This is the funniest thing, if only for its sheer stupidity, that I have seen today. Actually it’s the funniest thing I have seen in a while. This is a post from Jim Manzi over at NRO.
Game On [Jim Manzi]
OK, you lose some battles, but you fight on. It’s time to develop a conservative game plan for the next several years. I think, at the outset, that a wide variety of voices are essential.
Slate is hosting a two-day discussion of the conservative future among a polyglot group of right-of-center types: Tucker Carlson, Ross Douthat, Douglas W. Kmiec, Kathleen Parker, Christine Todd Whitman, and me.
Can you believe this? I thought it must be a joke until I clicked on the link. Carlson, Kmiec, and Parker discussing the future of Conservatism? Please stop, you’re killing me. The Christine Todd Whitman one threw me over the edge! Inadvertent comic genius!
In a similar vein, I am thinking of attending a few other conferences in the near future.
- Jack Kevorkian Healthcare conference.
- Amy Winehouse Sobriety conference.
- Ahmadinijad Conference for Religious Understanding and Tolerance.
- and lastly The John McCain “How to run a winning campaign Conference”
Please, Mr. Manzi et al. Spare us. On second thought, this conference may yet be instructive if Conservatives were to do the exact opposite of what these folks recommend.
November 5, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Well, he did admit they were “center-right”…not exactly the same thing as conservative…
sigh.
The Kmiec thing really gets me. Look, the guy has proved he’s completely unserious about abortion…… can’t we all just ignore him now?
November 5, 2008 at 8:18 pm
Yeah, that caused me to do a double take as well.
November 5, 2008 at 8:20 pm
I’ve got a name for it. Democrats With Different Friends. (I kinda like Tucker, though. Must be the bow tie…)
November 5, 2008 at 8:50 pm
I think it sounds more like a MSNBC pseudo-conservative analyst job interview.
November 5, 2008 at 8:54 pm
Believe it or not, I share some of your issues. Ross and I are surely more conventional conseratives than the others on this list, but as I tried to say, I think that we ought to be casting our nets wide right now to develop support and generate ideas.
Best,
Jim Manzi
November 5, 2008 at 9:07 pm
Mr Manzi, you wrote:
“I think that we ought to be casting our nets wide right now to develop support and generate ideas.”
Keep reading CMR. You’ll pick up some of the best ideas here. You’ll also notice we’re more gracious losers than Democrats. But most of all, you’ll learn more about the “conservative base” among Catholics (21% of the population).
Stay tuned, and stay in touch.
November 5, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Right up there with the AIG conference on responsible investing. Jon Stewart conference on insightful yet charitable humor. SSPX conference on the spirit of Vatican II.
November 5, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Bishop Gene Robinson conference on Humana Vitae and the Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality.
November 5, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Britney Spears conference on modesty and purity.
I could go on all day. Thanks for the comic relief, Patrick.
November 5, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Jim Manzi,
Thanks for being a good sport. I don’t disagree that all ideas should be on the table. Perhaps you and Ross should throw the net a little more too the right, though.
A good number of us think that what went wrong this time is the less-conventional conservatives forced John McCain on us and then jumped ship to the port side anyway.
Perhaps the best place to start is not with the folks who endorsed Obama.
However, if we are casting nets to cart them away to the booby-hatch, I am all for it.
November 5, 2008 at 9:49 pm
That is pretty funny, but it isn’t surprising. I think it’s clear to anyone who reads his posts that Manzi, like a number of others on NRO, isn’t a conservative in any meaningful sense of the word. That’s why he would think that a conversation about the direction of conservatism should start by involving zero traditional conservatives, and instead include a tireless supporter of Obama, a politician who has spent an entire career trying to make the Republican party more liberal, and a writer who thinks that the problem with Republicans is “years of pandering to the extreme wing.” It seems pretty clear that Manzi’s line “I think that we ought to be casting our nets wide right now to develop support and generate ideas” is just code for the fact that Manzi wants to sit at the cool kids table with the other liberals.
November 5, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Could be an opp for a Linda Richman moment:
“I’ll give you a topic: center-right is neither center nor right (nor conservative). Discuss!”
November 5, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Tom:
What makes you say that:
“I think it’s clear to anyone who reads his posts that Manzi, like a number of others on NRO, isn’t a conservative in any meaningful sense of the word.”
(I mean this as a serious, non-rhetorical question.)
Best,
Jim Manzi
November 5, 2008 at 10:49 pm
They just don’t get it, do they.
November 5, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Yeah. This guy is obviously an idiot. He states this is a “Polyglot group” when he clearly doesn’t understand the meaning of polyglot, which means multilingual, and NOT diverse.
Unless this session will be held in say, English and Esperanto, my point stands on him being an idiot.
November 5, 2008 at 11:37 pm
“They just don’t get it, do they.”
No, they won’t. So let’s stop with the snarking long enough to explain it.
I don’t think there’s a regular CMR reader who will dispute, that the mainstream news media has been pathetically biased in favor of political liberalism throughout this election. (I even heard Dan Rather admit as much last week.) That’s why I had no problem writing this a few days ago:
“Alas, the status quo of the GOP ignored the grumbling of the conservative base, and realizing the need for a candidate that would get more than a crumb of media attention, put its efforts toward promoting the least offensive candidate. Otherwise, Mitt Romney would never have stood a chance. Ron Paul did better in the Iowa caucuses then Rudy Guiliani. When attention then turned to New Hampshire, who bumped Ron Paul out of the limelight? You guessed it.”
The point is, Mr Manzi, the GOP already tried “casting a wider net.” It didn’t work. Now we have the most liberal Democrat in history for our next President.
Maybe the Americans deserve something better. Maybe if they saw style take a back seat to substance, they might want to know more. Instead the Republicans pandered to the media by promoting the lowest common denominator. “Oh please, Mister Hollywood, give us just a few minutes of air time and don’t make us look stupid, and we’ll make it easier by throwing these Bible-thumpers under the bus when we’re done using them.”
I think promoting that strategy for the 2012 elections (or, for that matter, in 2010) would be as ineffective then, as it was in 2008. Hopefully, now you know why.
Okay, we can go back to snarking now.
November 6, 2008 at 11:33 am
Unfortunately, what used to be the Center moved quite a bit on Tuesday night–its now the radical right.
November 8, 2008 at 9:46 pm
A conservative discussion at Slate? Isn’t that all we need to know?