vomitous spew

[eumaas]

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=M2 ... JiODk3Zjk=

[eumaas]

Does anybody at NR realize the fucking irony of this kind of article appearing in a magazine started by a man notorious for his impenetrable elitist dialect?

[Wolter]

Does Florence King still write for them? Because without her and the Buckleys, I can't imagine wanting to read anything by that lot.

[Bankrobber]

But she has more knowledge about international energy matters — and probably about the advanced weaponry and technologies of surveillance that the U.S. military maintains in Alaska — than Barack Obama.

That is one of the stupidest fucking things I've ever read. The US Army Artillary school is at Fort Sill, Ok....Does that mean our governor Brad Henrey knows anything about 155mm cannon?

when she and Ultron-20/Romney run in the 2012 primary maybe they will finally rip the party apart.

[eumaas]

Some bullshit at the WSJ website:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1225044 ... 08_mostpop

Really we're just looking at tax-and-spend big gov't grounded in the welfare state versus borrow-and-spend big gov't grounded in the warfare state. I mean, shit, there are no small gov't candidates. Even the godman Reagan increased spending and gov't intervention.

Back to the NR: as far as Florence King, I'm pretty sure she still does write for it. But it seems like they've become subsumed into the Republican Party. It's not conservatism any more, it's mostly pure RNC-tailing. Pathetic.

[tepista]

Anyone who wants a president who's "just like us" doesn't mind having an idiot for a president.

[eumaas]

Dug this one up, a piece by King about the same shit in the '96 season:

THE best story about what can happen when a politician tries to flatter the masses comes from England, but fittingly enough the politician was American-born Lady Nancy Astor. Standing for Parliament during a period of personal unhappiness, she visited a women's prison and told the detainees: "You're luckier than I am; you're wanted and I'm not."

The season of "the real people" is upon us, and if the rest of Campaign '96 is anything like the shirt contest we've already seen, Oliver Stone will be forced to quit the movie business and find other work. Not that Campaign '96 won't inspire movies; merely that it won't inspire the wordy, three-hour character studies that Stone likes to make. Conservative politicians are courting the Common Man with such unshaded artlessness that we will have to regress to the silent era and make two-reelers with titles like "The Pickup Truck," "The Gun Show," and "The Tractor Pull," starring Buster Keaton as a beset Republican candidate desperately trying to cultivate a populist image.

Title card: "I love the smell of grease!"

Close-up: chain breaks.

Music: "Ride of the Valkyries."

Something like this almost happened to George Bush in '88 when he lost control of the 18-wheeler he was trying to drive, and again to the GOP senatorial candidates in last month's Virginia primary. John Warner tried to operate a textile loom, only to have the gears seize up. His opponent, Jim Miller, was admiring a pickup truck and chortling, "My Daddy had one just like this!" when the thing took off under him. The gentleman had started his engine without realizing that Miller was patting his mudguards.

The possibility that someone will get killed on the hustings grows daily, as does my hunch that the candidate who has to be removed from a threshing machine with a spoon will be a Republican, because Democrats don't have to run this man-of-the-people obstacle course to deflect charges of being "for the rich."

GOP strategists don't seem to realize that trying to out-lout the proles contradicts what everyone knows about human nature. I should say "used to know" because this kind of knowledge is rooted in home truths, maxims, and adages, which are reactionary by definition and hence suspect in our hyperdemocratic age. These pithy guides to living have been dismissed as "simplistic" -- a condition of pre-bigotry something like HIV -- while the person rash enough to claim that "everyone knows" anything at all is now accused of trafficking in "easy answers."

People who reject the accumulated wisdom of the ages have no way of knowing when they're going about something all wrong. Take, for example, those shining stars of ass-backwardism, the feminists. Blow hot and cold? Keep a man guessing? Play hard-to-get? Certainly not, they huff; such ploys "reinforce stereotypes" and imperil "equal partnerships." Maybe so, but everyone knows they work.

The worst casualty of the New Ignorance is the psychology of class.

Title card: "John Warner spends his time in fancy restaurants having lunch with Barbara Walters instead of cleaning his hunting rifle."

Close-up: eye squints into end of barrel.

Music: "The Vacant Chair."

