'Very different,' except it isn't

Today's Douthat column is downright sad. It marches formidably up the challenging hill to a new conservatism's gleaming city, whereupon Douthat has absolutely nothing to say about one new conservative's revelation of having nothing to say.

"Republicans [must] apply their principles more creatively, and think about policy anew," declares a confident-sounding Douthat. Thus "it’s fitting, perhaps," he continues in an ever more confident vein, that Sen. Marco Rubio has delivered "a speech that tried to do just that."

Well, this is getting exciting, no? Sounds promising, right? So here we go--let us catch some of that Douthat-excitement:

The speech didn’t offer the kinds of policy breakthroughs the party ultimately requires. Rubio ... stopped short of the leaps Republicans need to make on taxes, health care and other issues.

But his tone [see definition here] and themes represented a very different response to an electoral drubbing than the kind of [right-wing] retrenchment Republicans embraced four years ago.

Let's review. Rubio's speech was "very different," although it lacked any ideas on taxes, health care and other issues.

One wonders. Are Douthat & Friends trying to fool us again?--or are they trying to fool themselves again?

Comments

[Janicket]

Desperately trying to fool themselves, I would say; the protective bubble insulating them from reality is thinning so rapidly, the cracks in it are spreading and widening -- it's downright scary for them, catching glimpses of the cold cruel world lurking outside.

[Jason]

Here's the post-election difference I notice between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans keep talking about "conservatism" as they understand it, and they believe the reason they're losing is because their propaganda is failing. Democrats keep talking about policies that will create jobs, grow the middle class, and lead to fiscal health. They don't care if you label their policies as conservative or liberal or magically delicious or whatever, because they're concerned with empirical results, not abstract ideology.

[MinneapolisPipe]

Rubio gave a ludicrous speech. Outside of his support for some kind of watered-down Dream Act, he basically gave pathetic platitudes that some "forward"-thinking conservatives like Brooks, Douthat, & Frum (all intellectually suspect due to their endorsement of W and The Romney) could say hallelujah to.

Problem is the rhetoric is not matched by serious policy. It is still an age-old cocktail of one part religious fundamentalism plus one part plutocrat-based economic policies.

That is why it won't work. Not in 2016. Not until they start re-thinking actual policy (not speech-writing). Their entire party needs a "re-boot" much like the Batman film franchise did. Right now they're in the "Batman with nipples" phase directed by the woeful Joel Schumacher (see "Batman & Robin" 1997). They haven't found their Christopher Nolan yet; a serious Batman.

Have these so-called "forward" thinking conservatives seriously addressed and repudiated the GOP's blatantly discriminatory policies and attitudes to gay American citizens? Have they seriously addressed (without resorting to dis-proven "trickle-down" theory economics) poverty in America and the stagnation of the middle class? At this point, no.

As much as I sometimes loathe leftists and traditional Democrats, the deserve credit that when they had a seemingly-sure 2008 election in the bag after the epic disaster that was W, they chose to roll the dice with the first bi-racial president instead of an established party veteran. It seems natural now, but historically it took some moxie to do that. From their focus on the re-expansion of the middle-class to civil rights issues, they're connecting with a broad cross-section of America that these "forward"-thinking conservatives simply cannot.

For a very simple reason. Talk is cheap. Results and actions matter. So Americans chose. That's why President Obama won his historically unprecedented re-election (outside of FDR) despite rough economic times.

[BobB]

Lying is a well honed Republican art.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-froomkin/republican-lies-2012-election_b_2258586.html