Author: Andrew Sullivan

Ari Fleischer doesn't want the conservative wave to crest any time, you know, soon:

"If Republicans push too hard, we may blow our chances to actually reform entitlements and meaningfully roll back the size of government after the 2012 elections."

Until then, expect a meaningless roll-back of the size of government.

A reader writes:

I'm not a huge fan of Dancing With The Stars, but I've been watching it regularly this season … and have been stunned at the results on a weekly basis. Bristol Palin gives a lot of effort, but she is a terrible dancer. Clearly the worst of the whole lot; it's not even close. I know that in the past, this can work to your advantage for a few weeks. After all, this show is a popularity contest. But week after week, Bristol ends up in the bottom of the judging and nevertheless continues to get tons of votes. Care to guess who's doing the voting? People like my in-laws, who think she's "adorable" and "trying so hard, just like her mother."

This is what scares me.

You may think I am being trite and that this is just a silly TV show, but I truly think it's a microcosm of the 2012 election season. For Bristol, it doesn't really matter that she can't dance. The point is, her fans adore her. They don't care that she's a walking contradiction – an unwed mother who now flaunts her "abstinence" all over the country for $15,000 dollars per speaking engagement. They just know that they "like" her and, more importantly, they love her mother.

These people don't seem to care that they are being fooled by Sarah. They don't seem to care that their heroine doesn't read books, know policy, or practice rational thinking. They don't seem to care that she is little more than a vindictive, petty, hypocritical Queen Bee with a paranoid streak. All they know is that she's "trying so hard" and she's "just like them." Bristol Palin is Sarah Palin.

And each week, far more qualified dancers get voted off the island. Sure, they are technically proficient, terrific athletes, and talented artists. But they can't keep up with Bristol and her two left feet. This show stopped being about dancing a long, long time ago. Now it's about image. It's about power. And it's about who our next president could be.

Joe Carter argues that the tea party is actually a subset of the religious right:

A recent survey has shown that nearly half (47 percent) consider themselves to be part of the conservative Christian movement. And despite the perception of the movement being comprised of economically-oriented libertarians, the majority held social conservative views. Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of Tea Partiers say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, and only eighteen percent support same-sex marriage.

I think this is absolutely correct and makes the "tea-party" label a brilliant marketing move to repackage Fusionist Republicanism. It's a way to give fiscally conservative and socially moderate Republicans permission/cover to vote for Christianism again. But the Christianism is still there – just disguised – and, when exposed, as in Colorado, increasingly a negative. And at some point, surely, the mask will have to fall:

If the Tea Party were to completely drop its veneer of being focused on government spending and instead simply become a vehicle for the advancement of movement conservatism more generally, it would cease to have any real relevance whatsoever.  Indeed, it’s worth pointing out that each Tea Party-approved statewide candidate whose social conservatism became a campaign issue, whether by choice or otherwise, performed miserably or, at the very least, suffered a disappointing loss.

So let's see how the new GOP reacts to the live possibility of Don't Ask Don't Tell repeal, endorsed by the military brass. That will tell us where they stand.

Sarah Palin favorited a tweet by Ann Coulter linking to this beauty:

Joe Rospars discovers that the rising sun in Palin's "Morning in America" ad is actually a setting sun reversed. Classic Goldfarb response:

So what? Is he implying that Sarah Palin is anti-sunsets?

No, I'm sure she enjoyed a few of them in her "possibly fictitious" Alaska to California motor-home trip.

"Someone from Mississippi is making me look stupid?" – Eliot Spitzer in a riveting interview with Kevin Sessums.

Kevin is an old friend, so you can dismiss this if you want. But I wish more political journalists asked questions as blunt, candid and openly but transparently biased as Kevin's. And as well-researched.

Alex Balk urges us to live a little:

Everything that doesn't taste like crap is full of stuff that is in some way or another bad for you. You are going to die no matter what. Eat whatever you want. The oft-repeated Keynesian maxim that "in the long run we are all dead" is well and good, but it ignores that fact that for a long time we are all alive. For, like, AGES. Think about how long today has been, and it's not even five yet!

Yes, life is a beautiful valuable thing and there are so many joys along the way and etc., but let's admit that 90% of it is suffering, misery, pain, standing in line behind some idiot who can't figure out how that he doesn't have enough money in his balance to withdraw the amount of cash he keeps asking for from the ATM, heartbreak, defeat and "Seinfeld" reruns. A couple of eggs, or a McRib, or excellent Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey sipped outdoors on a crisp day while you smoke a cigarette: if these things are going to shave a few years off the time you would otherwise spend drumming your fingers on the counter as you wait for the laggard at the Duane Reade to ring up your single-item purchase, so be it.

Enjoy.