The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

A Whiter Shade Of GOPale

Posted on | March 19, 2012 | 18 Comments

by Smitty

And so it was that later
as McCotter told his tale
Smitty’s face, at first just ghostly,
turned a whiter shade of GOPale

McCotter laments at length at Ricochet, and I excerpt:

“I want to shout, but I can’t hardly speak”
Presently, Rock-n-Roll Reaganites are in exile on Lame Street. Bored in the conservative media establishment’s cultural gutters; beset by crony capitalism’s billionaire beggars; and bewildered by the fervid hucksters of “Cliff’s Notes” Constitutionalism, Rock-n-Roll Reaganites possess the same prospects for a return to cultural relevance as does Alex P. Keaton’s alter ego’s flick, Poison Ivy.

In today’s twitter-splintered parlance: “WTF?”

“It’s all mesmerized, all that inside me”

To understand what went recently wrong, we must examine what went initially right, so to speak.

In 1980, the long simmering conservative movement boiled over with Reagan’s election. The only President who made a living in the arts (and served as an elected union leader), Reagan deftly melded his political and theatrical sensibilities and timing throughout his Presidency; and ensured conservatism retained the virtues that sustained it during its rise to political and cultural prominence. Creative, entrepreneurial, impish, rebellious and, above all, rooted in the shared experiences of Americans, conservatism was called the “counter-counter-culture” – a testament its clear and present threat and ultimate transcendence of the politically and culturally dominant liberalism.

“Headed for the overload”

But nothing undoes like excess. Insensate to the cultural counter-stroke that was the Baby-Boomer Bill Clinton’s Presidency, in the aftermath of the 1994 “Republican Revolution” and the 2004 Presidential re-election of George W. Bush, the GOP hubristically declared it had attained a “permanent majority.” This was akin to Keith Richards saying he was completely straight. Dismissive of the late Andrew Breitbart’s dictum that “culture is downstream from politics”; rapt with their power and perks; and absent inspiration and vision, the flush Republican “leadership” contented itself with living off the fumes of the Reagan Revolution and wallowing in the mire of pork barrel politics and lame managerial talking points. Good times.

Read the whole thing. I’m a tremendous fan of McCotter; I think he’s one of the straighter shooters in the Progressive Pride parade. The crux of his argument seems to be the intersection of “Cliff’s Notes” Constitutionalism and Rock-n-Roll Reaganites.

The article works well as a retrospective of sorts. McCotter begins with “the idea that conservatism was once hip is as hard to imagine as 4% unemployment rates and the Flock of Seagulls selling records. But, alas, ’tis true.” And now there is this chorus of “Cliff’s Notes” Constitutionalists who look at the debt, the deficit-sans-budget, and the GOP and, indeed, float a “WTF?”

And so we’re making up for the education deficit, on Twitter, in blogs, at Tea Party gatherings. Regan, for all his gifts, could no more unwind a century of Progressivism than he could cheat the Iron Law of Bureaucracy. The cancer that is Progressivism has struck back with a vengeance over the last decade.

One could lament, put on some Floyd, and commence to get potted. We could bicker and argue over ‘oo betrayed their Constitutional oath more than ‘oo. The only thing that really matters, Rep. McCotter, is liberty. Everything undertaken has to be about liberty. More concretely, the enumerated powers of the Constitution. Progressivism is not Constitutionally well-founded. All of these nanny-state safety net programs that are not proper federal tasks Really. Have. To. Go.

Like geriatric rockers owning up to their tiny todgers, the GOP elite needs to come clean about just how utterly filthy, immoral, and untrustworthy the government has become. The pig’s lips have rotted away, and will accept no more lipstick. Honesty is going to mean a few careers go under the bus. Deal with it. When history judges, it’s better to be in the Bonhoeffer column than the other one.

There is a general notion that this era is coming to a close, hopefully too violent on a grand scale. But we have to get past the nadir for the slope of liberty to become positive again.

