Sigh The WaPo reports:
When Gov. Sarah Palin flew home to Alaska for the first time since being named the Republican vice presidential nominee, she brought along at least half a dozen new advisers to conduct briefings, stage-manage her first television interview and help her prepare for a critical debate next month.And virtually every member of the team shared a common credential: years of service to President Bush.
From Mark Wallace, a Bush appointee to the United Nations, to Tucker Eskew, who ran strategic communications for the Bush White House, to Greg Jenkins, who served as the deputy assistant to Bush in his first term and was executive director of the 2004 inauguration, Palin was surrounded on the trip home by operatives deeply rooted in the Bush administration.
The clutch of Bush veterans helping to coach Palin reflects a larger reality about Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign: Far from being a group of outsiders to the Republican Party power structure, it is now run largely by skilled operatives who learned their crafts in successive Bush campaigns and various jobs across the Bush government over the past eight years.
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>when was the last time the Whigs ran a budget surplus?
Scoff if you will, but the only way to get the parties back on track is for both the liberals and the conservatives to return to their roots and argue from first principles. I'd make the case that modern (in the long-view historical sense) conservative principles are best embodied by Silent Cal. Others might argue Teddy Roosevelt or Reagan. I have no idea who liberals might pick: perhaps FDR. I'm not sure exactly what Bush is, but it isn't conservative.
Who knows? Perhaps there is some young Whig idealist out there who wants to return us to the glory days of Millard Fillmore and Zachary Taylor. God speed, young Whig! Log cabins and hard cider! In our past is our future.
Kirk: "Are there any benevolent monarchies left out there?"
I think most of the remaining monarchies are benevolent, though there are a few tyrannical kings left in the Middle East. The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg sounds nice, though I've never actually been there. If you're a limited-government conservative, it sounds like Grover Norquist's dream come true. The Prime Minister is listed in the phone book, and answers his own phone, apparently with the greeting "hello, government".
"I'm not sure exactly what Bush is, but it isn't conservative."
The very movement that cheered Bush's appointments of Roberts and Alito and his using of taxpayer money to fund faith-based programs now claim he's not one of them. The movement that cheered the Bush tax cuts, especially in the face of war, and his deregulatory programs now claim he's not one of them. The movement that decried anyone who would question the wisdom of invading Iraq as being unpatriotic and unAmerican now claim that he's not one of them.
Spare us this, please. Bush is exactly as conservative as the movement that supported him, that breathed a sigh of relief when he chose Dick Cheney to be the "adult" in the administration, that looked the other way at the indecency of the Swift Boat ads, and all the rest.
I think banking is a fairly large chunk of the Luxembourg economy. Probably not the best place to be moving to atm.
"I'm not sure exactly what Bush is, but it isn't conservative."
Given how conservatives were flocking to his side in 2000, why should we trust the opinions of any conservative pundit here in 2008? Clearly they were dead wrong about Bush. Can we afford to listen to them if they are also wrong about McCain?
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