The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

It Could Conceivably Be Worse

Posted on | April 14, 2012 | 49 Comments

My post-primary depression has been hard to shake. Not even dancing up and down on Hilary Rosen cheered me up much.

But it could be worse. I could a North Korean rocket scientist.

I mean, think about that: You’re a freaking rocket scientist. But you’re in North Korea, arguably the worst totalitarian nightmare since the reign of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Nevertheless, your rocket-science skills made you one of the most important people in North Korea.

Until your rocket blew up.

Sucks to be you, huh?

As bad as it would be to be a North Korean rocket scientist, it might actually be more humiliating to be a North Carolina Democrat:

Jay Parmley, North Carolina’s Democratic Party executive director, has  been accused of sexual harassment by Adriadn Ortega, a former communications  staffer for the state party, according to a report by the J.W.P. Civitas  Institute.
An email chain The Daily Caller previously  obtained didn’t name the alleged perpetrator or the victim, but confirmed  the existence of the alleged sexual harassment, a financial settlement paid to  the victim and that Parmley and the victim had signed non-disclosure agreements.  Civitas has since reported the names of those involved.
On his Twitter account, Parmley describes himself as an “all around good guy  and a Democrat!”

IYKWIMAITYD.

Anyway, I’m bummed out by the end of the primary campaign, but are we really Doomed Beyond All Hope of Redemption?

Ace of Spades doesn’t think so. He thinks Obama’s failures are so transparently obvious that even Peggy Joseph has probably wised up by now. On the other hand, Ace once believed Rick Perry was going all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, so we should keep that in mind.

What about William Tucker of the American Spectator?

Call me crazy, but I think Mitt Romney has more than an even chance of winning this election against Barack Obama.

OK, then — I’m calling you crazy.

Still, I should look on the bright side: If even smart guys like Ace and William Tucker can convince themselves that Mitt Romney actually has a legit chance at winning in November, then lots of other people probably believe the same thing. So I can write about the general-election campaign pretending that I believe it, too. And then on  Nov. 7, after everybody’s naive dreams of a Romney victory have come crashing down like a North Korean rocket, I can say: “Chumps! Ain’t I done told you so?”

As long as I’ve got something to look forward to . . .

BTW, a belated Happy 59th Birthday to Charles Johnson.

 


Comments

49 Responses to “It Could Conceivably Be Worse”

  1. Adjoran
    April 14th, 2012 @ 4:59 am

    So you seriously thought a guy who couldn’t even qualify for the primary ballots properly would stand a better chance of beating Obama?  Sorry, that’s just delusional. 

    Some of the other Governors might have fared better – Daniels, maybe Palin, Perry if he hadn’t been late and had the back surgery – but after they were clearly out, Romney was the strongest remaining candidate.  Santorum or Gingrich might have fired up the base more, but neither one appeals much to the swing voters who will decide the election.  And the polling has shown this all along (with the occasional anomaly when someone broke out, which always turned out to be temporary).

    Obama never draws 50% in those polls, either, even the ones where he led.  Job approval, handling of the economy, right track/wrong track numbers all show an incumbent in deep trouble.  America has already decided Obama doesn’t deserve reelection on his record; his only chance is to attack whoever is the nominee.

    All they can attack Romney on is his success, his religion, and how he took his dog on vacation 30 years ago.  If he can’t beat Obama, it’s rather silly to believe anyone else in this year’s field could.

  2. Dave
    April 14th, 2012 @ 5:06 am

    The point is not that Romney could win in November.  That was NEVER the point.  

    The election is a referendum on Obama’s handling of the economy, and thus, our best opportunity to elect a real live movement conservative.  Instead we got the establishment’s next-in-line guy.  Woop-de-skip.

  3. Pathfinder's wife
    April 14th, 2012 @ 8:17 am

    Even if Romney wins, America loses.  It’s just a matter of degree — or as Dave said: woop-de-skip.

    Wow, all the Dems can attack Romney on are the things that are not just like Obama.  I don’t think some people understand the full implications there.

  4. smitty
    April 14th, 2012 @ 8:32 am

    As gently as I can rebuke this, America’s already lost. The recovery depends upon the citizens. Excess focus on any elected official is a distraction.

  5. Pathfinder's wife
    April 14th, 2012 @ 8:45 am

    Well, yeah, but the very act of going through the motions of “well, Romney could win” (like that’s some big victory) is in a sense playing along with the idea that we aren’t [already lost].

