Ross Douthat
Posted on 04/27/2009 6:16:05 PM PDT by GOPGuide
And John McCain’s defeat has been taken as the vindication of this premise.
We tried running the maverick reformer, the argument goes, and look what it got us. What Americans want is real conservatism, not some crypto-liberal imitation.
“Real conservatism,” in this narrative, means a particular strain of right-wingery: a conservatism of supply-side economics and stress positions, uninterested in social policy and dismissive of libertarian qualms about the national-security state. And Dick Cheney happens to be its diamond-hard distillation. The former vice-president kept his distance from the Bush administration’s attempts at domestic reform, and he had little time for the idealistic, religiously infused side of his boss’s policy agenda. He was for tax cuts at home and pre-emptive warfare overseas; anything else he seemed to disdain as sentimentalism.
This is precisely the sort of conservatism that’s ascendant in today’s much-reduced Republican Party, from the talk radio dials to the party’s grassroots. And a Cheney-for-President campaign would have been an instructive test of its political viability.
snip
We need to hear more: What was done and who approved it, and what intelligence we really gleaned from it. Not so that we can prosecute – unless the Democratic Party has taken leave of its senses – but so that we can learn, and pass judgment, and struggle toward consensus.
Here Dick Cheney, prodded by the ironies of history into demanding greater disclosure about programs he once sought to keep completely secret, has an important role to play. He wants to defend his record; let him defend it. And let the country judge.
But better if this debate had happened during the campaign season. And better, perhaps, if Cheney himself had been there to have it out.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
We should all listent to him!
PS: He claims to be a Conservative
Ross Douthat
Ross can shove it.
Cheney would be a better President than McLame and Hussein combined.
“And a Cheney-for-President campaign would have been an instructive test of its political viability.”
Dick Cheney running for President would have been Obama’s and his minions in the medias worst nightmare.
That’s why they selected McCain to run as the sacrificial RINO.
Douthat = doughhead.
Put another way: Cheney is more presidential in the sweat he excretes from his nether regions than Hussein and McLame have in their highest moments of intellectual and moral capacity.
It is like comparing the Taj Mahal with a homeless person’s cardboard shack.
Douthat went to Harvard, and you didn’t so what do YOU know about politics?
/s
Shouldn't the NYT like the fact that he wasn't an evil religious person?
Anyone who calls conservatism “right-wingery” doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about. Madison, Jefferson, Adama, Washington. All those right wingers. That is conservatism.
Douthat is a Republican, seemingly of the Olympia Snowe wing of the party...
Did you know Douthat wrote a book about how the GOP needs to move to the center to win again?
I tell ya, with armchair “strategists” like this, who needs Axelrod.
I don’t know the guy...BUT.....
the conservatives that I know....DO NOT OPPOSE TORTURE
treat them little b#$^&*() better than the way they would treat us....just torture, not death.....
Hey, look, another “enlightened conservative”!
Cheney may be pro-defense and pro-tax cuts (hurrah!) but alas, he is no social conservative. He wants to leave gay marriage up to the states, which means the courts will step into inter-state conflicts and impose homosexual laws on us.
He might say he’s pro-life but like John McCain, he’s not going to fight for it. He makes himself a national laughingstock by unapologetically using the F-word on the Senate floor. What does that teach our children in our foul-mouthed society?
Cheney is right on defense and right on taxes — but no guiding vision and no real moral core.
He looks like a real puddin’ boy.
Cheney/Palin - would’ve made an interesting race.
Cheney happens to believe in the Constitution. That is to what the Constitution did not say, that power belongs to the States. Each States has to decide for themselve what the Same Sex Marraige means. Cheney has no power even as Presdent to decide what the end game is to be in this particular case.
He doesn’t want the Government to decide the Social aspect of the public. Period.
Yeah, so do seminar callers for Rush. And David Brooks, and Peggy Noo.... nevermind.
First, Cheney would have beaten Obama. The low approval ratings are simply MSM spin.
Here Dick Cheney, prodded by the ironies of history into demanding greater disclosure about programs he once sought to keep completely secret, has an important role to play. He wants to defend his record; let him defend it. And let the country judge.
And second, there is no 'irony' here. Just your dropping of context, idiot. The 'demanding greater disclosure about programs he once sought to keep completely secret' is _after the fact_ that part of those secrets were treasonously released by Obama. You see, Douh...Asshat, there is no irony when half the story is released. Go back and check your 'irony' notes in Literature 101.
My first thought when I saw his picture was,”There’s someone who got beat up in grade school.”
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