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The Alternative Would Be A Phthartocrat, Which Sounds Really Unpleasant

Are we turning into the Ned Lamont Republicans? No, I’m not talking about Republicans racing for the exits in Iraq. I’m talking about the Ned Lamont-style party pure-o-crats of the Right: the folks who hope to punish insufficiently conservative Republicans by handing over Congress to the Democrats. ~Stanley Kurtz I suppose the opposite of pure-o-crat […]

Are we turning into the Ned Lamont Republicans? No, I’m not talking about Republicans racing for the exits in Iraq. I’m talking about the Ned Lamont-style party pure-o-crats of the Right: the folks who hope to punish insufficiently conservative Republicans by handing over Congress to the Democrats. ~Stanley Kurtz

I suppose the opposite of pure-o-crat would have to be corruptocrat or phthartocrat from the Greek, which would be entirely appropriate for the massively corrupt GOP majority.  There is also the small matter of this myth (speaking of reassuring fairy tales) that Ned Lamont represented some destructive purge of the unbelievers in his party.  This is preposterous.  Lamont differed chiefly over two things with Lieberman: Iraq and the attitude towards Mr. Bush.  Take those things away, and they have nothing to dispute.  To be a “Ned Lamont Republican” or, since I am not a Republican, an NL conservative, one would want to punish the majority for their grand, stupefyingly anti-conservative decision to “grant” the President the authority to do whatever he deemed appropriate on Iraq and acquiesced in the executive’s decision to start an illegal war.  To be a conservative Ned Lamont, one would want to see the GOP defeated for their continued support of that same war, as the GOP members in Congress form the significant majority of its supporters.  That is not the only reason to punish them, but it is better than most and it is something that does not expect some high level of conservative principle that would satisfy purists.  It requires only the most basic commitment to the Constitution and a refusal to engage in aggressive war.  They failed those tests, and it seems likely they will continue to roll over for every executive abuse of power and overreach that comes along.  Except when the House did pass a decent immigration bill, it is difficult to think of a piece of legislation from this Congress that would bear any resemblance to something a conservative would support.  Perhaps something has slipped my mind, but I don’t think so.  This is not a punishment for being insufficiently conservative but for being noticeably non-conservative throughout the present Congress and for the past six years.  Do I expect some magic recovery in two years?  Not really.  If Mitt Romney is already the Great Conservative Hope for ’08, which is somewhere between laughable and embarrassing, I don’t expect to see any quality candidates for at least another four years.  The GOP in Congress will probably not understand why they were defeated, attribute it to bad luck or the sixth year in the cycle and return to their bad habits, but I marvel at the idea that the voters should forsake disciplining wayward legislators because the ones in need of punishment are incorrigible.  If they are incorrigible, all the more reason to remove them from power.

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