The Other McCain

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

Damn You, Josh Barro!

Posted on | June 4, 2013 | 86 Comments

Do I want to defend Erick Erickson? No, I don’t. I used to be OK with Erick until August 2011 when he got the bright idea to load most of the conservative blogosphere onto the Rick Perry bandwagon — like Noah herding llamas onto the Ark — and sent them plummeting into electoral oblivion, only to subsequently claim that he hadn’t actually endorsed Perry. Along the way, the Perry-supporting blog herd convinced themselves that every other candidate in the GOP primary field was unacceptably flawed, repeatedly making the argument that “A Vote for [insert candidate not named Rick Perry here] Is a Vote for Mitt Romney,” the RINO Establishment choice. The denouement of this was that after Perry flopped, all the not-Romney candidates had been tainted, we got stuck with Romney anyway, and Obama won in November in part because a lot of conservatives were so disgruntled over the way the primary campaign played out.

Dude, I lost friends over that shit. But when I see Josh Barro hitting Erick Erickson from the left, I’m like, “Hey, wait a minute, what’s up here?” And so I’m forced to check out Erickson’s column:

Josh Barro is a late twenty-something gay male who hates conservatives, champions Obamacare, attacks Republicans for wanting to oppose it, supports the tax hikes that come with Obamacare, wants to rid the GOP of social conservatives, and gets fawning pieces of prattle composed by liberals who want everyone to know that their friend Josh Barro is a conservative reformer who wants less conservatism. . . .
He left the conservative Manhattan Institute after it became clear he was not a conservative through his support of Obamacare, but uses that connection and being kin to his famous father to segue into not very interesting, slightly shallow “deep think” pieces on conservative reform about which he knows nothing and advocates no such thing. His liberal friends call him conservative because of his prior employer and father and use him as a useful idiot to claim if only Republicans were like him they’d start winning.

OK, a lot of that is ad hominem and a lot of it is populist rabble-rousing, but it does describe not only Barro, but a certain type of soi-disant “intellectual” from whom we always hear a lot of squawking after Republicans lose an election.

Sic semper hoc. This never changes — the Articulate Elite point the finger of blame at the yammering mob of right-wingers as scapegoats for the defeat, while the yammering mob claim they were betrayed by fainthearts and establishment insiders who rigged the game to nominate a weak-kneed RINO who proves that there’s Not a Dime’s Worth of Difference, etc., etc., ad infinitum.

A lot of this is really just the Dougherty Doctrine:

At the end of the day, the arguments all seem to boil down to something similar: If it were more like me, the Republican Party would be better off. It’s failing because it’s like you.

Not all problems of the Republican Party are a matter of substance — of ideology or policy — and a lot of the problems are about process and personalities, of less-than-ideal candidates and tactical blunders and the ever-present headwinds of media bias. The only way to fix the problem is . . . to stop losing elections.

Kinda simple, really, and Republicans are not going to win elections by being Democrats Lite — the “Me Too” Party. Insofar as the argument between Erickson and Barro is about substance, Erickson is right and Barro is wrong. Republicans can’t defeat Demo0crats by agreeing with Democrats, and why should they agree with Democrats, when Democrats are always 100% wrong about everything?

That’s the attitude necessary to victory, a core belief that whatever Democrats are in favor of is a bad thing for America, because if it was good for America, Democrats would be against it.

Democrats are the Evil Coalition of Liars and Fools, and the job of Republicans is to convince America of this basic truth.

And calling Erick Erickson “derpy” ain’t getting the job done.

Now shut the hell up, kid, before you make me agree with Erick again.

 

Category: Intellectuals

Comments

86 Responses to “Damn You, Josh Barro!”

  1. Love this from RSM | God's Own Crunk
    June 4th, 2013 @ 8:18 pm

    […] via Damn You, Josh Barro! : The Other McCain. […]

  2. richard mcenroe
    June 4th, 2013 @ 8:21 pm

    Which proves my point.

