Newt Gingrich’s most recent trollery -- his preposterous swill about a “party of paychecks” being engaged in patriotic struggle against an ignominious “party of food stamps” -- was nevertheless meritorious in one way: it revealed the philosophical and spiritual chasm between yesterday’s conservatives and today’s pseudoconservatives.
To wit, from Politico’s “Arena,” there was this from former GOP congressman Mickey Edwards:
Newt is utterly unconcerned with the welfare of the country or the people in it; he cares about (a) Newt, and (b) power for Newt. There may well be some Republican candidates who will follow his lead, but if they do they'll drive away both independents and intelligent conservatives.
Mr. Edwards’ placement of the adjective “intelligent” was, I thought, telling. He assumed an intelligence among independents but culled that attribute from the mass of GOP voters.
If there are enough Mickey Edwardses out there, their partisan association with today’s decidedly unintelligent conservatism will come to a thundering end. Whether that leads to a third and likely insignificant party or their assimilation into the conservative side of Democracy remains, naturally, to be seen. But something inexorable is stirring.
And it’s stirring against what can only be called the monstrous likes of tea partiers and Gingrichites such as Michele Combs, director of communications for the Christian Coalition. I repeat, the Christian Coalition, whose pseudoconservatism doubles as pseudotheology. Again, from the “Arena”:
Former Speaker Newt Gingrich has always had a talent for getting to the nub of the matter. And when he implies that this election is a choice between "paychecks vs. food stamps," that just about sums it up. Except for less than a handful of the nearly 250 congressional Democrats running for reelection, not one Democrat running is using advertisements trumpeting his or her vote for Obamacare; or for Obama's stimulus bill, or for any other legislation the president forced through Congress.
Since every single Republican in Congress voted against Obamacare, they were the ones who voted for paychecks for the American people. On the other hand, the vast majority of Democrats in Congress voted for all of these Big Government programs and as a result, we have a record number of Americans on food stamps.
Now it may be that Ms. Combs’ paycheck-conservatism is constrained by a profound, congenital stupidity for which she should bear no personal responsibility; it may be she actually believes that “Obamacare” brought about today’s mass unemployment. But I doubt it.
I suspect, rather, that Ms. Combs is simply engaging in her party’s classic, tactical flapdoodle of saying whatever might appeal to the Social Darwinian apes among us who, given the proper motivation, will drag their pseudoconservative knuckles to the polling booth early next month.
Whichever way the 2010 midterm elections materialize, there’s a philosophical bloodbath coming for the GOP. Its Combses can’t tolerate its Edwardses and its Edwardses can no longer stomach its Combses. It seems, at long last, that the conservative-pseudoconservative coalition is doomed.
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