In the US, the party that represents the conservative interest, the Republicans, is in a state of historic collapse that makes the fall of the Roman Empire look like a narrow by-election defeat for the emperor in Parthia Northwest. ~Gerard Baker

The psychology of a blogger:

First response: the Republicans represent the conservative interest?  Since when?  Second response: If only this were true!  Third response: the Parthians were already long-gone by the time of the fall of the western empire, which in any case had no real effect on the eastern frontier and would probably have remained unknown to most people in the Sasanian Persian empire.  Fourth response: what is wrong with Gerard Baker?

Now that he has a post with a link up explaining what has happened, I think that I should say something about the fate of Chris Roach, an early friend of this blog who linked to Eunomia before most.  After I learned that Chris Roach was booted from Brainwash‘s site because of something he had written in the comments here at Eunomia, which his associates there deemed unsuitable and racist, I have to say I was stunned.  No, not stunned.  I was offended.  I have a very low opinion of people who engage in PC purges, which is what this was, but most especially when they are unmerited and committed out of a hysterical desire to appear correct only to those who despise everything Brainwash purports to represent.   

Whatever the hyperbole of the original comment that the management at Brainwash used to justify Chris’ removal (and I grant that there were some ill-chosen words), he more than made up for any mistake with his subsequent explanations as far as I was concerned.  To the extent that he erred, he erred in terms of expressing himself clearly so as to avoid misunderstanding.  In the content of what he said, he said what countless conservatives have said before and will say again–though they will make sure to couch all of it in preciously appropriate language that will avoid touching the tender sensitivities of some.  He made a claim about social pathologies and cultural dysfunctionality in the black community, except that he did not make the appropriate ritual prostrations as he did so, and he was therefore cast out. 

I don’t know Chris personally, but we have been blogging colleagues and share a great many views, and I have never once gotten the sense from anything he has written that he holds any malicious or hateful views.  To cut ties with someone on the basis of one comment and one comment only, even if it was intemperate, is the mark of cowards.  Brainwash is, of course, within their rights to let go whomever they please, but that does not make them right for doing so. 

I regret that I did not get into that comment thread to lend some help, but I assumed that Chris was able to answer well enough for himself.  Indeed he is, and he continues to blog separately from their site.  Frankly, Brainwash has embarrassed itself by acting like a third-rate ideological rag.    That their management probably thinks they have done the right thing, and not merely the expedient and easy thing, is all the more to their discredit.  The limits of perimissible opinion on the right just became even narrower.

You were promised a 12-step solution: it’s called Unity08. Unity08 is basically a gang of smart, hopeful politicians and recovering consultants, young people and business types who want to run a third party candidate in 2008 who will be selected entirely by delegates to Internet convention, through online voting. The president and vice president must either be from different parties or independents. ~Dick Meyer

I share Ezra Klein’s strong antipathy for Unity08, which he stated most powerfully in this bloggingheads appearance with Ross Douthat.  He said: “I can’t overstate how much I loathe Unity08.”  Hear, hear!  “It’s truly insulting to the real disagreements,” he added later.  The premise of Unity08 reminds me of some of the obnoxious traits of centrists I laid out in my list of traits of “centrist extremists”:

–never trusts in any dogmatic statement, but believes that the truth always lies “somewhere in between” two extremes, which he has conveniently pre-selected so that the happy middle matches his own views precisely.

–thinks that partisanship is the cause of nation’s political woes, and consequently thinks that bipartisanship is the solution to most, if not all, of those woes.

–doesn’t like negative campaigning.

The Atlantic ran an article on Unity08.  Joshua Green described how the ‘great’ movement began:

The three decided on the spot that they would create a third party to represent the center in the 2008 presidential election.

Perhaps I find this painfully insulting for some slightly different reasons than Ezra Klein, but painfully insulting it surely is.  The strange thing about the idea behind Unity08 is this claim that the center is somehow unrepresented, pushed down or out of the way by the two-party system when the two-party system abides in a very narrow political center in which a Sam Brownback is regarded as fairly far-right in most quarters and Chuck Hagel can be described, without irony, as a “rock-ribbed conservative” on numerous occasions.  From my perspective, which is admittedly on the very distant rightwards edge of the spectrum, the idea that the center lacks for representation is crazy.  Virtually nothing but the very narrow middle 10-20% band of American opinion that is the consensus center-right and center-left has any meaningful representation.  Hundreds of millions of people stand outside of this narrow band for one reason or another.  The mockery that the two-party system makes of representative government is not that it somehow artificially forces a broadly unified American people into rival, warring camps, but that it very artificially insists that all kinds of people who have no business being in the same party (such as, say, Brownback and Giuliani) should be smashed together and their distinct voices stifled for the sake of preserving the narrow consensus.

