost sounds like a description of the New Democrats) But watch Mr. Bill Kristol, on ‘The Powerhouse Roundtable'(Recall that this a branch of ShowBiz)sound all the notes of the current Nihilist Republican party line,as he acts out his role as political contrarian,in opposition to the defenders of ‘Liberalism’.
http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/video/week-powerhouse-roundtable-20412041?tab=9482930&section=1206874&playlist=6505465 Continue reading →

Mr. Douthat continues in his rhetorical mood of fabulism, that he expressed in his essay Call Me Vlad , with his latest entry titled Good Populism, Bad Populism. In sum Mr. D. presents the argument that the Republican Nihilists are not just ideological obstructionists but are, in fact, the future enactors  of ‘reform’ . Now, given that these same future oriented pols have just voted to de-fund the Heritage Foundation Health-Care aka Obama Care, how might a reader interpret the idea of ‘reform’ as expressed by Mr. D?

Political Observer   

What a wonderful stew of Conservative chatter ,that only Mr. Douthat can throw together, and still maintain any notion of the coherent, as he puts his various ingredients into the pot. He then applies intellectual heat, of a kind, to make this melange come to a rolling political boil!

Should we readers, in our astonishment at the power of Mr. D. to bring these disparate elements together and give it a meaning, again, of a kind, and produce a dish that barely passes as appetizing?

Another question: should the regular readers of Mr. D.’s thought experiments, on his blog, file the idea of Libertarian Populism under the same category of one of his other singular ideas Policy Entrepreneurship? Surely not a burning question but one that needs asking.

Political Cynic