Republican Elite Vs Republican Voters - Road to the Middle Class

NOW THAT the Republicans are out of power in Congress and President Bush is a lame duck, the Republican base doesn’t seem to feel the need for party discipline.

So when the Republican Party elite presented the Republican voters with a comprehensive and mandatory omnibus immigration bill we all upchucked, encouraged by our friends the talk-show hosts.

Why not? There was no point in good manners and obedience. Our guys aren’t in power any more.

You can tell that Queen Victoria is not amused about this. Sen. McCain (R-AZ) has talked about “my friends,” always a dangerous sign, and Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) has opined that talk radio is running America. “We have to deal with that problem.”

Oh goodie, says talk show host Michael Graham:

Sen. Trent Lott has seen the enemy, and he is us. Well, actually: me.

But let us have some compassion and sensitivity for our august Republican leaders.

What the reckless Republican base is demanding is quite over the top. It is demanding accountability from the government. It is demanding that before we give the government the right to amnesty 12 million illegals they should prove to us that they are controlling the border.

The effrontery! Why, government has never been subjected to accountability like that before! It’s unprecedented! There’s no accountability on Social Security. There’s no accountability on Medicare, or on VA hospitals. There’s no accountability on education.

Why in the world would people suddenly get the idea that we should hold the government accountable on border security?

You can see why the Sen. Lotts and Sen. McCains of the world would be upset. They didn’t get where they are today so they could take directions from a bunch of talk-radio hosts. They will, at a pinch, subject themselves to the agony of appealing to the voters once every six years, but enough is enough.

It’s almost enough to get a solon to give up politics in disgust. Almost.

Something tells me that in all this sound and fury the political plates are shifting under our feet. Or, if you like:

They’re changing the guard at Buckingham Palace
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.

As the song goes. But who knows who will be on guard after they have changed it. It won’t be all nice and jolly like the song. Probably the GOP will have to go into the political wilderness for a while and do some hard thinking.

But that’s ok. As they said about the buboes of bubonic plague during the Black Death: They need time to ripen.

And the buboes of the welfare state aren’t going to go away. They will be there when we get back.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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