[spokeshave]

"a swift and transformative upheaval which brings into being a new status quo"

And would that be a paradigm shift?...

No wonder the dims and elites are in head explode mode.

[thecabal]

Fascinating article, thanks for posting it.

If this is the choice of the conservative base, one said “Then we need a new base.”

Behold, this is what your masters think of you. I'm getting really sick of these old-money Northeast elites (both conservative and liberal) looking down their noses at the silent majority of the rest of us.

[RVN Airplane Driver]

By jove I believe the ole boy has it!!

[marsh2]

Thank goodness someone finaly recognizes that the Republican party is not just Evangelicals and country club Republicans. There is a large block of conservatives of libertarian bendt in the vast fly-over country and Heartland who believe in individualism, personal responsibility, private property and limited decentralized government as envisioned in the Constitution and promoted by Ronald Reagan. These tenets are the ideological cradle for entrepreneuralism, small towns and self-sufficiency which formed the backbone of frontier exploration, Western expansion and the values of community service, patriotism, loyalty, sacrifice and civic pride exhibited by the Greatest Generation.

I get the feeling that the elitist east view these ideals as rather provincial and unsophisticated. They remind me of the French fops that John Adams tried to treat with.

[Enchante]

Dunn can be great and this seems like a good analysis of the situation, but I have absolutely no patience with so-called “conservative” whiners about Palin. The only alternative in 2008 is OBAMA with BIDEN..... get over yourselves, you self-appointed elite of northeastern “conservatives”..... either support Palin or get out of the way b/c we have to save the country from the Obamanators, period.

[Straight Vermonter]

It’s is nice to see someone taking the longer view. I get so caught up in the issue du jour or the latest poll that I find myself missing the forest for the trees.

[KantianBurke]

Bit over the top. Simpler explanation is that the GOP, over the past decade, has embraced the values and views of the evangelical south. Hence why those who view that culture as alien and don’t put much worth into “faith” and “shes one of us” idolizations are disgusted with the Palin pick. She has more in common with the blue collar values voters (who now ARE the GOP) than those who exist outside of that universe.

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98jun/gop.htm

[ari-freedom]

if Rudy and Joe Lieberman and Donald trump can support McCain and (gasp!) Sarah Palin, then I don’t see what the problem is.

[KantianBurke]

Some excerpts:

“The Republican Party is increasingly a party of the South and the mountains. The southernness of its congressional leaders — Speaker Newt Gingrich, of Georgia; House Majority Leader Dick Armey and House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, of Texas; Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, of Mississippi; Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles, of Oklahoma — only heightens the identification. There is a big problem with having a southern, as opposed to a midwestern or a California, base. Southern interests diverge from those of the rest of the country, and the southern presence in the Republican Party has passed a “tipping point,” at which it began to alienate voters from other regions.

As southern control over the Republican agenda grows, the party alienates even conservative voters in other regions. The prevalence of right-to-work laws in southern states may be depriving Republicans of the socially conservative midwestern trade unionists whom they managed to split in the Reagan years, and sending Reagan Democrats back to their ancestral party in the process. Anti-government sentiment makes little sense in New England, where government, as even those who hate it will concede, is neither remote nor unresponsive.

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. Again, the nonsoutherners who object to this style of politics may be just as conservative as those who practice it. But they are put off to see that “traditional” values are now defined by the majority party as the values of the U-Haul-renting denizens of two-year-old churches and three-year-old shopping malls.”

[jwalsh07]

There are no electoral conservative votes in the Northeast Corridor. None, nada, zilch. No other explanation is required. If Northeast Corridor Conservatives are not happy with a conservative that ewes to all three legs of the conservative stool, they are unappeasable.

[JohnLongIsland]

Northeastern urban conservative , overnight The Thinker invented a new code word for liberal.

[Question_Assumptions]

I’m a Northeast Corridor Conservative and I was backing Palin for VP before McCain picked her and am happy with his pick.

[Rockingham]

Even more than elitism, a lack of experience in winning politics at the local and state level defines “Northeast Corridor Conservatives.” They may sniff at Sarah Palin’s supposed inexperience and populism, but they have long been in political decline on their native soil and have little or no experience themselves in producing successful state and local campaigns.

As Sam Rayburn supposedly said to Lyndon Johnson of the flock of intellectuals that he inherited from the Kennedy administration, “I’d feel a whole lot better about them if just one of them had run for sheriff once.” Notably, those conservatives who do have an abundance of retail political experience — Republican activists and convention delegates — immediately recognized Palin as a political star for the GOP and conservatism. Her nomination was an inspired choice that will generate long term gains for conservatives. As this becomes evident, watch for the eventual admissions to that effect from “Northeast Corridor Conservatives.”

[leadhead]

Wish he would have used the word "Republican" instead of "conservative" in many places in the article. I don't feel the terms are interchangeable.

Maryland, New York and Pennsylvania are full of Republicans who are not conservatives. They still have their Nixon and Rockefeller campaign buttons and David Gergan is their spokesman.

If there's any name changing to be done, it's to seperate from these fossils and change the name "Republican Party" to "Conservative Party"

[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.

[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

[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.

[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.