Actually, Broder has a history of spending a lot of time on the hustings on the campaign trail covering various candidates for many decades. He is practically a citizen of Iowa. Yet you are right, he doesn't have a clue about how the conservative mind works and that I find to be the interesting aspect of his column.
It would not be smart to dismiss Broder as someone who was unaware, he is not, he does observe, but clearly he misreads what he sees. Consider for example his recounting of the debate and the exchange between Romney and Huckabee over the immigration issue. Huckabee defended appropriating taxpayer money to place illegal aliens in Arkansas universities thus displacing places which otherwise would've been occupied by legal taxpaying Arkansans. Huckabee's defense as quoted by Broder:
"In all due respect, we're a better country than to punish children for what their parents did. We're a better country than that."
Romney's retort was absolutely brilliant: it's not your money governor, it's theirs.
Romney, perhaps wisely, did not take another line which was available: in our country we do not reward children because their parents have committed crimes. A crime does not lay the predicate for a new right.
Of course, there was yet another line of argument which Romney could have invoked and which he did allude to: the state treasury is a finite resource and when you divert the money to illegal aliens, you deny it to legal citizens. Romney said that but he might also have broadened its application to observe that Huckabee's formula punishes Americans. It is not compassionate, therefore, but discriminatory.
And it is here that Broder misses the whole point. Broder does not see the damage done by misplaced compassion. A typical liberal, he never anticipates the unintended consequences which inevitably blowback from liberals' unquenchable thirst to shape the world to their liking. Are you high minded? Do you want to see all children well educated and prosper in our society? Of course you do, therefore subsidize all their education with taxpayer funds. Do not consider that the funds are finite, and that you are depriving other children of those opportunities. Forget that these children you would subsidize will shove aside bona fide Americans. You ignore the basic rule of human nature which says that if you subsidize these illegal aliens in our midst you will simply generate more of them and do more harm to more Americans. Your compassion is so misplaced that it is positively harmful.
Why does Broder, the so-called dean of American reporters with nearly half a century to his credit on the campaign trail, persist in this folly?
If one accepts that liberalism is essentially an exercise in hubris, that is the imposition upon humanity of your ideas about how to run things through the force of government, then one accepts that liberalism is ad hoc. It's only standard for judging what is good from evil is one's take on the matter, one' s feelings about a new idea. But that's the whole idea of liberalism: to provide the liberal with a platform upon which to play God.
You see this repeatedly in the Broder column. He judges the candidates by their intentions. Indeed, he concludes his column and applauds Huckabee's wish to be, "a better country than that" with his own lofty and well-intentioned echo:
I think we are that better country. And I hope the Republicans agree.
So the Broders of of this world are always looking for the new idea and the new face to present the idea. They loved Franklin Roosevelt who gave them a new deal, John Kennedy who gave them a new frontier and Lyndon Johnson who gave them a great society. And that is why in their very secret yearning, liberal, bursting with compassion, hearts, the Broder's of the world really want Barak Obama. It would just feel so right to have a man of color in the Oval Office. It would be so new.
It seems that liberals have something in common with homosexual fashion designers, both worship the new, both profit from the new, both seek to impose their ideas on society. But liberals can do even more harm to society than homosexuals who at worst normally can only make women look ridiculous.
So when David Broder judges men on their intentions and their compassion, he inevitably misjudges how conservatives see the world. We want real world feedback. Liberals want to feel good and to do good, no matter what the cost to others. So Broder condemns Romney for the smallness of his vision of America-he would deprive aliens of scholarships merely because they are not citizens. Conservatives say that Huckabee would deprive American students of scholarships and flood our universities with new waves of illegals.
If David Broder stays on the campaign trail for another 50 years, he will never get it straight because his problem is not a matter of geography but of discernment.
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