Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Andrew Sullivan and the Revived Confederacy

Andrew Sullivan, the limited government conservative British transplant, is voting for Obama because he wants to save "The Republican Party". He is convinced that "social conservative extremists" have taken over the GOP, to the hurt of the fiscal conservative core of the party.

Who pays this guy to spout off such folly? If he wants to save the Republican Party from "Social Extremism", he could start by doing away with the vain politicking which assumes that his one vote of his one opinion will transform a coalition filled with diverse elements, yet nothing extreme.

If there is a war in the Republican Party, it centers on the voters who expect their representatives to cut the spending and lower the debts and deficits hurting this country, while for decades Establishment GOP types have paid lip service to cutting the spending and curbing the entitlement, only to subsidize Big Business.

Mr. Sullivan brings too abstract and academic a mantra to his pontifications. It would appear that he is a journalist in search of a journal, a columnist who rails at some fifth column or third rail of politics in this country. He has spent too much time hobnobbing with the distracted liberal media elites of Upper Manhattan, trying to fit in without being unfit for the limited government policies which he celebrates when no one is looking.

Andrew Sullivan is David Brooks with an elite accent and a diverse lifestyle. The two men claim to  want less government, but want what's left of government to do more for others. They want to be loved and respected by the red-hot conservatives but relish in the media elite reputation of talking heads at the table with George and David on the Sunday Morning talk shows.

Sullivan commented that Romney would be winning every Southern State once again, while Obama had won Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina in the previous election. "It's the revival of the Confederacy!" he exclaimed at the "This Week" Round Table.

Not only were Sullivan's extreme (and extravagant with vagaries) News Hour Columnist Gwen Ifill defended the social conservatives from the attacks of the British limited government moderate. She esteemed Missouri Congressman Todd AKin and Indiana State Treasure Richard Mourdock for their strong stance on opposing abortion, even if their views struck outsiders as strange or overwhelming.
Very few would have anticipated that Ifill was defending the very conservatives whom Sullivan claims to champion yet frequently denounces before the camera.

No shots were fired, no civil war emerged, and for all of his bluster, Sullivan's historical musings stirred very little controversy beyond the calm chiding of George Will.

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