Obama and…Burke?

To describe Sullivan or Douthat as “wise” is preposterous. Douthat believes that tinkering around the edges will fix the GOP, while Sullivan spent years cheerleading for Bush and the neo-cons, before hastily scurrying over to the winning side. As for Kristol and Wehner “mad dog” Republicans might come close to their poisonous variety of lunacy.

Joe Klein:
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All of Andrew Sullivan’s florid prose and volumes about souls to the contrary, he’s a closeted centrist, not a “wise conservative”.
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Even if he were somehow truly the conservative he loudly protests he is, Sullivan’s endless sycophancy toward Obama has discredited him utterly on that subject. Only Keith Olbermann has less intellectual value when discussing how well the President did or didn’t do.
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Geysers of Obama praise from Andrew Sullivan are as predictable as next week arriving.

Joe: I guess the thing that turns me off is that the vitriol the Repubs had for Clinton is back in full force on Obama. The man has been President for one month. Can we give him a chance? Can we give his policies a chance to work? I don’t get it.

Joe, I don’t know about wise, but frankly I would settle for honest, something that seems to really eludes Republicans, especially those of the conservative type.

What Stu said
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The human weathervain [sic] that is Andrew Sullivan makes Joe look stable (though no less ego driven). Nevertheless, if he’s a “conservative” the next thing you know someone will tell us Joe is a “liberal.” Two sides of the same f’ing coin. Their calling out the nutter-sphere doesn’t mean they’re arbiters of political common sense.
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“I can hardly wait to see what Wehner and Kristol have to say”
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Us too! That’s why we’re all here, Joe, so we can see you masturbate the nutters.

Pete Wehner and Bill Kristol, are complaining that the President didn’t have enough to say about foreign policy last night
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Oh, really?
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What did Bobby Jindal have to say about foreign policy last night?
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Pretty-please, guys –let’s compare!

@rainbow: They’re Repugs, so, no. They’re in this to win, whatever it takes, no matter who gets hurt. I’m surprised at you, actually. Their creed is “hate, greed, fear.” Where, in those three, do you see “compassion,” or “concern,” or “consideration”?
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Repugs remind me of those villains-in-training at Alice Cooper’s school in “Sgt. Peppers.” I imagine their indoctrination consists of repeating, over and over, “We hate love; we hate joy; we love money.”

BTW where is Karen “Twitter” Tumulty these days? Still in Tejas?

The issue of elections in foreign countries, “forced” by the US, that are “premature”, surely reflects a dismal state of foreign affairs. That hasn’t been a problem before. Just arrange for the overthrow and murder of the elected officials who were so “prematurely” elected, and install a puppet murderous dictator. Problem solved. For about 15 min., anyway.

The following is from Bevan at RCP! Note: Does anyone, even P-luk, think Hillary would inspire this kind of grudging respect, let alone the public love-in? She might be more likely to punch Reid & Pelosi in the mouth or avoid the bi-post-partisan b-s, but the public simply wouldn’t be onboard as they currently are (and that’s if she’d been able to beat Jackass Mac).
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“Everyone knows Obama is good at giving speeches. Not just good: great. He knows it. We know it. We expect him to deliver and, with only one or two exceptions in the last couple of years, he’s always delivered. So the text, tone and delivery of last night’s address wasn’t surprising in the least.
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What was surprising was the scope.
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Nobody can accuse President Obama of playing “small ball.” Unlike Bill Clinton who, after failing to pass sweeping healthcare reform early in his first term, seemed content with mostly nibbling around the edges of policy for years, Obama is promising rapid, wholesale changes in the way we live our lives; from the kind of cars we drive and energy we use to the way we get our healthcare and our education.
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It’s also not surprising that the public appears to have received the speech very favorably. Obama is an excellent salesman, and he packages his vision in the most appealing way possible. But it’s also worth noting that the power of Obama’s persuasiveness is rooted in his likable demeanor and calm disposition.”

Joe: I guess the thing that turns me off is that the vitriol the Repubs had for Clinton is back in full force on Obama.
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Dear formerly, if, after yelling at repugs all day, you need to clean the spittle off your computer screen, you might try this handy Screen Cleaning tool.

Snark aside, I’m perfectly happy to have an MSMer like Joe Klein frequently point out that the conservative pundits are full of sh!t, regardless of what his personal motivations may be.
So thanks, Joe.

