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WaPo: After Midterms, "Republicans who remain will be angrier, loopier and more belligerent"
By Jennifer Rubin
Opinion writer
October 1 at 11:30 AM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/10/01/a-first-class-temperament-whos-got-it/
The mingling of right-wing populism and the disintegration of conservative tone are inextricably linked. Right-wing populism thrives on anger, resentment and hostility toward elites. To defend irrational policies built on non-facts and fear of outsiders, vast conspiracies are required. (You really don’t see many rational, humble, modest, respectful right-wing populists.) If know-nothingism is essential to support your movement, you’re not likely to see many intellectually honest, measured leaders.
As (#NeverTrumper Eliot A. ) Cohen observes in recollecting the happy warrior Ronald Reagan, “The spirit of a president who celebrated America as a city on a hill that was generous abroad, welcoming to newcomers, and self confident at home, has been replaced by the sour meanness of a party chiefly of men, who build walls to keep the world out, erect tariffs to destroy free trade, despise the alliances that keep Americans secure, and sanction the deliberate plucking of babes from their mothers’ breasts in order to teach illegal immigrants a painful lesson. In such a world, decorum and courtesy are irrelevant.”
The temperament that Cohen and I define as conservative has nearly vanished on the right — or will when another tranche of Republicans retire or lose this year. The Republicans who remain will be angrier, loopier and more belligerent than we see even now. (Think about the Republican Judiciary Committee without Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona.)
Cohen is doubtful, as am I, that the GOP can recover. “It is impossible at this moment to envisage the Republican Party coming back,” he writes, “Like a brontosaurus with some brain-eating disorder it might lumber forward in the direction dictated by its past, favoring deregulation of businesses here and standing up to a rising China there, but there will be no higher mental functioning at work.” He concludes that the GOP “will plod into a future in which it is detested in a general way by women, African Americans, recent immigrants, and the educated young as well as progressives pure and simple.”
Opinion writer
October 1 at 11:30 AM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/10/01/a-first-class-temperament-whos-got-it/
The mingling of right-wing populism and the disintegration of conservative tone are inextricably linked. Right-wing populism thrives on anger, resentment and hostility toward elites. To defend irrational policies built on non-facts and fear of outsiders, vast conspiracies are required. (You really don’t see many rational, humble, modest, respectful right-wing populists.) If know-nothingism is essential to support your movement, you’re not likely to see many intellectually honest, measured leaders.
As (#NeverTrumper Eliot A. ) Cohen observes in recollecting the happy warrior Ronald Reagan, “The spirit of a president who celebrated America as a city on a hill that was generous abroad, welcoming to newcomers, and self confident at home, has been replaced by the sour meanness of a party chiefly of men, who build walls to keep the world out, erect tariffs to destroy free trade, despise the alliances that keep Americans secure, and sanction the deliberate plucking of babes from their mothers’ breasts in order to teach illegal immigrants a painful lesson. In such a world, decorum and courtesy are irrelevant.”
The temperament that Cohen and I define as conservative has nearly vanished on the right — or will when another tranche of Republicans retire or lose this year. The Republicans who remain will be angrier, loopier and more belligerent than we see even now. (Think about the Republican Judiciary Committee without Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona.)
Cohen is doubtful, as am I, that the GOP can recover. “It is impossible at this moment to envisage the Republican Party coming back,” he writes, “Like a brontosaurus with some brain-eating disorder it might lumber forward in the direction dictated by its past, favoring deregulation of businesses here and standing up to a rising China there, but there will be no higher mental functioning at work.” He concludes that the GOP “will plod into a future in which it is detested in a general way by women, African Americans, recent immigrants, and the educated young as well as progressives pure and simple.”
14 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
in connection with Raygun, he was anything but that! 
Bravo! 
(and she's also great when she shows up as a contributor on MSNBC too)
