Not That I'll Matter To The Rock-Brained Crowd

But recently two prominent members of the (for lack of a better term) "old-right" have come out and criticized what's become of the GOP.

First we go to Senator Alan K Simpson.  A former senator from the redder than the usual red red state of Wyoming, his conservative credentials need no verification.  However, in on CNN when asked about how his party voted down the Simpson-Bowles budget proposal, he responded:

Well, I think my party and I have different views on a lot of things. I guess I'm known as a "rhino" (sic) now, which means a Republican in name only because I guess of social views perhaps or common sense would be another one which seems to escape members of our party.

Abortion is a horrible thing, but, for heaven's sakes, a deeply intimate and personal decision and men legislators shouldn't even vote on it. Gay-lesbian issues, we're all human beings. We're all God's children. What is that?

And for heaven's sakes, you have Grover Norquist wandering the Earth in his white robes saying that if you raise taxes one penny, he'll defeat you. He can't murder you, he can't burn your house, the only thing he can do to you, as an elected official, is defeat you for reelection.

And if that means more to you than your country when we need patriots to come out in a situation when we're in extremity, you shouldn't even be in Congress.

And there's this. When asked for more specificity regarding Representative Paul Ryan and the details of the proposal, Simpson added:

This is madness. If you want to be a purest(sic), go somewhere on a mountain top and praise the east or something, but if you want to be in politics, you learn to compromise and you learn to compromise an issue without compromising yourself. Show me a guy who won't compromise and I'll show you a guy with rock for brains.

Let's summarize: On choice, it's "a horrible thing" but a personal decision, on LGBT issues, all human beings are equal.  And for that alone (even before we discuss his Norquist heresy), he'd find very few friends in today's GOP.

Then there's Michael Fumento. As his website points out,

Mr. Fumento has been a fellow with Hudson Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, Consumer Alert, and was the 1994 Warren T. Brookes Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, all based in Washington, D.C.

So his conservative credentials are solid as well.  And yet, he wrote this for Salon.com. Responding to a "rocks for brains" attack on climate science by the Heartland INstitute, he wrote:

This is nuts! Literally. As in “mass hysteria.” That’s a phenomenon I wrote about for a quarter-century, from the heterosexual AIDS “epidemic” to the swine flu “pandemic” that killed vastly fewer people than seasonal flu, to “runaway Toyotas.” Mass hysteria is when a large segment of society loses touch with reality, or goes bonkers, if you will, on a given issue – like believing that an incredibly mild strain of flu could kill eight times as many Americans as normal seasonal flu. (It killed about a third as many.)

I was always way ahead of the curve. And my exposés primarily appeared in right-wing publications. Back when they were interested in serious research. I also founded a conservative college newspaper, held positions in the Reagan administration and at several conservative think tanks, and published five books that conservatives applauded. I’ve written for umpteen major conservative publications – National Review, the Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, among them.

But no longer. That was the old right. The last thing hysteria promoters want is calm, reasoned argument backed by facts. And I’m horrified that these people have co-opted the name “conservative” to scream their messages of hate and anger. [links and italics in original]

All this reminds me of something George Orwell said:

Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

The New GOP - unconscious, rock-headed, nuts.  And that's not me talking, that's Alan Simpson and Michael Fumento.