The GOP, timelessly lost

By pure random chance, I just came upon an entry from May 2008 that will seem very timely today: “Man, the GOP is lost.” It’s about a set of nanny-state policies put forth by Tom Cole of the National Republican Congressional Committee. Here is part of my response:

Give people greater liberty? How the heck does liberty fit into this list of nanny-state programs promising to supply people’s every material need? The answer is that the Republican pols are trying, in their sincere, pathetic way, to get with the statist swing of things established by Hillary and Obama, while still sounding Republican notes. And the commenters at the NRCC site are having none of it. Cole’s pronouncement is greeted by the electronic equivalent of hundreds of tomatoes being thrown at him. The commenters want the GOP to be—surprise—a conservative party, not an imitation Democratic party.

It’s as though the Republican leadership and the Republican grassroots are in different worlds. The elite remain encapsulated, speaking to specialists who tell them what to say. These losers never try to relate to reality with their own minds. The idea never occurs to them. Reality is not something they live in and try to understand; it’s something they seek to manage from a distance, with the help of political technicians. That’s the only way to make sense of their spectacular cluelessness….

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 27, 2012 10:59 AM | Send