Palin, the Base, and the Northeast Corridor Conservatives

American Thinker ^ | September 18, 2008 | J.R. Dunn

[irishjuggler]

one said “Then we need a new base.” (We’ll leave names out of this for the moment, lest this deteriorate into an “I never liked him anyway” discussion.

FWIW, the author is talking about Richard Brookhiser, Yale grad, National Review alum and marijuana advocate. And I, for one, never did like him anyway.

[GOP Poet]

Thank you and those are fine words yourself! :-) You are so, so right.

[Yosemitest]

"The Sons of Liberty tarring and feathering a tax collector underneath the Liberty Tree"

Outstanding article. Thanks for the post.

Makes you want to feed the liberty tree ....

"God forbid
we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed.
The part which is wrong will be discontented,
in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive.
If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...
And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time,
that this people preserve the spirit of resistance?
Let them take arms.
The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them.
What signify a few lives lost in a century or two?
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time,
with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure."

Thomas Jefferson, November 13, 1787

[padre35]

I have the odd feeling that the article should have been entitled “On Peggy Noonan’s Calves rides the Old Guard Republicans”..

Fascinating that Dunn is using the New Media to expose the “Northeast Corridor” for what it is, a sort of Nancy Boy gaggle of weak kneed writers and talkers who are more then willing to knife anyone they do not support in the back be such stabbing be in print, or with microphones inadvisedly left on.

[larryjohnson]

I wish some one would name names.Who are these NECC’S?

[iopscusa]

Bravo & thinks for the post!!! One of the best definitions of current Conservative ideology divides I have read...the ossified NorthEast Conservatism aka Noonanism (Peggy Noonan)or Rockyfellar-ism

[Judges Gone Wild]

The Northeast Conservatives are aristocrats. There is nothing “conservative” about them. They sold their souls to the liberals to keep their positions of prominence. What made the remnant righteous in Isaiah was they remained faithful to the Lord and their principles. The Northeasterners are RINOs. They are virtually indistinguishable from the Commies. Remember how they fought Reagan tooth and nail at the ‘76 GOP Convention? They humored him when he was in the ascendancy, and then when he was gone, it was back to (pork) business as usual.

[maica]

Tonight I was watching O’Reilly and he brought on some ‘coach’ to analyze Palin’s hair and voice and delivery and all this crap while she did her interview.

@@@@@@

I saw that segment and thought that she must have been an Obama supporter, she had such negative feelings about Sarah’s positive qualities. I wrote to the O’Reilly show to voice a protest. Sarah Palin is a unique individual, and that “consultant” wanted to turn her into a clone of the Fox News readerbabes.

Last night she was not wearing her signature hairstyle! but instead had the wispy, straight down around her face look that is so ‘popular’ right now.

Guess what! She did not look as good as she does with her upswept style.

If coaches make her doubt herself, she will not appear as the positive person we have seen so far, when she give interviews and joins in debates.

[BelegStrongbow]

Dead Tradition ping!

I see the NE cultural conservatives in the same light that TOlkien saw the Mirkwood elves: themselves admirably capable, strong and vital, but totally unable to see anyone else having any virtues worth protecting. This should be the center of Jackson’s proposed film (it won’t be: I dont’ think he gets that level of metanarrative). But here in Outer Slobovia, as NY conservs might likely have it, we see Saray Palin as being responsive to things as they are and willing to use her long-preserved Tradition for the work that God wills us to do now, not to hold frozen in some kind of cultural freezer until the current winds of barbarism pass. If we don’t move, we’ll end up in that freezer.

[maica]

You are right, and it’s about time, that these nabobs of negativity are called out. They have been part of the anti-Bush chorus, too, for the past eight years. I view everyone connected with National Review as part of this group, with just a few exceptions.

[BelegStrongbow]

I saw that segment and thought that she must have been an Obama supporter, she had such negative feelings about Sarah’s positive qualities.

My wife and I watched that for about 20 seconds, then muted the sound and went back to discussing our son's efforts to grow through his freshman year in ROTC, always the most onerous, as I know from my own experience. The woman only got worse without the sound because she had an extremely annoying habit of physically acting out and simultaneously mocking the posture she did not like.

Last night she was not wearing her signature hairstyle! but instead had the wispy, straight down around her face look that is so ‘popular’ right now.

I watched the Palin interview and also found the new hairdo intriguing. It made her look prettier, but only because I happen to like the current style. My taste in female hairdos is not the point. The point is that she must be alert to prevent people visually pigeon-holing her. The problem was to subtly undermine what Tina Fey had so successfully accomplished: the hairdo both calls up images of faithfulness and Stepford wife. Tina was driving home the point about the latter. Gov Palin therefore changed her hairdo to stop anyone fixing that image as being her only image, something the 'media coach' entirely missed.

