One can agree or disagree with his peripheral positions, but political orthodoxy is political death. If those who are in a hissy fit about Sen. McCain would rather have Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, they will get Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton — how delightful to go to jail for building your house on land once visited by an exotic moth — and they will wake up to a great regret, as if in their drunkenness they had taken Shrek to bed.
But, guess what? Even if, as the country veers left, living conservatives gnash their teeth and dead ones spin in their graves, a small class of conservatives will benefit. And who might they be? They might be those whose influence and coffers swell on discontent, and who find attacking a president easier and more sensational than the dreary business of defending one. They rose during the Clinton years. Perhaps they are nostalgic. It isn’t worth it, however, for the rest of us.
(via Jim Miller)
Not sure who that eleite group is that will benefit but in general, if the country swings to the Left, you get the govt you deserve or have helped bring about.
Yes. I, for the life of me, cannot get the level of hysteria in some quarters. Disappointment, yes. But, hysteria? When does that emotion ever help a person make a good decision?
Shorter Mark Helprin: Our problems are your fault.
It’s that kind of mindset that gets wives beaten. Conservatives won’t respond well to being assigned the role of battered wife.
“— and they will wake up to a great regret”
I don’t think conservatives will “wake up to a great regret” – they already have it.
“They might be those whose influence and coffers swell on discontent, and who find attacking a president easier and more sensational than the dreary business of defending one. They rose during the Clinton years. Perhaps they are nostalgic. It isn’t worth it, however, for the rest of us.”
Presumably Stein refers to the handful of conservative talk hosts with respect to the “influence and coffers swell” comment. This discounts the audience (of talk-hosts) that, after all, listen in large part because the talk hosts reflect the mind set of the listeners. And, regarding who the “rest of us” are; I imagine that he refers to main street and wall street employers who would miss the cheap labor (country club Republicans, perhaps, would not be too inaccurate a label). IMHO the old saw “money can’t buy everything” is quite true. In this case it won’t buy the protestant-democratic-individualistic culture that has made this a great country.
I just read the rest of Helprin’s column: Is there another McCain running that I haven’t read about?
As usual, Helprin nails it. Conservatism seems doomed to repeated capture by parasitical “leaders” who operate entirely by using the opposition as a foil. They promptly head for the tall grass after an electoral victory. See, for example, the “10th Amendment Movement” of the early ’90s, from which nothing was heard after the GOP takeover of Congress in the ’94 election.
As far as I can tell, Helprin spends the column castigating conservatives for not wanting to choose the lesser of two evils even as he also castigates them for having chosen the lesser of two evils by having voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004.
I can imagine him writing in 2012, talking about how we’ll have no chance but to vote for “X” because we were stupid and voted for McCain, who had gone and done “Y” during the occupation of Tehran or Abu Dhabi or something like that.