The Current FReepathon Pays For The Current Quarter's Expenses?
Posted on 08/11/2014 6:11:41 AM PDT by cotton1706
The emerging conventional wisdom that the Tea Party is being vanquished by the GOP establishment, based solely on the fact they are beating primary challengers, is exceedingly myopic. If you believe that, you have a very superficial view of what constitutes “winning.” These primaries are forcing the allegedly mainstream candidates to move far to the right and the performance of the past few years proves that when this happens the Party stays far right as a result of this threat. Primaries can be very effective tools if used properly — and if they are backed up by money and influence, which the far right certainly is, they are formidable instruments of discipline.
Ed Kilgore did an excellent survey of these so-called victories for the voices of reason at Talking Points Memo earlier this week:
snip
The right is organized, both philosophically and institutionally as an enemy of New Deal liberalism.
snip
Right now there is little reason for the Republicans to stop doing what they’re doing. They are getting much of their agenda enacted simply by doing nothing. (In fact doing nothing is their agenda.) But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some new twists to their old story.
snip
I do worry that the still-emerging ideology of “constitutional conservatism” is something new and dangerous, at least in its growing respectability. It’s always been there in the background, among the Birchers and in the Christian Right, and as as emotional and intellectual force within Movement Conservatism. It basically holds that a governing model of strictly limited (domestic) government that is at the same time devoted to the preservation of “traditional culture” is the only legitimate governing model for this country, now and forever, via the divinely inspired agency of the Founders.
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
Interesting that they think that limiting power under a written constitution and the checks and balance of republican government are somehow inconsistent with civil liberties and problem solving. But unelected and permanent bureaucrats making decisions for all of us "for our own good" is perfectly fine.
But this is what we are up against.
The left is washington is ISIS on the Potomac.
isolate / polarize - same old playbook
So, if a Constitutional Conservative is a “horrifying cousin”, the Constitution itself must be a pretty scary document to them.
Actually, the article is fairly calm and reasoned (although it does get a few digs in) compared to the usual over the top nutburger rhetoric we’ve come to expect from Salon.
They refuse to acknowledge the lessons of history. eg. that socialism and communism do not work, at all, at creating happy and prosperous societies. Or that any power given to a government will, that is will not may, be abused by the people in that government to the detriment of the citizens.
They refuse to acknowledge the reality of the present. eg. the claim In fact doing nothing is their agenda. I invite the author to research the current Congress and note the literal hundreds of bills passed by the GOP controlled House that are blocked by a do-nothing Dem controlled Senate. Yes, 300+ bills just being stonewalled by Reid. When did he appoint himself ruler?
“So, if a Constitutional Conservative is a “horrifying cousin”, the Constitution itself must be a pretty scary document to them.”
Exactly. They don’t like that a “parchment document” restrains them from doing “what needs to be done.”
But they never stop to read the document to think through what not adhering to it means. Can trial by jury be just thrown out the window for example? Can a president serve for life if he/she wants to? Can a senator serve for 8 year terms instead of six, or for life?
The whole reason we write things down is to thwart the consolidation of arbitrary power. But these people apparently never read any history.
What petrifies them is anybody today following right-wing terrorist revolutionaries like James Madison, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, Washington, et-al.
OH THE HORROR!!!!
Because what we REALLY need is an outright-communist state that provides for every need, and rejects normal culture (like gender roles), because it was the result of LSD trips by the founding fathers.
To support Constitutional governance is “to move far to the right?”
What a ridiculous statement!
The Current FReepathon Pays For The Current Quarter's Expenses?
I love this! We’re supposed to quake in our shoes over the prospect of an ideology that respects the visions of our Founders, but we’re also encouraged to embrace movements that have resulted in mass murder, starvation, and oppression wherever they’ve been tried in the last 150 years.
Fear Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Henry but celebrate Stalin, Mao, Che, Castro, Pol Pot ...
Uh huh.
LOL She gets it exactly right but says it like its a bad thing.
The hare salon pontificates..
If they are unhappy and afraid, then I am happy. Furthermore, we should keep doing the same...pushing back against the poisonous, alien ideology of Leftism.
You know you are doing something right when people on the other side start becoming unhinged. Exhibit#1 is Nancy Pelosi. Of course, she was always off a bit, but lately she’s taken a dive off the deep end.
The “still emerging”, “growing in respectability” ideology of Constitutional Conservatism used to go by a different name:
Classical Liberalism.
Note what the writer is doing here: taking the operational governing philosophy of the country for it’s first 150 years or so and positioning it as radical. So as to obscure the radicalism of “Modern Liberalism” ...
http://www.salon.com/writer/heather_digby_parton/
A look at the title of articles she has written leaves no doubt which side of the war this gal is on.
Which part contains reason? All I got was hyperbole, straw men, extreme conjecture and misrepresentation from the author and her sources.
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