Blankley calls for cessation of all further conservative demands on the Republican party

David H. writes:

This article, “The GOP Needs a Survival Instinct,” might be of interest to you, by Tony Blankley at Real Clear Politics (and linked at places such as Instapundit and Libertas). Look at this mandatory swipe at the Christians:

“…But social conservatives received first-rate Supreme Court justices, a real effort at faith-based initiatives, constant rhetorical support for biblical values, and in fact, they have been denied nothing of consequence that brought them into politics [What does this mean exactly?—DH]. It would be an act of historic ingratitude to sabotage the GOP candidate at this point. It also would be a short path to undermining everything they have gained in national politics in the past quarter century…” [emphasis mine—DH]

All this with Bush? Good Lord that’s hilarious…

The “best” line:

“…Every faction within the GOP coalition should agree immediately to make no further demands of their party…”

The further we distance ourselves from the “mainstream” (liberal) GOP, the better off when the elephant comes crashing down. And crash down it shall!

Thanking you for all you do (which is so very much),

LA replies:

I’m appalled by the Blankley quotes you’ve sent. I always respected him as someone with some genuine conservative, not just neocon, instincts and formation. A year or so ago, when he wrote an absurd column enthusiastically endorsing Bush’s (used once) phrase “Islamofascist” and explaining how our jihadist enemies were really fascists (and this after he had written a decent book on the Islamic threat), and then declined to reply to my e-mails to him about it (which he had always done before), I felt he had switched from a thinking man to a mere Republican team player.

And now Blankley writes: “Every faction within the GOP coalition should agree immediately to make no further demands of their party”? Oh my prophetic soul. Another former talented and idealistic conservative who smoked too much “Dubya,” burned his brains out, and has ended up as a Party enforcer on Desolation Row:

At midnight all the agents
And the super-human crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do.

The column is an attack on social conservatives for opposing Guiliani. Blankley doesn’t seem to realize that even if the conservatives make no demands at all on the GOP, Giuliani is still going to be unacceptable to them! Or maybe Blankley does realize it, and what he really means by his peremptory telling conservatives that they must make no more demands on the GOP is that they must simply accept and support whatever the GOP throws at them, namely a Giuliani nomination. Blankley doesn’t want to put it as baldly as that, of course, so he makes it sound as though the problem was that conservatives were making unreasonable demands, when in reality all they are doing is opposing that which they oppose, namely Giuliani.

Republicans and “conservatives” who have touted Rudy as the GOP savior for the last few years are responsible for this. If they had acknowledge the obvious truth that this guy is totally unacceptable, then Giuliani would not have consumed all the attention and oxygen, and better candidates might have arisen. But they puffed up Giuliani from the start. Which shows that they’re not just motivated by the desire to find a candidate who can win. They positively want Giuliani to be president. That’s what this is all about. After all, how can Blankley state so positively that Rudy is the only one who can beat Hillary? What is his basis for being so sure about this? How does he know that Romney would not fare better? What this suggests to me is that they don’t want Giuliani out of a merely pragmatic calculation that he is the one who can win; they want him because they want him to be president. And conservatives who want Giuliani to be president have busted conservatism wide open. It is they who are the destroyers of the GOP and the conservative movement, not the Giuliani opponents.

Jason writes:

I think Tony Blankley, like so many other conservatives, is infected with a disease called Hillary Fear. These conservatives are so afraid of another Clinton administration they are willing to vote for almost the same thing because it does not have the word “Clinton” at the end of it.

I just acted as a surrogate for the Tancredo campaign at a conservative event. The person who came to represent Giuliani is as hard core conservative as I am. But he is infected. The main theme he produced was that we need to stop Hillary and only Giuliani can beat her. This is their theme. I am sorry to say it appears to be working.

I think the recent Christian group meeting that happened and how they “may” vote for a third party is a political shot across the bow. That and the fact the Giuliani’s numbers have not moved up or down in months. He is polling at around 30-33 percent in every Republican poll. And he is probably going to be 0-4 going in February 5th, so maybe his lack of momentum will seal his political doom.

On the brighter and more positive side. As many of my conservative friends prepare for the second curse of Clinton. I basically look at it this way, the bridge between Reagan and Gingrich was Clinton, so maybe another Clinton the White House will wake people up again, it did last time.

Your web site is a fantastic resource, as always. Thank you for what you do.

LA replies:

It’s a mental hell, going on year after year through the Bush era, and now perhaps in a Giuliani era as well, a nightmare I want to escape the way Stephen Daedalus wanted to escape history, in which the ruling calculus on the “right,” the only calculus, is how much we have to move to the left into order to stop, uh, the left. It’s a politics that has no notion of what it believes, that only exists to stop the dread Enemy, a politics that is willing to become virtually identical to that Enemy into order to defeat it.

Thank you.

Alan Levine writes:

Agreed with your comments about Blankley, although I am a bit torn. The man is a) obviously a conservative with decent instincts, b) often the only voice of sense on McLaughlin’s TV circus, but c) sounds like a Republican flack when defending Bush and the GOP. Actually, the last point is not quite correct, because he often makes a far better case, however pitiful on an absolute scale, for the Administration than Bush and his spokescritters can.

LA replies:

A long time ago I was a fan of the McLaughlin Group, then watched it less and less, then stopped watching it completely after 9/11 when McLaughlin came out as an enemy of Israel. One enemy of Israel on the show was bad enough. But to have McLaughlin and Buchanan thuggishly and gleefully demonizing Israel together on the same program was too much. Blankley was decent, but the show ceased being worth watching.

Gary M. writes:

I’m the guy who wrote the blistering letter to the RNC about 4 months ago that you called “magnificent.”

It’s laughable that Blankley should now argue that we can’t make any “demands” on the GOP. Note that this comes from a member of the GOP elite, the same party that has spent the last seven years under George Bush giving its own base the finger on spending, immigration, growth of government, national sovereignty, and so on. I suppose in a twisted way Blankley is right: there’s no sense in bothering to make demands when you have been disrespected so blatantly. You do what any person would do, if, let’s say, a woman’s husband cheated repeatedly—throw him out and make him feel some very painful consequences.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 04, 2007 03:03 PM | Send