Conservative Amazons

A professor of behavioral science says that if Congress and the President wanted people to spend their stimulus checks, they should have called them a bonus, not a rebate.

A rebate, psychologically speaking, is the return of a loss of one’s own money rather than a pure gain provided by someone else, so it is unlikely to be seen as extra spending money.

Getting a rebate is more like being reimbursed for travel expenses than like getting a year-end bonus. Reimbursements send people on trips to the bank. Bonuses send people on trips to the Bahamas.

Maybe, instead of taking our money only to give it back to us with the directive to spend, spend, spend, Congress could take a little less of our money in the first place. Just a thought.

Who would have thought, back in August when his campaign was floundering, that McCain would be the Republican front-runner in January?

McCain does have some advantages over the other candidates worth addressing. First and foremost, despite his tendency to piss off Republicans with his “maverick” identity, he doesn’t alienate any one branch of the Republican party. He is, at the very least, acceptable to social conservatives, acceptable to economic conservatives, and probably more than acceptable to national security conservatives. This is in sharp contrast to Rudy Giuliani, who alienated social conservatives, and Mike Huckabee, who displayed nothing but contempt for the Club for Growth wing of the party and a dearth of foreign policy knowledge.

Despite some serious flaws on issues like immigration and campaign finance reform, he is at least not in any danger of breaking the Reagan coalition. His foreign policy credentials are sound, his record on abortion is good (Planned Parenthood regularly gives him a rating of zero on their legislative scorecard, which says good things about him in my view. Your enemy’s enemy, and all that), and he has a strong record fighting wasteful spending. The stumbling block for a lot of economic conservatives will be his original vote against the Bush tax cuts, and the rhetoric he used to argue against them (he made some classic class warfare arguments).

McCain also has more experience as a legislator than his Democrat opponent would, though it’s unclear whether that will be in his favor or not. After all, it seems that Obama’s lack of record is working in his favor, because he can say whatever he wants about change and a new kind of politics without anyone realizing that his actual issue positions are old-school Democrat.

Here’s my big problem with McCain: he’s been a leader in the Senate, and he’s taken some conservative positions. But he’s never combined the two and been a conservative leader. The big pieces of legislation he’s pushed are outright conservative apostasies: McCain-Kennedy immigration and McCain-Feingold campaign finance.

Also, McCain recently admitted to not knowing much about economics. I guess it’s good that he’s honest, but I’d really like for my president to be economically literate, because so many bad ideas originate from a poor understanding of economics. Like, say, handing out $600 checks to ward off recession.

Speaking of recession, I found a NY Times Op-Ed suggesting that repealing the Bush tax cuts would be a great way to stimulate the economy. The really priceless part was here:

But if they were repealed in a year, the Bush tax cuts could spur a burst of economic activity in 2008. If people knew that their tax rates were going up next year, they’d work to make sure that more of their income is taxed at this year’s lower rates. Investors would likewise have a giant incentive to cash out their capital gains now to avoid paying higher taxes later. In 1986, stock sales doubled as taxpayers rushed to avoid the capital gains tax rate increase scheduled for 1987. If people pour their stock gains into yachts and fast cars, that’s pure fiscal stimulus.

Isn’t having everyone sell large amounts of stock all at the same time something we generally try to avoid? And wasn’t there a stock market crash in 1987?  Don’t we emphatically not want a stock market crash?  And why are we assuming that the money removed from the stock market would be used to buy fast cars and yachts? People are trying to avoid taxes, therefore they will buy luxury items? Huh?

Finally, some wisdom to round things out for the day, we have Thomas Sowell commenting in the economic stimulus package.   A particularly priceless observation:

 Both political parties seem determined that the federal government should create a “stimulus package” of things designed to cushion a downturn in the economy.

That alone should be enough to make us remember that “the devil is always in the details,” because things that are bipartisan are often twice as bad as things that are partisan.

A bipartisan intervention is virtually guaranteed to be a grab bag of inconsistent policies thrown together in order to get the votes of people with contradictory ideas of what ought to be done.

Well said.

Now that I’ve mocked the absurd rantings of a bitter, woman-hating man, it’s only fair that I also mock the absurd rantings of a bitter man-hating woman. And thanks to the Internet, there are entire communities of assorted dissatisfied crazies ripe and ready for the mocking.

In honor of the fact that I just watched finished watching Joss Whedon’s Firefly, I bring you a radical feminist’s critique of said show. Rather than being content to debunk the idea that Firefly is a feminist show, the blogger, Allecto, goes straight into “Joss Whedon is evil” territory.

