Colorado governor race offers glimpse of conservative future

By Dan Brooks in conservatism, corporatocracy, populism, Reactionary Populism, representative democracy, rumormongering, Tea Party 5 Comments
Tea Party protestors in Greeley, CO protest the runaway taxation of the Obama administration, which taxes at exactly the same rate as the Bush administration.

Tea Party protestors in Greeley, CO protest the runaway taxation of the Obama administration, which taxes at exactly the same rate as the Bush administration.

There is a storm brewing across our great nation. From Spokane to Schenectady, decent, hardworking Americans who watch television at 4pm are joining together to question their federal government. “Why do you continue to exist?” they ask. “Why can’t we get back to the government we had in 1789, which apparently included Medicaid and Social Security? Have you heard that a black guy is President now?” They are the Tea Party, and they object to taxation and spending. They may also be entirely the creation of the country’s second-biggest cable news network, owned by the world’s 132nd-richest man, but that doesn’t stop them from being a legitimate political party. Sort of. And nowhere is the newly-consecrated Tea Party so influential as in Colorado, where the GOP has chosen as its candidate for governor Scott McInnis, largely because he has the Tea Party’s backing. Kinda. The important thing is, he’s winning. I guess. To hear Fox News tell it, at least, the awesome power of the Tea Party has swept Bill McInnis to certain victory in Colorado. Except maybe they made it all up.

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Andrew Sullivan: Canary in the mine

By Dan Brooks in conservatism, glenn beck, health care, help me kill zombies, new york times, populism, Reactionary Populism, representative democracy, sarah palin, widespread dumbening 8 Comments
Conservative Atlantic Monthly blogger Andrew Sullivan has publicly repudiated the right.

Conservative Atlantic Monthly blogger Andrew Sullivan has repudiated the American right, finally freeing him to publicly wear these glasses.

We here in the Combat! offices read Andrew Sullivan a lot, but we don’t get to link to him as often as we’d like to, probably because he doesn’t spend enough time saying things that are completely insane. A Tory transplant from the UK, Sullivan has identified as a conservative for most of his career,  despite his sexual preference (dudes) and his tendency to support centrist Democrats in second-term Presidential elections (Bush-to-Clinton, Bush II-to-Kerry.) Basically, Sullivan’s conservative principles guide his political affiliations, not the other way around. Until Tuesday, he’d managed to lean left and right while remaining publicly aligned with the Republican side of the American political spectrum. All that changed with this blog post, in which Sullivan announces that he can no longer support “the movement that goes by the name ‘conservative’ in America.” His public repudiation of the American right—and, by implication, the GOP—is seismic coming from a man who prides himself on being “of no party or clique.” It’s also an indicator of how far the Republican Party has drifted from anything that an informed, reasonable American who is not himself a politician would want to endorse.

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