Huh. And here I thought the Rockefeller Republicans had all moved into an undisclosed bunker underneath Kennebunkport.

You always teach me new things, Mssr. Tbogg.

Like the Andrew Sullivans of the world, conservatives take years to figure out that shit they thought was great is actually toxic, perverted and iniquitous. During that time however, they have a gay old time sneering, snarling, accusing, deriding, screaming hysterically and impugning the character of anyone who disagrees with them.
David Klinghoffer and his ilk…(insert your own dreadful revenge fantasy here)

I choose conservatism. It’s a no-brainer.

For once I’ll agree w/ DD.

(When the hell was he “kind of a levelheaded conservative”? Guess people paid absolutely no attention to him then, as opposed to now, when he is a vague blip on the idiot detector screen.)

I choose conservatism. It’s a no-brainer.

MBouffant, I was going to point this out but you beat me to it. Unwittingly revealing the truth … sheesh.

race-baiter, TBogg

Are teabaggers a race?

It’s as though Ted Bundy or Gary Heidnik or Charles Manson woke up next to a coupla of their bloody, tore up victims and said “Geez, who the fuck did this?”

The bad news: Conservatives will always fall back on the cop-out that true conservatism has never been tried anywhere.

The good news: Despite fielding the same claim, communism eventually did go out of business.

For example, is it crazy to call Sarah Palin the grifta from Wasilla? I think she is (but on an intellectual level).

Also.

I choose conservatism. It’s a no-brainer.

A hanging curveball right over the plate, obligingly driven out of the park …

The whole idea that conservatism only just recently went bonkers and stupid is debunked quite neatly in a passage from this 1998 piece by noted author Samuel R. Delany. Here he mentions, in passing, that even conservative authors like Bob Heinlein preferred the intellectual company of lefties to their righty co-religionists:

…Understand that, since the late ’30s, that community, that world had been largely Jewish, highly liberal, and with notable exceptions leaned well to the left. Even its right-wing mavens, Robert Heinlein or Poul Anderson (or, indeed, Campbell), would have far preferred to go to a leftist party and have a friendly argument with some smart socialists than actually to hang out with the right-wing and libertarian organizations which they may well have supported in principal and, in Heinlein’s case, with donations.

The main difference between now and then? The really crazy Father Coughlin types, people who since the overthrow of Tailgunner Joe had been banished to society’s margins, organized and got massive cash infusions thanks to people like former Nixon cabinet head Bill Simon, who went on to control the Olin Foundation.

And as VA points out at Thers’ blog Whiskey Fire, the D.W. Griffith love letter to the Klan, Birth of a Nation, revolves around a mythical plot of evil black people to take over the country with vote scams almost identical to those that would be falsely alleged by conservatives against ACORN.

Oh, and that reminds me: How come most of the conservatives who praise the virtues of conservative places almost all prefer to live in liberal big cities like New York? Why doesn’t Allan Greenspan bring his trophy wife Andrea Mitchell down to Alabama to live near Lew Rockwell and his Mises Institute?

Ahhh, Davey ‘the Repentant’ Klinghoffer. His closing statement:

When I became a conservative, that is what I signed up for: a profound vision granting transcendent significance to public life and hope in private life. The goal wasn’t to defeat Democratic officeholders or humiliate left-wing activists. It was, and still is, with those who remember, to save civilization.

Save civilization? So, Davey is sort of a modern day Jesus? If as a born-again orthodox Jew he believed in that sort of thing, of course. Funny, I always thought the goal of the true conservative was to inherit money, pay no taxes on it, and then light Cuban cigars with the burning, uncashed welfare checks of the darkies. My bad. At least he is taking down the great unintellectual unwashed on the right.

But wait, what’s this at the bottom?

David Klinghoffer is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute

So if the serious, cool-cons are at the Discovery “Burn the Witches!” Institute? Where are the crazy-cons found? How many stairs into Mom’s basement/Stupid Hell do I have to decend anyway?

Actually, the GOOD news is that true conservatism has never been tried anywhere.

As usual, the commenters (in this case to Bainbridge’s piece) reveal the true state of Rightwingnuttia (forget “conservative” vs. “Republican,” we’re talking wingnuts all the way down). One takes offense at the “poorly educated” description of Palin, as an elitist attack on public schools (no, it’s a comment on her ignorance, moron). Some declare Tancredo irrelevant, others say he’s right that Obama is the greatest menace evah! Savage and Beck and Limbaugh are variously defended, or purged, singularly or severally. And overall the response is, “You elitist, liberal-associating, fucktard, go away! Neener! Neener!”

