Now I like a good joke as well as anyone. PJ O’Rourke has often made me laugh. He even did once in his opinion piece titled We Blew It. It is a amazing how much time can be spent avoiding ugly reality. P.J. displays all the lessons he has not learned from the most recent election. He knocks down the right strawmen, slips from the grasp of ugly truth, and postures at windmills.
P.J. asks what became of the promise conservatives made to their children for a ‘
land of freedom and responsibility, knowledge, opportunity, accomplishment, honor, truth, trust,’ at a cost of ‘one boring hour each week spent in itchy clothes at church, synagogue, or mosque'
. It must be hard to search where you went wrong when you start from the premise that your position was right. For a start conservatives have shitcanned the parts about responsibility (see 911, Iraq, 700 billion dollar bailout), knowledge (see global warming), accomplishment (see New Orleans - talk about the thinnest book in the conservative library), honor (see Bush/Gore election 2000, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo), truth (see all of the above), and trust (see Colin Powell). That just leaves freedom and opportunity. America was the conservatives’ mark. Conservatives took advantage of a sucker. Stolen fruit is sweeter. Let’s hear it for freedom and opportunity. Let the liar be heir.
Ignoring your whacko reference to BillAyers which was about as effective upon the reader as it was upon the electorate, you exasperate about Democrats’ audacity to tackle problems like
global warming, coal and oil, subprime mortgage foreclosures, consumer protection, business oversight, financial regulation, health care reform, taxes on the "rich," and urban sprawl.
. Well shit P.J., somebody has to since your ideology took an Augean stable-sized dump on all of us at the bottom. A rising dump does not float all boats. It’s a time for grown-ups to make hard choices – not to put it off for our children to suffer so we can have it easy.
It’s hard to argue with your observations that the Southern Strategy wasn’t necessary since southern whites were going to migrate to the Republican party anyway like crackers to soup. No discussion of the morality of dividing the American electorate by race in order to conquer. No discussion of whether the victory is worth the cost of the strategy. Just a belated "We could have had our cake and ate it too" observation of a lost opportunity to get away with racism: There was no need(emphasis mine) to piss off the entire black population of America to get Dixie's electoral votes.And despising cracker trash who have a laundry hamper full of bedsheets with eye-holes cut in them does not make a man a liberal. Meet the kinder, gentler racism.
And what is with conservatives’ certitude of the danger of education and the beatitude of ignorance? Kids are stupid. No sense trying to force education on the ignorant. Just imagine how ridiculous it is that someone thinks there is value in reading. Is that why you became a Republican or why you became a writer? You postulate that fear for one’s children is a good conservative value which should form the backbone of a conservative movement. Conservatives are really big on fear. It’s their raison d’etre or freedom fries essence. They know how to create it, exploit it, demand it, in just about every way you can. They even know how to get rid of it. But then that would be a liberal idea. To paraphrase Crispin Glover in "Bartleby" " They choose not to." .
Although one can sympathize with your remonstrance that conservatives have made it their business to interfere in people’s private lives, I reject that the real message of the conservative pro-life position is that they're in favor of living. I suppose that’s how they would dream it. The real message of the conservative pro-life position is a command: Obey!. Disobedience to authority is not a conservative pro-life position.
And regarding President Clinton’s impeachment for lying about his sex life, I’ll make it fundamental enough to resonate with conservatives: It’s none of your business. While it is certainly enjoyable to wallow in the details of congresspeoples’ sordid, sex lives, that is the province of the rags. The affairs of congressmen should be separated from the affairs of Congress. In case you didn’t notice - Elliott Spitzer resigned while Larry Craig didn’t, Louis Vitter didn’t, and Ted Stevens didn’t. Not that there’s anything wrong with hypocrisy...When Atlas shrugged he said "I got mine. Get your own.".
Speaking of hypocritical fantasies, you spend a lot of credibility capital on your premise that the conservative position is not low taxes but fiscal conservatism. Sorry P.J. but I’m going to have to call SCOREBOARD on you.
Oh how I wish that conservatives were fiscally conservative but then that would get in the way of telling a good story not to mention getting re-elected. Please, PJ - enlighten us on those fiscal conservatives like Reagan and Nixon and Bush and Ford. Eisenhower was the last Republican to have a partial incrase of th budget deficet You wouldn’t see budget deficits in those administrations being such good fiscal conservatives. Funny, how the Carter and Clinton administrations added less to the deficit what with them being so liberal and all.
You sum up with a play upon fears repeating Reagan’s corporate truism that the 10 most dangerous words were "I’m from the federal government and I’m here to help." to instill a foreboding of wish fulfillment. To me the ten most dangerous words were spken by Brittney Spears: "We should just let the president do what he wants.".
Those words are terrifying because that is what conservatives said for the past eight years. It took a long time for voters to realize that letting that president do what he wants was a bad idea. So now Obama kicked McCain’s ass because to some of us he is as good as we could hope for. To others it was because he was at least reasonable in comparison.
The next time it will be much worse for your side.
You will not have the federal government to help fix the elections. Instead the elections will be fair and in that case your side is done for...at least until Americans feel comfortable again. Then conservatives will pout and complain about how much they have to give to the government and what a rotten deal it is. And some people will start acting like everyone else is out to steal their stuff. And your side will pick a new scapegoat who the Democrats will defend out of principle to their disadvantage in the elections. Then the conservatives will rape and pillage and everybody will try to get rich quick. Then we’ll probably go through this shit again. Because it’s not that you blew it, it’s that you blow it.