The Real Rudy
The Real Rudy
In his New York Times column (November 23, 2007), “conservative” commentator David Brooks complains that his favorite political figure has gone over to the dark forces of the “anti-immigrant movement.” Brooks recalls those happier days when Rudy, in an address at the Kennedy School of Government in October 1996, recognized that xenophobia had overwhelmed his own party, when it had just passed a welfare reform bill in Congress restricting benefits to legal immigrants. Rudy shuddered at the “fear-mongering and discrimination” that were afflicting the party of Lincoln, “someone who had the courage to take on the anti-immigrant forces.” Then last year, Brooks had “seen [sic!] Rudy passionately deliver remarks at the Manhattan Institute Hamilton Award Dinner in which he condemned ‘the punitive approach’ to immigration, “which is reflected in the House legislation that was passed, which is to make it a crime to be an illegal or undocumented immigrant.” Listening to his recent harangues about sealing America’s borders against illegals, Brooks is worried that his onetime hero may be losing Hispanic voters in his desire to accommodate nativists. He fears that “Rudy may “look back on this moment and wonder why he didn’t run as himself.”
Putting aside some of his muddled historical details, e.g., Lincoln Republicans were not open-borders types, but anti-Irish and at least implicitly anti-Catholic, Brooks is certainly expressing valid neoconservative concerns. By sounding “Tancredo-esque” at this point, after decades of being identified with socially leftist positions on immigration and just about everything else, Rudy may be sliding irreversibly to the right, beyond the neocon communion. What happens if he does win while sounding like a critic of immigration and the gay lobby (two causes that mean a great deal to Brooks as a “New York Times conservative”) and then bases his presidency on his newly constructed identity?
Allow me to comfort the agonized columnist and others who may think like him. I couldn’t imagine why Rudy would not revert to form once elected. It is highly unlikely that his habits of thought, acquired over many decades, would suddenly be reversed in a 61 year old politician, who is trimming his sails because of the wind he is trying to get through. I doubt that anyone but a low-grade moron, or someone acting like one in order to hold on to Republican patronage, could possibly believe that Rudy is no longer Rudy. Does anyone think that Rudy underwent a recent epiphany since addressing the Manhattan Institute last year, as a pro-illegal immigrant zealot? His conversion shows about the same degree of sincerity as the practice of Western Communist party leaders in the 1950s who would talk about “democratic pluralism” when they were competing with social democrats. Rudy has no choice in the Republican primaries but to lie through his teeth, unless he wishes to sink like a lead weight. If he does win (God save us from that fate!), he will probably do what he did before, favor leftist social positions, appoint federal judges who lean strongly left, and call for war against “Islamofascism.” Brooks would be delighted with these results. And by then Rudy would have dragged along the mercenary or opportunistic conservative media, toward an updated form of “value” or “compassionate conservatism.” If I were David, I would stuff the ballot box (or whatever contraption they vote with in the Big Apple) to make sure that the “real Rudy,” who is the only one, manages to prevail.
Comments
I saw Brooks on C Span last night. It was some sort of dinner where he was just sort of talking about the days events. I got the sinking feeling that people were paying to be there. It was just a litany of very very boring middle of the road remarks, not unlike the stuff he wrote before 9/11, which was sort of dumbed down, oprah fied cultural studies. you know what “americans are increasingly this and not that as much” sort of stuff. as per this column, brooks and co are, as many paleos have noted, simply getting ready for the dash to hillary land.
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Rudy represents a coming together of the most overtly
jingoist neocon sectors and the cultural Marxist left.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/preston2.html
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It’s obvious that the “New Rudy” is loading his campaign
with the freinds of the “Old Rudy”.......His staff and
supporters are who he is.
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Neoconservatives contempt for American history and culture is destroying the Republican party and conservatism. Neoconservatives crazies must be purged from the conservative movement if convervatism is to survive.
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David Brooks..... as my grandpappy P.C., proprietor of the Stockyards Cafe said whenever earnest idiocy reared it’s smiling face… “makes about as much sense as a fart in a hailstorm”.
What I truly enjoyed about the Brooks piece is where he suggested that the G.O.P. would be better served by Rudy’s “reformist” instincts. In that the GOP has been essentially reformed out of existence by the current Administration, reform aint what’s needed.
But , counter-intuition is to be expected around Mr. Brooks, a snoringly affable journalist who has been called “a conservative liberals can love”. If this is truly the case, the smitten liberal and his counterpart, the reformed-conservative might be better served by re-learning how to enjoy the clarifying effects of informed principle, expressed without nuance and free of the erosive effects of popularized, one size fits all thinking.... the essential bane of the age.
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Apparently Brooks has never read that the party of Lincoln was also the party which supported colonization for newly freed slaves (in part to prevent the cycle of violence which later characterized the Reconstruction period). I sincerely hope that one day a “Stalin Prize” will be awarded to the commentator who rewrites history in the most egregious manner.
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Grant would have to give the award, pending better
choices, to Frederick Kagan, who just published a
book stating that the Puritans came to the New World
to build a global democratic empire, from which they
be able to spread their creed everywhere. Michael
Medved during one of his diatribes against Ron Paul
paused briefly to express admiration for Kagan’s
groundbreaking scholarship.
