Hold that praise for George Will

This morning, on ABC's "This Week," George Will professed consternation about why Mitt Romney pals around with that "bloviating ignoramus," Donald Trump. So National Journal's Ron Brownstein explained the facts of conservative life to George:

Mitt Romney throughout the entire primary season has shown very little willingness to confront the right. And there is a big portion of the conservative base of the party that does believe that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. And Romney has just seemed to be spooked throughout the whole process at the thought that the right will mobilize against him.

What we'll see and hear for the next few news cycles is the commentariat's praise of George Will's conservative independence and high-minded criticism of his own party's presidential nominee. And it will all be horseshit, for George Will has yet to honestly reproach the millions of ignoramuses who comprise contemporary conservatism and have made it the absolute philosophical joke that it is.

If Mr. Will should ever get around to that level of honesty, then I'll gain respect for him. Till then, he's just another enabler of pseudoconservative madness.

Comments

[ohollern]

If I'm not mistaken, Will's wife was an advisor to Rick Perry. So much for the serious big kids in the Republican party.

[nk007]

Your commentary is spot-on! I think this is the case of the "good cop/bad cop" trying to hide the fact that there is not that much difference between Will and Romney.

[Ted Frier]

I have been a George Will fan ever since I was an impressionable college student in the 1970s just coming of age politically and infatuated with Will's elegant writing style and learning. And so I think I know George Will as well as anyone -- well enough to know he is an utter and complete hypocrite today whose advocacy of the GOP includes as repudiation of just about every traditional conservative position he once defended. Does anyone remember when the fiscally prudent George Will was arguing what America needed was a good tax increase because we were not taxed enough given the government services we wanted. His criticism of Elizabeth Warren's take on the American social compact (that no one made it entirely on their own and so owe something back to the community)) as an attack on "individualism" is particularly rich considering that in "Statecraft as Soulcraft: What government does" Will's biggest criticism of conservatives is that they denigrate the community in favor of -- drum roll please -- radical "individualism."