Monday, March 17, 2008

The Blog is Coming From Inside the Building!   [Mark Hemingway]

I'm deep in enemy territory right now at the Take Back America conference, organized by the Campaign for America's Future. It's basically CPAC for self-styled "progressives" — it's even being held in the same hotel as CPAC was a month ago. Anyway, I just got back from a spectacularly unilluminating and off-topic panel discussion about "The Crackup of Conservatism" wherein we were informed among other things that the progressive electoral strategy of "losing forward" isn't working. With that kind of earned wisdom, progressives will be storming the Bastille any day now.

That said, it was interesting to learn that progressives regard McCain as a real threat. One of the speakers at the panel was Cliff Schecter. Schecter began his speech by announcing "John McCain is a jackass," and closed his remarks by announcing "Conservativism today is theocracy, oligarchy and permanent war," so you know you can look forward to reviewing his other salient and scholarly opinions in his forthcoming book on McCain.

Still, Schecter expressed great concern over the damage done by the infighting between Barack and Hillary's infighting given McCain's relative strength, adding "If it were Mitt Romney we were running against we could all sit back and eat barbecue for six months and still kick his butt."

03/17 01:51 PMShare