Kind of a mixture. Just when you think he’s making sense, he comes out with something strange. In the end, this looks more like someone trying to craft his own image in the new world of November 2008 than someone who is trying to say something useful for the future of conservatism.
Too bad, because he’s not a RINO, I don’t believe. But he does seem to be a bit of an opportunist when he’s given the Forbes podium.
As far as I can tell Coburn is his own man and will do and say what he thinks is right no matter who it offends. Which is why I am glad he is my Senator.
He is actually one of the few who stuck to his self imposed term limits in the House. I don’t think he is worried about his image nearly as much as he is about the future of the country.
“In the end, this looks more like someone trying to craft his own image in the new world of November 2008 than someone who is trying to say something useful for the future of conservatism”
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Yes. I feel you’ve naile it.
Too much CYA for me.
Victor Davis Hanson had similar, wholly unnecessary congratulations for the Marxist Zero.
I guess I’m more on the fringe than I thought. So be it. I’m not budging an inch.
I’d have voted for him for President before anyone else in the Senate...and then he came out for McCain in the primaries! WTF?!?!?!? How can a principled conservative do something like that without a streak of pure insanity in the family tree?!?!?!?!!
Dr./Senator Coburn is NO RINO! Some of his best lines in the article.....
“Conservatives find the charge that they have been suddenly expelled from American political life surreal because we have been a minority within the majority, then a minority within the minority, since 1996. Conservatives have been consciously marginalized ever since the new Republican majority decided inconvenient promises like term limits were no longer necessary now that the “good guys” were in charge. And, as far back as 1997, Republican leaders initiated the Republican leadership policy of referring to conservatives as “you conservatives”—a troublesome band best kept outside of the Republican machinery that was busy doing important work like constructing the K Street Project.”
“While establishment Republicans find solace in complaining about the demands from the right, the record of history shows that virtually every warning and call for internal reform conservatives have offered since 1996 has been vindicated. It was conservatives who indicted the corrupting practice of pork-barrel spending long before sitting members were formally indicted. It was conservatives who warned that budget surpluses would quickly disappear in an environment of out-of-control spending and decimate the Republican brand. It was conservatives who insisted that a culture of oversight was more important to our long-term success than a culture of parochialism.”