from Kevin Williamson in National Review, So Much (for) Winning

The Republican party — stupid and corrupt as it often is — has in fact provided a number of dramatic victories for conservatives in recent years: the spread of right-to-work laws and school-choice programs, lower tax rates, trade liberalization, affirmations of the First and Second Amendments, restrictions on abortion, including a national ban on partial-birth abortion, etc. (See Charles C. W. Cooke, “What Has Conservatism Ever Done for Us?”) Consider the state-level work that has been done in Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma. These are not trivial victories — these are the small things that in the end add up to big things.

Some conservatives — more right-wing populists than conservatives properly understood — were driven mad by Barack Obama, some for reasons having to do with race and culture, some because of his imperious and insufferable style, some for other reasons. These right-wing populists did not think much of the Republican victories of the past 20 years, dismissing them as nothing more than coastal elites pursuing their own ends. (Who knew that Manhattan investment bankers cared so deeply about our Second Amendment rights, or that defense contractors in Virginia fretted about abortion?) They believe that Barack Obama is uniquely evil (rather than being an updated Jimmy Carter or a slightly more refined Lyndon Johnson) and that the Republican party has betrayed them to accommodate him because they fear — here the story becomes positively absurd — that they might suffer socially if they took too strong a stand. Georgetown cocktail parties and all that. The financial interests of cable-news has-beens and talk-radio ranters in maintaining that “betrayal” storyline will be of some interest and worth revisiting in the aftermath of what’s coming on Election Day.

HKO

If the GOP commits suicide, right wing talk radio may be the gun.

print