Friday, November 30, 2007

Right Said Fred   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

I missed Rush yesterday while I was on the Acela to D.C. without earphones and have been reading in my inbox what he said about Thompson ever since:

 Some of you might not think of this as an upside or a silver lining, but the genuine moderate as opposed to conservative aspects of three of the top-tier, four of the top-tier candidates were on full-fledged display last night.  There was one candidate who did not display any moderateness or liberalism or have any of his past forays into those areas displayed, and that candidate was Fred Thompson.  Now, this is not an endorsement.  You know, I don't endorse during primaries. I just point out: These are things I noticed, and I've told you during the course of this one campaign year that one of the things that's bothering me, is I'm a Reagan conservative, and I believe in conservatism. It's in my soul and it's in my heart, and I know it is the best way for us to manage our affairs to ensure the most prosperity for the most, to continue our freedom, to protect our country.  

Conservatism sees people and sees potential.  Liberalism looks at people and sees victims.  Liberalism looks at people and sees incompetence, and, "We gotta help 'em out and keep 'em forever dependent so we'll always have power."  Conservatives don't want to use the government to empower themselves.  They want to get government out of the way to empower other people.  So, to me it matters, and we have a campaign now where most of the candidates are not genuine conservatives.  They may be saying they are, but in their past they have done some things that are not conservative in any way, shape, manner, or form — and I think a lot of those things are being overlooked even by friends of mine in the conservative media because the obsession is Hillary.  "Well, we gotta have somebody who can beat Hillary, and we can't have the perfect candidate," and so we gotta make the choice here based on who's best equipped to win and beat Hillary.  I understand that, and whoever the nominee is, I'm going to support them.  So don't misunderstand here.  But I don't like seeing "conservatism" being watered down as the way it's defined.  I don't want people who are not conservative being said to be representatives of the "new conservatism."  There is no "new" conservatism.  There is conservatism, and you either are or you aren't. 

You can be 80%, but it depends on what the other 20% are, and I'm just telling you that last night, it was Huckabee and Rudy and Mitt Romney, because of these questions, who were all faced with the reality — and everybody watching saw it — that they've got some governance in their pasts that is not conservative, and this is something that just hit me.  While everybody is talking about Fred Thompson, "He's too lazy. He's too lackadaisical. He doesn't seem to have whole lot of energy." Fine and dandy. I'm not going to argue with people about your perceptions of attitudes and so forth.  I will say this.  I don't think anybody would get into this mess running for the presidency, the media and all of these things. You can't imagine what these people go through.  You wouldn't want to go through it, and I can't imagine somebody put themselves through it if they really don't want it.  

He made clear he was not endorsing — he doesn't do primary endorsements, he's been saying for a while. I think we're corporatedly generally on a similar wave with Mr. Limbaugh — we pointed out right before Thanksgiving (as you might have heard from Senator Thompson) that "Policy Fred" is pretty Right on some important issues he's weighed in on. 

11/30 11:37 AMShare