[...] Burkean bells are going off everywhere! Sully….Ross what’s his name…Joe Klein. [...]

These days it’s weird. The Burke strand from liberals’ DNA has been showing itself as the major influence. On the other side, Conservatives’ Marx/Trotsky DNA strand has been the major influence. Interesting times.

@jcapan: I think you – or whomever – have to consider the context, too. When Clinton came into office, things weren’t as bad after Bush I as they were after Bush II. I don’t know if it was so much that Clinton wasn’t as good a salesman as it is that people are more likely to accept the sweeping changes proposed by Obama, today, based on the crappy situation bequeathed to us by Bush II.

Every other country in the world gets better health care more cheaply than we do. Every economist who’s been right about anything in the past 10 years thinks we need a massive stimulus bill. Everyone who’s thought about our use of energy for more than 30 seconds realizes we need to make changes.
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Does being a Burkean has anything to do with empiricism, or is it just an emotional characteristic or pose of some who are born into the upper or upper-middle class? If reality and context matter, then it’s still not incorrect to note Obama’s Burkean temperament. He’s not talking about cutting taxes during a war, or asserting the executive’s right to detain citizens indefinitely without charge, or putting a man on Mars, for gosh sakes. He’s talking about doing what needs to be done.

Joe Klein alleges that Andrew Sullivan is a “wise conservative”? ROTFLMAO!

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Sullivan is a “conservative”, and I’m an ivory-billed woodpecker. BTW, Sullivan ain’t “wise” either. He is, though, the high priest of the fundamentalist homosexualist religious cult, and a huge worshipper, follower and supporter of legendary conservatives like John Kerry and B. Obama.

Does being a Burkean has anything to do with empiricism, or is it just an emotional characteristic or pose of some who are born into the upper or upper-middle class?
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Elvis, I’m kind of a Burkean and as you know I’m also a progressive. In fact I support progressive policies for very Burkean reasons: history has shown they tend to work better than the alternatives.
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Douthat, Sullivan and Brooks are basically completely misunderstanding Burke. It’s obviously not possible to know what Burke’s politics would be if he were alive now, but I suspect he’d be a fairly progressive Democrat.
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Burke opposed radicalism and blind optimism. He emphasized the importance of tradition not for tradition’s sake, but because of the dangers of overturning a system that was – whatever its faults – essentially functional; things could always get worse. (As Sullivan points out, the status quo is not functional anyway) I’m sure he would have disliked Obama’s “Hope” rhetoric in the campaign.
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But he would have approved of Obama’s efforts to learn from the experiences of past Presidents who faced similarly grave crises, including Lincoln and FDR. It’s actually hard to get more Burkean than modeling the basic outlines of an economic recovery plan on the last economic recovery plan that worked in similar circumstances: The New Deal.
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By ignoring the lessons of the New Deal, Republicans are being anti-Burkean.

Anyone catch Maddow’s interview with Pelosi? I have to say I’m liking Pelosi more than I used to.

Pelosi, the rep from cali that gave a standing ovation about the fact that we “inherited this crisis”. Since when did we do that?

She is more concerned with politics than our well being I believe. Isnt she from the bay area one of the largest housing bubbles of all. Yet she loves to play the blame game rather than work with the other side. Im not on here just to bash so if anyone can give me anything she did before this crisis to manage her own back yard I would appreciate it. Seriously you could change a fellow americans opinion.

I liked her too when she was first elected, one of the first fierce opponents of the republicans, it was great but the more I see the more she appears to be just another politician looking out more for herself, and her political party than the people of the U.S.

[...] best understood out here in Hollywood, one of Andrew Sullivan’s readers nails it:   Talking Obama and…Burke? – swampland.blogs.time.com 02/26/2009 Ross Douthat and Andrew Sullivan, two wise conservatives, [...]

Thanks, Rose. That makes sense. The modern GOP thinks only in caricature. Their totemization of Reagan and Jesus leaps to mind. It’s not a surprise that Burke is regarded as a great thinker for reasons quite beyond David Brooks’ understanding.

How about Joe “I’m not really a” Plummer? Is he a wise conservative too? Because the republicans seems unable to quit him. They keep bringing him to retreats and strategy sessions hoping to enrich themselves with his wisdom. Which begs the question what really qualifies as wisdom? Are we going to change the meaning of wisdom too?