Category: GOP, Thaddeus McCotter

Comments

18 Responses to “A Whiter Shade Of GOPale”

  1. Mike G.
    March 19th, 2012 @ 8:33 pm

    I just hope taking the country back from the brink doesn’t take the hundred or so years it took the Progs to get us to where we’re at today.

  2. smitty
    March 19th, 2012 @ 8:35 pm

    No, I predict technology and a renewed commitment to paying attention will work wonders amidst the pain.

  3. richard mcenroe
    March 19th, 2012 @ 9:11 pm

    Umm, not too violent, I hope you meant, or should I crank up the Lee Loader?

  4. MyOwnEyes
    March 19th, 2012 @ 9:17 pm

    Oh the hypocrisy. McCotter has never received a grade higher than a B- from the National Taxpayer’s Union.

    http://www.ntu.org/on-capitol-hill/ntu-rates-congress/members/house/thaddeus-mccotter.html 

  5. Steve in TN
    March 19th, 2012 @ 9:19 pm

     The key is energy (stating the obvious).

  6. smitty
    March 19th, 2012 @ 9:37 pm

    Crucial, but the I think the commitment of the people precedes even that.

  7. Quartermaster
    March 19th, 2012 @ 9:47 pm

    Energy comes as a result of commitment.

    OTOH, I doubt any of it is going to matter. The election that mattered is now behind us. McCain won, then lost. Lose-lose for the GOP.

    The next guy, Obama if my instincts are correct will only a collapse to manage.

  8. Adjoran
    March 19th, 2012 @ 10:24 pm

     Probably because he is a complete union tool.

  9. Adjoran
    March 19th, 2012 @ 10:25 pm

    McCotter’s lament lasted longer than his Presidential campaign.

  10. smitty
    March 19th, 2012 @ 10:32 pm

    Body blow! Body blow! Upper cut!

  11. richard mcenroe
    March 20th, 2012 @ 12:48 am

     Well, word is government contractors are major contributors to Romney’s SuperPAC so I guess they really anticipate some major changes in the way DC does bidness. /sarc

  12. K-Bob
    March 20th, 2012 @ 4:50 am

    I’ve played rock for money for a lot of years.  For some reason I don’t feel like endorsing Mitt Romney, like McCotter did.

    Maybe it’s only the rockers who never got paid who’d do such a thing.

  13. Bob Belvedere
    March 20th, 2012 @ 7:40 am

    Hey!  I never made that much money [we were artistes making ‘art’, don’t ya know] and I would never vote for Ben’s friend Willard.

  14. ThePaganTemple
    March 20th, 2012 @ 8:14 am

    I am curious about something Smitty. Why do you like McCotter so much when, if memory serves me correctly, you are dead set against things like minimum wage, whereas McCotter is all in for the unions? 

  15. smitty
    March 20th, 2012 @ 9:08 am

    If McCotter represents a union-heavy district, and I think he does, then he has to, you know, represent it.
    We trade calls for purity back and forth across people and contexts. Most of the time, the argument is about the rate of purification.
    Minimum wage laws are as effective as any other market tweaking.

  16. ThePaganTemple
    March 20th, 2012 @ 12:01 pm

    Yet you demand the NRA compromise its own principles on behalf of issues totally irrelevant to its mission. Interesting.

  17. smitty
    March 20th, 2012 @ 12:06 pm

    You have to take the empirical results. McCotter stays in office by flexing on some Hayekian principles.
    The NRA gets Harry Reid. Likely both McCotter and the NRA know more than I do.
    You could argue that, in protecting BHO’s backside, Reid is far worse. I think that may be the source of my contempt for him, an anyone who supports Reid, irrespective of their reasoning.

  18. K-Bob
    March 20th, 2012 @ 4:36 pm

    I could have accepted McCotter endorsing Ron Paul before Mitt. He would have had the excuse that “it was still early in the process,” and also he’s a libertarian, so who would care? But that Romney endorsement just made me wonder if Thad took that whole Gibson factory raid a little too much like having a horse head in your bed or somethin’.