Tag Archives: Conservatism

David Brooks

That’s what she said

David Brooks, Sunday, on the state of the conservative movement:

"World of pain," Brooks said. "A generation of pain. 1964, it was so much better than now. In '64, they had a coherent belief system. They lost, they didn't persuade the American people about it, but they understood where they wanted to take the country.

"Now it's just a circular firing squad, with everybody attacking each other, and no coherent belief system, no leaders. You've got half the party waiting for Sarah Palin to come and rescue them. The other half is waiting for Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana governor, to come rescue them. But no set of beliefs. Really a decayed conservative infrastructure. It's just a world of pain.

And,

He added, "[F]undamentally, the conservative movement failed — and I've been in it my entire life — because it hasn't addressed the problems of today."

Maybe the conservative movement needs new advocates. 

h/t Political Animal.

George Will, Specious allegations of fallacy, Straw Man

Not everyone made it

When I was a kid, I would wander alone through the woods, walk home alone from school (as a kindergartner), and ride a bike without a helmet (among much else).  Wondering aloud once not long ago how anyone ever survived, a friend of mine quipped: not everyone made it. 

On to today's story.  George "The Case for a Man with Little Experience" Will seems rightly dismayed by the idea that a person with such little experience as Sarah Palin might be chosen as a Vice Presidential candidate.  No argument here, though it's mainly her views on everything that bother me.  While complaining, however, that she has no Madisonian intellectual heft, Will displays his:

In his Denver speech, Barack Obama derided the "discredited Republican philosophy" that he caricatured in four words — "you're on your own." Then he promised to "keep . . . our toys safe." Among the four candidates for national office, perhaps only Palin might give a Madisonian answer — one cognizant of the idea that the federal government's powers are limited because they are enumerated — if asked to identify any provision of the Constitution, other than the First Amendment, that imposes meaningful limits on congressional or executive authority to act.

Doesn't seem much of a caricature when you then go on to complain that kids, when it comes to toys imported from another country, commerce of an international kind, you are indeed on your own.  But hey, not everyone makes it.