For myself, I’m not sure that I will recover from the shock of watching the malicious way in which Joss stripped his female characters of their integrity, the pleasure he seemed to take from showing potentially powerful women bashed, the way he gleefully demonized female power and selfhood and smashed women into little bits, male fists in women’s faces, male voices drowning out our words.

Malicious? Gleefully demonized? The little lady must be suffering from some kind of radical feminism-induced hysteria. I’m not going to argue that Joss Whedon’s work is “feminist” (after all, it’s funny), but smashing women into little bits isn’t often on the agenda in this show.

Zoe says, “This ship’s been derelict for months. Why would they –”

Mal replies, (in Chinese) “Shut up.”

So in the very second scene of the very first episode, an episode written and directed by the great feminist Joss, a white man tells a black woman to ‘shut up’ for no apparent reason. And she does shut up. And she continues to call him sir. And takes his orders, even when they are dumb orders, for the rest of the series.

I don’t think she quite gets the “chain of command” idea. But she’s very good at reading anti-woman subtext into everything.

The next scene we meet Kaylee, the ship’s mechanic. <- Lookee, lookee, feminist empowerment. In this scene Mal and Jayne are stowing away the cargo they just stole. Kaylee is chatting to them, happily. Jayne asks Mal to get Kaylee to stop being so cheerful. Mal replies, “Sometimes you just wanna duct tape her mouth and dump her in the hold for a month.” Yes, that is an exact quote, “Sometimes you just wanna DUCT TAPE HER MOUTH and DUMP HER IN THE HOLD FOR A MONTH.” Kaylee responds by grinning and giving Mal a kiss on the cheek and saying, “I love my Captain.”

What the fuck is this feminist man trying to say about women here? A black woman calling a white man ‘sir’. A white male captain who abuses and silences his female crew, with no consequences. The women are HAPPY to be abused. They enjoy it. What does this say about women, Joss? What does this say about you? Do you tell your wife to shut up? Do you threaten to duct tape her mouth? Lock her in the bedroom? Is this funny to you, Joss? Because it sure as fuck ain’t funny to me.

So a couple of lines taken entirely out of context and suddenly Joss Whedon abuses his wife?

It is clear from the outset that a large part of Inara’s service involves addressing issues of male inadequacy and fulfilling many other emotional needs of her clients. The ability to do this IS a resource and it is therefore a service that Inara must perform. BUT Inara services all of the male passengers and the Captain in this way. She also services Kaylee but the relationship between them is a little more reciprocal. In any case, Mal makes it pretty obvious that he expects his emotional needs to be serviced by Inara and she willingly obliges. Mal also allows the male passengers to demand her emotional services and does not tell them to stop, despite the terms of his agreement with Inara. Inara is not paid by any of these men for her time, energy and emotional support.

Well burn my bra and call me a feminist, those goddamn men expect a woman to be their friend! The outrage!

Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Joss uses his own wife in this way. Expects her to clean up his emotional messes. Expects her to be there, eternally supportive, eternally subservient and grateful to him in all his manly glory. I hope the money is worth it, Mrs. Whedon. But somehow I doubt that it is. No amount of money can buy back wasted emotional resources.

Again, not only is Joss Whedon not a feminist, he undoubtedly mistreats his wife. Let me go out on a pop psychology limb here and say that the author of this blog is not a woman with too many good relationships with men in her past.

Zoe, of course, is meant to be our empowered, ass-kicking sidechick. Like all sidechicks she is objectified from the get go. Her husband, Wash, talking about how he likes to watch her bathe. Let me just say now that I have never personally known of a healthy relationship between a white man and a woman of colour. I have known a black woman whose white husband would strangle and bash her while her young children watched. My white grandfather liked black women because they were ‘exotic’, and he did not, could not treat women, especially women of colour, like human beings. I grew up watching my great aunts, my aunty and my mother all treated like shit by their white husbands, the men they loved. So you will forgive me for believing that the character, Wash, is a rapist and an abuser, particularly considering that he treats Zoe like an object and possession.

And look! I was right! Let me get this straight: you and members of your family had terrible experiences with white men, ergo a white male character on a show is a rapist and an abuser. Got it.

I recommend reading the whole thing if you truly want to understand why radical feminists are such unhappy people.

It’s so awful it must be real. My new misogynist punching bag actually wrote a note for the ladies on how best to display your breasts in order to attract just the right kind of male attention - the kind that will trick him into the bonds of marriage and thrill his conquest-loving spirit. We girls have three choices when it comes to showing off our “assets,” and we’d best choose wisely.

