What's Wrong With The Establishment?

The Closet Conservative asks "WTF is Going On With Krauthammer"?

Here's your answer:

People like Rove, Krauthammer and Peggy Noonan (who all swore that Obama was a moderate, or would be reined in by the realities of governance) are really no different than the "liberals" ("libertines") they rail against.

They went to the same schools, have similar backgrounds and experiences, attend the same cocktail parties, belong to the same Country Clubs, have the same friends, and the same thought process; Their hope is that all the problems of this country can be solved by throwing someone else's money at them -- only a "conservative" believes he can do it cheaper so as to provide a moral basis under which he may keep more of his own. Liberals hide their own miserly ways by transferring responsibility for paying for anything by evoking the collective (i.e. "The Government", "Society", etc.).

The major differences revolve around their own peculiar mental constipations; the Libtards still find the struggle for Socialism to be a romantic pastime, the Old Guard R's are still fighting the Cold War. One side wants to relive the Age of Aquarius, the other pines for a lost vision of an America that never really existed except in a Norman Rockwell painting. Both are out to tell you how you should live, and how you may thank them for overpaying for the privilege of their enlightened guidance.

Both Establishment Republican and Democrat are deathly afraid of the prospect of having to work for a living like everyone else, or worse, of being in a position where they will have to actually live with the consequences of all the things they've advocated (or legislatively enacted) for everyone else. That's when they aren't in mortal fear of being exposed (and prosecuted) for the retarded crooks most of them truly are.

In between this Scylla and Charybdis is the greater mass of the American public which is tired of being lectured to and robbed blind by both sides. Sarah Palin is not so much a leader of this force as much she is an opportunist; She has identified the need this mass has for a visible face, and taken advantage of it. I don't dislike her -- I used to cream, figuratively, over her -- but now I wouldn't follow her through my own front door, even if I agree with her 90% of the time. Her "success" is less about HER (and her supposed political skills) and more about US.

Voting anti -establishment pisses these folks off because the party apparatus has much (other-people's) money invested in them. The purpose of getting elected has become an exercise not so much in responsible governance, but in how to use the levers of power to dole out patronage, or to try to enact policies that will affect the actions and behaviors of the masses in a way that's favorable to oneself and his confederates. And shareholders (i.e. campaign contributors).

A few loose threads:

* On John McCain: he lost because he was a Bad Candidate who couldn't beat an empty suit that gave Good Speeches. When McCain should have shown Leadership, he opted for Drama instead, before pulling a reverse-Kerry on TARP ("I voted against it before I voted for it"). Palin was not going to "save" him, and her only contribution was to make McCain look like an idiot for choosing someone so obviously Not-Ready-for-Primetime. Not that this mattered so much to the Other Side, did it? McCain made the choice easy with his scattershot theatrics and inability to adequately identify and explain the problems of the day in way that gave him an aura of command.

John McCain looked like a doddering, clueless old man, and so he stampeded the independents into Barack Obama's camp. They took a flier on "Hope!" instead of "Duh!"

* I loved GWB, but he was only elected because he uttered "Jesus is my favorite political philosopher", and then re-elected because the thought of another 9/11 with Kerry/Edwards in charge was too terrible to contemplate. If Bush -- father and son -- was a "real" conservative, you'd never know it.


* On the term "RINO": It refers specifically in "conservative" circles to people who don't espouse the complete "God-Guns-and-Gays" agenda of the Pantybunched Right. Rudy Guiliani was far more conservative than both Bushes put together, and he could never make it through a Republican presidential primary. You can be a fiscally-responsible, law-and-order, pro-growth republican, but if you don't promise to frogmarch gays to the ovens, execute the abortionists and put prayer back in the public schools, then you're a RINO.

But now the people WANT an Army of Guilianis, and this frightens the Establishment on both sides. They're not inclined to vote social issues right now, and this threatens Rove's/Kruathammer's/Noonan's ricebowl, as well as discrediting the Religious Right/Recipient-Class Left coalitions that these people have spent the last 30 years assembling, talking up -- and milking for a living.