One of the chief complaints against the GOP right-wing is that they don’t have any new ideas. Or any GOOD ideas for that matter. It’s bad enough that they don’t have any ideas, but that they continually insist on doubling down on the failed ideas that they do have is ludicrous. The constant refrain of “Oh, no…they will work, just give them time!” Meanwhile their failures continue to mire this country and society in this quicksand of their failed ideas, and we’ve even stopped moving!
Ross Douthat appears with a new column that says indeed, the GOP right-wing conservatives do now have some new ideas! Finally!
You know it’s not a good sign when these new fangled “ideas” aren't the lead off in Mr. Douthat’s piece. In fact, it’s not until the very end when these “ideas” show up. He appears to be trying to practice the dark arts of a David Brooks piece and just filibuster the word count until he can rope in some half baked thesis that’s completely useless. He even does the David Brooks assertion at the end. It’s uncanny how bad writing can spread in the pundit class in the cold winter months of nothing going on politically.
The David Brooks practice kind of infects Mr. Douthat’s entire article. Typically, though wrong, Mr. Douthat makes compelling, derivative articles championing GOP right-wing baloney. In this article his preamble declares that both parties (in the grand equivalency) are ideologically rigid and therefore that’s why new ideas haven’t been propping up on the right-wing.
He then goes off to rattle off a grip of right-wing pundit class that rose up in the wake of the W. administration’s utter decimation of “thinking”. These pundits represented a “reform conservatism” that unfortunately came much too late and was subsequently ignored by the GOP. Mr. Douthat establishes that by 2012 there appeared to be a clear delineation of this “reform conservatism”, that rose up after 2008? David Brooks level of ridiculous chronology aside, what stopped this “reform conservatism” from sticking. Well, Mr. Douthat explains: the same talking point that the GOP right-wing has been parroting since 2008.
It’s not their fault. Of course it’s not! Mr. Douthat explains that Paul Ryan, championed himself as an austerity freak instead of a reform guy and this pulled some GOP that way. While the TEA Party gobbled up the rest in it’s insane grasp. In the interim Mitt Romney failed them. This is the way the GOP right-wing portrays what went wrong in recent years. It bears nothing on reality whatsoever and Mr. Douthat just doubles down on it.
The GOP right-wing is desperately grabbing at anything that will propel it along, and then poorly deal with the fallout of courting bad ideas and ideologies. Which is what they’re dealing with now as TEA Party caucus members are alienating not only other republicans, but anyone who would remotely be interested in the other right-wing ideas that maybe speak to them as independents. In fact recent polls show that those who identify as republican is at an all time low, and the independent label is on the rise. Sure, under the banner of false equivalency, democrats have lost a bit too, but that republican has fallen so sharply so quickly, as the TEA Party loonies and their redistricted representatives have risen.
So what good are new ideas and “reform conservatism” if the ideological well has been muddied and poisoned by three decades of desperation tactics? Mr. Douthat doesn’t really paint a rosy picture of the future, and considering that Paul Ryan himself was a rising star that preferred to burn out with a failed Romney candidacy than help his party, speaks volumes to just one of the GOP right-wing’s current problems. That he all but concedes that a Hilary Clinton presidential run will overpower any real good “ideas” that the “reform conservatism” movement might bring kind of torpedoes his article. Much like a David Brooks article, the piece is just too top heavy with fantastical bullshit that when the real point of the article shows up it’s just flops over.
Oh yeah, those ideas? Yeah, they’re not new or reform either. When Mr. Douthat mentions that they’re from Mike Lee and Marco Rubio, the rest of the air leaves his column. He seems to confuse political mercenary tactics for something seemingly “new”. Having been unable to derail Obamacare and having large amounts of egg on their face; both Rubio and Lee are looking to do a little maintenance on their image seeing that they’re probably going to try and be Republican presidential candidates.
That Mr. Douthat thinks what Rubio and Lee are proposing are more interesting than anything the GOP in 2012 is enlightening as to just how far the depths of their lack of ideas go. His final line is also laughable: “But for conservative policy reformers, there’s an unfamiliar feeling in the air: It’s as if, for the first time in many years, their perspective actually exists.” But it’s always existed, if only to be marginalized by the GOP, the right-wing and their pundit class representatives like Russ Douthat. But where was Mr. Douthat when his vaunted pundit class thinkers were publishing article touting their “reform conservatism”? He certainly wasn’t promoting them in his pieces, because their also his competitors. So it’s a bit of a double edged sword. Ultimately, these ideas aren’t new or reform and just because you attempt to get behind something and start touting it as new, isn’t going to convince anyone otherwise.
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