What Became of the GOP

David Brooks (no link. Ever.) over at the NYT laments that the Republican Party has lost the narrative -- that "ideas have meaning" -- that was handed down by the Buckleys, the Strauss', the Rands, the Kristols, the Friedmans. Brooks is, it would appear, a man without a country, an intellectual in a mob-rule party.

The Republicans brought it on themselves. At some point, they decided that ideas were less important than appealing to the voters the Democrats didn't want, the racists, the proudly ignorant, the misogynists, the fucktards. There were, in conjunction with the conservative "intellectuals," enough fucktards to win an election.

John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate -- the final sop, it now seems, to an unholy partnership. Palin is now the most popular person on the ticket. Over at Free Republic, where the proudly ignorant, the racists, the misogynists gather to infect each other with new strains of stupid, they are wailing about McCain's ineffectiveness. It seems, you see, that McCain keeps trying to talk about facts and ideas (silly, disproved ideas, yes, but they're just old conservative retreads that have run out of usefulness -- Reagan is dead, after all). The fucktards want hate, visceral appeals, lynchings.

The Republican Party's intellectual wing has sown its own destruction. The mud people, the ignorant unwashed trash that Buckley, Will, Kristol held their noses and embraced in the 1970s, are now in the majority and have been raised to believe they are the rightful inheritors of the earth. The intellectuals lost control when they sent their new, demented children outside, to play with their guns, and talk personally to their imaginary God, and the brain trust huddled in its ivory tower and schemed about getting richer and more powerful through its conveniently-lucrative "ideas."

Training a mob to believe that it must not only defeat the Democrats politically, but must actually personally, spiritually, and permanently destroy them has consequences, to be sure. The mob grows, the brain shrinks, and today people like David Brooks have suddenly realized that they are powerless to stand up and retake control of the GOP. It is the party of the mudsills now.

There is not only a generational gap between Democrats and Republicans in this election. There is a "class" (Brooks' term) or generational rift on the GOP; McCain represents the old guard and Palin the newly-cognizant majority.

The inherent contradiction that has existed my whole life, of a party that encompasses fiscal conservatives, the self-styled "conservative intellectuals," and also the dumbest, most hateful, elements of American society has resolved itself, perhaps.

Where will the men of ideas go?