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Mark of New Jersey

Mark is a Founding Editor of The League of Ordinary Gentlemen, the predecessor of Ordinary Times.

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11 Responses

  1. Koz says:

    Good post. Most of the energy behind the dissident cons is emotional need to repudiate GWP, mainstream cons, Sean Hannity, etc. Once we get past that, most of the “substantive” issues don’t amount to much.Report

  2. Dan Miller says:

    Am I missing anything, or are there no actual specifics in that third point? Taking a position for tactical reasons is pretty weak tea, especially when you don’t propose anything to solve the problem you’re claiming to care about. I’m not asking for a white paper, but this is scarcely credible.Report

    • Sure, it’s missing specifics, but Hawkins is not the type of commentator from whom you would demand or expect specifics – he’s not a wonk or a reformer but a voice of the base. I wouldn’t expect him to forward detailed and original policy proposals anymore than I would expect Keith Olbermann to do the same. What’s important to me is that here you have an unapologetic voice of the conservative movement base acknowledging that the “Reagan agenda” is outdated and no longer viable and that the failure to recognize this rendered the GOP incapable of good governance over the last 9 years. What’s more, he’s calling for movement conservatives to be open to new proposals that attempt to apply “conservative” principles to the problems of today – which, of course, is precisely what conservative reformers can and should be doing.Report

  3. Art Deco says:

    I found their exchange rather inane. You want more?Report

  4. Reason60 says:

    I took notice of the second point, in which the expansion of the welfare state is blamed for the runaway deficits.
    What makes this maddening, is the reality of the fact that we spend about 900 Billion on defense, and only 500 Billion on every other thing the government does, except Social Security and Medicare.
    So this tired refrain about reining in welfare spending conjures up images of welfare queens and free spending giveaways when in fact our biggest spending programs are the wars we are fighting.
    If conservatives really want to cut government spending, and balance the budget, they have to tackle defense spending and Medicare.
    Unfortunately, these are both sacred cows, to both conservatives and liberals. And raising taxes? Apostasy!
    This…this is why I am so frustrated with the conservative movement. Even the leading lights, even the pundits and bloggers, ignore the real spending priorities in favor of platitudes and vague slogans about “fiscal conservatism”.
    A message of honesty and forthrightness laying out a program of shared sacrifice and sober realism may or may not win elections. But to posture that the Republican Party or conservative movement truly embraces fiscal conservatism is nonsense. Aside from people like Bruce Bartlett, they still haven’t grasped the painful choices we have ahead of us.Report

    • JosephFM in reply to Reason60 says:

      I’m not sure if this helps, and I mostly agree with you, but I should point out that generally when people on the Right (aside from Republican politicians) complain about the Welfare State, they mean Social Security and Medicare.

      Now, for some reason, some of them (including many Republican politicians) they want to turn the former into a government-run investment fund, which is just a bad idea irrespective of the merits of SS.Report

      • Reason60 in reply to JosephFM says:

        I am actually agnostic as to the solutions; raising taxes, cutting benefits, etc.
        What I lament is that there was a time when conservatives were the “green eye shade” guys, the sober adults who went around saying that there was no free lunch, that we have to pay in taxes for the benefits we receive. I made that statement over at redState and nearly got my head bitten off.
        The conservative movement is today as addicted to free lunch schemes and voodoo economics as the liberals ever were; the notion that a budget has limits, that revenue and expenditures must equal each other is not only ignored, but actually detested, and usually by the same people who chant “fiscal conservatism” at rallies.Report

  5. JosephFM says:

    “[H]e argues that the GOP has failed because of its willingness to expand the welfare state to obtain electoral advantage, which he implicitly blames on the “moderates.” Of course, the reality is that most so-called moderates, if you want to consider reformist conservatives “moderates,” want to see a reform of the welfare state to make it more efficient rather than an expansion thereof.

    The thing is, to the extent that ANY of that is true, there’s really no blaming that on “moderates”. I get wanting to frame George W. Bush and Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay and Trent Lott as “moderates”, but that’s about as far from the truth as it’s possible to get.Report

  6. angullimala says:

    The people playing the Conservative Movement for suckers are not the openly “moderate”. Rather, it is those who pretend to be earnest conservatives who spout a “true” conservative messages that they don’t really believe in and do not actually support in office. Sadly, the CM is, today, so totally filled with born suckers that they think that the moderates who openly and honestly admit to disagreements with the movement, are the traitors, while the liars who always tell them what they want to hear are the ones who are being honest.Report

  7. angullimala says:

    The thing is, to the extent that ANY of that is true, there’s really no blaming that on “moderates”. I get wanting to frame George W. Bush and Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay and Trent Lott as “moderates”, but that’s about as far from the truth as it’s possible to get.

    Sadly, it appears that the Conservative movement is currently filled with true-believers in the “no true Conservative” fallacy.Report