Even in their would-be rebellion, Unity08 is drearily conventional:

The creators of Unity08 believe that the answer is to open the process to the Internet masses, causing a tectonic shift powerful enough to disrupt the two-party system. They have not, however, lost faith in that system—merely in its power to correct itself. “The two-party system has worked well for 200 years and can continue to do so,” Bailey says, “but only when elections are fought over the middle. Our goal is to jolt the two parties into recognizing this, by drawing them into a fight over the middle rather than allowing them to keep maximizing the appeal to their bases at the extremes.”

This is where it goes from merely annoying to insulting.  Elections always are fought over the middle right now.  Remember 2000?  The most uneventful, boring election in the history of this country?  Why was it so dull?  Until Gore discovered some populist rhetoric towards the end, the contest was fought entirely over the middle by saying as little as possible about everything.  “Compassionate conservatism,” while a massive fraud in its own way as far as the conservative part went, existed to appeal to the middle and, to some extent, to the center-left.  Even the primaries in the two parties are ultimately being fought over who will serve as the best standard-bearer who can appeal to the general electorate.  Manipulating and whipping up “the base” and actually representing them are radically different things: one demonstrates contempt of party elites towards their supporters, the other indicates that the party actually serves its members.  Obviously, the former arrangement prevails to differing degrees in both parties.  The idea that elections are held captive by wacky extremists is one that partisans from both sides enjoy circulating when it helps undermine the opposing party’s candidate, but how many people really believe that Hillary is some rabid leftist?  By my standards, she is, but then by my standards so are George Bush and Sam Brownback, so perhaps my standards are not very representative.

What does Unity08 aim to do?  It does not aim to rebalance or fundamentally restructure the political system as we know it.  They just want to give the system a jolt and get it “back on track.”  They assume, of course, that the normal state of affairs for the last several decades is somehow not “on track.”  For these people, the two-party system is assuredly failing the American people, but they were under some misguided impression that it had ever really done the job they think needs to be done.  This effort isn’t political reform.  It’s a snit-fit parading as high-minded idealism and pragmatism all rolled into one.  At least ideological and policy protest votes for coherent third parties have a certain logic to them.  In theory, the existing minor parties would like to become real players in policymaking and they would like to become permanent parts of the system. 

Unity08 aspires to nothing but acting as a one-time defibrulator for the heart of American representative government.  If more radical surgery is needed, they aren’t going to bother.  Not only is this a loathsome pose in the eyes of people actually interested in correcting the flaws in the present system, but it is a nonsensical one as well: when it comes time to vote, voters become very tribal and rally for or against a candidate for visceral, irrational and often inexplicable reasons.  If there is a ticket that represents bipartisanship for the sake of bipartisanship, no one will pay any attention to it.  It neither excites nor terrifies–it puts you to sleep, like listening to Joe Lieberman talk.  The entire effort is based on it being shocking and invigorating, when it is almost guaranteed by its very design to be plodding and uninteresting.

If Hagel were better fitted for metaphor, Zorro would be an awfully good one, certainly better than that overrated royalist stooge Robin Hood. With his Michael Curtiz pastels and his Merry Men, the former Earl of Locksley fought to restore to the throne Richard I, the bloodthirsty slaughterer of Saracens, who’d left England to corruption and destitution while he went haring off to the Middle East on some damned Crusade. A renegade aristocrat himself, Zorro fought only to free the peons from a tyrannical governor. Zorro wore black. Zorro always rode alone. ~Charles Pierce, Esquire

Overrated royalist stooge?  Is that any way to talk about a Saxon hero?  Anyway, Hagel is about as much like Zorro in his political career as Lieberman is the Lorax.  When has he ever fought to free peons from anybody?  He votes with the White House more frequently than anyone else in the Senate!

I am frankly getting tired of these puff-pieces in which pro-war, interventionist pols who simply quibble about details of how such wars are fought get this glowing, reverential treatment:

A rock-ribbed Reagan conservative, he’s become the voice of uncompromising dissent on this war.

Uncompromising dissent?  I’ve never heard it, I’ve never seen it.  He dissents over tactical arrangements and management, not over anything fundamental.  He sometimes states things bluntly when he disagrees with the administration, but the idea that he is this fiery opponent of the war who takes no guff and stands tall, etc., is a lot of nonsense.  The Vietnam veteran-turned-politician who actually does oppose the war and has been working, however blunderingly and confusedly, to achieve some sort of American withdrawal is Jack Murtha.  People on the left had their Murtha-praising moment, but now he is practically ignored, almost as if he were an embarrassment to them.  Where has Chuck Hagel been in all of this?  Oh, yes, he talks about selling shoes and Cambodia and even drops impeachment into his conversation, but when it comes time to do something he doesn’t do very much at all.  “Let’s have a debate!” he says. 

