Douthat on Beck

Ross Douthat's take on Beck-a-palooza is about as insightful as I've seen, and it captures a lot of what I've felt but haven't been able to artfully express.  Here's a key graph from his editorial:

"In a sense, Beck’s “Restoring Honor” was like an Obama rally through the looking glass. It was a long festival of affirmation for middle-class white Christians — square, earnest, patriotic and religious. If a speaker had suddenly burst out with an Obama-esque “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” the message would have fit right in." 

That's it, really, for me.  This rally and the Tea Party, represents a bunch of State-U or No-U, hard workin', church goin', tax payin', flag wavin'  folks (I was channeling Sarah Palin there) who are a little bit tired of what they are seeing.  And they will not be ignored.

Barack Obama's genius as a political figure is that he tapped into the hip, urban, cosmo, hepcat meme--and he got a pliant, cheering press to go along with him (because he was so much like them!).  That was enough to win an election when the Dems could have run a goat against the Republicans and won--but now that the country has re-awakened, Obama and his Greek chorus at the NYT/WaPost, ABCNBCCBS, are beginning to realize how very, very different they are from a large chunk of America.

Ross Douthat Talks Some Sense

Some very sensible, conservative ideas on a responsible budget.  You already know how I feel about the home mortgage deduction; means testing social security is another one I'm all for. 

Ross Douthat Surveys The Conservative Landscape

Ross Douthat is fast becoming one of my favorite Conservative voices. He writes a column for the New York Times among other things, and he blogs at the Times' blog site.

This entry really does a great job of laying out the tensions between the different tribes who pow-wow under the Conservative tent (laid bare a bit yesterday by my post on Tea Parties).

I'll summarize it this way--there is the intellectually motivated policy wonk think tanky crowd (my homies, though they'll surely never have me), there's the "movement" Conservatives (Radio, Foxnews, Tea Parties, etc) and there's the politicians. All three groups have to live with each other and for Conservatives to govern, they have to cooperate. But it's not always pretty.

I do think we're in a bit of an intellectual renaissance with respect to Conservative policy-making. Time in the wilderness will do that for an ideology, and I think we're making progress.

Douthat's analysis here is worth the read.