    I suppose it gives a person something to talk about, but that’s about it.  It’s discussing the events in the circus while trying to ignore that the bread is getting in mighty short supply (and forget about any freedom or liberty stuff).

    Eh, might as well play along.

  6. Adobe_Walls
    April 14th, 2012 @ 10:07 am

    As a conservative I condemn the sexist democratic feminists who are sexually harassing their inferiors in NC.

  7. Dave R
    April 14th, 2012 @ 10:18 am

    Mitt ended up the guy most acceptable to the ‘establishment’ this time around. But it wasn’t for lack of effort to stop that. Pawlenty and Perry failed to gain any traction with voters. Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie and Paul Ryan all declined to run despite some very heavy recruiting efforts (some of which did convince Rick Perry to run). John Huntsman for some reason decided to run as a liberal. He ended up the ‘establishment’ choice because no one else in the race was running a serious campaign.

  8. robertstacymccain
    April 14th, 2012 @ 10:25 am

    You seem to have completely missed the point, Adjoran.

    My whole idea of the 2012 campaign, conceived in my mind even before the 2010 mid-terms were over, was this: How to carry forward the populist spirit of the Tea Party movement?

    How do keep up the grassroots conservative fight not merely against the Left, but against the fainthearts, time-servers and hirelines of the Republican Establishment? How to turn the 2012 primary campaign into something akin to the NY-23 Doug Hoffman uprising or the “Not One Red Cent” Rebellion that elected Marco Rubio?

    In that spirit, the qualities of the candidate were a minor consideration in comparison to the ability of his campaign to attract and organize a grassroots movement. Thus I always viewed the candidates and the campaigns much differently than did those who permitted the media to shape their perceptions of the GOP field. While the media coverage dwelled on the front-runners, I was always looking at the underdogs, knowing that if one of them caught fire, it would be despite, and not because, of the pundits and experts.

    Thus, when Herman Cain zoomed up after the Orlando straw poll, he owed nothing to the Karl Roves and other GOP elite power-brokers, and the same was subsequently true of Rick Santorum’s late-building surge in Iowa. Santorum owed his success entirely to the conservative grassroots who had rallied to him as their champion, and not to any party officials or arrogant pundits sitting on a Fox News set in New York or D.C.

    This is what I mean by true populism: If we permit those people — whether you use the phrase “elite” or “Establishment” or “insiders,” makes no difference — to be the Deciders, then elected officials will owe their offices to them, and not to us.

    The elite/Establishment/insiders (as I say, call them what you will) are forever counseling the politicians their control to trim their sails and “triangulate” leftward, and thus to ignore the interests and ideals of the overwhelming majority of conservative voters to whom any Republican ultimately owes his election. You cannot fight the influence of the GOP elite until you learn to recognize their influence, nor can you contend successful against them if you make too much of a fuss about the choice of candidates behind whom you seek to rally the grassroots. Was Doug Hoffman my beau ideal of a candidate? Was he anyone’s ideal? Of course not: But his shortcomings were his strength. No one could ever suppose that it was Hoffman’s overwhelming charisma that accounted for his success. Rather, what his success showed was the enormous strength of the conservative grassroots. Newt Gingrich’s failure to recognize that aspect of the situation in NY-23 was therefore a very telling indictment of Gingrich’s political judgment: “You have to answer for Santino, Carlo.”

  9. Adobe_Walls
    April 14th, 2012 @ 10:27 am

    Then we are doubly lost,10 to 20 percent of the “citizens” are against us to one degree or another. Of the 20 to 30% who are at least somewhat conservative 1% or less actually understand how bad things are, the arethest in way, think we’re crazy and are afraid we’re going to take away their dildo’s, medicare or food stamps.

  10. Adobe_Walls
    April 14th, 2012 @ 10:57 am

    By any rational metric Obamsky should be beatable, by anybody, so our one chance to elect a true conservative is lost. Of course it’s probably too late anyway and there doesn’t seem to be any rationality to the metrics anymore.

  11. RichG.inIN
    April 14th, 2012 @ 11:53 am

    Stacy,
    You unknowingly (for lack of better words) stole my thunder in your response to the first commenter of what I was thinking as I read your above posted article and then the comments. There are too many either gullible, lazy and/or non noncomprehhensive morons that refuse to think for themselves And do their own research when it come to the electoral process of choosig a political candidate to support and vote for. Apparently they out number those of us who do think for ourselves and comprehend most if not all of what is said and done in governmental political electoral process. There may be no hope left for America and it’s Consttution after the 2012 General Election. Very few people care anymore. It will be too late when these people finally wake up and realize the prophetic words written and spoken in the Bible of the many ways the destruction of not only this Country but this World become a reality.

