Poe contra the Hillarycons
(A reader pointed out that this entry as originally posted contained a very long sentence that was difficult to decipher. He was right and I’ve rewritten it, making it into four sentences, beginning at “For example, he doesn’t acknowledge…”. Our exchange, along with the offending sentence, is further down in the thread.)
When Richard Poe’s latest article, entitled “An Open Letter to Hillary Conservatives,” arrived in my e-mail today, I eagerly read it, since I am a Hillary conservative. But, while interestingly breaking down the phenomenon into three types of Hillarycons, it’s a disappointing piece. Poe fails to acknowledge any possible rational reason for a conservative to prefer Hillary. For example, he doesn’t acknowledge the argument that McCain is totally unacceptable from the point of view of serious conservatives, and therefore it is not irrational of them to regard Hillary as an acceptable alternative to McCain, for both negative and positive reasons. First, Hillary represents a less radical path than the unknown Obama-god. Second, her victory would finally remove the insane neocons from power along with their Thousand Year Iraq. And third, her presidency would give conservatives a chance to rediscover conservatism again by having a leftist Democrat in the White House whom they will oppose rather than a leftist Republican in the White House whom they will support. But Poe, instead of acknowledging any possible rational reasons for preferring Hillary, denounces all three types of Hillarycons as deluded or mischievous.
- end of initial entry -
Alan Levine writes:
I think you are perhaps giving people the wrong impression by calling yourself a “Hilarycon.” It unintentionally gives the impression that you are more enthusiastic about her than you really are, or should be.
For myself, while I appreciate, and broadly agree with, your arguments that 1) McCain is impossible, even if or especially if he wins 2) Obama is too dangerous 3) Hilary is the lesser evil, I am a bit more tolerant of people who have a different evaluation.
Of course, the way things seem to be going, your preferences or mine in this matter would seem to be transient and unimportant. I suspect, also, that, rightly or wrongly, in a McCain-Obama contest, or even a McCain-Hilary contest, many people who now swear they will never vote for McCain will simply find the Democrats intolerable and, holding their nose, back McCain. I think the more leftist Democrats themselves will insure this by simply being their obnoxious selves. Even if Hilary or Obama are smart or even decent enough to exercise restraint, many of the Democrats are so vicious that even people on the right who now strongly oppose McCain will be enraged into backing him.
Frank Rich’s columns in the Times and the attempt to argue that McCain is ineligible to be President because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone are just a foretaste of what the real campaign will be.
I am not saying you will do this, and I doubt I would, but I am sure many other people will.
LA replies:
Re “Hillarycons,” of course. I mean it humorously, and also as a way of pointing to the strangeness and desperateness of our situation. I don’t affirmatively support her; I oppose everything she stands for. But I see her as far preferable to Obama-god and, like Ann Coulter, as preferable to McCain as well. We must rid ourselves of the incubus of the neocons with their thousand year Reich, excuse me, their hundred year occupation of Iraq.
Paul K. writes:
The Poe piece seems half-baked, if that. I don’t understand his assumption that Hillary will muscle aside Obama with her “rope-a-dope” strategy. I think he gives her too much credit for having a strategy; it appears to me that she’s just flailing about. If Obama wins Tuesday’s primaries he’s got the nomination, period.
I’m curious why you feel that a defeat of McCain would purge neocons from the GOP leadership. They seem to be so well-entrenched that I have trouble seeing how that would happen.
I agree with Alan Levine’s view that many conservatives who hate McCain will find themselves, in the end, voting for him. In light of his age and previous health problems, if he chooses an acceptable conservative as his running mate I might cast a vote for him and pray that God or nature does the rest.
LA replies:
Poe’s rope-a-dope theory of Clinton reminds me of Lev Navrasov, a Soviet emigre figure in New York conservative circles who insisted, even after 1989, even after 1991, that the fall of the Soviet empire and the fall of the Soviet Union were a plot by the Communists to gain more power! Poe attributes super-human powers to Hillary.
Re your remark about neocons remaining in GOP leadership, at least an Obama victory would get them out of national leadership, ending their otherwise endless lies about seeking a “victory” in Iraq, and about how Muslims can be democratized, and their refusal to take any responsibility for the hideous mess they’ve gotten us into, and their constant demand that conservatives must support a liberal President because he’s being attacked from the left, and all the rest of it. The thought of continuing the Bushite-neocon regime for another four years is unbearable. A GOP loss at least presents the HOPE that truth can replace neocon lies in the GOP and the conservative movement. A McCain election would mean the CERTAINTY of continuing as we’ve been, of being told that maintaining endless occupations of Muslims countries is “patriotism,” and that opposing the invasion of our country is xenophobia. The neocon rule must end. That’s my bottom line. The way I see it now, only if I believed that the election of Obama represented an existential threat to the country would I vote for McCain. If we have to endure four years of leftist leadership, so be it. After all, we can’t put off a Democratic presidential victory forever; eventually a Democrat is going to win the White House again. So let it be now. Let it come. It will stir conservatives to life again in opposition to a leftist president (just as Republicans stopped a Democratic president and Congress from passing Clinton’s socialist health finance scheme in 1993-94), instead of being in the political death-state of supporting a President McCain. Imagine conservatives investing their main political energies for the next four years defending the occupation of Iraq and defending John McCain from the latest smear by the New York Times!
LA continues:
This is not a position I argue dogmatically or say that others should adopt. All the choices facing us are terrible and there’s no clear right decision here. Those who have said we must stop Obama at all costs also have good arguments.
M. Jose writes:
Of course, you have to remember that according to Richard Poe, Hillary Clinton is the Antichrist. If there were a choice between electing Adolf Hitler and Hillary Clinton, he would argue that Hitler is the lesser evil.
On his old website (which he has taken down and replaced with the new one), he constantly excused or refused to acknowledge that Bush had done anything bad in office (he criticized the Supreme Court for upholding McCain-Feingold, but neglected to say anything bad about Bush for signing it). He was also obsessed with Mayan eschatology.
He also suggested some crazy conspiracy theories. He did Laurie Mylroie one better, not only did accepting the claim that Saddam was behind 9/11, he suspected that the Chinese and the Russians were in on it, and that they opposed the Iraq War because they wanted us to get hit by more terrorists). As I recall, he even suggested that Bush had secret evidence that justified the Iraq War in terms of 9/11, but could not release it due to the international problems it would cause.
In short, Poe is nuts and anything he writes should be read with that in mind.
Ran M. writes:
You wrote the following SENTENCE (as opposed to paragraph):
For example he doesn’t mention the argument that the Republicans have got to lose the White House to the Democrats at some point, and, given that McCain is totally unacceptable and would destroy whatever is left of conservatism, seeing Hillary as an acceptable alternative whose victory would remove the insane neocons from power and give conservatives a chance to regroup and recharge by having a leftist Democrat in the White House they will oppose rather than a leftist Republican in the White House they will go to the mat for, is not an irrational view.
I can’t parse it. Please help. :)
LA replies
LOL.
I did think at the time that that was a little overboard, but it still seemed to work, so I left it as is. But you’re absolutely right, it’s out of hand. Thanks for pointing this out to me.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 01, 2008 01:06 PM | Send