Curiously, Hagel has appeared first in GQ, and now he’s in Esquire.  Is Hagel going after the metrocon vote?

As to the polls, the description of some respondents as being “less likely” to vote for a pro-choice candidate includes me among them. By this, I mean that all things being equal, I would support a pro-life candidate against one who was not. This does not mean I would do so if things were NOT equal: for instance, I would vote for Joe Lieberman over Sam Brownback, or another Republican who was not strong on the war [bold mine-DL]. ~Noemie Emery

Wow.  I have always assumed that “new fusionists” and Weekly Standard folks privilege their irresponsible foreign policy views over literally everything else, including little things like truth or reality (such as the truth that Brownback is as pro-war as they come), but I don’t think I have ever seen one of them state it so succinctly and plainly.

Speaking of Romney, he has been making the rounds on the national TV circuit, providing endless fodder for critics who paint him as a constant flip-flopper.

In yet another example, CNN profiled the 2008 presidential field and Romney listed his favorite movie as “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” But as recently as 2003, Romney told media outlets that his favorite was the George Clooney flick “O Brother Where Art Thou.”

Why the switch?

Perhaps the answer lies in this very Biblical description of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in the CNN piece: “Renowned archaeologist and expert in the occult, Dr. Indiana Jones, is hired by the U.S. Government to find the Ark of the Covenant, which is believed to still hold the Ten Commandments.”
And we all know how much the religious right loves the Ten Commandments. ~The Boston Herald

Even though I am a tireless Romney critic, I will actually allow that it is perfectly acceptable for someone to change his mind about his favourite movie.  They are both pretty good, as these sorts of things go, so I can’t even fault him for having bad taste.  Of course, no one would even think to bring up the change if he hadn’t been engaged in pure cynical pandering for the past year.  When you start reinventing yourself entirely as a politician, people begin to distrust you about everything you do, no matter how innocent or normal. 

As it happens, the films convey distinct messages about piety and religion, and O, Brother, Where Art Thou? has a far more explicit theme of the hubristic wanderer brought to repentance and humility (as everyone can see, it is an adaptation of The Odyssey in much of its story).  Might that message have hit too close to home for the ambitious politician who can’t decide which state he’s from? 

If politics had anything to do with the change, I would guess that George Clooney’s leading role in O, Brother was probably what put Romney off the film.

Blogging isn’t a complete waste of time and energy–it improves your knowledge of made-up blogger vocabulary that no one else will understand.  Take “Rethug,” for instance.  As in: “Compared to most Rethugs, Huckabee’s a socialist.”  

I don’t really know now what it means anymore than I did when I first saw it, but it seemed at first to be a reference to social conservatives or evangelicals or some combination thereof.  Any explanations or speculations are welcome in the comments.  Is it a play off of the word Republican, which I guess is the most obvious explanation, or is there some more arcane meaning that I’m missing?

Update: The author of the post cited above writes later on:

The kingmakers in the Republican Party are more like David Frum, who wants to economically stress the middle and working classes so that they will develop good moral character…

To be blunt, when did David Frum ever care about anyone developing good moral character?

And I think he’s right that all three current GOP front-runners are less awful than some seem to think. ~Andrew Sullivan

If Sullivan is vouching for the Terrible Trio, they must be worse than I supposed.

I have seen some bad campaign swag in my time, but this has to take the cake:

And despite Dean’s warm welcome to Senator Hagel, I think the Nebraska senator has figured out that Senator McCain’s campaign is fading fast and that the “maverick” vote needs a home.  If Senator Hagel gets in, it will indeed draw some votes from Senator McCain and give the Buchananites a home as well. ~Hugh Hewitt

In addition to not understanding that the Politico story on Richardson is not a “take-down story” (just as the Romney ancestor story is not an attack on Romney), but simply a reporting at the national level of facts that are well-known to New Mexicans, Hewitt doesn’t seem to understand much of anything about GOP primary politics.  Hewitt’s confusion of a news story with an attack piece is understandable, since the “new media” do not actually report anything to inform people for the sake of having an informed citizenry but selectively and even more tendentiously report on only those things that serve the turn of the “new media” celebrities.  I suppose we should start calling people like Hewitt members of the MNM (mainsteam new media).  In the world of the MNM, news stories that reveal potentially embarrassing details, even when they are common knowledge and of no great political importance in the candidate’s home state, cannot be anything but attack pieces, because the MNM cannot conceive of something called “journalism” that does not have a malevolent angle to it.  In this they are even more myopic than the biased journalists they presume to replace.

