The American Spectator

New Republic

The somnambulistic John B. Judis offers up The Death of Conservatism thesis, circa 2009, renewed with Botox and a nose job, and hesto presto suddenly the 2010 elections never happened and Barack Obama is FDR rather than a community organizer without a community:

The Republicans’ identification of socialism with spending, and their pledge to cut the budget and fight increases in the debt ceiling, could imperil the country’s recovery-or even precipitate, as happened in 1937 and 1938, a double-dip recession. And Republican determination to cut spending on green technology and infrastructure threatens America’s future beyond this immediate business cycle. Put that together with a likely revival of the kind of neo-isolationism that characterized the Republicans of the 1990s, and you have a recipe for U.S. decline.

In the end, the Republicans will probably exhaust whatever mandate they think they procured from the 2010 elections. The country as a whole doesn’t support counterrevolution, and, when it finally sees it in action, it will almost certainly repudiate the GOP at the polls. Whether that happens sooner or later depends on the political skills of Obama and the Democrats. In the meantime, the current Republican Party-a party that would make Clinton Rossiter shudder in his grave-can still do considerable damage.

(February 3, 2011)

Washington Post

A gentleman with the macho name of Hank Stuever reviews a documentary on the life of General Robert E. Lee, commander in chief of the Confederate army, and gives himself over to the New Heroism-history as seen by nobody in particular:

As the anniversaries of this skirmish and that battle trundle through, I’m more eager to know of the domestic details of the 1860s, nuggets of everyday life on the periphery of the Civil War. In the 21st century, we are more emotionally and academically equipped to revisit the war era through the eyes of blacks, Native Americans and women. We are more able to have conversations about culture, fashion, food, song-all the things that exist on the margin.

(January 2, 2011)