The first option causes women to minimize their influence over each man they encounter. Maximum cleavage or near-nipple exposure focuses men on sex instead of the female and her other qualities. Her obvious immodesty relieves and sometimes is taken as condemnation of masculine self-restraint. It signals that she welcomes masculine-style sexual freedom—whether she does or not is moot, because he perceives it—and this shifts her into a player in the man’s game and seller instead of buyer after he conquers her.

Why is it always about the conquering with this guy? And the selling and the buying? I’m forced to wonder if he thinks that women are people. Actually, I’m not sure he thinks men are people either.

The second option causes women to discourage men or ignore messages she’s trying to send. Boobs well covered and shapeless regardless of size shift manly focus to other women. Sweatshirt-covered and other bosom-shaped displays indicate age. Other women just look better. Big, shapeless, and comfortable for her won’t reduce his eagerness for conquest, but it reduces his enthusiasm for her as keeper. Wives often resort to comfort—even to sloppiness—without realizing the impact on husband. It’s not modesty, but her shapeless boobs or breasts without ‘character’ that push men toward other women, and husbands are men.

Cover up too much, and it’s your own damn fault if your husband strays. Seriously, this guy spends a lot of time making excuses for other mens’ infidelity.

The third option empowers women to maximize their feminine impact on men, and women need to display this way for all men in order to find the right man. Very modest cover with two, albeit small, distinct boobs pointed uncomfortably high and perky forces decent men to focus on her eyes and other qualities in order to maximize his persuasiveness. She appears not only hard-to-get, but is implying ♫na, ♫na, ♫na, ♫na, ♫na, ♫na to this face—look but don’t even think about touching. Her appearance and attitude force the hunter-conqueror to plan for a long campaign. This empowers her to keep his attention focused on her and not on sex and for her to dominate their relationship before his conquest. Highly stressed modesty and two high and perky boobs blended into a non-sexual ‘in your face’ attitude can easily overpower male dominance. Men wilt under this kind of feminine determination, unless they are only after sex in the first place, which should empower her to put him back in the parade.

“Two, albeit small, distinct boobs pointed uncomfortably high and perky?!” So women with big boobs are automatically disqualified for being too slutty, as in option A. And uncomfortable for whom?! And why is that the magic combination to make men look at her eyes? Methinks this fellow reads a little too much into women’s choice of shirts. And maybe takes himself a tad too seriously.

Anyway, I enjoyed it immensely. Next time I feel the need to be conquered in a manly way (but by being a buyer and not a seller…or maybe it’s the other way around) by a man who hates women, I’ll be sure to follow some of this advice.

And I’m now a girl without a candidate. So, do I bother to pick a new one, or just wait and see what the primaries hand me?

It’ll be a cold day in hell before I vote for a Republican who talks like John Edwards. So, barring some pretty drastic climate change, Mike Huckabee is out of the question. I also couldn’t vote for a man who lets 9/11 Truthers and white supremacists speak for him, so Ron Paul is out of the picture.

Other than that certainty, I don’t know which remaining candidate I can best stand to vote for.

Mitt Romney has the Massachusetts health care plan hanging over his head, not to mention the fact that he’s not terribly electable. And since I’m already sacrificing principle, there’s no point in sacrificing electability.

Giuliani would be bearable were it not for his authoritarian tendencies and shakiness on social issues. I’m also having trouble getting past the marital indiscretions. We don’t need another Clinton episode, and I’m firmly convinced that a man who will lie to his wife will have no qualms about lying to the rest of us.

Romney and Giuliani spent a lot of time late last year squabbling over who was worse on taxes and who was worse on immigration. The impression I came away with was that both candidates were sub-par on both.

At least McCain is a fairly honorable sort, and may have a shot at winning the election. He was also right about strategy in Iraq, for which he deserves credit. I do like that he’s into cutting out earmarks. But earmarks aren’t even half the government spending battle - we need entitlement reform and Thompson was the only one willing to talk about it seriously. Finally, his stances on the Bush tax cuts, amnesty (especially the part where he didn’t seem to realize what exactly was in the bill) and campaign finance reform are really big stumbling blocks.