[padre35]

Nattering naybobs indeed.

What bothers me about them is there lack of spine and lack of consistency, the chattering class was all in favor of the Iraq war, things got hard in Iraq, they jumped over the gunwales and let President Bush suffer a savaging.

Now that the Surge has worked, and Gen. Patraeus is the locus of success, they do not give him credit, quite the contrary, they now seek to throw Governor Palin over the same gunwale and leave John McCain to “fend for himself”.

Such people have little utility, indeed, they deserve no hearing.

[padre35]

David Brooks, Peggy Noonan for a start, Brooks slammed Governor Palin as inexperienced, Noonan in an unguarded moment with an open microphone on MSNBC stated that the selection of Governor Palin “effectively ended the race for McCain” she said the race was over now.

IMO, we could use a “Wall of Shame” on FR.

[AdaGray]

Excellent article. As a northeastern Conservative who went to school with some of these elitist Conservatives, I know them all too well. Can we say...Mr. Kristol, Mr. Brooks? They are out of touch and far more concerned with social acceptance than reporting on the real mood of the nation.

[maica]

Even Charles Krauthammer’s first remarks on the night of her appearance at the convention were negative.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Remember how they fought Reagan tooth and nail at the ‘76 GOP Convention?

I was in the Reagan campaign in 1976, and remember that the most effective conservative opponents of Reagan were Barry Goldwater, Strom Tbhurmond, and John Tower.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Bill Kristol was an early and enthusiastic supporter of Sarah Palin.

[AdaGray]

My mistake.

[Claud]

The most profound clash between the South and everyone else, of course, is a cultural one. It arises from the southern tradition of putting values — particularly Christian values — at the center of politics. This is not the same as saying that the Republican Party is “too far right”; Americans consistently tell pollsters that they are conservative on values issues. It is, rather, that the Republicans have narrowly defined “values” as the folkways of one regional subculture, and have urged their imposition on the rest of the country.

I don't agree with the author's analysis here. I'm a fiercely proud northern Catholic, I guess originally "urban" though we live in the burbs now. In many ways, southern evangelical culture looks, to be honest, a little weird to me. But whatever. I certainly don't feel as if the Republicans have *defined* that as the party--especially as most of the Republicans I know are formerly urban northern Catholics like myself. You folks in the South and folks in the West and folks in the Midwest got your ways of being conservative--we got ours, and that's fine by me!

I think the media likes to make the equation Republican = Southern Evangelical because that's who the libs love to despise around here. Libs here in the NE look down their noses at them, so it serves the media's interest to portray the GOP look like that: "So you want to associate yourself with these rubes??" And my answer to that is "Frankly, yes I do."

Federalism properly applied means that conservatism in Pennsylvania and New Jersey is gonna look different than in Tennessee or Wyoming. That's part of the genius of our system.

And for the record, this Northeastern (sub)urban conservative thinks Palin was an awesome pick. It's not a problem for me that she defines a "Western" conservatism over "Eastern" conservatism. Because I recognize in her, and in Alaska culture now, those same qualities that we had in Pennsylvania and Jersey back in the 1700s when we were a howling wilderness.

[tom h]

"Sarah Palin as Republican vice-presidential candidate has revealed a serious chasm in conservatism"

"There is a large block of conservatives of libertarian bent ... who believe in individualism, personal responsibility, private property and limited decentralized government as envisioned in the Constitution and promoted by Ronald Reagan."

The Republican party long ago left rich Easterners in New York and Connecticut, who in the 1950s and 60s cared only about tax rates. They are all country club Democrats now.

I have long been saying that the Republican party, with the populism awoken by Sarah Palin, is morphing into the Patriot Party. A party that loves country and reveres our nation's origins and Founding Fathers. A party that appreciates the nation's religious origins.

These are the voters that Ronald Reagan awoke.

I still chuckle when I think about that news item the day after Reagan won his huge landslide in 1984. The editorial board at the New York Times was crestfallen. Up on the 50th floor, looking out the windows at their bustling city, they mused to each other, "How did this happen? I don't know anyone who voted for Reagan."

In the meantime, on the lower floors and in the basement, the secretaries, custodial staff, and paper boys were all exulting over Reagan's win. Guess the "peons" in the building didn't give a d-mn what their elitist bosses were writing every day on the upper floors. All the ink in the world, all the noise from television sets, wouldn't change the truth.