If and when they do, the week just past should make the short list. In coming years, political historians might look back and try to pinpoint the day or week or month that the Republican Party shed the last vestiges of its small-government philosophy. Ryan Sager looks at this, in conjunction with last week's hearings on steroids and baseball, and comments: That people don't like the result isn't a reason for unprecedented Congressional action, unless results are all that matter. Florida has a general law, and it's been followed. Can they all be deranged advocates of a "culture of death?" But regardless of the merits, Congress's involvement in this case seems quite "unconservative" to me, at least if one believes in rules of general application. As with Bill Hobbs, quoted below, I don't have an opinion on what should happen to Terry Schiavo - though given the rather large numbers of judges who have looked at this case over the years I'd be especially reluctant to interfere. In their intervention in the Terri Schiavo matter, Republicans in Congress and President Bush have, in a few brief legislative clauses, embraced the kind of free-floating judicial activism, disregard for orderly procedure and contempt for the integrity of state processes that they quite rightly have denounced and sought to discipline for decades. As former Solicitor General Charles Fried observes: After talking about small government and the rule of law, Republicans overwhelmingly supported a piece of legislation intended to influence a single case, that of Terri Schiavo. There's also a lot of contradiction lately. And, of course, the bankruptcy "reform" bill - which, as I mentioned earlier, was a giveaway to big business - seems to have been based on greed, too. Nor is Jack Kemp's behavior in "actively shilling" for Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Only a reactionary could have been so discomfited by Savimbi's little cannibalism problem as to think this was not a daring contribution to the cause of Reaganism. And best of all, you could get rich while doing it!īefore long, ringleader Grover Norquist and his buddies were signing lobbying deals with the Seychelles and the Northern Mariana Islands and talking up their interests at weekly conservative strategy sessions - what could be more vital to the future of freedom than the commercial interests of these two fine locales?īefore long, folks like Norquist and Abramoff were talking up the virtues of international sons of liberty like Angola's Jonas Savimbi and Congo's dictator Mobutu Sese Seko - all while receiving compensation from these upstanding gentlemen, according to The Legal Times. You could harness the power of K Street to promote the goals of Goldwater, Reagan and Gingrich. These bold innovators had a key insight: that you no longer had to choose between being an activist and a lobbyist. Greed, of course, is not uncommon in politics, but as David Brooks notes, it's on the upswing, with Republicans engaging in the very kinds of behaviors they deplored from Democrats:īack in 1995, when Republicans took over Congress, a new cadre of daring and original thinkers arose. Right now it's aiming at two out of three. How could the Republican coalition fail? By being "too Southern, too greedy, and too contradictory." In their book, The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America, authors John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge predict steady growth for the conservative movement in America, unless something goes wrong to derail its trajectory. But I think that more and more of them are starting to recognize that blogs, and bloggers, are a great resource. And newspapers are trying to ride the blog wave, although they need to realize that there's more to blogging than "attitude." Still, it's a sign of progress, I think.Īs Joe Gandelman notes, there are still a lot of Big Media people who are afraid of blogs. Likewise, CNN is incorporating blogs - though not bloggers - in its coverage of current events, too. (Also featured have been Jeff Jarvis, LaShawn Barber, and a host of others.) You can see video of my appearance by clicking the image to the left. Today I was on MSNBC's Connected Coast-to-Coast, a show that brings in not only blogs, but a steadily rotating list of bloggers to cover things in the blogosphere. But now the TV operations are doing it to. MSNBC took the lead in that, in a way, by bringing in bloggers like me, or Eric Alterman, or Alan Boyle. And now some people are starting to prove me right, as various news operations start to incorporate blogs and bloggers into their operations.spacer I've suggested before, though, that the relationship betwen the two is more symbiotic than it is antagonistic or parasitic. There has been a lot of writing about Big Media and the blogosphere being natural enemies.
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