I don’t want to hear any more fighting about who most resembles Ronald Reagan. Here’s what I do want to hear:

• I want the candidates to talk seriously about entitlement reform. Earmarks are easy compared to entitlement programs, and my generation can’t wait much longer for a fix. The longer we wait, the more painful it’s going to be. And I’ll be damned if I let Congress raise my Social Security taxes to pay for benefits I’m never going to see.
• I want to know what kind of judges we’ll see nominated, and how the candidate plans to get them through a nasty confirmation fight. I want specifics, not just “strict-constructionists.” Get a campaign staffer to dig up some names, so I know the candidate is on the right track.
• I want to know what the candidates’ economic plans are. And “making the Bush tax cuts permanent” is not a sufficient answer. What about a reduced corporate tax rate, or a corporate tax replaced with a revenue-neutral carbon tax? What about a new, simplified tax system? A permanent and complete end to the marriage penalty?
• I want to hear the candidates talk about the actual principles behind conservative ideas. Because a checklist of positions isn’t enough if they don’t understand why they’re doing it. One of the (many) things I like about Fred is that he gets Federalism, and the ideas behind limited government, not just the talking points.

With Fred out, I’m going to have to do some more research and try to figure out what they’re all promising. Last time I checked, the candidates had very vague positions, rather than explicit policy agendas, which, as previously noted, is not good enough.

I get the feeling that 2008 is not going to be a fun year to be a Republican.

When I stumbled on a blog called “What Women Never Hear,” I just knew it was going to be good. And I was so right.

First, how the author describes himself:

A. Guy Maligned respects and honors the female gender more than his own, as do most men of his generation.

Curiously enough, his idea of respecting and honoring women sounds a lot like garden-variety bitterness about how much feminists have screwed up women, by making them less likely to behave the way he wants, rife with stereotypes about how men and women ought to be. Some choice excerpts:

Some women marry but retain their maiden name to show independence. Men read it as weak attachment to husband. Other women take their husband’s name as token of thankfulness for giving up his freedom. Other men respect them for that.

That’s right, ladies. If you keep your name for professional or sentimental reasons, you’re an ungrateful hussy. After all, your husband gave up his freedom to marry you. I like how he makes it sound like marriage is only beneficial to women, and something that men just put up with.

Some women dress erotically to capture a man and follow up with sloppiness that turns his head toward other neat and erotically attired females. The end is in sight. Other women know that their sloppy appearance and inattentive personal grooming at home and in public spawns potential trophies in their man’s eyes.

If your man strays, it’s because you didn’t put enough effort into being sexy. Stop complaining about what an asshole he is for being unfaithful and put on some lipstick.  The same sentiment comes again in a later post:

Some women convince themselves that the right combination of passion, love, religious beliefs, common interests, and kids will keep their relationship together. Other women know there’s no such insurance and that special stroking of her man as king to her queen is essential.

Your marriage is destined for failure if you insufficiently stroke his ego.  Got it.

Some women demean the male ego with cheap sex. They deny men the thrill of conquest and earn little respect for themselves. Other women exploit the male conquering drive to earn his greater respect—the precursor of a man’s love. They delay conquest for lengthy periods in order to earn his devotion and extract firm obligations.

And on a related note:

Some women discourage manly devotion by providing cheap, uncommitted sex. Other women inspire manly devotion by delaying a man’s conquest until he wants her for much more than sex.

Here’s where things get tricky. I agree that women are doing themselves a disservice by acting promiscuously. But his justification is entirely wrong. You don’t abstain from sex in order to play to a man’s desire for conquest, or because having sex will make him less likely to be all manly and devoted - you do it for yourself. More importantly, I really, really hate the idea that it’s the woman’s job to play sexual gatekeeper for both. Over and over in my Catholic school education, we heard that it was the woman’s job to keep men’s sexual appetites in line. This assumes two equally harmful things: that women have no sex drive and men have uncontrollable sex drives.

Some women base their love for a man on how well he lives by female rules and expectations. For example, insisting that he check in frequently and involve her in all decisions. Other women base their love around masculine rules and expectations, trust more than suspicion, friendship warmth instead of co-dependency, and loving appreciation more than direct involvement in each decision.

Women shouldn’t ask to be involved in decision-making. They should be grateful they have a man to do it for them.

Reward men appropriately for husbanding and fathering, and women can have what they want out of life with a man. ‘Appropriate’ means as defined by that man and no one else. So, a woman’s lifelong major task is to uncover what her man expects from her, and make sure she will not be victimized in whatever follows. (Of course she can claim that she’s due the same thing. But, he lacks the skills and interest to do it.)

Translation: women have to do all of the work, and if they do it to a man’s satisfaction, maybe they’ll get rewarded. Or at least not victimized. Implicit in everything this man has written, but made explicit here, is that he believes that men are individuals, who get to decide what their reward should be, while women are pretty much interchangeable servants.

