Small government romanticizes the role of the local community; which has always stratified based on religion, race, gender and sexual autonomy, and leverages violence and ostracism to enforce jurisdictional and commercial monopolies.
Basically. Both Charles Sykes and Erick Erickson have done some public owning up: <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Interviewed <a href="https://twitter.com/SykesCharlie">@SykesCharlie</a> recently for story on conservative media I'm working on. Worth reading what he had to say <a href="https://t.co/cqsVOabG7Q">pic.twitter.com/cqsVOabG7Q</a></p>— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) <a href="https://twitter.com/oliverdarcy/status/764909726278836225">August 14, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> Erickson: Charlie Sykes and the Questions of Blame and Responsibility I have boundless admiration this campaign cycle for Charlie Sykes, the Wisconsin radio show host. And that admiration just keeps increasing. Oliver Darcy of Business Insider, last night, tweeted out some comments Charlie made about conservative media and accountability in the Age of Trump. One of the things Charlie said was “And I have to look in the mirror and ask myself, ‘To what extent did I contribute” to the conditions that led to Trump. I have written before that I think I and virtually every other person engaged in politics at the national level contributed in various ways. In fact, at this weekend’s RedState Gathering I said I think a new rule of thumb could be to never trust a politician, political consultant, or pundit who says they had nothing to do with the rise of Trump. For some, like me, perhaps we pushed too hard on issues and held too many people to many promises we took more literally than we should. Perhaps we encouraged activists to have too little grace for others. For others, it was making promises they had no intention of keeping. For others it was peddling stories they knew to not be true, but were just too good not to talk about. And for others, it was ignoring very real concerns of Americans in favor of the concerns of check writers. Republicans and Democrats both deserve blame for the rise of Trump — the one for talking a good game and not delivering and the other for flat out ignoring the conditions and concerns of a disaffected group of Americans in favor of identity politics. I think, if anything, the coin operated conservative movement will never account for its participation in the rise of Trump, but deserves much blame. It decided to define conservatism based on the highest bidder instead of the highest principle. Conservative activists turned lobbyists and suddenly their issues became conservative even if they were not really. Back in February, Rush Limbaugh interviewed me for the Limbaugh Letter and he asked me about a particular criticism often raised of me — that I somehow think I’m the standard setter for conservatism. I told him I didn’t necessarily think that was true, but I also think there has to be people in that role because otherwise everyone will claim conservatism for themselves. It’s a vastly more popular label than liberal. To the extent I can help clarify what is and is not conservative while not being the pocket of vested interests, I do try to do that. Remember, just ten years ago we had a number of supposed conservative thought leaders telling us we should go along with Harriet Miers because they had begun to treat conservatism as a synonym for Republican. It will not surprise you that now some of the very same people are trying to tell us that Donald Trump is a conservative. Like Charlie, I think I have to more fully assess my role and responsibility in this new phenomenon. But I don’t think a lot of the people who deserve a lot of the blame will do that. Do not, for example, hold your breath for the Wall Street Journal editorialists to ever acknowledge they were in part responsible, though they were too. Gigot would sooner prefer to be touched by a commoner than ever admit his editorial page fluffed elites and parroted talking points at the expense of heartland voters he disdains as a way to pretend his roots are more refined than they are. Hell, his opinion writers cannot even admit there is an elite or an establishment if only because their heads are so far up the rear ends of those folks they can’t see them. One of the other groups that I am confident will never do that is the mainstream media itself. Much of Charlie’s statement to Oliver Darcy was about how conservatives have spent years delegitimizing the mainstream press. And I think it absolutely had to be done, though it is not without consequence. Further, I think a lot of the consequences cannot be blamed on conservatives, but on the media itself. Take Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times as one example. He flat out made up the story about George H. W. Bush and the grocery store scanner in 1992. His punishment? Promotion. Take the cultural issues of gay marriage and transgenderism as another example. National reporters in New York and Washington who shape national news opinion on this issue have taken a one size fits all view. If you don’t want to violate your faith or have boys in your daughter’s bathroom, you are a bigot. Take environmentalism as another example. The press has taken the left’s position that we are polluters without any recognition that we are also producers and contribute the planet. The press has completely ignored the plight of displaced coal miners, put on government assistance against their will because extreme environmentalists have shut out their jobs. Or look at the current media coverage of Clinton and Trump. I guaran-damn-tee you that if Dylan Roof’s dad had been at a Trump event, the media cycle on that story would still be ongoing, while the media circled the wagons around Clinton when the Orlando terrorist’s dad went to her rally. Oh, and that reminds me, look at guns as an issue and how the media covers that. I do think, however, what guys like Charlie and I and others have to be willing to do and be consistent about is calling out bullcrap on our own side. How many conservative outlets were willing to call out Gateway Pundit and Breitbart for running pictures of the Cleveland Cavaliers celebration as if it was a Trump rally? How many were willing to call out those sites that ran pictures from February as if they were pictures from yesterday showing Hillary Clinton falling? Conservatives have spent years calling out the mainstream media for making up stuff about the right. We do ourselves no favors if we do not also hold our own side accountable lest they discredit us all and drive our own side to the brink of dementia. That is why, for example, I have a growing list of conservative media outlets I flat out refuse to reference or rely on for my radio show and this website. If there is one great bit of blame for conservatives, it’s that we allowed bad operators to join us because we assumed we were in common cause with them when we were not. And now, like the cuckoo bird, these bad operators would shove us out of conservatism when instead they themselves much be held to account for profiteering, corruption, and lying to senior citizens and activists alike.
