The Other McCain

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

The Brooks/Parker Cage Match

Posted on | February 10, 2013 | 19 Comments

by Smitty

I don’t run around wishing mayhem on people, but I bet a cage match between Star Parker and David Brooks would sell some tickets. Brooks begins an interesting exchange beginning around 9:00:

(emphasis mine):

There’s been a lot of calls for Republicans to change. And we have seen that from everybody to Paul Ryan to Marco Rubio. Now we’re beginning to see the donor class really begin to change. There is some question, are they trying to change just the candidates, so they don’t get Todd Akin, or they trying to actually change some of the substance?
And, so far , it seems to be just the candidates. One of the interesting things — and I can’t say I know the answer to this — is, how much will the Tea Party fight back? There has been some effort that they are saying, oh, the establishment is taking over.
But my own sense of things so far is that there is not the will to fight among the Tea Party and that a lot of people in the Tea Party are, frankly — they’re not — they are also Republicans. And a lot of — say, Rush Limbaugh, for example, who is not Tea Party, he’s more an establishment Republican who wants the Republican Party to win.
So I have a feeling that the establishment is going to have maybe an easier time of it than some might think.

Star Parker takes completely the opposite tack (emphasis still mine):

Karl Rove would like to weed out candidates like former Missouri Rep. Todd Akin. Akin, who was defeated by Democrat incumbent Claire McCaskill in the Senate race in Missouri, was a six-term Republican congressman with a flawless conservative record. For most of 2012 he was ahead of McCaskill in the polls. Then, in August, he expressed himself poorly in an interview about abortion. Despite his apologies and efforts to clarify himself, his own party abandoned him.
McCaskill ran ads, over and over, showing Mitt Romney questioning Akin’s qualifications. This race could have been saved. But the party elite wasted not a second to dump Akin because they were not comfortable with his conservative values to begin with.
We’re living in a deeply troubled country today. Americans are looking for answers, not a political class feathering its own nest. There are tens of millions of conservative American patriots who seek an opposition party to represent their conviction that America will not get back on the path to strength and prosperity without restoration of freedom, limited government, free markets and traditional values.
Today’s big question is whether the Republican Party is going to be that opposition party. If not, it is not conservative values and convictions that will be abandoned. It will be the Republican Party.

My thought is that the GOP heads view the Tea Parties as sort of a warmed-over collection of malcontents, a la Perot voters in 1992 (and I was one) who can be gently herded back into the fold. Flock you, GOP: we’re not sheep!

The technology has shifted to the point that the GOP elite commitment to Progress in lieu of limited government is painful, obvious, and not being tolerated at the polls, 2008 and 2012 mean much. Hint to GOP elite: if you want to go for a three-loss trifecta, all you have to do is heed Karl Rove and run Jeb Bush.

Bookmark and Share
Category: GOP

Comments

  • Coulter76

    What did Akin and Mourdock in was their bat sh!t crazy SoCon ideas. It wasn’t insider Party Elites that did them in, and besides, I though the TruCons don’t need “Establishment” help. So which is it? Now they can’t win without the Karl Roves?

    Regardless, the “rape” exception is now mandatory on the position of abortion, the SoCons that still want to peddle that nonsense about the blessings of rape babies are going to have to find a new line of work. Perhaps they can start yelling at people on street corners about how the End is Near.

  • Garym

    Brooks, as usual, mis-represents Limbaugh’s position. Rush has stated, since the 2010 election, that the establishment needs to change and stop being democrat lite.

  • http://twitter.com/largebill68 William Keane

    Where do you get the idea that a so-called “Rape exception” is mandatory? Many otherwise pro-life people have foolishly taken that stance believing it makes them seem compassionate. Wrong! It just makes them seem stupid and inconsistent. If a child conceived by rape can be murdered then what is the basis for opposing the murder of other children? The sanctity of life? Hardly can make that argument if you also say “You can kill a kid if his mom says the dad is a rapist.” Any weak politician who makes an exception is really not pro-life but rather a political opportunist seeking to take a position palatable to most voters and is no better than the scum who say “I’m personally opposed, but . . . it should be safe, legal but rare.”