  3. truthzone333
    June 4th, 2013 @ 8:49 pm

    If he’s wrong, why are Republicans always losing and the Republican-led Congress has it’s lowest approval rating in history now? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result, but it looks like you Republicans are just fine with being insane. But, I’m sure the Dems aren’t complaining.

  4. Charles G. Hill
    June 4th, 2013 @ 9:03 pm

    Different Derpy, I suspect.

  5. RantMan
    June 4th, 2013 @ 9:49 pm

    Blow me asshole.

  6. Beaglescout
    June 4th, 2013 @ 10:24 pm

    People don’t get turned off by blatant partisanship. They get turned off by candidates who stand for nothing, or who keep emphasizing how they are exactly like their opponent only a little more… something else. Why would anyone vote for a Republican who was exactly like a Democrat when they can get the whole thing with a Democrat? In 2012, Romney would have won if he had as many Republican conservatives voting for him as McCain. He didn’t carry as many of his own party as the candidate who hamstrung his own VP candidate, who thought the media were his best friends, who endorsed Obama in the last debate. Republicans haven’t had a candidate who thought that Democrat ideas were stupid and evil since Reagan, nor have they won a landslide election since then. It’s time for a Republican candidate who believes in conservatism and expresses it clearly.

  7. Beaglescout
    June 4th, 2013 @ 10:28 pm

    Our problem isn’t conservative candidates. It’s the ones who agree with Josh Barro that the GOP should be Democrats-lite who are the problem.

  8. Patrick Carroll
    June 4th, 2013 @ 11:15 pm

    Erickson is also predicting the Democrats will retake Georgia in the near future.

    Maybe he’s one of those “contrarian” types.

  9. Patrick Carroll
    June 4th, 2013 @ 11:18 pm

    I believe you have just lost, sir.

  10. Patrick Carroll
    June 4th, 2013 @ 11:20 pm

    I obviously lack your … culinary … experience, because I’ve never encountered an actual asshole that *could* blow me.

    I expect your “experiences” are more “exotic” than mine.

  11. Patrick Carroll
    June 4th, 2013 @ 11:23 pm

    Well, it works for Democrats.

    They’re defining elections downward. Republicans are going to have to get ahead to win, and then pull us out of this political swan-dive into catastrophe.

  12. Patrick Carroll
    June 4th, 2013 @ 11:25 pm

    Ever notice, though, how carefully he controls calls into his show?

    He has a franchise to protect. He’s simply a carnival barker; no more, no less.

  13. K-Bob
    June 4th, 2013 @ 11:35 pm

    Same here.

  14. K-Bob
    June 4th, 2013 @ 11:39 pm

    “Metrosexual” isn’t sex talk, any more than “man” or “woman” is.

  15. K-Bob
    June 4th, 2013 @ 11:41 pm

    It’s never about ideas, logic or reason with leftists. It has to be some physical characteristic. Pretty obvious why the KKK came from Democrats.

  16. Dave R
    June 5th, 2013 @ 12:11 am

    I just couldn’t stand the whole ‘Romney is inevitable. He must be stopped!’ bipolar insanity in primary season.

  17. ihazconservative
    June 5th, 2013 @ 12:17 am

    It does when you bring up manliness and metrosexuality in response to “Republicans need to get some ideas because you won’t wing by blindly, cravenly opposing Democrats”

  18. skylights
    June 5th, 2013 @ 1:19 am

    Shorter RSM: Forward! Into irrelevance!

  19. Digging the Hole Deeper | Just Above Sunset
    June 5th, 2013 @ 2:50 am

    […] They seem to be digging themselves into a pretty deep hole here, but there’s a plan for that too, one from Robert Stacy McCain: […]

  20. paulzummo
    June 5th, 2013 @ 8:04 am

    Republicans are always losing? You mean other than the majority of House, state legislative and state gubernatorial elections held in recent years?

  21. Bob Belvedere
    June 5th, 2013 @ 8:19 am

    I bought the new book by Diana West, American Betrayal, through you. Can’t wait to dive into it.

