The Why We War

It’s the time of the election season when conservatives of all stripes engage in that greatest of relatively recent right-of-center traditions – one that might seem counterintuitive for people calling themselves “conservatives”:  the collective purity test.

My favorite example:  Marco Rubio – who, four years ago, was a Tea Party insurgent – is now “establishment”, because of his position on immigration.  But examples attach to every single candidate in the field;  any given conservative wants to toss Jeb Bush because he’s soft on Common Core, Rand Paul because he’s soft-ish on defense, Christie because he’s weak on the Second Amendment and hugged Obama, Fiorina because her Senate campaign in dingy-blue California catered toward dingy-blue voters, Carson because he’s very weak on the Second Amendment, Trump because for most of his life he never really talked like a conservative, and Cruz because he’s that all-purpose political diagnosis when you can’t find anything better, “Crazy”.

After watching Mitt Romney lose an election he could have won had 400,000 conservatives in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Colorado gotten over their various quibbles with his history on abortion, gun control and healthcare, I’ve despaired at times that anyone could be perfect enough to satisfy everyone enough to actually get them to the polls.

Jay Nordlinger  wrote about this on National Review the other day. You should read the whole thing if the subject has ever affected you as well.

He concluded it with a quote from a podcast he did with British conservative thinker Roger Scruton:

“I think that, in the end, there is something that unites all conservatives, which is that they are pursuing something they love.

My view is that the Left is united by hatred, but we are united by love: love of our country, love of institutions, love of the law, love of family, and so on. And what makes us conservatives is the desire to protect those things, and we’re up against people who want to destroy them, and it’s very simple.”

And if conservatives can’t unite around that, then I despair for the nation’s, and the world’s, futures.

18 thoughts on “The Why We War

  1. I’ve been saying that for years. I mock the leftist institutions, but have no desire to destroy them. But the left hates and wants to destroy:
    -Boy Scouts
    -Bible based Christian churches
    -Salvation Army
    -Bakers and wedding photographers who don’t submit
    -Crises pregnancy centers
    -Chik-fil-a

  2. I’m paraphrasing/misquoting Glen Reynolds (“the Instapundit”). My cat would be a better president than Obama. And I don’t even have a cat.

  3. Romney lost because he couldn’t criticize Obama care. ‘Causes it was basically his plan.
    Your “basically” is carrying an awful lot of water, DMA. Romney did not only criticize Obamacare, he promised to repeal it:
    “Our mission is clear: if we want to get rid of Obamacare, we are going to have to replace President Obama,” Mr. Romney said. “That is my mission. That is our work. And I’m asking the American people to join me.”
    http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/romney-says-he-will-repeal-obamacare-if-elected/?_r=0

  4. So, okay. Both your links are from 2015.
    Romney ran in 2012.
    As in ‘Romney lost in 2012 because of things he said in 2015!’
    Pathetic, DMA.

  5. Lunchbox, when it talks like a duck, walks like a duck, and is the author of Romneycare, you are a screwed duck no matter what you say..

  6. ” I mock the leftist institutions, but have no desire to destroy them.”

    Why not? If you believe (correctly) that leftists would do harm to America and Americans through their institutions, why wouldn’t you work to crush them into dust?

    I see value in retaining a token left, just enough to keep the right honest, and as a cautionary example of feckless disregard to proper parenting, but far from having any power.

    Leftists love to point to times in history when the Democrat party had power during times of prosperity, but the Democrat party of the 1960’s was to the right of today’s mainstream GOP. A gathering of today’s Democrats would feel right at home in Nikita Khrushchev’s Kremlin.

    The 1990’s were prosperous for many reasons, but Clinton isn’t one of them. Remember he completely capitulated to the GOP congress.

    The only place for leftist institutions is under our real American shoe leather.

  7. Romney is what happens when Real Americans live among leftists for too long. Liberalism is like Hansen’s disease. You can visit a leper colony without being infected, but if you pitch your tent, you’ll get it sooner or later.

    Chris Christy is infected, BTW; he’s just asymptomatic during the campaign season.

  8. Both your links are from 2015.

    I don’t know why that got posted twice. I blame Berg. I also blame Berg for bringing up Romney at a time like this.

    I voted for Romney. Then I went home and took a long hot shower. And that is the last time I will ever do that again.

  9. If NOBODY voted, who decides who wins?

    Lunchbox, your catch phrase writing needs more work to pass the logic test.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.