  12. Evilbloggerlady
    April 14th, 2012 @ 12:00 pm

    You are both right. Stacy needs to quash his inner Tabitha Hale. You go to war with the Mitt you have. Mitt is the underdog…but Obama’s policies are dogs. Mitt has his flaws, but Santorum’s were at least just as bad (and primary voters went with Mitt). I would like to think that Obama is so bad even an establishment GOP second stringer can win and is preferable.

    We should have a fund to send you to Vanauatu after the election.

  13. scarymatt
    April 14th, 2012 @ 12:19 pm

    I think it’s not time for that yet.  The Tea Party, etc, is still too young.  A more promising route is to strengthen it in Congress and state governments first.  2010 was a great year for that.

    But it’s more than just winning a couple of elections.  The other important thing that we saw in 2011 was a shift in the reported narrative, and who was driving it.  

    Tea Party-esque candidates and discourse needs to become the norm, as opposed to all of the Progressive assumptions currently baked into the cake.  Look at how long it took Progressives to get Medicare.

    I just hope we have enough time before nature and economics totally catches up with us.

  14. Pathfinder's wife
    April 14th, 2012 @ 12:33 pm

    Is Mitt Romney, the man who thinks government doesn’t need to get smaller just “smarter”, going to give any of us our liberty back?  Is he going to uphold the Constitution, or consider it a living document that just needs tweaking in a different way?
    Or will he just keep up the status quo under the guise of new and better management?

  15. richard mcenroe
    April 14th, 2012 @ 12:42 pm

     Ann Romney is an impressive woman. So was Dolly Madison. How’d that work out? http://tinyurl.com/6tbdy2s

  16. Quartermaster
    April 14th, 2012 @ 12:49 pm

    The only thing we have time for is to take a meat ax to FedGov so we quit borrowing to throw the money into a rat hole that can never be filled. Romney will not do that, and I think the electorate will sense that he is not different enough to matter when it comes to the comparison with the Kenyan. Tucker is rubber room insane on this. Mittens has as much hope as a man entering the inferno. With Mittens you are voting for someone just as evil as Obama, just in a bit different way.

  17. Quartermaster
    April 14th, 2012 @ 12:51 pm

    Exactly. The men elected are a reflection of the electorate. America lost in 1865 and has been losing ever since.

  18. Bob Belvedere
    April 14th, 2012 @ 1:02 pm

    Adj doesn’t want to understand that the rules of the game have changed.  He’s still thinking like many of us did before 2008.

    This is the time to take togh stands, to stand our ground and never yield.

    WOLVERINES!

  19. Bob Belvedere
    April 14th, 2012 @ 1:04 pm

    It’s sad to watch good and thoughtful men like Mr. Tucker show just how pathetically they are grasping at straws.

  20. Bob Belvedere
    April 14th, 2012 @ 1:05 pm

    All those men you mention, except, perhaps for Rick Perry, are part of The Establishment.

  21. Bob Belvedere
    April 14th, 2012 @ 1:09 pm

    We should start a campaign called ‘Don’t Get Out And Vote’.

    If you stay informed on the issues facing this country, you have a duty to vote; if you don’t you have the equally important duty not to vote [it’s the very least you can do].

  22. Adobe_Walls
    April 14th, 2012 @ 1:18 pm

    I say he’s just going for the status quo.

  23. Pathfinder's wife
    April 14th, 2012 @ 1:23 pm

    Ann Romney appears to be a NICE lady…but I withhold being impressed by anything more than her niceness.
    😉

  24. CPAguy
    April 14th, 2012 @ 1:23 pm

     Rick Perry is part of the establishment…the turncoat, opportunist Democrat variety.

    A sickening abuser of executive privilege and crony capitalism.

  25. CPAguy
    April 14th, 2012 @ 1:24 pm

    ???

  26. McGehee
    April 14th, 2012 @ 1:26 pm

    You go to war with the Mitt you have.

    I’d rather have a rifle, myself.

  27. Pathfinder's wife
    April 14th, 2012 @ 1:34 pm

    Going rogue with that vote is starting to look like an attractive option however.

  28. jackafter6
    April 14th, 2012 @ 1:42 pm

    One more thought to add to all of this…the “Tea Party” is such an ambiguous idea. If I had to define it, I’d define it as the movement to reduce the size, influence, and cost of Government. Mitt Romney’s big government foot won’t fit in that little glass-slipper.