A mash-up of the contradictory, mindless wingnut talking points, coated with a heavy cream sauce of “Fuck you if you don’t support everything in Rightwingnuttia!” Charming.

Soon, David Frum will be Bainbridge’s only friend.

Anyone who thinks that Obama is a socialist is not an intellectual. That person, in fact, is quite stupid.

I have to agree that accusing Donald Douglas of ever being “level headed” is grossly unfair. I also second the chorus above in applauding the honest revelation that conservatism is a no brainer. Got to wonder about that “racebaiter” comment, however. Is he perhaps referring to NASCAR or perhaps the yacht races? The mind, she boggles (or perhaps TBoggles).

Not to mention totally delusional.

Bainbridge also moans about “mouth-foaming, spittle-blasting, rabble-rousing talk radio” including . . . Hugh Hewitt (?!). (Really? When is the last time Bainbridge was on Hewitt’s show?)

Yeah, because if you haven’t BEEN on Hewitt’s show, you can’t possibly know what Hewitt is about. What, you think he, like, BROADCASTS his show so that other people can hear it?

P.W., your comment gave me a little inspiration.

These “intellectual” conservatives don’t want to live in the world they call for. They want to live in a vaguely liberal world, playing the role of conservatives. It’s their ongoing fantasy. We know this, of course–as soon as I write it, I think, Duh. But the image of Heinlein (whom, as a good 14 year old reader, I revered) enjoying himself Being The Conservative/Libertarian among “socialists,” brought it home from another direction.

The Bush years turned them into the dog who finally catches the bus: see what happened? Now they return to a fantasy life, of which the ultimate avatar is Palin, a transparently idiotic provincial liar, whom they pretend is a “leader.”

We say “they’re crazy,” and they are. But real crazy people are tormented. These clowns LIKE it. They all agree to reinforce and validate each other’s lunacy and everyone has a fine time, makes money, goes home, acts out their sexual fantasies, and thanks God no one will REALLY end Social Security or Medicare, lest they be forced to deal with that bus they impulsively caught.

I gotta agree with you, those comment show that they don’t reserve their derision, scorn, hatred for us poor little progressives.

the devolution of the conservative mind

Nothing new there:

I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.

John Stuart Mill, letter to the Conservative MP, Sir John Pakington (March, 1866)

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRmill.htm

Your last paragraph is chillingly insightful.

Robert Heinlein worked on Upton Sinclair’s gubernatorial run in CA in 1934, the EPIC (End Poverty in CA) campaign. Sinclair won the Democratic primary and ran as a Democrat, although without support from the national committee because of his Socialist history and ideas. Heinlein reportedly worked long and hard on the campaign writing articles and doing PR work, at least that’s what I gather from all I’ve read. It would be interesting to know what changed his politics or if his politics actually changed all that much from that time.

He essentially took the opposite ideological route from Sinclair. Sinclair started out a rabid right-winger whose conscience and brains turned him into a Socialist; Heinlein apparently emulated Ronald Reagan in that he took a swing to the hard right after divorcing one spouse and marrying a new one. But he still preferred hanging out with lefties to righties, unlike Ronnie.

I choose conservatism. It’s a no-brainer.

That’s the only way any sane person could choose it.

Douglas: “And as a party out of power, the most strident voices at the base are going to get a lot of play, especially when new media is driving most of the key political memes.” — gee, that sounds familiar; why, it’s almost exactly what happened with the Democrats in ’07 and ’08 when The Black One was annointed Savior-to-be by the unwashed masses, and he spent many months on the campaign trail pretending to listen to the grassroots who were about to (and badly needed in order to) get him elected. Oh, the things we discussed: single payer health care, an end to Iraq & Afghanistan, transparency in government — you name it. Change, yo. Hope, even. And then, once the party faithful and Beltway Insiders were comfy and set on their hard-won thrones, the grassroots and their “important” issues got the big middle finger — because it was never really about them or their issues.

You gotta wonder if Mr. Douglas and his fellow travelers sitting sullenly in the back of the GOP bus with their “we’re not with Stupid, Stupid” t-shirts of moral superiority realize that once the Republican power brokers are back in command, the tea baggers and the rest of the “K-K-Konservative, not Republican, if you please” posse will be ignored like the naive idealists they are?

