2008-05-22

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Optimistic (for most of my readers) article in the New Yorker, on the rise of the modern conservative movement with the campaigning of Nixon, Buchanan, and the now apostate Phillips (though the moderate liberal policies of Nixon's actual government), the high point of Reagan (with lots of positive rhetoric, and accomplishing everything he wanted except for shrinking the government), to the post-Cold War emptiness of not having any unifying factor other than negative attacks on liberals and dreams about shrinking the government, which aren't even all that unifying and have pretty much no chance, since as Reagan realized the voters like their programs. Near the end the author (George Packer) watched a McCain stump in Inez in the Appalachians, where LBJ launched his war on poverty, and where the voters talk openly about not wanting a colored in the White House and being Republican for abortion, but appreciating the government programs that gave them food. Packer quotes or cites a lot of conservatives, especially younger ones but also ones like Frum and Ed Rollins, viewing the current instance of the movement as dying or sclerotic.

Edit: racist lies (via quote-mining and outright fabulation) about Obama

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