Conservative editor praises Bush for adopting Democratic positions

In a typically, stunningly empty column by Emmett Tyrrell, a man whose paid writing career somehow continues on and on, though he literally has nothing to say except to repeat for the ten thousandth time his tired, adolescent swipes at such targets as “Boy Clinton” and Sen. Biden’s 18-year-old plagiarism of a British politician, he does say something worth quoting, but only for negative reasons:

In foreign policy and even in many of his domestic initiatives, this Republican president has achieved a neat trick. He has assumed policies usually associated with the most honored Democrats. The almost unprecedented anger against him is the anger once exhibited by Midwestern and small-town Republicans as they watched FDR pass them by.

Tyrrell, one of the established names in the so-called conservative pantheon, is praising Bush for adopting the Democrats’ program. His approval is based on the fact that Bush’s leftward moves infuriate the Democrats. By Tyrrell’s standard, namely that whatever outflanks and upsets Democrats is good, Bush should adopt an out-and-out socialist program, since that would outflank and upset the Democrats even more than his adopting a merely liberal program.

How does this empty, worthless “conservative” establishment go on?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 22, 2005 11:53 AM | Send