    People will ask in the days to come how it happened that the Tea Party movement was sidetracked to the point where Romney became the Republican nominee. I can illustrate this very simply. The Tea Party was co-opted by establishment Republicans.

    Here in Memphis Tennessee, during the thrilling 2010 elections, it seemed that the new Tea Party was a Cinderella story in the making. This incredibly powerful fiscally conservative force had arrived and the establishment would just have to deal with it.

    So I joined the Memphis Tea Party. Shortly after the successful 2010 elections, an email was circulated to Memphis members. I don’t remember the exact wording, but what it asked us, was to agree that social issues should be a major part of the Memphis Tea Party agenda. I disagreed and commented back my sentiments. It didn’t matter. The Memphis Tea Party steam-rolled along, fully controlled now by the Establishment. As I expected they quickly endorsed Mitt Romney, and frankly there is no difference at all between the Memphis Tea Party and the Republican party. It really is a shame. I think if you look around you’ve probably seen the same thing happened in your neck of the woods.

  29. Pathfinder's wife
    April 14th, 2012 @ 1:58 pm

    Oh, that’s exactly what happened here.  The Tea Party came out of the gate hard and fast, looked promising, then the local GOP machine got its grubby mitts on it…no more local Tea Party chapter.
    The only cold comfort is that the local donks can’t rouse much enthusiasm from their constituents either.  
    Even the Ron Paul guys around here have largely given up too.  Nobody is gung ho for anybody; only the seriously hard core or the ones getting pay-offs from somewhere are doing anything — there are very few of those.

  30. Video: North Korea Admitted Test Missile Fail on State TV | The Lonely Conservative
    April 14th, 2012 @ 2:13 pm

    […] state without total control.Read the whole thing. Here’s the video.Update: Linked by The Other McCain – thanks!Tweetvaso linkTags: failure, Missile Test, North Korea, video This entry was posted […]

  31. Adobe_Walls
    April 14th, 2012 @ 2:22 pm

    The Tea Party suffered (suffers) from a catastrophic lack of a radical agenda.

  32. richard mcenroe
    April 14th, 2012 @ 2:33 pm

     I have intimacy issues.  Gimme back my mortar platoon.

  33. Tennwriter
    April 14th, 2012 @ 2:37 pm

    One of the chief problems with the Tea Party was that it thought of itself as the last word.  There were several iterations of liberty supporting folk, and the Tea Party is merely the latest (the Town Hall movement was one earlier).

    Having a Full Spectrum Conservatism was and is neccessary to have the snake shed its skin, and grow to an even larger size.  But, 1)Fiscons would rather lose than be Conservative.  2)The GOP wanted to co-op things, and it did.

    We need the next iteration beyond the Tea Party, and Cain or Santorum could have helped us do that.  But first the fiscons need to decide: Do you hate tyranny or the socons worse?

  34. Tennwriter
    April 14th, 2012 @ 3:38 pm

    Why bother asking?  The fiscons already answered.  Romney is the next GOP nominee, and its time for Operation Whig because some people can only be persuaded to reason and morality by power, and the next stop after that one, if it fails is the one with grapeshot, and not just a whiff of it either.

  35. Adobe_Walls
    April 14th, 2012 @ 4:07 pm

    A few RPGs or equivalent might come in handy as well.

  36. ThePaganTemple
    April 14th, 2012 @ 5:08 pm

     I can’t fault you for supporting Cain as your first choice, I see your reasoning there as someone looking for an appeal to Tea Party conservatives. But where you messed up was backing Santorum instead of Bachmann when Cain floundered, ESPECIALLY if your purpose was-

    “How to carry forward the populist spirit of the Tea Party movement?”

    Of course its your right to support anybody you damn well please, but looking at things realistically, Santorum is a Tea Party conservative about like Barak Obama is an extreme Far Right Pro-Life evangelical.

    It’s just too damn bad that blasted video of him dissing Protestants who use contraception didn’t come out between Perry’s first two horrible debate performances and the date of the Iowa caucuses. Richard “women should stay barefoot and pregnant and out of the fucking Oval Office” Vigarie and his goons might have swallowed their pride and supported her, then I wouldn’t find myself in the position of having to support Romney.

    But, it is what it is.

  37. ThePaganTemple
    April 14th, 2012 @ 5:45 pm

     I’m starting to wonder if that kind of SocCon hate of the FisCons isn’t what led to the demise of the Tea Party. If so, we deserve another four years of Obama.

