These are head-scratching times. Last I checked, the Republican
Party controls the House, yet from all appearances and expectations
its leaders there act as if they were in charge of a minority,
happily deferring to the Democratic Senate to settle a major budget
dispute on which constitutionally the lower house of Congress
should be in the lead. The question then becomes not so much
whether they have the courage of their convictions but whether they
still have convictions and what efforts if any they’ll make to
articulate them, to advance them, to defend them.
It gets worse. What passionate intensity we do see on the right
is disproportionately directed at others on the right. When Jim
DeMint announced he was leaving the Senate to head the Heritage
Foundation, a leading conservative blogger’s reaction read, “Good
riddance, Mr. DeMint.” She didn’t want to see him go to Heritage,
and she didn’t want him to stay in the Senate. Our senior editor
Quin Hillyer is rather alarmed by such displays, but also by rancor
from the right directed at political deal-making of any sort. If we
were liberals we’d probably have to invoke Rodney King. Luckily, we
still have Reagan (p. 14).
We can get along, in other words, if we remember that there are
characters out there like the cat-loving Paul Krugman serving as
major influences on our re-inaugurated president’s economic
policies and, more disturbingly, on the coldly intolerant tone he
adopts toward anyone who deigns to disagree with them. The
excellent Ira Stoll has both men figured out (see p. 18), though to
be fair to Mr. Krugman at times in his career he has made sense.
And his Nobel came for economics, not celebrity. With any luck,
he’ll be outed as a deviationist.
Already ultra-liberal New York magazine has dissed
Krug’s professorial abilities, highlighting this sample of
Princeton student opinion: “He routinely came to class unprepared,
clearly had thought little about what he was to teach that day
(much less how) and broadcast the impression that he was showing up
only to justify his professor’s salary.”
As many on the right continue to lick their Obama-inflicted
wounds and point fingers at their confreres, some are finding
solace in throwing in the towel on issues that once appalled them.
Are conservatives really becoming tolerant of something as seedy
and demeaning as marijuana smoking and legalization? I’m afraid so,
and in Peter Hitchens they will have more than met their
civilizational match (see p. 28). If he can’t clear their heads,
they might as well move on to LSD.
Not that I’m not an optimist. If not Mr. Hitchens perhaps
they’ll at least heed the guidance of Mr. Cliff May, whose
experience in covering the Troubles in Northern Ireland continues
to pay huge dividends (see p. 34). There’s nothing like a good
Saloon Series offering to put the world in the right
perspective.
You see, we’ve learned something from our own experience in
presenting The American Spectator. With this issue, we
begin our 46th year of publication in a tastefully redesigned
format, sharpening ourselves for the serious work ahead but also
drawing on our past in order to remain well grounded and
unbudgeable on all the things that matter. Trendiness we will
always have with us, but we also know it never lasts.
