Q. How can you tell if someone is not a conservative?
A. If they disagree with the definition of who a conservative is, as described by the late, great William F. Buckley Jr., a founder of modern conservatism, the spiritual godfather of MRC/NewsBusters, and the actual uncle of our Chairman, Brent Bozell.
As WFB famously put it:
"A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop!"
Yet here was Joe Scarborough, on today's Morning Joe, lamenting that:
"The Republican party since 2009 has more often than not been the party of “No.”
As if that's a bad thing?
For some strange reason, Scarborough continues to call himself a conservative. But with that one sentence, Joe has written himself out of the conservative clan.
Scarborough made his "party of 'No'" remark in the course of kvetching that Republicans are refusing to go along with Biden's big-government proposals on Covid "relief" and "infrastructure"—read: thinly-disguised handouts to favored Democrat groups. And that the GOP also opposes the Democrats' plans for yet more "gun-violence" measures on top of the hundreds already on the books.
Panelists Claire McCaskill, the ex-Show Me State senator, and Jon Meacham—who secretly was advising and speechwriting for Biden before he was ultimately outed—also chipped in with some absurdities.
McCaskill branded the GOP "the party of grievance, negativity, darkness and doom."
In contrast with the Democrat party, Claire? The party that denies American exceptionalism, that calls our country inherently, structurally, racist, that embraces the New York Times 1619 Project—the radical rewriting of American history that makes slavery its centerpoint? The party that demands that the USA be "fundamentally" transformed? Spare us, McCaskill!
Meacham then insisted the GOP is collapsing like the Whigs and faulted Republicans for not having a plan "to build an engine of social mobility for a demographically diverse country."
Meacham bills himself an historian. But does he "misremember" the Declaration of Independence? Our country is built on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In other words, government should, to the greatest degree possible, stay out of the way, and respect our freedom to pursue happiness as each American defines it. It is not for the government to "build an engine of social mobility." That sounds more like socialism. And we know how that ends every time.
Scarborough also criticized Joe Manchin for not going along with Democrat plans to ram liberal legislation through with reconciliation, or by "reforming" [destroying] the filibuster.
Scarborough ended by complaining that Republicans are refusing to support proposals that would "help America" if doing so would also help Biden politically. Yet again, by defining big-government proposals as "helping America," Scarborough shows that he is no longer a conservative, if ever he were one—other than for political expediency
Joe Scarborough criticizing Republicans for refusing to go along with big-government Democrat proposals was sponsored in part by TD-Ameritrade, Lincoln, Discover, and Liberty Mutual.
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
4/8/21
6:11 am EDJOE SCARBOROUGH: This gun debate, the shape of it appears to be changing even more, moving in Joe Biden’s direction. But will that make any difference to any Republicans? Or will they still continue to be voting on the wrong side of an 80/20 issue?
CLAIRE MCCASKILL: Yeah, it’s kind of weird. What is the Republican party for right now? I thought it was really interesting yesterday that Joe Biden led so strongly with the message: bring us your ideas. I mean, the Republican party has become the party of grievance, negativity, darkness and doom.
JON MEACHAM: And we’ve talked about this a lot. My sense is the Republican Party has to melt down, and then morph into something else. It’s like the Whigs in the middle of the 19th century. They don’t have a coherent answer to the central question of the time, which is how to build an infrastructure, how to build an engine of social mobility for a demographically diverse country in a globalized era.
. . .
SCARBOROUGH: With this being the case. With me just stating, again, fact, not opinion, that the Republican party since 2009 has more often than not been the party of “No.” And they’ve not come forward with a single major unifying plan on health care. They’ve said “No” to one popular bill after the other. I’m just curious, I read what my friend, Joe Manchin said yesterday. I know you worked with him. And Joe said that he’s opposed to reconciliation, he’s opposed to any sort of reform on the filibuster. That he thinks they should work with the Republicans. He wants to work with the Republicans.
Well, I want my cat, Meatball, to play Chopin, I really do. It would be nice as I was having an early dinner to hear Meatball get on the piano and play Chopin. He’s not going to do it. But there is a chance he will do it before there's a chance that the Republican party will do anything constructive, that might even remotely help America, if it helps Joe Biden.