  22. Bob Belvedere
    June 5th, 2013 @ 8:21 am

    May I recommend Jeff Goldstein, who runs Protein Wisdom. Like Stacy and Smitty, the man is a damn good observer and thinker.

    http://proteinsidom.com

  23. Buddy
    June 5th, 2013 @ 8:24 am

    Mr. McCain

    You’ve just settled in and doubled down for an America which is totally dysfunctional. For both sides. Totally dysfunctional. If half the country were to insist for ever and all time that the other half is always 100% wrong, then, my friend, we are ALL DOOMED.

    Isn’t this obvious? If so, then what is gained by always insisting that the purist, no-compromise stance must be enforced? Like it or not, we are not blue, or red but ONE.
    If you need absolutes to feel good about yourself go to Church.

  24. Bob Belvedere
    June 5th, 2013 @ 8:27 am

    Exactly.

    We will never get another Ronald Reagan – as with such great men, he was one-of-a-kind – but we can, I think, realistically search for someone who, shall we say, is infused with The Spirit Of Reagan, which is really just The Spirit Of The Founding.

    I see it is Sarah Palin and it’s looking like Ted Cruz may have it as well [too early to tell]. Rand Paul is too Tom Paine / Thomas Jefferson for me.

  25. Bob Belvedere
    June 5th, 2013 @ 8:32 am

    Heh.

  26. The Spirit Of The Raygun | The Camp Of The Saints
    June 5th, 2013 @ 8:56 am

    […] This is just a thought I had this morning while reading the commentary of Stacy McCain’s post: Damn You, Josh Barro! […]

  27. SDN
    June 5th, 2013 @ 9:34 am

    Republican != conservative. See Romney, Mitt.

  28. SDN
    June 5th, 2013 @ 9:44 am

    “Freedom” vs “Slavery on the state collective” seems pretty absolute to me.

  29. K-Bob
    June 5th, 2013 @ 4:38 pm

    Clearly you’ve managed to avoid the testimony given in the various House panels investigating your hero’s anti-American meltdown.

  30. K-Bob
    June 5th, 2013 @ 4:41 pm

    To the left, the control of the Federal government is pretty much everything. Sort of like putting up a monarch over the people, who stands for everything they despise in a man. A perfect recipe for revolution.

  31. K-Bob
    June 5th, 2013 @ 4:43 pm

    Your non sequitur is showing.

  32. ihazconservative
    June 5th, 2013 @ 7:32 pm

    lol – the Democrats who were in the KKK joined the Republican party once the Dems started to fight for black civil rights, but sure, Dems are the party of the KKK, and the Republican “Southern Strategy” was meant to help end racism.

  33. A Death That Has Been Greatly Exaggerated | Paul's Blog
    June 5th, 2013 @ 9:45 pm

    […] the past few months I’ve read a lot of eulogies coming from both the left and right. On the comments to this post from Stacy McCain one individual chimed in […]

  34. K-Bob
    June 5th, 2013 @ 10:00 pm

    Sad. That’s the only thread of desperation the Dems have to hang on to, to try and justify not only the years of racism, but the current plantation they run. It all gets justified based on some stupid notion of a “southern strategy,” which is one single incident in politics that no one agrees about in the first place. (Dems like Al Gore Sr. never even thought of changing parties.) And that flimsy excuse is put up against generations of racism, both overt and institutionalized on the left.

    You can run from it, but you can’t hide it.

  35. Adaptive Politics | Just Above Sunset
    June 6th, 2013 @ 2:59 am

    […] They also have the Tea Party now too, who want their country back. It’s also hard to reason with that, if you assume it’s everyone’s country, and it’s particularly hard to reason with someone like their Robert Stacy McCain: […]

  36. Da Tech Guy On DaRadio Blog » Blog Archive » ….While Gabriel Gomez Makes a Rookie Mistake
    June 17th, 2013 @ 11:22 am

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