Bush's Destruction of Conservatism

"This is by way of a friendly response to the estimable Jay Nordlinger, Senior Editor at the likewise estimable National Review. Jay wrote a strong column yesterday openly saying what I’ve been hearing many conservatives express tacitly ever since the election. Reflecting on the media’s disgraceful distortion of the characters of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin, he wrote: “It seems to me that the Left has won: utterly and decisively. What I mean is, the Saturday Night Live, Jon Stewart, Bill Maher mentality has prevailed. They decide what a person’s image is, and those images stick. They are the ones who say that Cheney’s a monster, W.’s stupid, and Palin’s a bimbo. And the country, apparently, follows.”

I’ve been hearing and reading prominent conservatives and Republicans say nearly as much on television, in print and in private conversation ever since the election. They say Sarah Palin can never make a comeback. They say the fight for small government has been lost. They say we can’t have immigration reform that protects our borders. They say we have to distance ourselves from “embarrassing” commentators like Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter.

No, no, no, no. What the right is experiencing at the moment is a phenomenon called “cultural para-stimuli.” You can read all about it in Tom Wolfe’s wonderful novel I Am Charlotte Simmons. It’s sort of like peer pressure on steroids. It was discovered by Nobel Laureate Victor Ransome Starling, who found that when he surrounded normal cats with cats whose behavior had been bizarrely altered by brain surgery, the normal cats began acting like the crazy cats all around them.

That’s us–surrounded by the mainstream media. So steeped are we now in their lies about our representatives, their ridicule of our commentators, their demonizing dismissal of the causes we know are just, that we’ve begun to adopt their attitudes toward ourselves! And perhaps chief among the lies they’ve sold us is the lie that they’ve won, that the media are theirs for good and all, and that Americans are going to be hoodwinked and brainwashed by their constant barrage of misinformation forever.

Andrew Laven's analysis is nonsense.

He has been been bushwacked by his support for a president who talked conservative values but walked liberal values, even while sheep-like conservatives continued to support the president. So, by supporting the president, they ended supporting nation building, unfunded mandates, preemptive wars, torture, executive overreach, and massive budget deficits-- all of which has established a precedent of policy for Obama.

Don't blame the media. If you are looking for blame, look in the mirror, if you supported in any way this hapless simian of a president. Politico's Joel Kotkin said it well. "Over the past eight years, Bush has done more to undermine conservatism than all of the country's college faculties, elite media and Hollywood studios put together... Conservatism's core values rested on notions of a strong national defense and free market economics. Bush has punctured these ideas in a way that transcends the effects of historically anomalous scandals such as Watergate or Clinton's extramarital affairs. Bush has not only dinged the conservative car, he has totaled it."

Thanks to Bush and folks like Andrew, Rush, and Anne, the time of the conservative has come and gone. And so, for the next generation, Democrats have only to point to the Bush (along with Anne and Rush) as the very flower of conservatism and the Bush record on the economy and foreign relations as to what conservatives will do should they ever again get control of the levers of executive power.

Coulter is smarter than all you left wing retards combined. And that's why you hate her so much.

She is indeed smart. But you are so wrong that I hate Anne. She has smitten me for I attribute the Democratic victory in no small part to Anne, perhaps good for 50 electoral votes. I consider her the face of Republicanism. The first president I ever voted for was Ronald Reagan. I would vote for another Ronald Reagan. But so long as voters have the image of Bush, Hannity, Dobson, Palin, O'Reilly, Rove, and Coulter on their brainpain as an accurate representation of the world view of conservatism, the Democratic Part will prevail. Americans as a whole are moderate and pragmatic, and the extremism and ideology of the past eight years will suffice to keep the Democrats in power, no matter how incompetent or scandel-ridden the Democrats are or may be.

Anne is the gift that keeps giving.