And this is coming from a man who claims to hold women in high esteem. That esteem is clearly a double-edged sword. Because women are so much better, they are held to impossible standards as the perfectly submissive wives and mothers. Because they are so much more virtuous than men, they are expected to beguile men into good behavior. If a man acts poorly, it’s the woman’s fault for not dressing well enough, or not being moral enough. And while woman are expected to discover her man’s idea of appropriate rewards for marriage and fatherhood, men lack the “skills and interest” to reward her similarly for her role as a wife and mother.

In my family, we have a term for this: intentional incompetence.  For example, when asked to do the dishes, a younger brother will first ask a million questions - what temperature should the water be?  Where are the sponges?  Should I use soap? - then do a terrible job so that next time, I’ll think it’s easier to do it myself than ask them.  A. Guy Maligned is practicing intentional incompetence on the behalf of the entire male population.  Men just can’t be trusted to do anything right or make any sacrifices, so you little ladies will have to pick up the slack.

Michael Gerson, who tried to go from Bush speechwriter to political philosopher with his book, Heroic Conservatism, is now slamming Fred Thompson for being “callous.“

Thompson’s crime? Disagreeing with the “compassionate conservative” spending on AIDS in Africa. The set-up:

At a campaign stop attended by a CBS reporter in Lady’s Island, S.C., Thompson was asked if he, “as a Christian, as a conservative,” supported President Bush’s global AIDS initiative. “Christ didn’t tell us to go to the government and pass a bill to get some of these social problems dealt with. He told us to do it,” Thompson responded. “The government has its role, but we need to keep firmly in mind the role of the government, and the role of us as individuals and as Christians on the other.”

Thompson went on: “I’m not going to go around the state and the country with regards to a serious problem and say that I’m going to prioritize that. With people dying of cancer, and heart disease, and children dying of leukemia still, I got to tell you — we’ve got a lot of problems here. . . . “

That sounds pretty reasonable to me.  When the federal government gets involved in things like AIDS treatment in Africa, priorities for that spending are based on who has the most lobbyists on Capitol Hill.  As Thompson rightly points out, who’s to say whether cancer research or AIDS programs in Africa deserve more funding?  When you look at the the cost of any given aid program, you have to take into account not just the dollar cost, but the opportunity cost of how that money could have otherwise been spent.  And when you’re talking about tax dollars, that money could have been kept by the people who earned it to use as they saw fit.

Michael Gerson is one of those Republicans who wants to turn our party into the religious man’s Democrats.  Some excerpts from his attack on Thompson:

Thompson’s argument reflects an anti-government extremism, which I am sure his defenders would call a belief in limited government. In this case, Thompson is limiting government to a half-full thimble. Its duties apparently do not extend to the treatment of sick people in extreme poverty, which should be “the role of us as individuals and as Christians.”

“Anti-government extremism?”  Really?  I don’t think it’s at all extreme to question whether we ought to be pouring billions of dollars into fighting AIDS.  Especially when we have actual medical researchers who think that spending on AIDS may be out of proportion to its impact.

If you accept, as Gerson does, that it’s our responsibility to treat Africans infected with AIDS, aren’t there millions of people in this world living in various states of poverty, disease, oppression and squalor?  Why do AIDS patients in Africa get $30 billion over the next five years? If it’s just a question of morality, who gets to decide which cause is more deserving than another?  Which is of course the appeal of such an approach:  it’s nice to feel compassionate and important at no great cost to yourself.

Thompson also dives headfirst into the shallow pool of his own theological knowledge. In his interpretation, Jesus seems to be a libertarian activist who taught that compassion is an exclusively private virtue.

By definition, virtue must be private.  Forcibly confiscating other peoples’ money in order to give it to the poor doesn’t make you virtuous.  Nor does being forced to give money to poor.  As soon as it’s forced, it’s not virtue anymore.  People can be virtuous.  Governments cannot be.

What of the more than 1.4 million men, women and children who have received treatment with the help of Bush’s AIDS initiative? According to Thompson, they are not a priority. The 800,000 HIV-positive pregnant women who have gotten treatment to prevent transmission to their children? Not a priority. The care of nearly 3 million orphans? Not a priority.

Does Thompson actually believe this? Perhaps he was merely pandering to anti-government conservatives — though it is difficult to imagine what collection of shriveled souls would be excited by an attack on AIDS treatment. Either way, Thompson’s image as a courageous teller of hard truths — the “adult” in the race — is damaged. It cannot be called bravery for a millionaire actor, with a blessed life, to pick on the most vulnerable people on the planet.

