A loud but confused trumpet for Gingrich

Ruth King posts at Ruthfully Yours a letter by Angelo Codevilla in which he argues that the Republican Party—at least since Eisenhower beat Taft for the GOP nomination in 1952—has been controlled by an establishment that “differs from and is antagonistic to people who vote Republican.” He makes a powerful case. However, the point toward which he aims is that the current attacks on Gingrich are but the latest manifestation of the Republican establishment’s decades-long campaign of denigration against the true conservatives (e.g. Goldwater and Reagan) who challenge it. The problem with this thesis is that Gingrich himself is, of course, a Rockefeller Republican; as a congressman, he used to call himself one, and he still supports Rockefeller-Republican type policies today. So even though Gingrich with his inflammatory rhetoric is being cast at the moment as the non-establishment candidate, in substance he is not different from the establishment. Codevilla’s argument thus stumbles.

As for the question of conservative credentials, let us remember that Codevilla, like Gingrich, says very interesting, non-conventional, conservative-sounding things, but is also extremely unsound and the very opposite of conservative. Thus in 2009 he wrote a big article at The American Spectator (see my discussion of it) where he said that the U.S. because of its geographic proximity to Mexico must marry and merge itself with Mexico:

For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, whether anybody likes it or not, the United States and Mexico are joined at the Rio Grande until the stars fall from the sky. What Geography hath joined together, let no man even think of putting asunder …

So, self-interest as well as the Golden Rule command us to love Mexicans as we love ourselves …

Also, on the subject of elites, of whom Codevilla is very critical in the above linked letter about the GOP establishment, immediately after writing his insane 2009 article in which he said that Americans have no choice but to surrender to the Geographical Inevitability identified by gnostic bully boy Codevilla and merge themselves with Mexico, he wrote an entry at the Corner in which he denounced haughty elites: “the media’s haughty personages … the upscale folks who look down on the rest of us and upon themselves as saviors of the planet.”

So, again, Codevilla, like Gingrich whom he now champions, is wildly full of himself and madly contradictory.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 19, 2011 02:41 PM | Send