Your Morning Wingnuts

DougJ: Gotta love Larison

I’ve been reading a bit of this panel discussion thing about conservatism’s future. It’s mostly an epic wankfest and it’s remarkable how much Larison stands out. I liked this especially:

Conservatism rebels against the concentration of power and wealth, temperamental conservatism teaches that power corrupts, while the movement concentrates in acquiring political gain particularly on national security.

Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Moby Dick:

The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvelous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! How cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!

I’m sure there are also all kinds of paradoxes in liberalism or progressivism or whatever it is that people like me are supposed to have as a philosophy. And this is why I think it’s a mistake to think that pondering Burke and Hume or their liberal equivalents, whoever that would be, will lead to any kind of clarity.

Benen:

* The National Jewish Democratic Council believes conservative use of Nazi rhetoric to criticize Democratic policies has reached "epidemic proportions."

Think Progress: Teabaggers Try To ‘Flush’ Graham Out Of GOP; Graham Responds: ‘If You Don’t Like’ Moderates, ‘You Can Leave’

In April, former Republican Sen. Arlen Specter (PA) switched his party affiliation to caucus with the Democrats after being targeted by right-wing activists and others within the GOP. Shortly before his departure, an anti-Obama tea party rally focused its attention at Specter, hate radio host Rush Limbaugh demanded that Specter be “flushed” out of the party. A campaign with the theme “Benedict Arnold” subsequently harassed Specter for voting for the stimulus.
Now, after voting to confirm Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court and expressing a willingness to build a compromise approach to clean energy legislation, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) appears to be the new target of tea party activists. At a Graham town hall in Greenville yesterday, activist Harry Kimball of “RINO HUNT” protested by constructing a display that depicted Graham, as well as moderates like Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), being flushed down a toilet:

KIMBALL: This is for every RINO who has failed to represent us. [...] [the toilet represents] flushing them, flushing them.

One attendee of the event asked the senator, “when are you going to announce that you are switching parties?” The question drew loud applause from the crowd. Graham defended himself, and denounced the influence of Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) on the Republican party:

GRAHAM: I’m going to grow this party, I’m not going to let it get [inaudible], I’m not going to let it be hijacked by Ron Paul. [...] I’m going to find people in Maine, Delaware, Illinois, other places–
AUDIENCE: Move there!
GRAHAM: That can win as Republicans, and I’m going to go up, and we’re going to move this party, and this country forward, and if you don’t like it, you can leave.

Watch it:

Angry attendees in the crowd interrupted Graham with cries of, “You’re a country club Republican,” “Sotomayor!,” and “You lie.” Outside the event, right-wing activist Julliet Kozak picketed the town hall with a sign decrying all “Unconstitutional Anti-Christ Socialist Federal Deficit Spending Programs.” She explained that she opposes what Graham is “doing in our Congress, what he’s doing to our country.”
Graham’s fellow South Carolina senator Jim DeMint (R) was an outspoken proponent of ejecting Specter from the Republican Party. DeMint told a conservative blogger Specter “cut our knees from under us.” He added that conservatives in the Senate need to aggressively “go after” Specter and other GOP moderates.

Update According to the newspaper The State, Graham repeatedly responded to those who accused him of being a "traitor" to "chill out." One man told Graham he had "betrayed" conservatism and made a "pact with the devil" by working with Democrats. "We're not going to be the party of angry white guys," Graham said to even more shouts. Some people walked out during Graham's speech after he told them, "if you don't like it, you can leave."

Update Brad Johnson rounds up the conservative blogosphere’s reaction to Graham.

 attaturk: Birth of a Vacaton

Hey Teabagger, are you even more delusional, just out of rehab, looking for a place where you and 100 fellow wingers can hang out with the 1,400 collective voices in your 104.5 heads?
Well, look no further than the BIRTHER CRUISE, where you can sail the Caribbean looking for those Somali Pirates holding Obama’s Kenyan Birth Certificate hostage.

Passports optional, birth certificates mandatory. Offer not valid in Mexico, Canada, Vermont or other socialist countries
And don’t forget they’ll be speakers — including somethin’ special for “the ladieeeeeeees”, as charismatic as any random George and/or Rosemary Clooney.

So start working out, and get yourself ready for some cruising.

 Drum: Taxing and Spending

Conservative apostate Bruce Bartlett explains why he became an apostate:

During the George W. Bush years [supply side economics] became distorted into something that is, frankly, nuts — the ideas that there is no economic problem that cannot be cured with more and bigger tax cuts, that all tax cuts are equally beneficial, and that all tax cuts raise revenue....As a consequence, we now have a tax code riddled with tax credits and other tax schemes of dubious merit, expiring provisions that never expire, and an income tax that fully exempts almost on half of tax filers from paying even a penny to support the general operations of the federal government.
Indeed, by destroying the balanced budget constraint, starve-the-beast theory actually opened the flood gates of spending. As I explained in a recent column, a key reason why deficits restrained spending in the past is because they led to politically unpopular tax increases. But if, as Republicans now maintain, taxes must never be increased at any time for any reason then there is never any political cost to raising spending and cutting taxes at the same time, as the Bush 43 administration and a Republican Congress did year after year.
The supply-siders are to a large extent responsible for this mess, myself included. We opened Pandora's Box when we got the Republican Party to abandon the balanced budget as its signature economic policy and adopt tax cuts as its raison d'être. In particular, the idea that tax cuts will "starve the beast" and automatically shrink the size of government is extremely pernicious.

In most countries, there's sort of a natural cycle to politics.  For a while, voters elect liberals who promise lots of goodies but also raise taxes.  People like the goodies, but eventually get tired of the taxes, and throw the bums out.  Conservatives then take office promising to cut taxes and restrain spending growth.  People like the low taxes, but eventually they get itchy for more goodies so they throw the bums out.  Rinse and repeat.
Whether deliberately or not, Reagan and the supply siders killed this cycle.  They decided they could stay in office forever by cutting taxes and increasing spending, thus pleasing everyone.  It even worked for a while.  In the ensuing 28 years Republicans held the presidency most of the time and controlled Congress for much of the rest.
But eventually the piper has to be paid.  We still haven't quite come to grips with that, but we can't avoid it too much longer.  Either we (a) slash government spending in ways that the public quite plainly isn't willing to do, (b) raise taxes in ways that the public isn't yet willing to do, or (c) allow the rest of the world to do it for us.  I used to be more optimistic about the possibility of avoiding (c), but lately I've begun to wonder.  I've read more than a few pronouncements over the past couple of years about the death of the tax revolt — I think I've even written a few myself — but I have to admit that it's not really looking all that dead these days.  Not here in California, anyway.
On the other hand, Italy hasn't collapsed yet, and we're still several years away from being as bad off as they are, so we've got time.  Maybe we'll come to our senses sometime in Obama's second term.  Maybe.