Jim Miller actually said this during the Virginia primary, which may be why John Warner tried to operate the textile loom. Eager to play the class card, Miller forgot the joker in the populist deck. Psychologists call it "identification with the aggressor" while Nancy Mitford expressed it with, "The masses love a lord," but they mean the same thing: the great unwashed side with the washed.

Bubba doesn't want to have lunch in a fancy restaurant himself because he would feel out of place, but he thinks it's great that John Warner can: "God bless the squire and his relations and keep us in our proper stations."

Earlier generations of politicians could brag about their non-existent log cabins without damaging themselves, but the faux populists of Campaign '96 are stirring the acrid juices of contempt. The difference is television, which takes us close enough to see their pleading eyes. Miller's, like Lamar Alexander's, were positively plangent, while Dole's roll around like marbles whenever he feels unsure of himself.

They're starting to look horribly familiar to me, and I know why: they remind me of "poor Lloyd."

Every woman has had a poor Lloyd in her life. He's the adoring suitor she despised, the one who adored her so much that she turned into Mildred in Of Human Bondage. Everything poor Lloyd did got on her nerves, but the more she screamed at him the more he proposed, the more she slapped him the more he apologized, the more she insulted him the more he loved her.

EVERY human interaction contains an unconscious erotic element. Regardless of the age and sex of the parties, despite the unerotic nature of their business, when one party has something the other party wants, a symbolic battle of the sexes is on. If Republicans want to win the blue-collar vote they should stop wooing it so slavishly. They should stay out of pickup trucks, avoid heavy machinery, ignore country music, stop making placating references to their father's overalls, stop talking about "the real people," stop saying "That's what America's all about" every time they see a lunch box, dare to keep all their clothes on, and campaign with the self-assured dignity and air of command that Bubba secretly admires. It might even help close the gender gap; after all, as everyone knows, "Faint heart never won fair lady."

As for my vote, it goes to Laurence Olivier for his remark about serving in World War II: "When I joined the Air Arm I thought, 'How marvelous, now I shall know real people, instead of this froth that I've been living amongst all my life.' My God, give me the froth every time."

COPYRIGHT 1996 National Review, Inc.

[Dr. Medulla]

Does anybody at NR realize the fucking irony of this kind of article appearing in a magazine started by a man notorious for his impenetrable elitist dialect?

I wish I could remember who suggested this theory, but I read one analysis that suggested that the problem can be traced back to the '88 campaign, when the Republicans mocked Dukakis for being a Harvard liberal. This campaign tactic quickly morphed into a general disdain for any kind of intellectualism, culminating in the faux and very crude populism of Bush Jr and Palin. The centre-left's derision of Quayle, I imagine, also became a badge of honour to his supporters. The GOP is not only intellectually bankrupt, they seem to think they've finally achieved nirvana.

[eumaas]

More vomit:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/ ... stacy.html

[Dr. Medulla]

More vomit:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/ ... stacy.html

Conservatism was always a phenomenon of the common people in this country, people who took tradition seriously. It would never have become of interest to the elite but for one figure -- William F. Buckley, Jr.

Holy moly, now there's some nice revisionism.

[eumaas]

More vomit:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/ ... stacy.html

Conservatism was always a phenomenon of the common people in this country, people who took tradition seriously. It would never have become of interest to the elite but for one figure -- William F. Buckley, Jr.

Holy moly, now there's some nice revisionism.

WFB engineered a coherent synthesis that pretty much defined American postwar conservatism, but yeah uh... plenty of conservative elites before that.

[eumaas]

One of the muddle-headed comments:

Anyone who grows in the lap of luxury as I am sure Buckley, the lesser, did cannot be a conservative. The wealthy, or elite as some mistakenly term them ,having never worked for their wealth, cannot understand the meaning of conservatism. The cure for these "elites" would be to strip them of their privleges and make them work for a living as the rest of us must do. Since that cannot happen in a free America, we must wait for the left to do that to the elites when they take absolute power, but ,of course ,that will be too late for the rest of us. The "elites" are stupid and ignorant of the history of leftism (communism). They simply can't concieve that their"friends" whom they support and help gain power would see them simply as useful tools(idiots, as Lennin termed them). These "elites" will only become conservatives finally when their communist friends strip them of their wealth and privleges.

