September 28, 2006
REPUBLICAN DARWINISM:
Anybody But McCain (JOHN BATCHELOR, September 28, 2006, NY Sun)
John McCain of Arizona has won the Anybody-But role for the Republican nomination in 2008. Is this good or bad news for Team McCain? It is a tradition in the Grand Old Party that choosing a nominee, especially to succeed a sitting Republican president, means that the party must perform a romantic opera that requires certain roles to be filled by credible performers. The lead role is that of Anybody But, which the 2008 election has now filled. Equally critical is the role of Who-Can-Stop-Him? which is filled this year with a lean, hungry triumvirate of Rudy Giuliani of New York, Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, and Bill Frist of Tennessee. The junior roles are called What-Abouts? which best have a regional balance: George Pataki of New York, Newt Gingrich of Georgia, Dick Armey of Texas, and Condoleeza Rice of California.Republican history suggests that the Anybody-But role will be the nominee — from Blaine in 1884 to Taft in 1908, Nixon in 1960, and Mr. Bush in 1988 — and that all of the booms for the competing candidates know this as they plunge into the contest. No blame attaches to supporting a Who Can Stopper or a What Abouter, since the party expects you will eventually join the Anybody Buts. The Republican Party is the most successful third party in history just because it understands and enjoys these periodic tantrums in which the party faithful scrap with each other far more passionately than with the eventual Democratic opponent. The Republicans call them contests of ideas, but this is self-admiration, because there is only one idea in the Republican Party — liberty — and no party member is more equal in that debate. The tantrums are best seen as routine Big Manhood: Choose your Big Man and fight to control the party's money, which is the same as controlling the party.
George W. Bush is that rare Republican nominee who began life as an Anybody-But, rather than evolving from a Who-Can-Stop-Him. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 28, 2006 8:14 AM
The idea that McCain represents "liberty" is risible. Expose him on these grounds, and some one else may win, though McCain is the way to bet.
Nice to see Mr. Batchelor acknowledge that Republicans are a successful "3rd party." I submit that it is time for another one.
Posted by: Bruno at September 28, 2006 10:01 AMMr. Bruno, what would the new party form around? The only issue that is moral and powerful enough to do that abortion, and the Republicans seem to be on the right side of the issue.
Posted by: Robert Mitchell Jr. at September 28, 2006 11:13 AMAs a conservative, McCain represents liberty, against freedom.
Posted by: oj at September 28, 2006 11:31 AMRobert:
Bruno thinks middle class white parents who are happy with their schools will join him in importing black kids from failing schools. It's crazy, but cute.
Posted by: oj at September 28, 2006 11:34 AMRobert,
OJ is essentially correct, as middle class parents who are happy with their schools are doped white mice who think what the teachers unions tell them to think, despite all evidence to the contrary.
As for your insightful question, I am agnostic on whether a 3rd party succeeds, or whether it becomes enough of a threat to bring Republicans back to supporting their rhetoric. I merely point out that the protectionist racket under which the Dems & Reps have created retards the competition necessary to maintain a dynamic culture.
The "issue," such as it is, will be corruption (in a very broad sense), and it will first rear its head in places like Illinois, where the Republican Party is essentially worthless and corrupt to the core.
I don't have the time to ramble on all the details, but a growing number of Americans are slowly noticing that Alexis de Tocqueville was psychic when he wrote...
"After having thus successively taken each member of the community in [Government's]powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."
Posted by: Bruno at September 28, 2006 2:15 PMRobert,
OJ is essentially correct, as middle class parents who are happy with their schools are doped white mice who think what the teachers unions tell them to think, despite all evidence to the contrary.
As for your insightful question, I am agnostic on whether a 3rd party succeeds, or whether it becomes enough of a threat to bring Republicans back to supporting their rhetoric. I merely point out that the protectionist racket under which the Dems & Reps have created retards the competition necessary to maintain a dynamic culture.
The "issue," such as it is, will be corruption (in a very broad sense), and it will first rear its head in places like Illinois, where the Republican Party is essentially worthless and corrupt to the core.
I don't have the time to ramble on all the details, but a growing number of Americans are slowly noticing that Alexis de Tocqueville was psychic when he wrote...
"After having thus successively taken each member of the community in [Government's]powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."
Posted by: Bruno at September 28, 2006 2:18 PMNo, a growing number of people vote for the Third Way, whether proferred by Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, George Bush, Stephen Harper, Tony Blair, John Howard, or whoever. We want the arm, we just want it under rather than over us.