Kathleen Parker and Peggy Noonan are spiteful sellouts.
Posted on 10/17/2008 9:34:11 AM PDT by St. Louis Conservative
The truth few wish to utter is that the GOP has abandoned many conservatives, who mostly nurse their angst in private. Those chickens we keep hearing about have indeed come home to roost. Years of pandering to the extreme wing — the “kooks” the senior Buckley tried to separate from the right — have created a party no longer attentive to its principles.
Instead, as Christopher Buckley pointed out in a blog post on thedailybeast.com explaining his departure from National Review, eight years of “conservatism” have brought us “a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance.”
Republicans are not short on brainpower — or pride — but they have strayed off course. They do not, in fact, deserve to win this time, and someone had to remind them why.
Christopher Buckley, ever the swashbuckling heir to his father’s defiant spirit, walked the plank so that the sinking mother ship might right itself.
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
Kathleen is mad that an Alaskan “hick” is the new voice of the party. Ronald Reagan who these elites used and sponged off of, was a movie star.
She has swallowed the narrative from her Washington Post colleagues - the Republicans have been taken over by “extremists” and “kooks.”
I wrote to her and asked - exactly who are the “kooks?”
exactly what extremist positions are the Republicans now espousing? What conservative values have been abandoned?
I sense the Obama love-fest in DC has become too much for her to resist.
It’s annoying to be lectured by someone about conservatism’s failures by someone who does not fundamentally understand what conservatism is. Parker is a tool.
Buckley said this week that he was going to vote for “The One.” Isn’t that like killing to baby to cure diaper rash?
I wonder why she is sinking her own ship.
Kathleen Parker is in a downward spiral into liberal hell.
These people do not have beliefs and principals. They have attitudes and nuanced positions.
Just like their new hero, Barry Soetero. He's the cool black friend they always secretly wished they could have.
Actually, Katty, WFB is probably turning in his grave.
The dork of a son said Rush is from the Sanhedrin wing of the party. WFB admired Rush and called him the leader of the conservative movement.
St>louis, I can no longer even reply to this wingnut. When you have time and/or inclination, you might read “The Sixth Deadly Sin” -—http://www.wegotsarah.com/
Has Kathleen Parker always been a “conservative”? She is always referred to as a “conservative” columnist, but is she really? What’s her history? What have her columns been like in the past?
No doubt his seafaring father is cheering from heaven: “Ahoy there, Christo! Well done, my son.”
No doubt his conservative father is jeering from heaven: “Ron, Jr., I see you gave up ballet . . “.
The mess the GOP is in is precisely the result of following the advice of halfwits like Parker. Does she think the “far right” are responsible for the No Child Left Behind Act, the prescription drug bill, the Iraq War, and the Wall Street bailout? I would submit that Kathleen would have a pretty damn hard time making that case. That bimbo must be suffering from delusions of adequacy. My guess is that her phone has been ringing off the hook with calls from MSM and Hollywood types praising her for her “insights” about Palin, and stoking her obviously overblown ego. She'll end up like Arianna Huffington, I suppose. Well, good riddance, toots, you were an affirmative action hire in the first place, so your departure will be no great loss.
KP, enjoy your 15 minutes of approval from the MSM.
At the risk of invoking the dangerous "Hitler Analogy" I am reminding of Hitler's ordering the destruction of Germany when the war was lost because he decided the nation had "failed" him. Man, I don't want to be loved by these kinds of people.
The increasingly irrelevant, soporific, and downright silly Kathleen Parker's latest homage to clueless irony.
“She calls the Bush years eight years of “conservatism”?!? Aside from some tax cuts and some great judges, there wasn’t a whole lot of conservatism there.”
Exactly. It isn’t conservatism that brought us to this point it is the RINO party.
My point is that you cannot point to the fiscal policies of W. and use them as a definition for “conservative” as a basis for your attack on conservatism. That’s a fallacy of logic I believe is called a Strawman Argument.
With the beginning lines of this column, I may only conclude she too tasted some Kool-Aid and has joined the cult. Whatever she’s written in the past is part of her former life.
