The Patriot Post® · Liberals Care Deeply About Republican Party's Health
It warms the cuckolds to read about the concern liberals — sometimes known as Democrats, moderate Republicans or columnists for The New York Times and Washington Post — have for the health of the Republican Party.
It’s almost as if they wish that the health of the GOP could be healed as easily as Obamacare is curing the illnesses of all Americans, at little or no cost.
Take this fellow Jonah Goldberg (he is usually described at the end of his newspaper columns as a fellow) — he works for something called the American Enterprise Institute, which is probably either a shipbuilder or a mental institution.
But more importantly, at least for this commentary, this fellow, Goldberg, is a senior editor of National Review, a written publication read by an unknown number of people.
You, the reader, might be among the numbers who didn’t read in the publication a few days ago a forceful and moving account of why the campaign of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump must be wrecked.
For the good health, of course, of the Republican Party.
I must warn you to doubt the claim that National Review, and this fellow Goldberg, are philosophically conservative, similar to the false claims made by fellow journalists when speaking about David Brooks and George Will, who write newspaper columns under the direction of The New York Times and the Washington Post, respectively.
These false claims are similar to those made about the founder of National Review, the late William F. Buckley. Buckley may have managed to deceive himself that the magazine was a voice for conservatism, and it may have leaned slightly that way in the beginning, but in a few years it, and Buckley, became largely a tool for the established wing of the Republican Party. Like a Ted Cruz of today, they ranted and raved in voicing opposition to liberalism, but did little to promote conservatism, especially by introducing new realistically achieved ideas of their own.
Maybe this fellow Goldberg realizes the National Review’s brand of conservatism is standing on quicksand and it is why he defends it — in a column appearing in the January 27 edition of the StarNews (Wilmington, N.C.)
He tries to explain the conservative philosophy not by quoting Buckley but R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., the founder of the American Spectator. Give Goldberg credit, though, he probably spent hours boning up on the definition of conservatism, as penned by non-conservatives.
On the opposite page from Goldberg’s writings in the StarNews is a column by another National Review senior editor, Ramesh Ponnuru, also described as a Bloomberg View columnist.
Above Ponnuru’s column is one by Robert Reich, long an admitted liberal and a former U.S. Secretary of Labor and at present a professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley.
(Niether Ramesh or Bob are described as fellows, though I have no doubt that they are, and splendid ones, too.)
Keeping to the subject of the health of the GOP, Ponnuru, who says he is a friend of Ted Cruz (but implicitly assures readers that he writes unbiasedly), expresses sadness that anger within the party is leading Republican “officials” to make three mistakes. But he is heartened that “there will still be plenty of Republicans, especially relatively moderate ones,” who don’t like either Donald Trump or Cruz.
At column’s end, Ponnuru wonders: “Will they come to their senses in time?” I assume that he thinks that the sensible thing would be to nominate a moderate Republican, one who can campaign with dignity and lose to Hillary or Bernie gracefully.
Mitt Romney did swell on the dignity thing, John McCain less so, appearing as a clown on Saturday Night Live three days before the 2008 election.
Avowed leftist Reich probably penned the most sensible piece, and the least biased, at least in the beginning of his column, of the three writers. He laments that policy has taken a back seat among most Republican and party leaders.
In the end, though, Reich reveals his true colors, getting into a possible election between Bernie Sanders and Trump. The choice, he says, is “either a dictator who promises to give power back to the people, or a movement leader who asks us to join together to bring power back to the people.”
Adds Reich, “You don’t care about the details of proposed policies and programs.
"You just want a system that works for you.”
It should be pointed out that the three columns are the only ones appearing on the StarNews Op-Ed pages, known for its fairness and balance, on January 27.
After reading the golden words and phrases penned by Ponnuru and Reich and turning back to fellow Goldberg’s writing, one is amazed. While supposedly the most gifted writer of the three, Goldberg uses mundane, trite language.
He cites “Free Beer Tomorrow” signs to explain what he says is a fierce battle within the Republican Party: “whether to oppose Trump’s run, passively accept his popularity, or zealously support his bid.”
One can guess what the fellow means when he refers to the first two options, but almost surely he, like most in the mainstream media, thinks supporters of Trump — or any person who is not progressive — are uneducated, ignorant, fools and idiots.
Goldberg spends much time defending the Republican Party establishment but gets lost and meanders as he tries to do so without specifically naming who or what he is defending.
Frankly, I wouldn’t want to be a liberal these days. They have a lot to defend. I suppose also that their time thinking and scheming is limited by necessary time in mental therapy.
L.E. Brown, Jr. is an independent writer based in Magnolia, N.C. Contact him at [email protected].