Crunchy Con

Obamacon asks, "If not Obama, le deluge?"

Thursday October 30, 2008

Categories: Democrats, Republicans

The conservative blogger Cunning Realist comes out for Obama -- for reasons that will be of interest to sympathetic conservative readers of this blog. Excerpt:

Related, a broad swath of this country has been turned off to conservatism and the Republican Party, perhaps permanently. If Obama wins and four years from now the economy hasn't improved and his approval rating is at 30%, where will those people turn -- politically, socially, and culturally? History has some pretty nasty examples of what can happen after dynamic, galvanizing agents of "change" either don't meet expectations or for whatever reason are interrupted in their mission. Throw in wildcards like the possibility of another attack on U.S. soil, followed no doubt by Dolchstoss-flecked charges from the opportunist Right. One of the themes of this space has been the creeping malevolence and madness out there, and it became obvious during the last month of the campaign. That must be turned back, especially in desperate economic times. McCain has made it clear he would stoke the madness, if only because as president it's unlikely he would suddenly discover something substantive to say and a coherent way of saying it.

In other words, for this blogger, a vote for Obama is a vote against the possibility of true and destabilizing political radicalism emerging out of the economic tsunami breaking upon us. Interesting. I see where he's coming from. At the request of a publication I contribute to, I was asked to prepare a piece to run if Obama wins, and one to run if McCain wins. Writing the McCain piece, I was kind of surprised by how depressed I was by the thought of a McCain victory. Depressed in the sense of seeing nothing good coming from it. It's a strange position to be in -- I don't think a president as liberal as Obama would be good for the country, but four years of McCain, coming into power just as the economy is falling off a cliff and the conservatives are falling to pieces, would be as angry and as rotten as any since Nixon's time. And I say that not to blame McCain, really. It's just the idea of four more years of that same crowd running the White House and the Republican Party is like taking a flying leap into a slough of despond.

Incidentally, Fouad Ajami, writing in today's WSJ, says he's been most fascinated by how Obama has allowed himself to become a slate upon which the masses have projected their hopes. What happens, asks Ajami, when people realize that he's a politician, not a secular messiah?

Comments
Lord Karth
October 30, 2008 9:57 PM

Mr. Dreher writes:

"It's just the idea of four more years of that same crowd running the White House and the Republican Party is like taking a flying leap into a slough of despond."

Mr. Dreher, with all due respect, are you kidding ??

Let's get back to the facts. We know that "The One" has the most leftist voting record in the Senate. We know that both houses of Congress are going to be more leftist after next week. We know that there is a very high probability (IMO better than 50 %) that there will be NO effective opposition faction in the Senate after next week.

These facts all add up to one thing: a Congress that is poised to really and truly run wild, in ways that are very antithetical to anything even vaguely resembling conservative/Traditionalist principles, unless someone stops them.

John McCain may be the only thing that stands in their way. (God help us all, that is.) Heaven knows McCain is no prize. I'd much rather have Bob Barr in there, in all honesty. Chuck Baldwin would do, too. But even McCain, for all his manifest and manifold flaws, would do the country a better turn than Barack Obama, the Quiet Marxist. 4 years of McCain might well produce a Slough of Despond. 4 years of Obama, on the other hand, would almost certainly produce a Massive Enveloping Cloud of Darkest Depression.

Would a President Obama oppose Pelosi & Reid's efforts to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine ?

Would a President Obama oppose Pelosi, Reid, Clinton & Kennedy's efforts to nationalize the country's health care system ?

Would a President Obama do anything to oppose Pelosi & Reid's effort to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act ?

Would a President Obama do anything to oppose Pelosi & Reid's effort to establish open borders ?

Would a President Obama do anything to oppose Pelosi & Reid's backing of the ultra-left's efforts to boost "social spending" ?

Would a President Obama do the least thing to oppose Pelosi & Reid's desire to raise taxes to support said "social spending" ?

Would a President Obama even bother to sit down with even the rump-conservative faction in either house of Congress to "include" them on any issue for any purpose other than providing political cover ?

Can anyone here honestly answer ANY of those questions "Yes" ? And if so, can anyone here present specifics---quotes, Web links, anything at all in the way of specific evidence---to support such an answer ?

I await what will undoubtedly be a vast and resounding silence. Cue the chirping crickets, please.

Your servant,

Lord Karth

AML
October 30, 2008 10:05 PM

Lord Karth,

The silence continues. You have said it all.

Max
October 30, 2008 10:09 PM

Reagan,

You only wish that Obama's most extremist exemplar were FDR.

FDR did not actively seek to eliminate political and religious freedom. Barack Obama will do so by means of the fairness doctrine, increased and more coercively imposed "hate speech legislation," and by IRS manipulation of churches and political opposition. And this is not to mention the coming judicial tyranny that orthodox Christians are going to face. I wish that the overtly religious "paleocons" or "crunchy cons," such as Dreher, would at least acknowledge the possibility of this scenario. Because they do not, they strike me as intellectually dishonest.

Enemies of orthodox Christians are going to be emboldened as never before in this country with the coming Democrat supermajority. Those who value the natural family as the basic unity of society and who recognize that political protection of the vulnerable includes the right to life of unborn babies, the elderly, the chronically ill, and the mentally disabled, are going to have to keep their opinions private or face retribution by the law or by the IRS. Barack Obama's intuitive understanding of personhood is no different than Peter Singer's, though Obama could never follow the philosophical argument all the way through the way Singer does.

But all the "crunchy cons" seem to care about is that there is an unsightly Walmart in their neighborhood that needs to be destroyed, or that the "neocons" refuse to draw a moral equivalence between the governments of Israel and Iran. But most of all, they have had their feelings hurt by the GOP, and this drives their political thinking. They are, indeed, aptly labelled "neuroticons." They are more emotivistic than the citizens of the general therapeutic culture that Dreher so often speaks about.

And, by the way, Dreher and company have fallen into the trap of reductionism in how they think about modern economic science. If they were truly traditional on economic theory, they would think less about the abstract concept of "locality" and more about the concrete realities of the natural family and the Church: both of which are under a whithering, intentional, and direct attack by Democrat Party social engineering. Would that they could swallow their considerable and unfounded pride and admit that Barack Obama is a direct heir of the French Revolutionaries, whose main intention was to destroy both the the natural family and the Church, replacing them with an abstract federal or international "village."

John McCain, though imperfect, is much more in keeping with the descendents of the American Revolution, who valued the moral and spiritual authority of pre-political societies. How can "crunchy cons" not see this? They should be much more familiar with counter-revolutionary thought than they seem to be. "Authentically" (and I hate to invoke this Hegelian term that they so abuse) Burkean they are not.


Reaganite in NYC
October 30, 2008 10:56 PM

Max,

Your points about B.O. being far more extremist than FDR are worth examining. B.O. has purposefully shrouded his past from careful inspection and this begs scepticism, at the least, about the man's sincerity and authenticity. He is simply not been truthful with us.

Who the heck really is Barack Obama? What do any one of us REALLY know about this mystery man?

We're being sold a bill of goods re: Obama. McCain has worts, to be sure, but there are no surprises regarding the former naval aviator. His Communist jailers in Hanoi tried to destroy him 45+ years ago, but he who they failed to destroy they made stronger.

asleep06
October 31, 2008 2:38 PM

a vote for Obama is a vote against the possibility of true and destabilizing political radicalism emerging out of the economic tsunami breaking upon us.

Because having a supremely charismatic leader sincerely and steadfastly seeking the centralization of authority and power in his undivided federal government during such times of radical political instability and economic turmoil is a good idea?

...

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About Crunchy Con

Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.

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