Why we read Krauthammer:
A man who has no use--let alone no feel--for colorblindness has no business being a leader of the conservative party. True, if Lott is ousted, he might resign from the Senate and allow his seat to go Democratic, thus jeopardizing Republican control of the Senate and undoing the great Republican electoral triumph of 2002.
So be it. There is a principle at stake here. Better to lose the Senate than to lose your soul. New elections come around every two years. Souls are scarcer.
Since I'm not much of a Republican or a conservative, I'm perhaps even less concerned than Krauthammer about the Senate Republican majority -- although as a hawk, I see it generally as a mostly good thing. But Lott has got to go.
Just one quibble. Early in the piece, Krauthammer identifies Pat Buchanan as a Goldwater Republican. Please. Buchanan was once a Nixon Republican, with all the negative connotations you can think of. Now Pitchfork Pat exists at the fringe of fringes, where the Loony Left and Radical Right become as one.
Let's not tarnish Barry's mostly-perfect legacy with Buchanan's stink.
UPDATE: Predictably, Jonah Goldberg disagrees with Krauthammer on the bigger issue dividing neo, paleo, and traditional conservatives.
In the late 1980s, there was an execrable miniseries entitled "Amerika," starring Sam Neill, Mariel Hemingway, and Kris Kristofferson. The one useful line in that entire waste of 6-8 hours was "America once stood for something. You failed when you only stood AGAINST things."
If the GOP does not stand FOR something, then it really doesn't matter whether it controls the Senate, and it doesn't DESERVE to control the Senate. I think, in the long-run, that the GOP will do far more for itself if it makes Lott step down, even at the cost of control of the Senate (which is by no means assured, btw).
It will have shown that it really DOES have principles. More important, it will have shown that it is prepared to make sacrifices on behalf of those principles. Which is what it should be all about. For what are principles worth, if one is not prepared to back them up w/ sacrifice???
Following the link from InstaMan, I found myself shocked to almost completely agree with the latest column by loony-right columnist Ann Coulter.
Republicans qua Republicans have never had a race problem (hell, they freed the slaves and passed the 1964 and 1965 civil rights acts), but it's the Dixiecrats-turned-Republicans that have caused that party nothing but grief (even if it gave them the White House for most of the past 35 years).
Pragmatic libertarians like myself would be much more inclined to lean Republican if it weren't for the Jim Crow Nostalgia Wing of the party...
"Now Pitchfork Pat exists at the fringe of fringes, where the Loony Left and Radical Right become as one"
Man, I wish I had said that. That really nails it on the head doesn't it?
Glenn Reynolds and Virginia Postrel are conservatives?
Thanks for the Goldwater defense. As someone who was sucked into an interest in poliitics by the Goldwater campaign, its nice to know he hasn't been forgotten.