  38. SDN
    April 14th, 2012 @ 8:00 pm

     You obviously don’t live in TX, where he’s done just fine.

  39. Ford Prefect
    April 14th, 2012 @ 8:41 pm

    PT, your comment is nonsense.  SoCons don’t mind FisCons at all. In fact, SoCons are also fiscally conservative.  The problem is, FisCons prefer social liberalism over social conservatism.  In this respect, FisCons are SoLibs and therein lies the problem.

  40. Ford Prefect
    April 14th, 2012 @ 8:51 pm

    My suggestion for conservatives, when it comes to Romney, is think strategic.

    We need to make something out of this crap sandwich we were handed by the Establishment.

    We all agree that Romney is an unrepentant RINO. An untrustworthy opportunist who apparently just wants to be president so that he can be the ultimate CEO (much like Clinton just wanted to be president to be Captain Adulterer™).

    We also would have to agree that, for all his faults, Mitt would not actively try to destroy America like the current cypher-in-chief. If anything, Romney may approach a post-Obama America kind of like he approached the Utah Olympics – something to be saved. Oh, he’ll do that by being a “smart” technocrat but he will act the white knight; it’s in his character (what little of it he apparently has).

    So even though many despise the guy, he has the potential to not totally suck. But here’s the thing, he has to be forced to make some conservative campaign promises THAT HE KNOWS HE WILL HAVE TO FULFILL. He knows that GHWB doomed himself by promising “read my lips” and then reneging on that promise. He also knows that GHWB made that promise in order to get re-elected. Despite what Adj said at the top of this thread, swing voters DO NOT decide election, conservatives do.  Without them, no GOP nominee mades it into the WH.  
    People wanted another term of Reagan and GHW Bush knew this. He just was too much of a wimp to follow through on his promise. I think Romney is of mildly stronger stuff than GHWB. He needs to make the promises necessary to get the conservative vote and then he needs to follow through on them or doom his chances for a second term. But if we just let him know in advance that “aw shucks, yeah, we’ll vote for you anyway”, then he has no motivation to do anything more than nominate a conservative running mate.

    So, we need to let Romney know, in no uncertain terms, that we want him to actually make us some “severe” conservative campaign promises that he can’t break lest he become the next GHWB.

    How?

    Every liberty-minded poster in the conservative blogosphere needs to say they won’t vote for Romney unless he makes those promises. None of this “I’ll hate myself but I’ll vote for him anyway” stuff. NO! We just say, “sorry, not gonna do it unless you promise the following:”

    The Romney fans will accuse us of throwing away our vote but to that I say, “au contraire”, we WILL vote for Romney if he promises a conservative agenda. If he doesn’t, then he is metaphorically dead to us.

    The reason this has to happen is that we know that RINOs and their supporters are ignoramuses (ignorami?) and they have to be shaken out of their room temperature IQs long enough to recall a little history.

    When the primaries winnow out the conservative candidates (as they almost always do), the establishment always says, “the grass-roots have no where else to go now – they will have to vote for the establishment candidate”. Of course, they always seem to forget how false this axiom is. That, in the case of Ford, GHWB, Dole, and McCain, enough conservatives ended yo making a choice to NOT vote for the RINO that said RINO got shown the dust-bin of history in the general.

    IOW, the RINO wing of the party (the part that gives the GOP the nickname of the “stupid party”) always forgets that enough conservatives have historically made the choice to NOT vote for the moderate establishment squish to throw the election to the Dems.

    So this time, we just need to remind Romney outright, that he’s the next Dole unless…

  41. ThePaganTemple
    April 14th, 2012 @ 9:30 pm

     Well, I don’t really like lumping all SoCons in one big group, so I’ll amend my statement somewhat. I probably actually agree with them probably as much if not more than I do Fiscons. But actually, its wrong to lump all Fiscons in as one group as well, especially calling them SoLibs.

    In fact, SoCons and FisCons probably agree on more things than not, I see it as a fundamental difference in what constitutes the proper role of the federal government. Where many, though not all, SoCons see the federal government as the proper avenue to enact socially conservative policies (such as Pro-Life), FisCons want government off everybody’s back and out of their bedrooms as well as their wallets. But they also want to protect religious freedoms. They just want to leave such matters up to the individuals, families, communities, and to a point the states. For example, a Fiscon would probably be the last person to demand you take down your Christian Nativity Scene from a public park, and if anything would jump to its defense.

    The gulf, what one there is, seems to me to be one more of priorities than of ideology or belief. If your priority is a return to small government federalist policies and originalist constitutional adherence, then you are probably more of a Fiscon.

