Comments Posted By Peter Principle
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GLENN BECK AND THE RADICAL RIGHT
If you can take the long view, what's happening on the conservative right looks like a predictable cyclical pattern in American politics -- in which an elite (or at least, intellectually grounded) movement rises to power by attracting mass support, only to grow increasingly out of touch with the populist "fringe" elements it has attracted to the cause.
Fifty years ago, the mandarins of the old New Deal left had to deal with the more radical civil rights and New Left activists who challenged their control of the Democratic Party. Before that, the old Wilsonian Democrats of the Progressive Era were challenged by the urban machines and the unions, who emerged as the big winners in the New Deal. Before that, the agrarian Populists took on the McKinley-Hanna Republicans, and before THAT, the Whig elites who created the GOP to contend with the nativist Know Nothings.
Now Rick Moran is discovering, much to his horror, that his elite reactionary ideology -- the conservatism of Russell Kirk and William F. Buckley -- has mutated into a populist movement, with all the carny sideshow theatrics and conspiratorial paranoia that American populist movements have traditionally fostered.
Not to worry: If past is prologue, the elites will eventually regain control, after the movement has been in the political wilderness long enough.
The real story is going to be on the left, as the same dynamic begins to generate friction between the Clintonite and Obamanian Democratic establishment and the less domesticated liberal "netroots".
For conservatives, this should be a source of some encouragement, not to mention entertainment.
Comment Posted By Peter Principle On 12.04.2009 @ 20:01
TIME TO FORGET MCCAIN AND FIGHT FOR THE FILIBUSTER IN THE SENATE
Joe the Pumber is your miracle weapon???
Oy vey, you guys really are hopeless.
Comment Posted By Peter Principle On 17.10.2008 @ 00:41
IF ELECTED, OBAMA WILL BE MY PRESIDENT
"if Obama wins, I plan on giving him as much of a chance as the Democrats gave George Bush. I will gleefully forward every paranoid anti-Obama rumor that I see, along with YouTube footage of his verbal missteps. I will laugh and email heinous anti-Obama photoshop jobs, and maybe even learn photoshop myself to create some. I’ll buy anti-Obama books, and maybe even a “Not My President” t-shirt."
In other words, he'll treat Obama exactly as the conservatives (a.k.a. the "Hillary killed Vince Foster and stuffed his body in an Arlington safe house" crowd) treated Clinton.
And this would be surprising how?
If you guys were real conservatives, instead of wacked out right-wing populists, you might have reflected on that "as you reap, so shall you sow" line.
But then, you all have never been very big on introspection.
Comment Posted By Peter Principle On 14.10.2008 @ 19:36