Conservatives should have reverence for the status quo and legal precedent Conservatives should be for conservation, maintaining the environment for future generations Conservatives should be for freedom of religion and freedom from religion to let the marketplace of ideas decide Conservative should be for restraint in dictating against currently existing legal behaviors by duplicitous means like voting rights and abortion. Conservatives should be for respectful discourse, statesmanship and the tradition of compromise
Only one thing matters, conservatives should be to conserve the wealth and power of the wealthy, nothing else really matter.
Nice post, thumbs! I remember those days. Who knows how the current political situation will play out. Will this turn out to be a watershed election? We could have the first woman president, which would be a very significant event, but I was thinking more of the political direction of the respective parties. The congressional elections this Fall and the elections for legislatures across the country are critical. That's where a Hillary landslide by 10 points or more would have a real down ballot influence. That would be groovy from my perspective. I don't see the GOP splitting up, though. We've seen so many 3rd party attempts come and go that I see little prospect of another being successful.
Nice unbiased post. Its hard to predict what will happen. Its human nature to have an adversary. We will always have a distinct party fall-in when it comes to issues. I believe religious beliefs will stop driving party politics and we will start ushering into a division between poverty/wealth, domestic/foreign issues and capitalistic/socialism control. The future will determine more on how the US handles the erosion of our world power.
Once the Democrats took over the 110th congress they started to run a deficit every single year that was nearly as much as the entire Iraq and Afghanistan wars cost combined total.....and they did this until they lost the control of congress. When you talk about "blowing trillions" there are better things to talk about than the relatively cheap Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The more you know
No, not signing on for those "relatively cheap" wars. I'm not afraid of terrorists either. Stop the bull**** war machine, both parties, and all the terrified Islamophobes as well. We have several generations of pu$$ies developing in this country.
Are we out of Iraq and Afghanistan yet? Perhaps when we have a reliable total to work with we can talk about relative cheapness, that's of course after adding up all the military benefits (since providing healthcare for soldiers is cheap).
A war led by some cowboy carpet bagger's administration desire, a desire to secure energy for the globe and to secure lucrative private contracts to rebuild what we bombed. At least Slick Willie was smart enough to just lightly bomb Sadaam's military via cruise missiles. Jokes on us as that's mostly China's oil in Iraq and we have the world's most proven reserves as of this year.
Yeah, we left Iraq in 2011 and left Afghanistan in 2014 with only a token number left behind. That said, if you are going to add up all of the associated costs when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan, then it's only fair to add up all of the costs associated with literally doubling the national debt. Do you really want to count interest on 10 trillion dollars? Probably not since that's something like 200 billion dollars a year at this point and isn't going away any time soon. The incredibly liberal estimate for the total costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars including the potentially 80 years of VA benefits is only 4-6 trillion dollars or roughly in the same range as to what Obama and the Democrats added to the national debt between 2009 and 2012
So then you see the spending against ISIS as separate? Seems terrorism is big business, that is fighting it or whatever. Cold war to war on terror back to Russia. Always needing that prime time enemy.
I laugh when I read this - environmentalists didn't put those coal miners out of work - it was the Saudis who tanked energy prices. This is the problem - even here he isn't getting the facts right. They released the monster, and the only solution is to cut themselves from it. No it will not be a "split" what it will be is a fractured party that can not unite and voters fleeing until it shrinks. I think it's the Democratic Party will split. You will have a left party that is pro-entitlement programs and pro-using the gov't to lift people up so to speak. You will have a central party that is socially liberal but fiscally conservative - Neo Republicans so to speak. This party will be the one favored by business and will be the small gov't anti-regulation anti-tax and but pro spending on military And finally you will have the right wing / tea party folks who will be anti-business, anti-immigrant, anti-everything. But they will be pro gov't spending in the areas of infrastructure and policies that benefit blue collar workers. It won't be so much as a spectrum as a circle, with each of these parties working with the other two to try to get it's agenda implemented. It could work well, or it could be a complete mess. I think it will be a mess as that's why we always ended with just two parties.
That wasn't the biggest thing I sited. Those "mistakes" looked horrible and tarnished the convention. Giving Wassermann a job for her "loyalty" which was overseeing a group that disadvantaged her competition was not the appropriate thing to do under the circumstances. Lol at you calling me partisan.
Look don't get mad at me for your party calling you ignorant. You do realize that much like signing a legal document pledging to protect confidential information, Hillary did the same with conflict of interest, right? I run a charitable org and I have a job in the corporate world. I cannot and will not let the 2 mix with each other. It's obvious that Hillary has done that. Give up the 7 year old's defense of well Billy did it too. She's running for office now. Her judgement while holding office matters. If you presented evidence that the others did what you claim and they were running for public office now, I wouldn't vote for them. I'm not voting for Trump either. .
