This time it’s The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol. Writes Richard Spencer at Taki’s Magazine:
“The Beltway Right is still venting its collective spleen over Bill Kristol’s latest Times op-ed in which he argues, rather elliptically, that the conservative movement and GOP should get rid of its “small government,” “rugged individualism” talk, which scares people, and instead spend their years in exile developing a governing philosophy for the modern welfare state—not too big, not too small, just right.
Or something like that. The fact is, Kristol’s argument isn’t about the actual size of government, which he takes as immutable, but instead amounts to a kind of semantic game in which the objective is to give the state the most conservative and vigorous-sounding names: “liberalism” is bad, but then government should be big enough to be properly “energetic”; “socialism” is, of course, unthinkable, but “national greatness” is another story.
Michael Tanner of Cato is right to observe that in Kristol’s embrace of Douthat-ization, he’s awfully disconnected from reality and seemingly incapable of understanding why the GOP lost big in the fall. Kristol appears to live an alternative universe in which the House Republicans were defeated due to their devotion to Barry Goldwater and “President Bush’s commitment to bigger, more expensive, and more intrusive government … has brought about his soaring approval ratings.” (Tanner could have mentioned that the GOP floundered in ’08 because of Mr. Kristol’s war, but perhaps this would be a bit too much to ask since his comments appeared at NRO.)
Whatever the case, this certainly wouldn’t be the first time Kristol has advised the GOP and his movement colleagues to tack leftward. Back in ’92, Kristol received kudos from his future employer for trying to remove the “anachronistic” (in his words) pro-life plank from the GOP platform, and throughout the ’90s, he took pains to emphasize that he’s pro-mass immigration and an admirer of LBJ.
Kristol, of course, would never try to make the GOP pro-choice now. After Iraq, the Religious Right remains the most fanatical supporters of expansionist foreign policy in the Middle East—Kristol’s issue numero uno—and he wouldn’t dare question these voters’ fascination with Israel and the End Times and their other bizarre hangups. Kristol has, however, kept up his attacks on the Goldwater-ite wing of the party, and even dedicated pages in The Weekly Standard to the depiction of Ron Paul supporters as crazed hippies. (Well, if Kristol thinks we’re threat, then we must be doing something right!)”
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I liked his comment later in the article:
“Since the November debacle, no major Republican or movement conservative has turned decisively against the Kristol-Bush foreign policy, nor even speculated that—maybe, just maybe—the GOP might have lost big because of the Iraq war.”
This is perhaps the most important factor. Neocons will push for any “appeasement” of the Left as long as their foreign policy remains steadfast in the GOP. Less and less people are buying the propaganda, and hopefully the young people that were attracted to Ron Paul will have a bigger force in the GOP in years to come.
The symbol definig example of a Neocon=Bill Kristol. What a duchbag!
In my immortal words……Hey, William…..BLEEP off!!!!!
When has Bill Kristol ever knew what he was talking about.
I think the great oil party should move further to the right andf get rid any and all who do not do abesance to every oil well they come upon along with every military plane, bomb, rifle, truck or any other military piece of equipment and of course the Bushes.
Mr. Kristol’s observation apparently failed to take into account our “mushroom cloud” of financial disaster presently hovering over our heads? Also, that “leftie” communist plot of “Bailing Out” the worst transgressors of financial mismanagement in our history?
It doth appear Mr. Kristol meant sticking his head where it has been for the past eight-years — up his “forward” hind-sight; meaning his arse…