Top Conservatives and Liberals
The UK Telegraph published a list of the Top 100 most influential conservatives and Top 100 liberals, compiled by the paper's Washington correspondents. It's a fun read, with nice vignettes of each individual and why they rank where they do.
CONSERVATIVES: What's striking about this list is the virtual absence of figures from the religious right. There are only three, and they rank far down: #65: Richard Land (Southern Baptist heavyweight), #70 Gary Bauer, and #81 Tony Perkins (Family Research Council). This probably reflects the declining salience of the abortion issue.
I see this as a hopeful sign for the future of the GOP.
LIBERALS: I take the parallel to the religious right to be the Moonbat Left, equivalent to the religious right in their uncompromising zeal, threatening extremism, and ability to evoke gut-level, polarizing revulsion from the other side. The news here is not so encouraging. In the liberal top 20 alone are found four certified Moonbats: #7 Michael Moore, #12 Markos Moulitsas Zuninga (Daily Kos), #15 George Soros (funder of the others), and #20 Joan Blades and Wes Boyd (MoveOn.org, of "Gen. Betrayus" fame, among other things).
I take this to be a bad sign for the future of the Democratic Party; these people clearly deserve their high influence ranking, which is way too influential for the good of the party. They will drive it into the left ditch.
Thing is, what's bad for one party is eventually bad for the other, also. Without a strong opposing party, the one in power quickly drifts into arrogance, excess, intellectual laziness, and lack of pragmatic creativity. It becomes captive to its ideological purists, and is soon wisely rejected by the voting public. I thought the GOP had retired the trophy for that kind of debacle, but this Congress under Reid and Pelosi seems determined lower the bar to new heights. The Democrats can probably be thankful they didn't win the Presidency, because then the brakes would really be off the bobsled. If I can't have wise, pragmatic governance, and it seems that I can't, then I'll take the stability of division and gridlock. And, please, term limits, term limits, term limits.
Byron
CONSERVATIVES: What's striking about this list is the virtual absence of figures from the religious right. There are only three, and they rank far down: #65: Richard Land (Southern Baptist heavyweight), #70 Gary Bauer, and #81 Tony Perkins (Family Research Council). This probably reflects the declining salience of the abortion issue.
I see this as a hopeful sign for the future of the GOP.
LIBERALS: I take the parallel to the religious right to be the Moonbat Left, equivalent to the religious right in their uncompromising zeal, threatening extremism, and ability to evoke gut-level, polarizing revulsion from the other side. The news here is not so encouraging. In the liberal top 20 alone are found four certified Moonbats: #7 Michael Moore, #12 Markos Moulitsas Zuninga (Daily Kos), #15 George Soros (funder of the others), and #20 Joan Blades and Wes Boyd (MoveOn.org, of "Gen. Betrayus" fame, among other things).
I take this to be a bad sign for the future of the Democratic Party; these people clearly deserve their high influence ranking, which is way too influential for the good of the party. They will drive it into the left ditch.
Thing is, what's bad for one party is eventually bad for the other, also. Without a strong opposing party, the one in power quickly drifts into arrogance, excess, intellectual laziness, and lack of pragmatic creativity. It becomes captive to its ideological purists, and is soon wisely rejected by the voting public. I thought the GOP had retired the trophy for that kind of debacle, but this Congress under Reid and Pelosi seems determined lower the bar to new heights. The Democrats can probably be thankful they didn't win the Presidency, because then the brakes would really be off the bobsled. If I can't have wise, pragmatic governance, and it seems that I can't, then I'll take the stability of division and gridlock. And, please, term limits, term limits, term limits.
Byron
posted by Byron | Friday, November 02, 2007
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