Dear Reader (and the opposition researchers working for my primary challenger),
Exciting times.
Last Saturday, I was in Racine, Wisconsin, home of the Danish kringle (which I didn’t get to try) and the largest settlement of Danes in the world outside of Greenland (teach me, O Wikipedia sage!). I was the keynote speaker for the tea-party rally there. It was an awesome time.
At one point, emcee (and free-market dominatrix of Wisconsin talk radio) Vicki McKenna raised the question of whether it’s pronounced “Ruh-seen” or “Ray-seen.” The audience yelled both pronunciations, of course.
When it came time for Paul Ryan to speak, he told everyone that it could be pronounced either way. “‘Ruh-seen,’ ‘Ray-seen,’“ he explained, it’s a potato/poh-tah-toh kind of thing.
Now, I’m a huge fan of Ryan’s (I even said he was the best congressman in America later on in my remarks). But little did he know that he had walked directly into the Claymore mine of my niggling pedantry. When I took to the stage, I explained that with all due respect to Representative Ryan, “No one says ‘POH-TAH-TOH!’”
I’ve always hated that expression because it validates one mispronunciation by citing another mispronunciation. And don’t give me any of this “Well, the British and Thurston Howell III say ‘poh-tah-toh’“ crap. This is America, dagnabbit.
Family Squabbles
Would that all disagreements on the right mattered so little these days.
As you can imagine, I get a lot of nasty e-mail. Some mornings peering into my e-mail box is a face-melting experience akin to looking into the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders. I’ve developed a pretty tough hide about such things. I don’t even notice the anti-Semitic stuff anymore (which comes almost entirely from the left, for the record). Though I must say I was pretty appalled recently when a reader insisted that she loved my eulogy to my dead father, which is why she was so disappointed that I had betrayed him by taking some position or other she didn’t like. She was sure that my father would have agreed with her. I’m even more sure that my Dad would say she was an idiot.
I also don’t like it when pundits whine about their e-mail to make themselves into martyrs of one kind or another. Kathleen Parker’s bebopping and scatting on her reader feedback to denounce Sarah Palin and elevate herself was particularly unseemly (as I noted at the time).
All that said, I find a lot of the rage over the Christine O’Donnell stuff a bit dispiriting. As I’ve written a billion times before, I don’t put much stock in the “cocktail-party invite” theory of punditry. It’s not that there’s no merit whatsoever to the charge that some Gergenesque Republicans or nominal conservatives “grow” out of their conservatism in order to be more mainstream. It does happen, though it’s rarely as simplistic as most people think.
But the charge is thrown around so promiscuously (often fueled by some of our friends in talk radio) and with so little justification that it can be incredibly tedious. To go by the angriest folks e-mailing me over the last 24 hours, not only am I a “fake” conservative, but everyone at National Review and The Weekly Standard is, too. Not to mention Karl Rove, Charles Krauthammer, and pretty much every Republican or conservative analyst or pundit who expressed any skepticism about Christine O’Donnell’s chances of winning in November.
Now, I don’t want to re-argue the case against O’Donnell. I was never that invested in the Delaware race to begin with. Indeed, until yesterday, I think I offered one post on the matter. And besides, now that she’s the nominee, I sincerely hope she wins.
But what is so vexing about all this is how little it has to do with substance. It all has to do with perceived loyalty to some sort of purity test or disloyalty to the agenda of the folks invoking the purity test. Actual positions on issues don’t matter. You can be pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, pro-tax cuts, pro-everything conservatives are supposed to believe, but if you argue against the “anti-establishment” figure purely on tactical grounds, you are a fraud and a sell-out.
This argument is not being made solely in my e-mail box. It can be found on radio and TV, and all over the web. And it is pointless and self-destructive.
It also makes no sense.
For starters, while I understand the frustration with the official GOP apparatus, beyond the RNC and such organs, what exactly is this “establishment”? Some say it’s Fox News, citing Krauthammer, Kristol, and Rove. Okay, but Fox News is also Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. Are they any less a part of the conservative establishment? Heck, they’re full-time Fox employees. Oh, and is Fox News contributor Sarah Palin, the GOP’s vice-presidential nominee in 2008, not a member of the establishment? Jim DeMint is a sitting senator. Is he not part of the conservative establishment? Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin have been on a tear against the establishment. Are two of the most successful Republican commentators in America really outsiders? If you were talking about mainstream politics or media, you could call them outsiders. But we’re talking about the conservative realm, and these guys are more popes than heretics.
The simple truth is that this is a disagreement among friends and allies, not an ideological civil war. I just wish some of my friends and allies didn’t want to make it into a civil war.
My intent is not to disparage any of these people, some of whom are friends or people I admire (or both!). It’s simply to say that this “anti-establishment” talking point is paper thin and it’s being used in a shabby fashion.
Second, the notion that National Review has sold out is flat-out bizarre. The cover this week is a full-throated editorial against gay marriage. But that sort of thing counts for nothing because, don’t you see? Some folks around here expressed concerns over O’Donnell’s electability. Suddenly we’re The New Republic!
If we’re showing our “true colors” – as scores of e-mailers tell me – why did NR go in early and strong for Rubio when he was a long shot? Why have we been so supportive of the tea parties? Why have we . . . oh, to hell with it. We shouldn’t have to defend our conservative credentials.
Third, the most annoying argument made by the “anti-establishment” establishment is that we have an obligation not to say anything that might harm their preferred candidate’s chances. Now, I think there’s merit to this point of view when it comes to GOP officials, especially after the primary results are in. But I can’t begin to tell you how many people have written to tell me I’m a hack and a fake conservative because I won’t follow their party line. I don’t do party lines (unless you’re talking about those phone-sex chat lines I see advertised on TV where incredibly hot women decide to stay home on Saturday nights and talk to stamp-collecting nerds. Oh wait, then I still don’t do party lines).
This is a fantastically exciting and important moment for conservatives and, by extension the GOP and the country. I’d hate to see us blow it over such nonsense. Because if we do, it could be another couple years of this.
Look, I’m sorry to use up this incredibly valuable space for a rant like this. But I kind of needed to vent. I promise we’ll get back to “immanentizing the eschaton” puns and thoughtful essays on the perils of women’s prison movies next week. Oh wait, I think that should be the other way around.