Ross casts Nixon as the devil (see here for a slightly more friendly interpretation) in connection with this post.  I am actually less interested in Mr. Casse’s talk about the state of the Republican coalition than I am in the response the post elicited.  Ramesh Ponnuru wrote that Daniel Casse…

is a smart guy, but what a bizarre post that was. Paul Craig Roberts’s trajectory actually doesn’t tell us anything interesting about the future of the Republican coalition; it tells us that he’s a nut.

Two points.  First, it is probably more significant than not that a former high-ranking official of the Reagan administration would become an intense enemy of the Republican establishment and all its works on what he holds to be specifically conservative and patriotic grounds.  If Mr. Roberts were the only prominent Reagan-era official or pundit who had broken so dramatically with the GOP, it might be less meaningful, but we all know that he is far from the only one.  It might also just say something about the direction of the modern GOP and the conservative movement that someone with an “impeccable” background in both should feel compelled to become such a staunch oppositionist.  It probably does not mean that he is a “nut,” or else there is an increasing population of “nuts” who happen to agree with the overwhelming majority of what Mr. Roberts has to say.  The second point is that someone at a group blog that plays host to Michael Ledeen’s posts should take care with throwing around the word “nut” when describing people with whom you disagree, since it could so very easily be applied to some of your colleagues.