The following is from Bevan at RCP! Note: Does anyone, even P-luk, think Hillary would inspire this kind of grudging respect, let alone the public love-in?
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I think that there would have been a public love-in for Hillary — any Democrat would have gotten a public love-in because they represent an end to the Bush era.
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But I also think that the media’s Clinton Derangement Syndrome would have been in full force, and that regardless of what she did the media would have treated her far worse than it has Obama — and the GOP is afraid to take on Obama, because the media is still by-and-large in love with him (that’s why the GOP focusses its attacks ‘congressional democrats’).
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Nevertheless, I think that the people would be behind Hillary as much as they are behind Obama — Bill Clinton’s job approval ratings remained high throughout the end of his term despite the personal antipathy people felt toward him because of the Monica thing. I think Hillary would have been able to achieve the same thing, despite a festival of Hillary-bashing by the media, because people have learned to disregard the lions share of that crap.

IN response to Kristol saying: Conservatism is more sophisticated than it was back then (in the 30s and 60s), DougJ responded: Could that possibly be true? Was there some 30s and 60s equivalent of an even dumber Joe the Plumber?

Is there a post coming deriding the cnbc hacks for not seeing this crisis coming but now acting as if they are the only ones being honest about what’s going to work. Maria Bart would be more helpful if she put a gag in her mouth and posed in rape scene for Penthouse along with Dillan Rat and Rick Sant depicting what they’ve been advocating Wall street do to this country for years.
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Any more fake outrage to boost their own noteriety and they’d qualify for enemies.

Sorry, but anyone who is HIV positive yet goes on the internet trolling for unprotected anal sex while bragging about his “power glutes” (complete with pictures) falls far short of any definition of “wisdom”. That Klein thinks Sullivan is “wise” is merely a demonstration of the degeneracy of the Village mindset.

meant Emmys

or enemas?

@wvng–LOL

Ok I saw this one coming. The first time mahuffer came on it started talking about “don’t call me a troll” and “don’t call me a republican” because supposedly they were disagreeing with the rest of the commenters. Trouble was they weren’t even commenting on the topics everybody else were commenting on. So now the subtle concern trolling starts and of course it has already put out there the “don’t label me” card. I am sure by tomorrow they will more into textee or hula. Why not just cut out the middleman and go batsh*t crazy.
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Now if you say you aren’t trolling why don’t you tell us why you brought up Nancy Pelosi when nobody was talking about her and why don’t you tell us all why you think she contributed to the housing crisis.
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This should be fun.

more should be morph

SG– How do you know a troll is a troll?
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Regardless of how they label themselves or respond to a post, they lie or believe they are telling the truth and are just delusional.

Dee: A true troll sees how the majority of commenters post/think and takes the opposite tack to fire them up. Hijacking the thread is first and foremost on their minds. The concern trolls try to seem reasonable and list their misgivings backed up by links to websites/articles that represent their true colors. The bi-polar trolls are the most fun. Half the time they appear lucid and the other half they just resort to all caps and rave. They’re the car wrecks. You know you shouldn’t gawk but it’s a quick way to feel about about yourself. The wannabe trolls are the sad sacks. They want to be be trolls but they just suck at it. They usually have a bedtime that mom enforces.

sgw, speaking of going batsh*t crazy: It smells like CPAC is in town.

sacredh: A true troll sees how the majority of commenters post/think and takes the opposite tack to fire them up. Particularly on issues they find most threatening. I always know when hula will go into “I’m going to cut and paste the longest pieces I can again and again cause I don’t want to see people discussing this I don’t want to see people discussing this I don’t want to see people discussing this I don’t want to see people discussing this I don’t want to see people discussing this cause I’m scared.”

LIVE on MSNBC- Obama unveiling budget.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2009/02/video_obama_unveils_budget_plan.php

JOE —WHEN DID YOU LOSE YOUR OBJECTIVITY AND BECOME A LIBERAL HACK. YOUR POSTS ARE INCREDIBLY PREDICTABLE..HATE REPUBLICANS AND ANYTHING THEY SAY..BUT SLOBBER OVER OBAMA AND DEMOCRATS. IT’S NO WONDER YOU HAVE NO CREDIBILITY AMONGST OTHER JOURNALISTS.