She's strictly 50/50 for every 'conservative' column she writes another which is mainstream democrat left wing. I've been reading her for years on-off since I stumbled upon a very common sense column she wrote opposing women in combat. I like to think of her as the greatest pundit that ever straddled both horns of a dilemma. But, make no mistake,and I wish I could find the column where she stated this succinctly, she is a democrat and after all her self-described conservatism she will party vote for the democrat.
Unfair to blame it on NR. This is a syndicated column, Parker doesn’t write for NR.
Is there anything more disgusting than the sight of these spineless poltroons pushing everyone else out of the way on their way to the exits of a room they think is on fire? Yes indeed there is, when the arsonists are the people doing the shoving. Conservatism is going to be just fine -- even better -- after all the Kathleen Parker types have bailed. She can join Christo, David Brooks, and blast from the past Gary Wills in the obscurity she so richly deserves.
Nice post.
I’m sure people are lighting up her phone lines begging her to appear on the various Sunday talk shows so they can bring her on as the “conservative” opinion. There will be no shortage of the word “conservative” when describing Parker. Then they’ll say, “see! see! even ‘conservatives’ don’t like Sarah Palin!!”
Your reply hits the nail on the head. When I read her babble, I saw a girl trying to justify her transgression, and resorting to the liberal technique of flat out lying - by blaming the poop in her own nest, on the people who warned her she wouldn’t like the smell. It is a mix of denial and projection, and a very fundamental liberal defense mechanism. Of course defense mechanisms used to be the way we overcame our weaknesses to remain in respectable society. Liberalism has turned this on its head and made quality defects a notion of pride and something to trumpet to the group - wave that freak flag, as it goes.
Unfortunately, since liberalism is the dominant culture in our civilization, she will receive ample superficial rewards for jumping onto the freak bus. As a conservative knows, often her type of deal is one with the devil and she cannot serve two masters.
It is sad, and too commonplace today, to see promising servants become disciples of this world, rather than eternity.
Come on Kathleen, he said that he is VOTING FOR OBAMA.
No moral man would do that.
Well, yes. But also, no.
As a loyal NR reader of several decades who still finds the magazine basically sound I agree this isn't the editorial position of the magazine. On the other hand, NR has been giving this putative conservative exposure by reprinting her columns on the web. Frankly, they need to stop. They should have stopped when the second pro 0bama missive appeared. They didn't. They didn't stop reprinting when the third pro 0bama column appeared, nor after two columns attacking Palin on personal, rather than substantive points. Now this atrocity. Time to pull the plug.
Kathleen Parker and Peggy Noonan are spiteful sellouts.
Lincoln once famously asked, "If we call a horses' tail a leg, how many legs does a horse have?" A perplexed Secretary replied, "Five?" "No," Lincoln replied, "Just four. Saying a horse's leg is a tail doesn't make it one."
Kathleen Parker is not a conservative. Saying she is a conservative doesn't make her one; she's just another horse's tail.
Kathleen’s “Bless his heart” moment; neo-neoconservatism accepts all premises.
who the sam hill was this harridan before this elction?
a wart with a laptop.
a comely wart to be fair..alas
Ok, I read the first sentence. Please put me in the KOOK column with Sarah,Rush,Ann Coulter,and the rest.
Endorsing Barack Obama is a very strange way to advance conservatism. I have to wonder what is really going on in the minds of people like Buckley and Parker.
She is what I might call a distaff conservative; daddy’s girl, mommy-pleaser, self-educated conscience-awareness-raiser.
She mostly writes controversial columns with a conservative theme as though she were describing the terrain.
She fills a void that embarrassed editors felt Martha Stewart was too housewifey for.
A deep thinker, she ain’t - a wordsmith with a cold flame and a clunky hammer willing to hold the same horseshoe for days..
Buckley: “My colleague, the superb and very dishy Kathleen Parker”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-10/the-conservative-case-for-obama
Parker: “Christopher Buckley, ever the swashbuckling heir to his father’s defiant spirit”
EGADS!!! Get a room already!
Don’t give him any ideas. He’s already got one love child.
Are Kathleen and Peggy Noonan close friends?
Parker is utterly confused.