[Dr. Medulla]

One of the muddle-headed comments:

Anyone who grows in the lap of luxury as I am sure Buckley, the lesser, did cannot be a conservative. The wealthy, or elite as some mistakenly term them ,having never worked for their wealth, cannot understand the meaning of conservatism. The cure for these "elites" would be to strip them of their privleges and make them work for a living as the rest of us must do. Since that cannot happen in a free America, we must wait for the left to do that to the elites when they take absolute power, but ,of course ,that will be too late for the rest of us. The "elites" are stupid and ignorant of the history of leftism (communism). They simply can't concieve that their"friends" whom they support and help gain power would see them simply as useful tools(idiots, as Lennin termed them). These "elites" will only become conservatives finally when their communist friends strip them of their wealth and privleges.

Why weren't we hearing this stuff when Bush the Younger was the conservative darling? Hell, if one's background is so important, let's all rally around Obama and Bill Clinton. Desperate tactics in search of a supporting principle.

[eumaas]

One of the muddle-headed comments:

Anyone who grows in the lap of luxury as I am sure Buckley, the lesser, did cannot be a conservative. The wealthy, or elite as some mistakenly term them ,having never worked for their wealth, cannot understand the meaning of conservatism. The cure for these "elites" would be to strip them of their privleges and make them work for a living as the rest of us must do. Since that cannot happen in a free America, we must wait for the left to do that to the elites when they take absolute power, but ,of course ,that will be too late for the rest of us. The "elites" are stupid and ignorant of the history of leftism (communism). They simply can't concieve that their"friends" whom they support and help gain power would see them simply as useful tools(idiots, as Lennin termed them). These "elites" will only become conservatives finally when their communist friends strip them of their wealth and privleges.

Why weren't we hearing this stuff when Bush the Younger was the conservative darling? Hell, if one's background is so important, let's all rally around Obama and Bill Clinton. Desperate tactics in search of a supporting principle.

Bingo. And if the consie intellectuals jump ship, they won't have one--this is now the party of the rabble. I wouldn't be surprised if big business put more money in the Dems now.

[Dr. Medulla]

One of the muddle-headed comments:

Anyone who grows in the lap of luxury as I am sure Buckley, the lesser, did cannot be a conservative. The wealthy, or elite as some mistakenly term them ,having never worked for their wealth, cannot understand the meaning of conservatism. The cure for these "elites" would be to strip them of their privleges and make them work for a living as the rest of us must do. Since that cannot happen in a free America, we must wait for the left to do that to the elites when they take absolute power, but ,of course ,that will be too late for the rest of us. The "elites" are stupid and ignorant of the history of leftism (communism). They simply can't concieve that their"friends" whom they support and help gain power would see them simply as useful tools(idiots, as Lennin termed them). These "elites" will only become conservatives finally when their communist friends strip them of their wealth and privleges.

Why weren't we hearing this stuff when Bush the Younger was the conservative darling? Hell, if one's background is so important, let's all rally around Obama and Bill Clinton. Desperate tactics in search of a supporting principle.

Bingo. And if the consie intellectuals jump ship, they won't have one--this is now the party of the rabble. I wouldn't be surprised if big business put more money in the Dems now.

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, commenters are gleefully awaiting a Republican takeover of Congress in 2010 and the presidency in '12 when Obama overplays his hand. They are completely oblivious to what a mess the GOP is. All three pillars of their awkward tent—right wing evangelicalism, right libertarianism, and Wall Street—are all in various shades of disrepute and intellectual bankruptcy right now, and it'll take more than two or four years for a new coalition to emerge, and even that might not lead to electoral viability for a generation. Christ, the Republicans needed a charismatic war hero who supported the New Deal and a disastrous war in Korea to get back after twenty years. And the Democrats needed the most gifted and magnetic Democrat of his generation, and one who had to basically buy into Reaganism, to break up almost twenty-four straight years (Carter barely won even with Watergate aiding him). I suspect only the conservative intellectuals and Wall Street types realize that the party is going to spend some time in the wilderness. And in that sense, I think you're right that big business will begin to hedge its bets more aggressively with the Democrats. Hell, the near extinct beast, the liberal Republican, might be making a comeback as a vital powerbroker.