Daily Kos writer Hunter thinks that conservatives’ quintessential activity these days isn’t arguing for or against ideas, but rather throwing a pity party for themselves. In a Thursday post, he asserted that “conservatism has devolved into a prolonged monologue into just how oppressed and persecuted conservatives are.”
After noting that Rick Perry recently said that his prospective presidential campaign was “moving right along” notwithstanding his indictment on felony charges, Hunter snarked, “At some point it became a net positive, on the right, to be seen as crooked” and added, “New [-school] conservatism also considers breaking the law itself to be a noble thing, when done in service to conservatism.”
From Hunter’s post (bolding added):
[C]onservatism has devolved into a prolonged monologue into just how oppressed and persecuted conservatives are, and nothing builds those credentials like being able to hold up your own mugshot as demonstration of how the liberal man is out to get you…New conservatism also considers breaking the law itself to be a noble thing, when done in service to conservatism, which is why the various Fox News talking heads spoke of armed standoffs at the Bundy Ranch in approving tones and with references to the Founding Fathers, and why Dinesh D'Souza is of the opinion that he is a True American Patriot for breaking campaign finance laws for the single dubious reason of wanting to, and why conservative-led statehouses throughout the United States have busily passed resolutions saying they do not have to follow any federal laws they do not feel like following…
…The 2016 lineup is on track to have strong representation by the crooked and the suspected-crooked; we've got Rick Perry, under indictment for using his office as political bludgeon. We've got Chris Christie, whose approval rating took a steep hit after being seen as working too closely with Obama after a hurricane but who has subsequently redeemed himself considerably by the revelation that he led a staff of apparently crooked bastards who used the power of his office as, yes, a political bludgeon. And it looks like we're going to be granted the campaign-trail appearances of one Gov. Scott Walker, a man whose rise to the governorship has left a trail of indictments and embezzlement and cheap, petty crookedness so wide and long that you could play a championship football game on all the paperwork.
The obvious outcome of this, of course, is that sooner or later we're going to have a Republican nominee who has to give his acceptance speech from between two federal marshals.
