The Dish

"Many conservatives believe that the key question in this election is: Are there to be two multiculturalist open-borders parties or one? … Any bill similar to the senator’s “comprehensive” immigration reform would accelerate the GOP’s relative demographic decline by creating new voters overwhelmingly likely to vote Democrat in a quicker time scale. This dominant Democratic majority would emerge fully only after a hypothetical President McCain left office, but its approach would cloud the future of every other Republican incumbent," – John O’Sullivan.

Is John saying that conservatism is an inherently racial or cultural phenomenon that future Hispanic-Americans will be unable to support? I don’t see why that should be the case. The United States, meanwhile, is a multi-cultural nation, in case John hasn’t noticed. That’s part of its strength. And neither party favors "open borders" by any stretch of the imagination. There is a pessimism bordering on despair among conservatives right now that is as vexing as it is self-defeating. It does not bode well for a potential McCain presidency.

A reader writes:

This Grateful Dead concert is not good news for Obama. Given one last chance to hear the Dead, even without Jerry Garcia, many, many fans will take this opportunity to embark on the magical mystery tour just one more time.  And you know what that means – low turnout on Tuesday.  At the last free Dead concert I attended, albeit many years ago, purchase of a t-shirt got you a hit of very pure windowpane. When I left the concert at five in the morning, well, not even the opportunity to vote for the Resurrected Christ could have kept me from my bed for the next 14 hours.

Hey guys, if you’re reading this right now: get out and vote.

Some helpful comments on the arguments that will weigh with him. He doesn’t endorse – he’s not pompous enough for that. But he does persuade.

Justin Raimondo, in The American Conservative, attacks McCain on foreign policy:

It is impossible to know what is in McCain’s heart. There may be a purely ideological explanation for his changing viewpoint. But what seems to account for his evolution from realism to hopped-up interventionism is nothing more than sheer ambition. This was the case in 1983, when he defied the Reagan administration over sending U.S. soldiers to die at the hands of a Beirut suicide bomber, and in 1999, when the cry went up to take on Slobodan Milosevic. He was positioning himself against his own party, while staking out a distinctive stance independent of the Democrats. It was, in short, an instance of a presidential candidate maneuvering himself to increase his appeal to the electorate—and, most importantly, the media. […]

Other politicians were transformed by 9/11. McCain was unleashed. His strategy of “rogue state rollback” was exactly what the neoconservatives in the Bush administration had in mind, and yet, ever mindful to somehow stand out from the pack while still going along with the program, the senator took umbrage at Rumsfeld’s apparent unwillingness to chew up the U.S. military in an endless occupation. He publicly dissented from the “light footprint” strategy championed by the Department of Defense. More troops, more force, more of everything—that is McCain’s solution to every problem in our newly conquered province.

McCain’s emergence will either forge a new Republican foreign policy consensus, or blow the whole apparatus apart. A post-Bush Iraq occupation will be a fascinating thing for the GOP to grapple with.

A reader writes:

Your post "Blogging for Power" is either disingenuous or simply naive. Of course power motivates you to write on politics, whether you’re conscious of it or not. You influence hundreds of thousands of readers on a daily basis, and, yes, that does influence elections. You’ve practically been Obama-central in the blogosphere: if there’s an important piece of Obama news, you’ll have posted it within an hour or two. Your article, "Goodbye To All That," seems to have played a major role in persuading many opinion-makers that Obama’s time is now.

Schopenhauer and Nietzsche recognized The Will to Power didn’t need self-consciousness to achieve its ends; perhaps self-consciousness just gets in the way. They also recognized that Power is not a function of the human ego, but a shaper of it.  Humans are will-to-power beings in the same way we’re sexual beings.  Power is intrinsic.

Why don’t you just admit it, Andrew?  Where’s the shame in it? Do you really believe your passionately biased take on everything Clinton isn’t driven by a force larger than mere psychology or random preference?

At the risk of some self-psychoanalysis, I disagree. Sometimes, I feel much happier when my views or arguments are thoroughly rejected, rather than accepted. In fact, I often get queasy at the thought of getting yes for an answer. And so I hide behind the Nietzschean mask of mere self-expression. Forgive me for needing it.

Ambers points out the obvious. But what’s staggering to me is how popular George W. Bush still is with Republicans. He has a 71 percent approval rating from Republicans. After the last seven years? And Romney’s supporters are the most pro-Bush: giving Bush an 82 percent approval.

An elegantly persuasive post from Reihan. Money quote:

Some say, “we do it with car insurance!” Regulating automobiles, which involve a dense web of surveillance, regular registration, etc., is a piece of cake in comparison. Your right to drive can be revoked. What do you do to an incorrigible skinflint who refuses to buy health insurance?

The ongoing revolution in the biosciences makes these questions mostly moot. We are arguing about building a coercive apparatus to solve a social problem that won’t exist in the same form for very long. But of course that coercive apparatus will never go away.

He’s the next Reagan, natch – about to turn back the tide of decadence with a burst of conservative orthodoxy and excitement. Yep, I’ve been reading Hugh again. And there are signs Romney is doing well in Southern California.

Either Zogby or SUSA is going to look very embarrassed tonight.

"[Obama and Clinton] are not going to surrender the country to Islamic radicalism or the war in Iraq. They are not going to do that to themselves, despite what their base says. The idea that we’ve only got one person in this whole roster of candidates, either party, who is willing to take on the war on terror is frankly, absurd," – Rush Limbaugh today. If McCain were the nominee, could Rush back Obama in the fall?