Voting Republican Ain’t Easy
August 29th, 2004 - 9:14 pm
Neoconservative publisher Adam Bellow (son of author Saul), describes his journey from Left to Right in a fascinating New York Metro piece. Most interesting was this little tidbit near the end:
In short, the conservative intellectual movement has gone off the rails. Politics has trumped ideas, scholars have been displaced by hired gladiators, and people like me
Man, nothing pisses a Republican off more when you point out that Bush is not conservative. I tend to use the word “socialist” to describe him. I bring up the prescription drugs, campaign finance reforms, steel tarrifs, and his wussing out on the assault weapons ban. They usually agree with me, but then use the idea of Kerry-as-president to try to make me see the light.
Man, can someone please earn my vote by standing for what I believe in? Fiscal conservative, social liberal, pro-choice on everything.
I guess I’ll call myself a WHAHmbulance now.
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t Adam Bellow’s biggest complaint really that Republicans don’t value intellectuals like himself?
And if he was so smart (sorry, intellectual) how come he was a Leftie for so long? And if he is sooooooooooo conservative, how could he have ever tolerated even for one moment the dogmatic, destructive Liberalism that has nearly destroyed his own party?
No, it’s more like a rat jumping a sinking ship demanding he be made Captain, or at least a navigator, on the new vessel. No thanks.
And, please, dont’ tell me that Adam Bellow would ever ACTUALLY agree with Ronald Reagan on anything except when Reagan was safely dead. The fact is that he’s a camp follower who helped destroy his own party by not working to moderate it. I dont’ want him anywhere near the chart table. He isn’t the best judge of conservative intellectual movement. He’s just there for the countercultural movement and the fun of rebelling even a little. The harder work of actually making an idea work is beyond him. THAT is politics — what’s possible in a Real World where the rest of us live.
JRice,
You are wrong — in the sense that you have completely misrepresented (through ignorance or invective, I don’t know) Bellow’s evolution and position.
You might disagree with the small portion of his article I quoted, but that’s no excuse.
Stephen, why did you turn the microscope on this and totally ignore the spectacular David Brooks piece in the Sunday Times? The man writes a manifesto for the new (meaning, old Hamiltonian) party and you don’t even give it a one liner?
Alas, alas.
Ben,
I missed Sunday’s NYT. I’ll check out Brooks’s piece tomorrow, if I can remember through the hangover.
Man, nothing pisses a Republican off more when you point out that Bush is not conservative.
Oddly, that same observation tends to enrage many Liberals as well.