November 29, 2005

Linked without comment because I have a busy afternoon

Lance Mannion: They paid for this police force and by gum they're going to use it!

What Santorum wants is for a lot more cops to start pulling over a lot more of us and write a whole lot more tickets. This is something he doesn't dare say, it's probably something he doesn't even dare think, but it is what he wants.

It's what all these 'family values' and 'culture war' conservatives want.

Their problem is that since Barry Goldwater, the Republican Party has adopted a Populist pose and Populist rhetoric and Populists don't like cops because they know that traditionally the cops have been owned by the Rich and Populists don't like the Rich. Which ought to mean that Populists shouldn't like Republicans. But the Republicans have spent spent 40 years bad mouthing big government and making the case that it's Liberals who want to tell everybody what to do, what to think, and how to live their lives, and they've done a good job of convincing a large chunk of the country that the Republican Party isn't what it is, a party of rich people who like calling in the cops.

So they can't say what they want without calling attention to the fact that it is they and not the Liberals who want to boss everybody else around.

This is why Santorum's rhetoric turns to mush when he is asked to stop yelping about all the threats to the family and America's general fine and dandyness and make some specific proposals for dealing with those threats.

Double standard, doubletalk, doublespeak, double-think, double-cross---The Republican Motto.


Via Pandagon.

And now I'm off to refute the ontological argument! (If I remember and have time, I'll post a precis tonight.)

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