And the MSM and liberal rags like TIME wonder why readership is down so much. People are tired of jerks like Joe pushing a liberal agenda and want the news. Time will be out of business and people will get their news from the internet

Just like the NY Times and S.F. Chronicle

wvng: I agree. When something truly frightens you and you can’t handle the impending change, you resort to whatever you think has even the slightest chance of working. However, I don’t think this is limited to troll territory anymore. It seems like the entire republican party has got a serious case of the heebee jeebies. They appear to be suicidal. If they can’t have things their way, they seem intent on bringing the whole country down with them. The more desperate they get, the crazier they act.

wvng: Conservatism in some ways is “more sophisticated than it was… in the 30s and 60s,” but not in a flattering way.

mahuffer might still be a troll, but his/her Pelosi post was a follow-up to Art’s question about the Maddow-Pelosi interview. easy, now!

There’s a little bit of troll in all of us. I defend my descent into trolldom as support of the healthcare industry. Even one ruptured aneurysm, heart attack or blood pressure emergency can send at least one doctor’s kid on spring break.

Rose, can I recommend a book? Mike Lux’s The Progressive Revolution. The central thesis is that the conflict between tradition and progress has been played out over and over again in the US, on pretty much the same terms. The first couple of chapters are about Burke vs people like Tom Paine.
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it’s interesting to argue that “tradition” means “change” because change is traditionally more successful than stasis.
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Oh, and I’ll be talking to Mike about the book tonight. You can listen here: http://virtuallyspeaking.ning.com/ or join us in Second Life.

9pm eastern

There *is* such a thing as bad change. I’d argue that the French Revolution and its unintended consequences are the best example (which is why *Reflections…* is still read). Even Woodrow Wilson said that “Burke was right” about the French Revolution. Maybe *some* French Revolution had to happen to defeat absolutism. But the French Revolution that ended up going forward was terrible.

Ghandi and MLK are much better examples than the French revolutionaries.

I think Rick Perlstein is right to fault some of the excesses of the 60′s revolutionaries, who Nixon used as campaign fodder.

Whats a troll? Im new to this so I dont know if I am one of not.

sg- you totally misquoted me but hey Ill get over it. The only other post I’ve ever made on here was a few days back “Why was congress reading along?” I believe the post was. I stated that I agreed with some of BO’s agenda but not all of it. Then yes I stated that I wasnt a republican or democrat so please no useless bashing. Im not baiting you into a party based arguement and likewise I will not responde to ignorant comments like “who the **** is mahuffer and whats he been smoking”. I was commenting on his speech which was printed in the story. I was typing up another post to give my specific line item critiques good and bad but I had to come back and reply to you and everyone else that will listen that we should not jump straight to a “I’m republican and your not a patriot” or “I’m democrat and your a currupt rich white guy” kind of stance.

Back to this post now someone was saying how great they thought Pelosi was I totally disagree but hey Im open minded if you have any real feedback as to what makes her so great please send it my way, Im still in my twenties and have a lot to learn maybe Im mistaken.

For the sake of fitting in Ill throw you a bone Jindel was moronic during his interview and the whole RNC leader taking it “hiphop” sounds pretty retarded too. But Im not on here to offer my services in place of time reporters, make partisan jokes or just call people funny names.

damn you all I can remain incognito no longer, the republicans will one day be back, they’ll be back, and you will all bow to our will!!!

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Just kidding, just wanted to lighten it up a little, I think I got my troll definition once I read wvng and sacredh’s comments. Is this an anology to the fable about a troll under the bridge trying to catch the sheep?

mahuffer: I’ve used the troll under the bridge metaphor myself, but I believe that it’s more akin to trolling with a fishing line and reeling them in. The term “feeding the trolls” means responding to or engaging them in debate. When you get a true beliver on either side it’s often hard to distinguish the troll from the sincere poster. Hulagate and textee are true trolls. I hope I have been of assistance.

Mahuffer, without being unkind, you might like to meditate on what an English sentence looks like. You will also derive great benefit from discovering how and when to punctuate said sentences. Currently, your posts are extremely hard to read, which is generally a marker of troll status.

[...] Seriously, this Burke guy is showing up in conservative articles all around the web. Usually he’s mentioned as someone who would disapprove of Barack Obama’s plans for sweeping change. John Cole also recognized the trend: Burkean bells are going off everywhere! Sully….Ross what’s his name…Joe Klein. [...]