  42. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    April 14th, 2012 @ 9:36 pm

    Nope.  Probably not.  But if you want to curtail the President’s power, that is what Congress is for.  Go help elect some good ones to the House and Senate.  

    I am not defending Mitt as great, I am pointing out Obama is really bad.  

  43. ThePaganTemple
    April 14th, 2012 @ 9:38 pm

     I always said the RINOs care more about holding on to their positions of power over the party than they do about winning the presidential election. Even if they knew it would result in their defeat, they’d still support the moderates just because of this fact. As long as they hold on to this power they can parley that into a seat at the table, and from there tax breaks and regulatory relief for their favored contributors (but not their competitors, of course) and maybe even more importantly, government and state contracts.

    That’s why I always said its going to be a long hard slog taking over the party and remaking it in the conservative federalist image. But as long as FisCons and SoCons continue to tear at each others throats its never going to happen. And the Tea Party, which should rightfully have been the start of a long but determined process, will end up being just a flash in the pan.

  44. Pathfinder's wife
    April 14th, 2012 @ 11:45 pm

    Love the thought; it’s a good one.
    One problem: I live in IL (and not in a district that which will be aiming for greatness this election).
    Literally, I have nobody to joyfully vote for except county clerk and the coroner (even the dogcatcher stinks).

  45. Adobe_Walls
    April 15th, 2012 @ 12:49 am

    ” But if you want to curtail the President’s power, that is what Congress is for.”

    That seems to be the problem because I don’t think they know that.

  46. Adobe_Walls
    April 15th, 2012 @ 1:18 am

    Your premise that Romney is a RINO is false. He epitomises the GOP! This is the trap that conservatives habitually fall into. It’s like a woman who marries a man assuming she can change him into an ideal husband. It’s like conservative women thinking they can take the word feminism away from the left. It W.I.L.L. N.O.T. H.A.P.P.E.N.. Neither will making the GOP a conservative party.

  47. ThePaganTemple
    April 15th, 2012 @ 9:19 am

     And it won’t happen because getting conservatives to agree on enough to forge them into a consistent movement is about like trying to herd cats. The Tea Party success is probably going to be a one time thing because SoCons and FisCons can’t deal with each other amicably. Each one has the my way or the highway mindset, which usually translates into “no way”. In the meantime, the moderates just chuckle and wink and keep on making their deals and compromises and wait for it all to blow over, like they did with the Goldwater movement, and like they always do.

    The sad thing is, it wouldn’t be impossible otherwise. Anybody that thinks its impossible for conservatives to become the predominate force of the GOP haven’t been paying attention, and should google the name Michael Harrington. That’s the man who more or less paved the way for the Democrats to be taken over and controlled by the left wing of the party in the late sixties, basically a socialist aligned with the Catholic Worker’s Movement.

    So it can be done, its just not easy. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it takes time and hard work and determination. Its not going to drop into our laps from on high.

  48. Adobe_Walls
    April 15th, 2012 @ 12:00 pm

    Poppy cock. An interesting theory but false as I understand it. If I read you correctly you are asserting that if the democratic party could be taken over by the left with people like Harrington leading the charge then the GOP can be taken over by conservatives lead by for example a Demint or a Bachmann.
    Here is the flaw in your concept. The democratic party had to go in the direction it did, if not Harrington and he was by no means alone, someone else would be remembered as instrumental in taking the democrats in a direction that they couldn’t not go in. Once the party became left of center the trajectory was set. When I state that there is no fundamental difference between Gene McCarthy or Ted Kennedy and Pol Pot that’s not hyperbole that all leftists are merely different points on an arc descending into serfdom and darkness that is because that trajectory is inexorable. In short the Democratic Party had to follow the path it did, it had and has no choice in the matter what so ever. Until and unless the Dem party is destroyed utterly as a relevant force in our political, cultural, social and economic lives there MUST be killing fields in the end.
    While your hypothesis that the GOP could be taken over by conservatives given enough time the example of the constantly leftward direction of the Dems in no way supports that theory.

  49. Narrative Arc: Second-Guessing Palin, Santorum’s Story and Romney’s Doom : The Other McCain
    April 17th, 2012 @ 1:04 pm

    […] 16: Further Omens of Impending DoomApril 14: It Could Conceivably Be WorseApril 12: The Fox Factor: Newt, Sarah, Mitt, Rick, Bias and ‘The Mother of All Spin-Jobs’April […]