With Obama’s poll numbers down and the hapless Democratic Congress thrashing about for traction on virtually every issue, you would think these would be the glory days for the GOP. But one look at the results of the new Rasmussen Poll, trumpeted as a “shock” on Drudge, leave little to be shocked, or even surprised, about. Despite Huckabee’s mild ascendance, there is not one new face here or one new idea. It’s the same old, same old. Indeed even Palin at this point represents pretty conventional conservative thinking.
Of course on the other side of the ledger it’s worse. Even (or especially) with Obama’s increasingly tedious exhortations for “hope” and “change,” the Democrats aren’t offering us anything the slightest bit original. It’s just recycled LBJ. You would think in our high tech era there would be some thing new, but no. All the creative intelligence in our culture seems to be being invested in iPhone apps these days.
We can’t entirely blame the politicians, however. It is in the nature of that political culture NOT to reward original thought. And the media makes it worse. They don’t seem to be interested in the slightest in the search for new ideas. Everything is a score card. Who’s up? Who’s down? And, of course, in preserving their own liberal status quo. Nothing new there.
But speaking of iPhone apps, I highly recommend GPS Drive from MotionX… and good, old fashioned Scrabble.
The Democrats are offering nothing new but recycled LBJ? I don’t recall LBJ commandering all TV stations to promote a leftist agenda: http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/sright/2009/10/15/part-ii-search-and-ye-shall-find-left-wing-advocacy/. I don’t recall him blackballing political opponents frpom becoming sports team owners. I certainly don’t remember him filling his staff with Mao worshipers and admirers of the likes of Hugo Chavez, seizing private corporations, appointing a “pay czar” to tell private sector employers what they can pay people. And on and on.
LBJ was liberal, not a neocom. The Democrats today bear almost no resemblance to the Democrats of LBJ’s time.
So what’s wrong with “pretty conventional conservative thinking?”
Part of conservatism is recognizing that change is not always for the better.
You’re always welcome to come up with the idea yourself.
Scrabble… I don’t think I’ve got that on the iPhone. MotionX does make good stuff.
I am not so sure we need new faces right now. If someone came along right now, the press would just work them over. It might actually be better if new faces did not appear until a little closer to the last election. No one stays new for long anymore, in fact it sometimes seems as if Obama has been President for years and years…
When do we get to see the Face The Music Apology Tour starring GOP office holders and seekers? It should have been nationwide last winter. Had it been, a revitalized Republican base and worthy center-right candidates and incumbents would have been tanned, rested, and ready to take on the Establishment Left by spring. Instead, the moral and political vacuum was left to be filled do-it-yourself style by the naively anti-partisan Taxed Enough Already partiers.
The Tea Party people are the Perot voters of 1992. I was almost one until he imploded. The Republicans had the chance to lock things up when they had the majority. Instead, they acted like the party hacks that have D after their names. The country is heading toward the cliff and you want games. If we are not to be Argentina, the GOP has to get smart and adopt the Tea Party ideas, not the other way around.
Then start working on making the Republicans electable and forget about the Dems. A healthy GOP would swat unreconstructed socialists out of the sky like a fly any day. Focus on removing Republican corruption and its associated anti-science platform. Writing that global warming is a scayum helps Dems, seriously, they love this stuff. Get people who can write about science. Are PJM an information channel or a megaphone for wingnut talking points?
“Are PJM an information channel or a megaphone for wingnut talking points?”
Lazar, I don’t often respond to statements like that but if you think people like PajamasXpress bloggers Richard Fernandez, Ron Radosh and Victor Davis Hanson are wingnuts, you’re out of your bloomin’ mind. (BTW, Fernandez happens to have a graduate degree from MIT, if you’re so interested in science.)
Roger,
‘Are PJM generally repeating wingnut talking points, as evinced by the linked article, in their coverage of a particular science issue’? is a different question from ‘Are a certain subset of PJM authors wingnuts’?
Umm, I’m not sure why you think 2) follows from 1)? Owning a graduate degree is not unusual and is not equivalent to doing science. My interest in science is in the science and not, generally, in personality.
If you wish to make the case that the linked article is unrepresentative of PJM output on this issue, you have the floor…
Setting out to improve on the dreadful quality of the MSM; good.
Instead emulating the worst of WSJ op-eds and the IBD; bad.
Slurring the names and work of generations and of thousands of scientists; worse.
Incidentally, I read Fernandez’ latest article on ‘global warming’. Generally I’m unimpressed by people who refer to the field of atmospheric physicists and chemists as “the Global Warming crowd” or “Global Warmists”. It’s more unimpressive when said person apparently needs a climate science 101; e.g. not realizing interannual variability is primarily stochastic. The rest of the article is asking questions as if they’re new, when they’ve been considered for a very long time — by scientists, I mean, “Global Warmists”.
Why do I care…
Generally, I don’t.
But there’s a less than 5% chance PJM might live up to their ambition.
We live on small probabilities, right?
There’s the principle of subjecting the various unfair and ignorant attacks on scientists to criticism.
I also enjoy winding up wingnuts.
New post at Doc Hanson’s! Let’s rush over there!
Speaking of new faces, how about Meghan McCain? She looks pretty good as the new face of the Republican Party?