The old guard….that old guard that gave us McCain and Romney to sacrifice at the altar of Obama, knowing full well they would lose….is at it again pulling out the knives and placing them into the backs of the new guard. The guard that has actual idea’s, that actually has courage, that is willing to take on the old crony’s.
Here’s Bill Kristol, that champion of the old guard:
Was it, as Seth Lipsky suggested in a column in the New York Post, “wonderful,” signifying both that “our country is in a constitutional moment” and “the rise of a new generation of Republican constitutional conservatives”? Or was it, as William Shakespeare wrote ahead of the fact, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”?
…Paul’s political genius strikes us as very much of the short-term variety. Will it ultimately serve him well to be the spokesman for the Code Pink faction of the Republican party? How much staying power is there in a political stance that requires waxing semihysterical about the imminent threat of Obama-ordered drone strikes against Americans sitting in cafés? And as for the other Republican senators who rushed to the floor to cheer Paul on, won’t they soon be entertaining second thoughts? Is patting Rand Paul on the back for his fearmongering a plausible path to the presidency for Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz? Is embracing kookiness a winning strategy for the Republican party? We doubt it.
How odd that Kristol takes the McCain “kooky” attack stance when it’s abundantly clear that Paul meant, as he stated time and time again during his 12 hour monologue, that he didn’t believe Obama was going to drone someone at a coffee shop but rather the inherent risk is giving this power of “judge, jury, and executioner” to future presidents decades and/or centuries into the future.
It would of course be unfair to compare Rand Paul to Macbeth—unfair both to Paul’s lawfulness and to Macbeth’s greatness (of a kind). It would be unfair to compare conservative talk radio to Lady Macbeth, just because both recklessly egg on their heroes. But it’s true that a Republican party that follows the path of Rand Paul will end up as thoroughly defeated at the ballot box as Macbeth was routed on the battlefield of Dunsinane. And as deservedly so.
Yes, because we so thoroughly defeated the Democrats in 2008 and 2012. We won the White House and gained seats in the Senate following the old guard of the Republican party…..oh wait.
But there is another course for Republicans. It’s increasingly clear, just two months into his second term, that President Obama has overreached on behalf of a rhetorically tired and substantively discredited agenda. “We still have judgment here.” Liberalism will be ripe for the judgment of the American people in 2014 and in 2016.
But you can’t beat something with nothing. The filibusterer from Kentucky has had “his hour upon the stage.” When will other, more serious, Republican dramatis personae step forward?
In other words when will APPROVED Republicans step forward?
The old guard continues to disapprove of grass roots tea party Republicans, or anyone that doesn’t toe the line that the “brilliant” politicians like Boehner, McCain and Graham approve. We have come so far because of them you see.
Sigh…..
See author page