Since this controversy has much to do with Palin ( “The well-fed Right now cultivates ignorance as a political strategy....” ) it should be pointed out that Palin is the type of conservative that she describes WFB as admiring. The radical. The outsider. The one who has the mettle and the record to go after the “well-fed Right”.
Parker, C. Buckley, Noonan, and Brooks seem to cast themselves as the well-fed right, when, although they accurately criticize the failings of the conservative movement of recent years, they fail to recognize Palin’s obvious antipathy and non-membership in those aberrations.
So, one can only conclude that it is Palin’s colloquialism, her style, her what?....her ineloquence that turns them off. Her inability to cite supreme court cases she disagrees with, when she’s actually been spending her time accomplishing things and reforming government for her constituents who overwhelmingly approve of her efforts?....and not studying arcane historical minutiae to impress the intelligentsia and the media gotchya gamers?
I think WFB would recognize the true conservativism in Palin, the radicalism and activism that she represents and inspires, and his congenial and kind nature would have embraced her despite the regional, educational, and intellectual differences. Perhaps, he would have strove to befriend her and influence her, rather than jump ship. WFB would have never endorsed Obama. Never. Give me a break.
We are gradually seeing a political realignment along the lines of elitists vs. populists.
did you forget your /SARCASM tag, FRiend?
In no particular order, here's three examples off of the top of my head:
President Bush and the Republican Party have left the Conservative building.
This is why I cringed when Bush used this phrase in his first run for the presidency (he didn't use it the second time around because conservatives didn't want to hear it anymore). Real conservatives knew what "compassionate conservatism" truly meant - it was simply re-packaged moderatism, i.e. liberal Republicanism. Bush is a moderate, not a conservative, with most of his domestic agenda being proof of this fact.
If the GOP loses this election, the loss will sit squarely on the shoulders of the elitist moderates in the party. McCain is no conservative, either, at least not enough to be able to call himself one. He is instead nearly the perfect moderate candidate, one who has mostly been unable to articulate a vision of what he truly stands for. Parker and Buckley should love this guy since he is one of them. They are not conservatives.
This column would have some legitimacy if she & Buckley were throwing their support to somebody like Bob Barr or Chuck Baldwin as a protest because “the GOP deserves to lose this one” due to having abandoned conservatism. But instead, they’re actively giving support to the most openly Marxist candidate ever.
Do you think Parker & Noonan really want Obama to win? Did Noonan not read the editorial in The Wall Street Journal (her paper, mind you) about the disastrous effects of a Dem trifecta?
I can understand a disgruntled conservative voting for Bob Barr or Chuck Baldwin. I don’t agree with it, it’s not pragmatic, but I at least understand the point of view there. But no conservative, not now, not EVER, could vote affirmatively FOR Obama. Any “conservative” that does that doesn’t have very strong convictions.
Contrary to Parker's praise of National Review’s supposed radicalism and eclecticism in Bill Buckley's heyday, no one at National Review endorsed Humphrey over Nixon, McGovern over Nixon, Carter over Ford, or Mondale over Bush, or Gore over Bush.
Although National Review relentlessly pointed out deviations from conservatism by Republican candidates and administrations, at election time, practical politics dictated their choices. This year, McCain is the only sensible choice for conservatives.
Some of us know the difference between Conservatives and Republicans. Many of us don’t. If you support a Republican because you think he (or she) is necessarily a Conservative, you will be sadly mistaken.
there is so much jealosy out there....mostly women...but some men...because we wouldn’t all want another stuffed white shirted middleaged guy with the typical charisma of a normal pub....answer is HELL NO.
Parker fries my a$$. She is the kook. An ivory tower and silver-spoonish kind of kook, but still a kook. She does not speak for me as Sarah does and by, her effete posture, she is helping Obama and is therefore an enemy of the people and the nation. There is no place for her or her ilk in a true conservative resurgence.
That was a brilliant use of the Hitler Analogy. Hear, hear!!!
You just gave the best blurb on Kathleen Parker I’ve ever read!
Excellent post. It does a soul good to hang out with the ordinary folks here at FR. We have more common sense in our 200 word posts than the collected works of half a dozen "conservative" columnists.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.