Buckley’s National Review, where I was the literary editor through the 1990s, remains as vital and interesting as ever.

Agreed, if by “ever” you mean it never had any vitality or interest to anyone other than plutocrats and genteel racists.

Talk about race-baiting – Buckley invented the concept, with his editorials in the 50′s about how black folks just weren’t ready for democracy, and had to be ruled by their smarter white neighbors. And his progeny like John Derbyshire and Andrew McCarthy have continued that noble tradition.

With worthies like Michael Barone, Rich Lowry and Charles Krauthammer writing bullshit on a regular basis there, Jonah Goldberg and K-Lo are just icing on the intellectually-bankrupt cake.

So is a vaporoid an android made of vapor or an android that goes around vaporizing things?

You know, I much prefer having people like us pissed off that a Democratic President is doing a lousy job of doing all the things we want him to do to having the teabaggers pissed off at a Republican President not being rabidly right-wing enough. Bush II may not have been a “true conservative,” but he still did enough damage that will take years, if not decades to undo it all.

Where Obama and Democrats have really fallen short is their inability to appreciate that creating a large, permanent hobo class of unemployed and unemployable adults is actually a huge fucking problem that needs to dealt with like, yesterday. Letting people like Geithner, Summers and Bernanke dictate policy has been a huge fucking disaster, and one that the Democratic Party will be rewarded for with loss of control of one or both houses of Congress in the fall. Happy days!

That’s an interesting perspective, but I think that many are actually tormented, or maybe just plain miserable. Pissed off all the time. At us.

Some are crazy (Pam Gellar & Michelle Malkin), some are dumb (Jonah & the rest at NRO), and some are charlatans (Limbaugh & Hannity), and some are all three (Beck).

“I choose conservatism. It’s a no-brainer.”

Truer words were never spooked.

Hey, where’s that dante dude to scold Mr Douglas for not addressing any of your points?

Well, how about France before the Revolution? Power carefully cuddled in the hands of the Best People… no welfare, no nanny state, no gummint interference with what the Best People did with their property… true, it didn’t do to get on the wrong side of the Bourbons, and a certain amount of bowing and bumlicking to the King was de rigeur, but every embedded silver spoon has its little clouds.

(I may be influenced by watching the great old movie of Tale of Two Cities the other day.)

Not long before he died Bill Buckley was asked about the failure of his conservative movement and what would replace it, he replied that Socialism could attract people because of those failures.

We should look to our neighbors, south of the border, for examples.

PW, you sure sound like you know your SF culture history! Like Mr. Wonderful, I read Heinlein faithfully as a kid and into my late teens (along with many others of the Golden Age authors). It was RH’s support of the Vietnam War that clued me into his conservatism. Viewing his stuff a bit later thru eyes that had been de-scaled by re-awakening feminism, I realized that he was, and always had been, deeply sexist. In this he was scarcely unique among serious SF authors (James Blish being another example) – but it doesn’t surprise me that his political about-face took place after a bad divorce.

I think if we only knew, we’d find that a lot of the adult “conversions” we hear so much about from professional wingers were all tangled up with intimate downers in their personal/sex lives.

Ooo, there goes my invitation to the next do at Versailles. I misspelled de rigueur.

I found Heinlein somewhat later, when I needed reading material for cross-country plane trips. My high school introduction to science fiction was reading “1984″, “Brave New World”, and “Childhood’s End” in the course of six weeks or so during one summer.

I remember thinking “Why hasn’t this been made into a movie?” all though the first half of “Stranger in a Strange Land” and then thinking “Well, there’s that.” all though the second half.

there goes my invitation to the next do at Versailles

That’s OK. The parties at Versailles haven’t been anything to write home about lately. Certainly nothing to lose your head over.

In spite of disagreeing with practically every political idea he ever wrote about, including his rather Victorian ideas about women, I’m still a Heinlein fan. He was a class act in many ways … not least in supporting Philip K. Dick with both money and recommendations to editors in spite of their philosophical & political differences.

It’s that ol’ “No True Scotsman” thing in action, isn’t it?

Because you can’t whine about how the media is ignoring you if there isn’t any media to ignore you (if by “media” you mean the Montgomery Advertiser). Plus they’ll be jabbering away about politics at football fans (like there’s anything else in Alabama).