Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Short: A conservative gives up on Romney
I don't know B-list conservatives from C or D-listers, so maybe this guy is a complete crank. However, he wants "to see Mitt Romney spat out of the body politic, once and for all." Yet, he doesn't name whom he rather have as Republican nominee. When you don't have an embarrassment of riches, sometimes you end up with just the embarrassments.
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6 comments:
Galupo, like many of his compatriots at the American Conservative, self-identifies as a communitarian paleo-conservative. That is, he represents a tradition that is very different from either economic conservatism or the Tea Party, and in some important ways is the very opposite of libertarian belief. The like to invoke Burke more than Hayek or Rand.
In truth I suspect they are mostly in the tradition of moderate British Tories (the Churchill and Eden variety rather than the Thatcher wing). I suspect their will never be love lost between them and Romney. But I equally suspect that they will be on the fringes of American conservative politics for quite some time.
Communitarian paleo-conservative. I've heard the term before, but I can't identify what the beliefs of the species are. I guess I'll have to educate myself about it... but maybe later this week.
Thanks for the info.
Strong on local control but with a very pronounced moralistic streak. Tends to emphasize personal responsibility but likes to add that responsibility extends beyond the self to the greater good. Hero might be George Romney, father of Mitt: that is someone with good business sense in a real productive business, strong local roots, strong morality, and sense of community that includes law and order along with support for most kinds of basic welfare (including health care and, especially, education, but also extending to productive government stimulus such as infrastructure spending ).
Respect for local community leads to emphasis on federalism and can lead to going weak on civil rights. Sometimes gets into denial about the relative inefficiencies of local vs national programs. However, emphasis on community and necessity of mutual support generally leads to a loathing of modern libertarian ideas and a horror of unrestrained and unproductive capitalism a la Bain.
The American Conservative supported Ron Paul and has published some of the strongest denunciations of the war on drugs, US imperialism and violations of our civil liberties that I've read anywhere. If that's the new face of paleoconservatism, then we might have to stop calling it a communitarian ideology.
Anastasios is also wrong about George Romney -- he was a moderate-liberal reformist Republican, very much an enemy of the party's traditionalist wing at the time.
Doubtless views of George Romney have shifted over the years, as have the positions of various factions in the body politic. I am sure George Romney himself would be horrified to be put forth (smarmily) as a hero in TNR. As for The American Conservative, I suppose it's best for everyone to read it and make their own evaluation.
Anastasios,
You're probably the only person on the planet who thinks George Romney was, by any definition, a paleo-conservative.
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