This part is complete assholery.  Shriveled souls?  Picking on the most vulnerable?  Gerson is in fine liberal form today, picking up one of their classic techniques: If you don’t agree, you’re a terrible person.  Thompson is saying that it shouldn’t be up to a handful of bureaucrats and politicians to set the charity priorities of the nation.  Gerson says that Thompson is just being mean, or pandering to mean people.

Thompson’s questioner got it wrong. Support for the fight against AIDS is not a matter of being a “Christian” or a “conservative” — or a liberal or a Buddhist. It is an expression of compassion and empathy, which also reflects a serious conception of America’s role in the world.

No, I think you’ll find that you have it wrong, Mike.  Donating your own money to AIDS treatment is compassionate.  Insisting that the taxpayers fund your charitable projects is theft.

It takes great hubris to be a Michael Gerson.  You have to believe that your priorities are always the right ones.  You have to scorn the idea that individuals may be able to make better charity decisions than government bodies can.  You have to believe that people who disagree are just callous or ungenerous.  Gerson is effectively saying that he doesn’t trust the American people to be charitable with their own money - they need the government to force it out of them.

Gerson wants to save the Republican party with his ideas about compassionate conservatism.  Americans shouldn’t pride themselves on having a generous government, but on being a generous people.  Why not let individuals make their own choices about which cry of need to answer?  I suppose if we did, people like Michael Gerson wouldn’t get to feel as morally superior.

The Wall Street Journal published a review of his book which aptly points out some of the great errors in his judgment.

Or I’d be able to get rid of that annoying blue thing beneath the header. Curse you, CSS.

But I did change the color of the links on the side. They used to be blue, now they’re red. It’s a little bit like magic, but the kind where I had no idea what I was doing and just futzed around until something changed.

Update: If you happen to stop by and see garish awful color combinations, it’s not that I’m color blind, I’m just experimenting with which template will give me all the stuff I need and trying to figure out how to adjust colors.

Update 2: Ok, I’m liking this look a little better.  No more random blue bar beneath the header.  Not sure I’m digging the font, but don’t feel like messing around with the CSS anymore.

I’m supposed to write a short paper on my future career plans, attitudes towards work and experiences of work for my Political Science Seminar class on, you guessed it, the politics of work.  I think it’s among the dumber, fluffier assignments I’ve had to do.

So instead of getting it done right off the bat, I just spent 10 minutes trying to figure out if one of my arms is longer than the other.  Turns out, my right arm is about an inch longer than my left.  I can touch the ceiling of my dorm room with my right arm, but not my left.

New themes are what you get when you take a blogger, give her meaningless academic work to do, then sit her down at a laptop. I also thought the light blue was a little girly (which isn’t necessarily bad, but it was the shade of blue that looked weak and passive. Not exactly Amazonian), and didn’t work with the header at all. I’m liking this one more. Maybe. For now.

Speaking of indecision, Romney beat Huckabee in Michigan. The Republican primary voters are like a girl at a high school dance who will tolerate dancing with each boy just once, but isn’t impressed enough to ask for a second from any of them.

And speaking of the Republican primary, Reagan biographer and all-around conservative dude Craig Shirley wrote a great little history of the Reagan Revolution (for those of us who haven’t read his book) and how the modern Republican party has fallen away from that legacy. An excerpt:

Today’s Republicans are really reconstructed Tories, defending the status quo from on-high on the firm belief that power flows downward. True American conservatives have always believed that power flows up from the people and the status quo must always be challenged. They believed individual Americans rule their government, the government does not rule the people. The Constitution is a check on government, not the people.

You’d think this would be a pretty easy philosophy to follow, but somehow the dunderheads of the Republican Congress (and our President) don’t quite seem to grasp that government does not exist to solve everybody’s problems. And it certainly doesn’t exist to provide them with a permanent place of employment for as long as they want it, or a throne from which to hand out benevolence (to either the ragged masses or their special friends).

The issues may have changed (i.e. we aren’t fighting the commies anymore), but the approach to governing ought not. In my semi-perfect world, the election and ensuing disasters of Clinton’s or Obama’s elections will ignite some of the old limited government spark in the party. It’s times like these we have to remember that sometimes it takes a Jimmy Carter to get us a Ronald Reagan.

Anyway, I recommend you read the whole piece by Shirley.  There’s a lot of food for thought.  And some reflection on why Huckabee is such a disaster.