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This week on GLoP Culture, sure, we cover the shutdown, but also life as a high profile dissenter, the realism of Gravity, some myth-busting about being a conservative in Hollywood, and some unsolicited advice for J.J. Abrams on the next installment of Star Wars.
Note: We had some audio difficulties towards the end of the show. Beware of the chop.
Solid as a rock, EJHill.
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Hard to imagine anything less likely for an Amish teen on Rumspringa to be doing than watching Charles Krauthammer.
John Podhoretz needs to get out of New York every now and then.
I appreciate, John and Jonah, that you fight the good fight in very tough territory. Abrasive and nasty comments about being RINOs is cheap and easy.
“I will not cede more power to the state. I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the Associated Press. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power, as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth.”
It seems to me that the comments by John and Jonah are not the problem here, they were merely pointing out the over-the-top negative responses to their own sensible views- by the Guardians Of Purity who tell us that anyone who points out that Ted Cruz and Jim DeMint forgot to put on their clothes before parading about in public to push the House into this latest counterproductive stunt- are incorrect.
A whole lot of the comments here illustrate their point.
I repeat again, Establishment Lefty RINO Byron York explains how we should have handled this.
Cheers and thanks to Astonishing, Palestrine, Mike H, E J Hill, Vince, and Nathan, all excellent points. Concerning John and Jonah’s feeling wronged, “haven’t we already proved ourselves?”, arguments over purity of belief exist in all human groups everywhere. There are 16 varieties of what defines a Baptist. These are purity arguments, that they get personal and lack graciousness is common. That conservatives may feel isolated, well “God and Man at Yale” is an old record. That John and Jonah who get paid to be in the arena, often have a large audience, and that they often receive praise for their work and still feel so sorry for themselves is puzzling. That they lack the insight that many others feel and have felt as they do is also puzzling.
Jim Beck
I’ve been looking for a link that shows where guys like Byron pushed these strategies ahead of time. Maybe an example or two of where they stuck THEIR neck out. I’m sure it is there somewhere. I mean these aren’t the kind of guys that would let someone else take the risks, then Monday morning quarterback the outcomes, are they?
A whole lot of the comments here illustrate their point.
The current GOP rift is not a divide between Sensible Realists and Naked Guardians of Purity.
Instead, what a “whole lot of the comments here illustrate” is a grave divide between the GOP establishment and its intelligentsia on one side and the overwhelming majority of the GOP base and rank-and-file on the other.
Strangely, the GOP establishment and intelligentsia, who would style themselves Sensible Realists, are neither sensible nor realistic.
If they were Sensible Realists, they would be sensible of the fact that the first reality of politics is that you cannot win anything without your base.
The supposedly Sensible Realists, having won their invitations to off-the-record White House tea, now call Cruz “bin Laden,” they call those who cheer him suicidal, and they call for the GOP establishment to make open war against the Tea Partiers.
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They call us suicidal, but it is the Sensible Realists who are killing the party by joining their voices to the Democrat choir and thereby further dispiriting and alienating the GOP base.
The Sensible Realists speak sagely of tactics, yet with insults, condescension, and dismissiveness, they alienate the base without whom their Sensible Realist tactics are naked purposeless vanity.
What sort of tactic is that?
After the Sensible Realists have called us suicidal, deranged, terrorists, when the rank-and-file express heartfelt dismay that Sensible Realists’ criticism, in both substance and tone, seems indistinguishable from the Democrat attack, the Sensible Realists whine indignantly that they should not be purged (as if anyone is purging them!) because their disagreement is merely about tactics.
Yet the rank-and-file do justly feel dismayed, and even betrayed, because even the most Sensible Realist must know that in the present fight for public opinion, the Sensible Realists’ criticism gives great assistant to our adversaries and dispirits the rank-and-file.
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If the disagreement really is merely about tactics, then once the die was cast and when the battle was joined, the Sensible Realists might have muted or, at least, tempered their criticism so it did not strengthen the Democrats in the battle for public opinion.
But instead, when unity and solidarity were most needed, when the battle was joined, the Sensible Realists joined the other side.
Perhaps the Sensible Realists believe that when the current battle is over, if the GOP seems to have lost ground, the Sensible Realists can pin the loss on Cruz, and then the rank-and-file and the base will see the error of their ways and will conform their future actions to the greater wisdom of the Sensible Realists.
Such a miscalculation would be the latest folly of the Sensible Realists.