Conservatism

I got this video clip via Andrew Sullivan via Memeorandum. Two things immediately jump out of this video.

1. What the Southern Avenger says here is in line with what a lot of liberals and progressives have been saying for the last eight years : That people like George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin are extremists and not conservatives at all.

2. Exactly because the argument of this video is that true conservatives are against the war, I find interesting that Andrew Sullivan doesn't waste time to call out the author a paleo-conservative. And yet, if you go to the guys' website ... paleoconservative is the last word to come to my mind.

What do you think?

At least one newspaper in Pennsylvania has decided to cancel Ann Coulter's column and several advertisers, including Verizon, have pulled their advertising from her website.

Michelle Malkin went all prim and proper on Coulter's verbal grenade, because it sullied the forthright image of conservatives; meaning it's going against their meme campaign to paint themselves as morally superior than the foul-mouthed bloggerss they were able to ouster from the Edwards campaign or that yucky liberal pundit Bill Maher.

By the way, some think Ann Marie Cox is a skank compared to Coulter. Then there's Tucker Carlson saying she called him gay once but he didn't cry about it.

Rush Limbaugh and GOsPindrones everywhere have been trying to paint 'faggot' as a synonym of 'wuss' and the applauses Ann Coulter got as a demand within the party for the kind of angry and offensive leadership Ann Coulter portrays. Right-wing bloggers everywhere have been all too fast to stay on message about their moral superiority meme and have gone of the defensive.

I suppose this was to be expected; being unused to defeat and enmeshed in their discredited ideology to the detriment of common sense, conservatives are claiming that the thrashing received by their party and their candidates on Tuesday was actually, somehow, a victory. Karol over at Alarming News opines:

We have work to do but we're already ahead of the curve because we've seen the American people embrace conservative principles. Democrats had to run to the right to win. That's a success for conservatism, even if its a loss for Republicans.

The snarky response would be that America needs more conservative successes like the one we just saw – many more. But even in terms of actual results, this narrative doesn't withstand scrutiny. I recall that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, seventeen years ago today, some communists in the Soviet bloc rejoiced, claiming this was a welcome development that would allow real communism to flourish; it stands to reason that the ideological cousin of communism, authoritarian conservatism, would make similar claims.

However, this election was a victory for a new coalition of centrists and Progressives. Consider, via Media Matters and DailyKos:

The 2006 mid-term elections are going down as having one of the most virulent campaign seasons in the last 100 years. Republicans have been the gravely wounded targets but it does not mean that Democratic incumbents and candidates have not come out hurting and smarting from the bloodfest. Because, it has been a horrendously bloody political season that started with the downfall of Jack Abramoff.

We can say that, well, the republicans were asking for it. I am not one to be beneath smacking down conservative hypocrites like Abramoff, Foley or Craig. As you well know though, I am also as eager to smack Democrats and liberal bloggers hypocrites.

Which is why, instead of smacking, I want to put a word of caution ... 19 days before the elections.

Democrats may well end up smarting, and not in a good way, from what I can only describe as their embrace tactics from the school of Karl Rove politics. This political season has been an all out war by Democrats. They are kicking ass indeed, but it may come back to haunt them.

Here's the problem:

In their eagerness to get elected anybody who calls themselves these days a Democrat, they are helping elect the rejects of the Replican party, people who not until they saw a political opportunity to switch, had no reason to call themselves a Democrat.

Party switching is not a new concept. Historically though, the wave has been against Democrats : Since the 1960's, and after the success of the Civil Rights Movement, most of party swtichers were Democrats (candidates and incumbents) bolting to the Republican party.

This is unbelievable. Captain's Quarters has published a response to BlogActive's outing of Senator Larry Craig by saying, and I quote "the left hates gays".

Uneffingbelievable.

Once again, the Left shows its obsession with sexuality, but it's really more than that. The Left obsesses over identity politics in all forms, and that obsession comes out in pathological terms. Rogers reveals this in his blog post, demanding that gay staffers on the Hill identify their orientation publicly, or else he will do it for them. Sexual identity is everything to him, and the concept of sexual privacy has no value to him at all. He wants to humiliate gays who prefer to keep their sexual activity private, forcing them to wear the virtual pink triangle against their will to experience obloquy and castigation.

I love this. Captain Ed is basically acknowledging the senator is gay but saying that because he is being outed, Rogers gay activism is wrong and proof the left hates gays.

Cognitive disassociation, anyone?

Which political party has been hijacked by extremist theocrats and pushed legislation against gay marriage?

Which political party has been hijacked by extremist theocrats and has run this country on vilifying gays and feminists as the moral opposites of the "family values" people?

Well, if he is not in Capitol Hill or Congress, he may well be having a gay ol' time in the bathrooms of D.C.'s Union Station:

As this message is posted, I have apppeared on the Ed Schultz Show, a nationally syndicated radio program broadcast in more than 100 cities and on Sirius Satellite. On the show I have called on Senator Larry Craig to end his years of hypocrisy by leveling with Idahoans about who he really is. I am also calling upon several prominent Idaho social conservative leaders to ask them how they square their anti-gay positions with their support for this leader.

I have done extensive research into this case, including trips to the Pacific Northwest to meet with men who have say they have physical relations with the Senator. I have also met with a man here in Washington, D.C., who says the same -- and that these incidents occurred in the bathrooms of Union Station. None of these men know each other, or knew that I was talking to others. They all reported similar personal characteristics about the Senator, which lead me to believe, beyond any doubt, that their stories are valid.

First off, a hearty congratulations to Ned Lamont. I didn't think he would pull it off. But he did. Congratulations as well to the many people on and off line who made Lamont's win possible.

But I honestly think many people have been unfair to Joe Lieberman. He is not and never has been like Zell Miller. Zell Miller's entire voting record was right in line with the most rabidly right wing Republican. He was in every way a nut case.

Lieberman's political career may now be dead. Perhaps even more so if he runs as an Ind and the Democratic Party does the right thing and turns its back on him. Maybe his career will survive, but I don't think so. But I think we should be fair to Lieberman.

Lieberman, more than many Democrats, was a man of conviction and strong beliefs. This affected how he viewed politics. He viewed politics as a conservative, religious man, yet managed to maintain (in sharp contrast to Zell) a reasonable voting record on choice, the environment and labor, at least according to LCV, NARAL and AFL-CIO. He was on our side in many fights throughout his career. And when he wasn't on our side it wasn't because he was triangulating. It was because he believed that what he was doing was the correct thing to do. I admit that I admire that about Lieberman. He did what he thought was right.