Mitt Romney Reaps What He Sows, Or Something

The liberal President Ronald Reagan once handed down an 11th Commandment: "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican."

He learned this rule from his life among the Democrats, whence he came to the Republican Party after he realized his former pals were getting cozy with the commies. To this day it takes forever for the Democrats to abandon one of their own to the wolves, even when they deserve it. Recent cases include Charley Rangel and that wiener guy from New York.

But Republicans still haven't learned this rule, proving the other one about old dogs. One whiff of trouble and a fellow Republican drops you like a hot potato. Hence the Rep. Todd Akin affair, even whose money they've cut off and would cut off his nuts if they could (a little Rev. Jesse Jackson humor there). Mitt Romney, being more at home with liberal Democrats, waited while everyone else piled on Akin before he decided to do so. Not exactly a profile in courage. More like a man torn about what he believes and which party he belongs in. As a social liberal and a fiscal conservative, he really is a fish out of water, seeing that the Democrats are the former and the Republicans are neither.

So it's not a little amusing to see the Republican establishment and Romney's other would be supporters now crucifying Romney for his 47 percent remarks last May, only just recently made public. If anyone will be to blame for Romney's loss in a few weeks' time, it will be the Peggy Noonans, Bill Kristols and John Tamnys of this world, not the conservatives. Rush Limbaugh rightly points out the irony that the conservatives, Romney's fiercest critics during the primaries, are his defenders today against his critics who were his liberal supporters yesterday, who insisted at the time that Romney was the only candidate who could win.

Meanwhile the clerisy rallies round the redistributionist, under whom income inequality has only increased. Spreading the wealth around all right . . . among the wealthy.

Same as it ever was.

Mitt Romney: Today's Symbol Of The Fatal Impoverishment Of Conservatism

"[T]he conservative movement is enfeebled, intellectually and in backing, at the very hour of its popular ascendancy. (By the way, America’s bigger men of business, with very few exceptions, never have been of any help to really conservative causes; if they think of politics at all, it is much as they think of professional sports teams: 'Winning is the name of the game.') This may become a fatal impoverishment. ... 

I am not implying that conservative folk should set to forming a conservative ideology; for conservatism is the negation of ideology. The conservative public man turns to constitution, custom, convention, ancient consensus, prescription, precedent, as guides—not to the narrow and fanatical abstractions of ideology. I am saying, rather, that unless we show the rising generation what deserves to be conserved, and how to go about the work of preservation with intelligence and imagination—why, the present wave of conservative opinion will cast us on a stern and rockbound coast, perhaps with a savage behind every tree. Conservative leaders ought to declare, with Demosthenes, 'Citizens, I beg of you to think!' ...

So it is that thinking folk of conservative views ought to reject the embraces of the following categories of political zealots:

Those who urge us to sell the National Parks to private developers.

Those who believe that by starving South Africans we can dish Jesse Jackson and win over the black vote en masse.

Those who would woo the declining feminists by abolishing academic freedom through a new piece of 'Civil Rights' legislation.

Those who instruct us that 'the test of the market' is the whole of political economy and of morals.

Those who fancy that foreign policy can be conducted with religious zeal, on a basis of absolute right and absolute wrong.

Those who, imagining that all mistakes and malicious acts are the work of a malign or deluded 'elite,' cry with Carl Sandburg, 'The people, yes!'

Those who assure us that great corporations can do no wrong.

Those who discourse mainly of the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderburgers, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

And various other gentry who abjure liberalism but are capable of conserving nothing worth keeping."

-- Russell Kirk, 1986 (here)

Democrat Jesse Jackson's Civil Discourse About Obama: "Cut His Nuts Off"

From 2008. Reported here. Video here.