Jonah Goldberg On Kathleen Parker’s “G-O-D” Shame
November 19, 2008 / 11:53 am • By Dr. Melissa ClouthierKathleen Parker revealed her hip happeningness yet again today:
As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit.
Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D.
I’m bathing in holy water as I type.
To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn’t soon cometh.
Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth — as long as we’re setting ourselves free — is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that.
Jonah Goldberg responds by saying, “Quite it Kathleen”:
I don’t know what’s more grating, the quasi-bigotry that has you calling religious Christians low brows, gorillas and oogedy-boogedy types or the bravery-on-the-cheap as you salute — in that winsome way — your own courage for saying what (according to you) needs to be said. Please stop bragging about how courageous you are for weathering a storm of nasty email you invite on yourself by dancing to a liberal tune. You aren’t special for getting nasty email, from the right or the left. You aren’t a martyr smoking your last cigarette. You’re just another columnist, talented and charming to be sure, but just another columnist. You are not Joan of the Op-Ed Page. Perhaps the typical Washington Post reader (or editor) doesn’t understand that. But you should, and most conservatives familiar with these issues can see through what you’re doing.
Besides being patronizing and noting a problem (which has at its core a very debatable premise), Ms. Parker lacks solutions. In part, I agree with her assessment about the God talk, but her obvious prejudice, and that of her media pals is an even bigger problem for Republicans. That is to say, that the description Ms. Parker writes of conservative Christians is a classic caricature and reveals her ignorance of the diversity that makes up that constituency. Because of her narrow-mindedness, she cannot formulate helpful solutions for addressing this typically Republican voting block. Likewise, it is obvious that the Republicans, and the conservative movement generally need to reach other constituencies–ones who tend to vote Democrat.
How?
Perhaps Ms. Parker could gather her formidable wit and way with words and formulate a solution rather than destroy what isn’t really a problem. Dehumanizing, demeaning, and really, demonizing the whole base of the Republican party seems counter-productive for someone who is in the same party. When the foundation crumbles, the house will fall on Ms. Parker, too. Unless, of course, she’s really not part of the house anymore, if she ever was, and has already moved in spirit (and one could say, in body, considering her employer) to another home. If that’s the case, she should admit to herself and to her readers her new home.
David Frum, Kathleen Parker, Chris Buckley, David Brooks and the rest, have become experts at demolition. They need to refocus their efforts and consider what it will take to rebuild their house. Or have they already moved and don’t know it?
Cross-posted at RightWingNews.com
8 Responses to “Jonah Goldberg On Kathleen Parker’s “G-O-D” Shame”
By Mat on Nov 19, 2008 | Reply
Seriously,
Does anyone really care what Kathleen Parker has to say?
By Phillipa on Nov 19, 2008 | Reply
So, you demonize someone for demonizing others and castigate that person for offering no solutions.
Where, then, are your solutions?
By Cousin Dave on Nov 19, 2008 | Reply
I don’t understand what’s happened with Parker lately, although as Mark Steyn pointed out at The Corner, ripping social conservatives does tend to improve one’s book sales…
Note that the use of “gorillas” and “oogity-boogity” would be considered racist in almost any other context. But when you’re talking about conservative Christians, well alrighty then.
Phillipa, to address your question seriously: For starters, I think we can safely say that one thing that is *not* a solution is splitting the conservative coalition in half. I lean libertarian myself, but I don’t understand the desires that some libertarians have to want to throw social conservatives under the bus. They live under a delusion that if they do that, they can for a new coalition with the center-left. Trouble is, this recent election vividly demonstrated that there is no center left in America anymore — they’ve all either gone libertarian, neocon, or far left. (The Democratic Party spent decades trying to get rid of them, and they have succeeded.)
Libertarians and social conservatives need to realize that the reason William Buckley put together this coalition in the first place is because the two groups, unlike most coalitions in American politics, actually have complementary concerns and goals. Freedom is meaningless if there is no social order and no government to defend individual rights. Conversely, social order cannot exist when people are not free to solve their own problems or shape the government as they see fit.
By Kevin Keough on Nov 21, 2008 | Reply
I stand with KP. What’s the big fuss about ? The “Jesus lovers” are a significant part of the problem-how does one get around that given ?
