Monday, May 19, 2008

The Political Scene: The Fall of Conservatism: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

David Brooks (as told to George Packer:
“American conservatives had one defeat, in 2006, but it wasn’t a big one. The big defeat is probably coming, and then the thinking will happen. I have not yet seen the major think tanks reorient themselves, and I don’t know if they can. You go to Capitol Hill—Republican senators know they’re fucked. They have that sense. But they don’t know what to do.”


The next words out of David Brooks' mouth were, “There’s a hunger for new policy ideas.”

Well, yeah. Now that the policy ideas that Movement Conservatism has pursued for 65 years have proven to be exactly what any sensible person could have predicted would be complete disaster, there's a "hunger".

Conservatives, of a pragmatic stripe, will attempt to take over leadership of the Republican Party from the Reacionary wingnuts. That's predicatable enough. And, they will promise compassionate conservatism, and a humble foreign policy and all sorts of empty nonsense. Their hunger is for something empty, that will satisfy the masses for the moment, the moment will pass, and they will go back to stealing and stupidity.

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