It is bizarre that Hewitt doesn’t understand that McCain’s appeal, really his only appeal at this point, is his position on the war and his potential credibility as a suitable leader in wartime.  It is especially bizarre since Hewitt is constantly lecturing everyone about how important the war is to “the base” (i.e., it is really important to him and therefore must be important to “the base”).  The position McCain holds would be, incidentally, the same position that Hewitt holds, and both seem to hold out that position out of the same wild-eyed ideological zeal that makes both of them so worrisome.  McCain is also the most reliably pro-life of the Terrible Trio (which may not be saying much, but there it is), which would also apparently jibe with Hewitt’s own stated views.  So what is not clear at all is why Hewitt is pretty openly backing Romney the dancing fraud and not the man who is much more clearly in agreement with him on the two issues (the war and judges) that he says transcend all other issues. 

But this post explains why: McCain is a “maverick.” You see, he has been tainted by the MSM’s love and is therefore untouchable by the likes of Hewitt.  He is tainted unlike, say, Romney, who is entirely a creature of the MSM and would have no name recognition at all if it weren’t for the MSM.  In any case, Hewitt’s deep and penetrating analysis amounts to this: 1) the MSM likes McCain, therefore I, Hugh Hewitt, don’t like McCain, so I accept that he is a “maverick”; other silly people in the MSM say that Hagel is a “maverick,” and therefore Hagel and McCain must both represent the “maverick” vote; Hagel has criticised the war and opposed the mighty “surge,” which would probably be punishable by death if I, Hewitt, had my way, and therefore he falls into some vague category of “White Flag Republican” which actually stands for “anyone who disagrees with me [Hewitt] about any aspect of the war.”  The “Buchananites” (translation from Hewittian: real conservatives) naturally fall into this category, since we certainly disagree with him and oppose the war, so Hewitt seems to think that we “Buchananites” want to support Chuck Hagel.  On this last point, while there is an occasional exception here or there, he could not be generally more wrong.  In all of this, he has shown himself to not only be a first-class dunce of a political analyst, but someone whose every opinion about any number of topics related to the war and the primary contest has been completely shaped and dictated by the MSM and its “narratives” about McCain and Hagel.  Amusingly for someone who so fervently hates the MSM as he clearly does, he is completely taken in by their descriptions of all these things and shows literally no ability to scrutinise or criticise the claims that they make except when it comes to making broad, sweeping statements about partisan bias or a failure to report the “good news.”

Update: Hewitt then criticises a post (the link Hewitt gives is broken) by my former EM colleague, Leon Wolf, for circulating a story about a couple of Romney’s sons being at a Brownback event and supposedly “crashing” it.  Mr. Wolf claims no such thing, but simply remarks on the Spartanburg straw poll results: “It is perhaps no wonder, then, that Romney’s campaign folks were apparently busy trying to discover Senator Brownback’s secret at a recent campaign stop in South Carolina.”  Mr. Wolf makes no claim that Romney’s people are “crashing” the event or that they weren’t allowed to be there.  The point Mr. Wolf is making is that Romney’s campaign is doing so badly that he has his sons out there doing research on Brownback to figure out how he is appealing to more people in South Carolina than Romney.  Besides rather blatantly misrepresenting Mr. Wolf’s post, Hewitt doesn’t seem to grasp the signal of the Romney campaign’s weakness that this story about Romney’s sons at the event sends out. 

Mr. Wolf (my link, unlike that of Mr. New Media, is not broken) linked to the Prowler piece I linked to earlier.  This is incidentally accompanied today by Philip Klein’s pretty thorough takedown of Romney.  The Prowler refers to the Politico “rehab” story about Romney.  The Prowler link to this story would be bad enough, but the Prowler then comments on another element of Romney’s campaign: 

The fact that Romney is apparently tweaking his message, moving toward “family” issues, is also interesting, particularly since it puts him in the position of parroting one of his competitor’s longstanding issues. Sen. Sam Brownback has been running on a platform of saving the family from a culture of death and depravity for months. Suddenly Romney has discovered it?

The Prowler concludes sarcastically, referring to Romney’s sons at the Brownback event: “We hope Mitt’s boys were taking notes.”  This follows the remarks on the Politico story, which note about Romney’s ad buys: “Such buys are unheard of at this point in the campaign.”  In other words, the campaign is sending out a warning signal: “Help! We’re drowning!”  In his madness, Hewitt also regards the Politico story as “very favorable to Romney.”  It is a story detailing how Romney hopes to recover from one of the worst months in recent presidential campaigning!  It is a story that talks about how Romney is planning to fritter away his money at an absurdly fast rate.  If that’s favourable coverage, I’d like to know what Hewitt thinks a hit piece looks like.  Oh, we’ve already covered that.