Obama ran one well-executed strategic campaign. McCain fumbled and lost face as much as I planned to vote for him.
You guys can’t complain about Biden–you have 4-8 years of material that will be delivered daily to your cyber doorstep. What you see is what you get. Give me a man who rams his shoes in his mouth for all the world to see over the warped serpents any day. Maybe a little anti-Irish-Catholic smug smog in the air ?
And KP will get around to writing that McCain et. al picked Palin because she is pretty hot as far as national female politicians go. She’ll get her talking points down over the next 4 years as well as W, GHWB, and RR. I’m okay with figure-heads. I’ll take any of those three over Slick Willie.
Palin will neutralize Hillary way longer than people expect. The GOP trotted her out at a good time. The election was all but lost. Palin offered some hope she could seduce us to swamp lust for security.
Biden is to Obama what Cheney has been to Bush with a better twist. Obama will be allowed to inspire while kept from going over the top. So far, it looks like he’s surrounding himself with fairly decent folks. Let’s pull in Hagel, Bob Kerry, James Webb, Colin Powell, maybe Kay Baily Hutchinson….leaving others to identify the blacks and latinos and a few more women. Keep Gates in for a good year or two.
Okay, things at the Fed and Treasury make me nervous
So, you don’t get to look at Palin everyday. Biden will keep us laughing and taken seriously. Michelle Obama and her girls will grow on us. Worse folks to have in our living rooms for next 4 years. We’ll be hunkering down anyway.
Could be worse. Kathleen is spot on. And Jonah surprised me with his whining…….
By ruffedge on Nov 21, 2008 | Reply
No matter how you shake it up, conservative Christians are the base of the Republican party. Reagan knew that as did “W”. Even McCain knew without the social conservatives he was dead in the water. Those inside the left leaning branch of the party should just offer their alliance to the Libertarians or possibly to the Democrats, (as in the case of Parker). The latter, I would suppose would be better in light of the fact that the split inside the GOP is going to gift wrap and hand over power to the Democrats for a long time to come.
The media has been dressing up Obama as the next Abe Lincoln or the next FDR. I’m guessing that it won’t matter if in the next four years he proves himself to be more like Dick Nixon or Jimmy Carter, if the GOP doesn’t end this bickering between the social conservatives and the social liberals, Obama will easily slide to victory in 2012.
By Bobbi Bennett on Nov 25, 2008 | Reply
The problem with evangelicals can be solved by changing the language with which we introduce core ideas into our discussion. The problem: Right now, the ideas of sanctity of life, the relavance of morality to societal health, and the underlying Judeo-Christian roots of the American IDEA are isolated and ridiculed by the Left. In the Leftist dominated discussion these ideas belong exclusively to the evangelicals who are tied exclusively to the conservative right who have been successfully labeled as “bigots,” “ignorant,” “anti-science,” etc.
However, the Left has in the last 2 election cycles at least, successfully “triangulated” these ideas and co-opt so called, “values” issues. Which should tell us that the core ideas are winners with the American people, and that it’s the language we use, not the ideas that need changing. Not that any conservative worth his or her salt would change such core principles anyway.
For Example: In this last election, despite our last minute Joe the Plumber surge, Obama was able to convince voters that the idea of redistribution of wealth was fair - and therefore the morally right thing to do. Since this Socialist fallacy has long been preached in many religious corners, we even presented some of our evangelical friends with a moral dilemma. Should they vote on the issue of life (which wasn’t presented as a major issue in the campaign and where our charges against Obama seemed incongruent with his public perosona) or gay marriage (on which both candidates sounded the same) or economics, where our arguments sounded lame? Given the October surprise economic meltdown, how would we expect them to vote? Given the public perception of Republicans and conservatives, why wouldn’t we expect many of them to stay home in disgust? And that, according to the numbers crunchers is part of what happened.
Conservatives and Republicans are losing their hold on evangelicals, while at the same time we are charicatured as one with the most outrageous elements of that particular voting bloc. In short, we’ve been Alinsky’d.
We conservatives need to recognize that because we have long been shut out of major media outlets and the schools, we are now speaking to an audience that is largely uneducated in facts and core principles that form the basis of our thinking and arguments. We therefore need to begin the long, slow process of re-educating the populace in facts and the core founding principles behind our ideas, lest we be forever shut out of the public discussion.