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If any gentle readers doubt the utter stupidity of Neocons, check out this exchange between the PC host of C-Span’s Booknotes, Brian Lamb, and big time Neocon David Brooks, formerly of the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard. Here, Brooks can’t identify the region of Europe where Bohemia is located and he can’t explain the origin of the word bourgeoisie but he is pretty sure that word pre-dates Karl Marx. Now, I think Neocons are more Evil than they are Stupid, but the two are by no means mutually exclusive.
http://www.booknotes.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1575
BRIAN LAMB, host: David Brooks, were do we find a bobo in paradise?
Mr. DAVID BROOKS (Author, “Bobos in Paradise"): Bobos are spread
across upscale America
LAMB: Where’s the word `Bohemia’ come from?
Mr. BROOKS: Well, Bohemia’s a region in central Europe, and I think
the Bohemians who had no ethnic relationship to real Bohemians who
were from Bohemia adopted it because they thought they were Gypsies,
that they ha--were free-floating individuals.
LAMB: Where is it physically? Do you know?
Mr. BROOKS: It’s--I’m not sure exactly. It’s a region--I think
the--I--I sh--shouldn’t guess. I’m not exactly sure.
LAMB: What about the--the--the n--word `bourgeois’ or `bourgeoisie’?
Where does that come--who--who first started using it?
Mr. BROOKS: Yeah, that’s a good question. You know, I don’t know.
It’s--it’s certainly a word Marx used, but I don’t--I think it
predates him.
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Sam spade’s truly illuminating revelation shocks me.
Until I have wrongly believed that only the gentile
servants of the neocons were selected for boundless
stupidity. But Brooks, who is obviously Jewish, is
almost as stupid as our neocon president or Cal Thomas.
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What if Hillary can be made to close the borders for real as part of her campaign to rebuild the middle class? What if she can exploit the divisions within the Repulican party and capture part of the Ron Paul vote and part of the social conservative-fiscal liberal (western PA and MI) voters based solely on the immigration issue? The GOP can rebuild in opposition; Hillary’s social programs (which are so similar to Rudy’s) will crash and burn; the neocons will be purged and a proper Republican can be nominated in 2012 after four years of Clinton and no new immigrants. This came to me last night in a flash - perhaps of stupidity. But I think it’s worth considering that Hillary will be stymied where Rudy may triumph. Let’s give her some rope; let’s propose her a quid pro quo that already fits with her “middle class” agenda. The Afro-Americans would be on board and the Hispanics may tolerate it from her but not from him. It plays everyone off each other: Fox news goes on its anti-Hillary witch hunts to denounce policies it would support if Rudy propsed them; the Left accepts Hillary’s need to close the borders to help “working men and women” and sock it the rich “greedy men.” Rudy is not a Federalist Society type anyway. He’d probably appoint a Seuter. I think this can work. I’ll call her tonight and propose it!
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Although the Republican Party of the 1860s contained a goodly number of memebers hostile to Catholics and immigrants (many Know Nothings had joined the party after the demise of their party), Lincoln was not among them. His law partner Billy Herndon remarked that Lincoln thought the immigrants would be good for the country, even the Irish (whom Herndon loathed). Lincoln also returned the Church’s property in the Mexican Cession which had been confiscated by the Mexican government after the revolution in the 1820s.
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Theodore M. Van Oosbree: Herndon may not be a good source for Dishonest Abe. Herndon was the many who said that Abe told him that Abe had syphilis and had passed it on to his wife. No other sources say this.
Can you cite me your source of the return of Catholic property to Catholics? I’m not distrusting you personally. It’s just that I’ve caught several other writebackers in lies and false citations.
Yet let’s suppose that these statements of Lincoln’s supposed beneficence are true. The general record of this monster, well documented by Tom DiLorenzo, proves on balance Dishonest Abe’s utter mendacity and perfidiousness and infamous actions. The man who, in fact, destroyed the real Union, imposed Hamiltonianism, began US imperial ambitions, and who didn’t oppose slavery and wanted to ship pre-1808 Blacks back to Africa is a man who doesn’t deserve a break.
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As usual, the Sidster is wrong. At least that means that God is still in his Heaven even if all else isn’t right with the world.
http://www.athanasius.com/camission/fernando.htm
In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed an Act declaring that all of the 21 missions in the California mission chain would become the property of the Catholic Church and have remained so since that time.
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Sebastian- The problem with your analysis is this:
Hillary will SAY she will close the border. But she will NEVER do it. She, like all the liberals, sold out to the Corporate interests and the open borders crowd years ago. And the Neo Cons aren’t going away. Who, pray tell, is going to purge them? They may be evil, traitorous and misguided, but they’re still 10 times smarter and more passionate than anyone else in the Republican party aka the stupid party.
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Keith wrote: Rudy represents a coming together of the most overtly
jingoist neocon sectors and the cultural Marxist left.
Rudy is a pimp for Wall Street and internatinal finance capitalism, which is what you might call the practical application of “libertarian” ideals.
In this regard, he’s following in the footsteps Bush1&@, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton style liberalism.
Bush1&2;represents the plutocracy of American Wealth that populist conservatives like Kevin Phillips has been talking about for a long time.
It’s important to understand that while Republicans talk like populists,, they govern like plutocrats, especially on the culture war issues. The culture war is being exploited by the plutocrats to gain political power.
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