Conservatism, Revealed for Newt

Michelle Malkin has an article today on Townhall.com explaining just how the folks that came up with the Bogus Death Statistics that Won't Die did it. It is, in short, a case study in the making up of the hysterical numbers that are thrown about by the left. First, the left takes a legitimate study with modest goals. Often, these studies are from Government sources, giving them the patina of unbiased professionalism. Then they fraudulently mischaracterize the statistics in order to create as large a number as possible. Next, they go before the cameras and proclaim their sad tale to a press that never checks to see whether there just might be an agenda here. Never the less, it is an interesting case study, for those who may have never seen the strategy before.

The more interesting piece from Michelle Malkin comes from her website here. Conservatives are disgusted with the GOP in the 23rd District of New York. Scozzafava is not a real Republican in any sense of the word, and would probably have been happy running as a Democrat, but she lives in a majority Republican district. The party pooh bahs think she is "electable" and have put their money behind her. Conservatives rallied around Doug Hoffman, who as Glenn Beck says, seems to say what he means, and mean what he says. The GOP is naturally worried that in a three way race, the Democrat will win, and are pushing hard for their gal. It is true that Hoffman, running as an independent, will likely take away votes that might otherwise go to Scozzafava, but whose fault is that? The GOP pooh bahs are the ones who solicited Scozzafava without any consideration that the principles she espouses are not the principles of the Republican party. It does us little good to have a so-called Republican in Congress who always votes with the Democrats. If we are going to have that, may as well have a Democrat.

Micheal Steele, Newt Gingrich, Lindsay Grahmnasty and others have been pushing conservatives to try not to be so...well...conservative, or at least to shut up while they go and grab some voters more to their taste. The GOP seems to be genuinely embarrassed by us. Perhaps they have been reading the WaPo and the NYT too much. It's true that if you read those papers, the impression of conservatives you get will be a bunch of racist, xenophobe, homophobe, government hating flat earthers who thinks the only good woman is barefoot and pregnant, reads the bible absolutely literally, and is huddled in his bunker with his arsenal of assault weapons. Well guess what Newt, your reading these things because that's the opposition paper. Try switching to the Washington Times. Try reading some vintage Buckley, or Jonah Goldberg, or Thomas Sowell, or Walter Williams, or Michelle Malkin or....There was a time when there were few such writers, but we have been building our intellectual base. There are now a lot of them.

No, the real problem Newt et. al. is that conservatives hold certain principles, expressed in the Founding documents, that ground their lives. These principles do not change over time. Oh yes, new technologies come along, new materials make new methods manufacturing and transportation possible. But while a chair that used to be made out of wood, by a very skilled cabinet maker, spending hours of time can now be turned out by a factory at the rate of several hundred a day, it still has to conform to human dimensions which do not change. The hipsters on the Left, always seemingly on the cutting edge of whatever is new, think each new thing or idea is somehow different, and gosh, we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and start from scratch to build a new society around whatever new idea they are hawking. But as I say, the principles don't change, only the circumstances of the application. Freedom of speech is freedom to speak out whether it is standing on a stump, or writing this blog. Freedom of the press exists whether someone is handing out pamphlets or commenting on the news on a blog, or a corporation that has a multi-million dollar organization to gather and report the news. They should all be protected. The Second Amendment applies whether we are talking flintlock muskets or Star Trek Phasars. The Left has been violating our principles by dint of "interpretations" of the Constitution for 100 years now, and you, the GOP have gone along with it. You have become the Democrat-lite party. Conservatives are tired of you taking us on the same road as the Democrats only slower.

Michael Steele, Newt et. al., if you want to get conservatives back again, your candidates need to stand up and declare conservative, Constitutional principles, and when elected apply them rigidly. No more compromise. We have compromised too much, and are in danger of losing our country. Besides, the McCain debacle should have showed you that if you offer up a Democrat-lite candidate against the real thing, he will lose to the real thing every time. None of the candidates running in the Republican primaries for President was a true conservative (though Ron Paul was closer that the others.) Sarah Palin, on the other hand, is looking like exactly the kind of candidate that would fire up the conservative base. You would be wise to embrace her.