  • JeffWeimer

    One feels for the woman raped, as she is an innocent. However, the baby is an innocent as well, however non-innocently conceived. Should he or she pay the ultimate price even as the miscreant doesn’t? That’s a hard question to answer.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    THIS.

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    That’s just Chauncey Gardiner Brooks trying to sow division amongst conservatives [how Marxist of him, eh?].

  • Garym

    But, but, but …….. he’s THE conservative, for the paper of record.

  • http://boogieforward.us/ K-Bob

    Spot on, Smitty.

    Although there’s some folks who think Rubio is a stalking horse for Jeb Bush, and others think it’s Rubio who represents the Cotton Conservatives, either way it seems we are akready seeing the elites in both parties preparing to shove the Clinton vs. Rubio matchup down our throats in 2016.

    Yeah, that always works.

  • http://boogieforward.us/ K-Bob

    Hey, I know, let’s open some can of worms rather than figuring out how to restore the Constitution!

    What a fabulous concept!

  • G Joubert

    If you want to go for a three-loss trifecta, all you have to do is heed Karl Rove and run Jeb Bush

    The damage done to the Republican brand by the Bush administration cannot be overstated.

    Of course Bush’s unconservative policies in many areas are not defendable. Steele tariffs, Medicare Part D, immigration, to name a few. He was NOT conservative in many ways.

    That said, a huge part of the damage was self-inflicted by Bush’s silence and refusal to defend his policies in the face of an ongoing organized onslaught of over-the-top accusations (Bush Derangement Syndrome). Rove was Bush’s political adviser, and it seems like it was done on his advice. Now the brand is so tarnished nobody wants to be associated with the Republican Party anymore.

    Rove is a legend in his own mind. His way of slicing and dicing the electorate and the advice that he gives from that has been all but the destruction of the Republican Party.

  • http://wizbangblog.com/ Adjoran

    You can be opposed to voluntary abortion in all circumstances without being cruel, unfeeling, or stupid.

    The problem with Akin and Mourdock wasn’t the substance of their positions, it was the FACT they were incapable of expressing them in a sane and measured way. In the middle of a political campaign, you need to be aware that whatever you say on ANY issue is subject to being turned against you by the opponent or his supporters.

    In the case of Akin, it is easy enough to blame “the establishment” for not supporting him after he put himself in the national cross-hairs. But remember he won after McCaskill ran ads FOR him, and he wouldn’t have had a chance had Sarah Steelman stayed out of the race. Who urged her to get in it? So whose fault is it?

  • http://twitter.com/largebill68 William Keane

    Steelman was not the problem. She would have won the general election.

  • Garym

    Easily!

  • Wombat_socho

    Karl Rove delenda est!

  • Quartermaster

    Indeed! And Mourdock’s answer was not a problem either. It was measured and sane, contra our resident establishment shill. Mourdock lost because of an unprincipled MSM who, instead of reporting, has become a group of leftist advocates who stand by BAMN to destroy what theynsee as an evil country.

    Akin’s answer was stupid, but the campaign was salvageable. Instead the liberal establishment went BSC and threw Akin, and the Senate seat, to the wolves. Adjoran’s heroes are as much to blame here as Akin himself.

  • Pingback: Larwyn’s Linx: Year of the Political Snake

  • http://alanye.com/ Dai Alanye

    The right of self-defense, one of the most basic human rights, gives a woman moral standing in cases of forceful rape, even against the rapist’s spawn.

    I wonder what kind of man would say to his daughter, “You gotta carry that man’s child to term, no matter how horrifying your experience!”

    That being said, what finished Akin and Mourdock was Republicans (including conservatives) piling on instead of defending them. Same thing, in other words, as happened to Christine O’Donnell and Sharon Angle two years previously. Dems always back their own, short of the most heinous and well-publicized of crimes. Repubs, however, suddenly turn politically correct when one of theirs makes a slip.

  • http://alanye.com/ Dai Alanye

    Remember! The propagandists of the left are capable of distorting any sane and rational statement into something near madness. The only response is to out-propagandize them, stay on the offensive. Once you begin to apologize there is no political hope left.

  • Quartermaster

    Yeppers! Their *tame* conservative (if such a thing can exist and I contend that it’s impossible).

Performance Optimization WordPress Plugins by W3 EDGE