Politics: March 2009 Archives
screedblog » So this fellow sends a manifesto
James Lileks brilliantly fisks Amitai Etzioni's redistributionist manifesto.
Herb Meyer: "Ronald Reagan was the first Western leader whose objective was to win. Now I suggest to you that there is a gigantic difference between playing not to lose and playing to win. It's different emotionally, it's different psychologically, and, of course, it's different practically.... It was Reagan's judgment that the time had come to play offense--that they [the Soviets] could be had. When he made that decision ... it flowed from a decision to play to win."
Pajamas Media » My Fellow Conservatives, Let's Be Bad Guys!
Stephen Green writes: "No matter what we do, we're painted as the villains. So let's twirl our mustaches and get to work....
"We cannot buy our way into friendship in Washington for the next four years. We aren't going to become popular by playing along with Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi or the president....
"Republicans spent the last eight years trying to do the "smart" thing, by buying out the Democratic agenda.... Well, we've tried the smart thing and all it got us was a bigger, more meddlesome government. Now it's time to do the right thing....
"Most importantly, we need to push for a sunset provision to all this so-called 'stimulus spending.'...As political junkies, we know the stimulus was really Porkzilla, with most of the "emergency" spending of this monster back-loaded into 2011 or beyond. The Democrats can be cornered on this one -- demand that any back-end spending provision expire as soon as the economy returns to positive growth."
Salon: Camille Paglia on Rush Limbaugh
"Only ignoramuses believe that Rush speaks for the Republican Party. On the contrary, Rush as a proponent of heartland conservatism has waged open warfare with the Washington party establishment for years. And I'm sick of people impugning Rush's wealth and lifestyle, which is no different from that of another virtuoso broadcaster who hit it big -- Oprah Winfrey. Rush Limbaugh is an embodiment of the American dream: He slowly rose from obscurity to fame on the basis of his own talent and grit. Every penny Rush has earned was the result of his rapport with a vast audience who felt shut out and silenced by the liberal monopoly of major media."
WillCollier.com: Tea Party Conservatives vs. Dinner Party Conservatives
"The most recent splash from the Dinner Party crowd comes from David Frum, who appears well on his way to becoming the Kevin Phillips of his generation. Frum's nasty jeremiad against decidedly-Tea-Party Rush Limbaugh fit so well into the media blitz being pushed out of the White House by Clinton slime masters James Carville and Paul Begala that Frum was granted not just multiple column-inches, but also the cover of the official weekly of the Obama Administration, Newsweek. Frum is already basking in his own bath of what he once called Strange New Respect, and undoubtably he'll receive plenty of smug adulation at his next few Georgetown dinner parties.
"Frum has always loved the idea of playing Cassandra; his last big splash came from the polemic 'Dead Right' in 1994, with similar arguments for shutting out the conservative base of the GOP in favor of elite opinion. As noted previously, this particular call to disarm was delightfully thrown on history's ash heap less than three months after its publication, when the Tea Party Conservatives of that age overthrew a four-decades-entrenched Democratic majority in Congress. Not much of anybody credited 'Dead Right' as being a catalyst for the Republican Revolution--but one Rush H. Limbaugh, III, a Missouri junior-college dropout and former D.J., was widely touted at the time as 'the majority maker.' It wouldn't surprise me one bit if that still sticks in the craw of the Yale-and-Harvard-approved Frum."
Neither Moderate Nor Centrist - Forbes.com
Peter Robinson, a speechwriter in the Reagan administration writes:
"'To see what is in front of one's nose,' George Orwell famously asserted, 'needs a constant struggle.' Congratulations this week to three journalists who have finally taken up that constant struggle: Christopher Buckley, David Gergen and David Brooks....
"[A] deep, recurring pattern of American life has asserted itself yet again: the cluelessness of the elite. Buckley, Gergen and Brooks all attended expensive private universities, then spent their careers moving among the wealthy and powerful who inhabit the seaboard corridor running from Washington to Boston. If any of the three strolled uninvited into a cocktail party in Georgetown, Cambridge or New Haven, the hostess would emit yelps of delight. Yet all three originally got Obama wrong.
"Contrast Buckley, Gergen and Brooks with, let us say, Rush Limbaugh, whose appearance at any chic cocktail party would cause the hostess to faint dead away, or with Thomas Sowell, who occupies probably the most unfashionable position in the country, that of a black conservative. Limbaugh and Sowell both got Obama right from the very get-go. 'Just what evidence do you have,' Sowell replied when I asked, shortly before the election, whether he considered Obama a centrist, 'that he's anything but a hard-left ideologue?'
"The elite journalists, I repeat, got Obama wrong. The troglodytes got him right. As our national drama continues to unfold, bear that in mind."
(Via Melissa Clouthier.)
UCSD: A catalog of political cartoons by Dr. Seuss
"... for two years, 1941-1943, [Theodor Seuss Geisel] was the chief editorial cartoonist for the New York newspaper PM (1940-1948), and for that journal he drew over 400 editorial cartoons. The Dr. Seuss Collection in the Mandeville Special Collections Library at the University of California, San Diego, contains the original drawings and/or newspaper clippings of all of these cartoons. This website makes these cartoons available to all internet users." (Via Meryl Yourish, who posts a cartoon that's still timely.)
