How to Sound Like a Complete Doofus

There's a conviction among many liberals that conservatives have no heart and a similar conviction on the right that liberals have no brains. I don't know to what extent either side is correct, but this guy, a politically liberal rabbi named Joshua Hammerman certainly reinforces the stereotype. He claims that if the Denver Broncos were to win the Super Bowl Christians might be running through the streets burning down mosques and deporting immigrants.

I know it sounds bizarre, but here's an excerpt of his exact words courtesy of Jammie-Wearing Fools:

People are always looking for signs of God’s beneficence, and a victory by the Orange Crush over the blue-clad Patriots, from the bluest of blue states, will give fodder to a Christian revivalism that has already turned the Republican presidential race into a pander-thon to social conservatives, rekindling memories of those cultural icons of the ‘80s, the Moral Majority and “Hee Haw.”

The culture wars are alive and well, and, if the current climate in Washington is any indicator, the motors are being revved up for what will undoubtedly be the most cantankerous Presidential campaign ever. When supposedly well-educated candidates publicly question overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change and evolution and then gain electoral traction by fabricating conspiracies about a war on Christmas, these are not rational times.

Into the middle of it all rides [Broncos quarterback Tim] Tebow. Absolutely confident that God is on his side, he comes across as a humbler version of the biblical Joseph, who, in this week’s Torah portion, audaciously lays claim to being the Chosen One, and then goes out and proves it. Tebow’s sanctimonious God-talk has led even pious peers like Kurt Warner to suggest that he cool it. Joseph could have used the same coaching.

If Tebow wins the Super Bowl, against all odds, it will buoy his faithful, and emboldened faithful can do insane things, like burning mosques, bashing gays and indiscriminately banishing immigrants. While America has become more inclusive since Jerry Falwell’s first political forays, a Tebow triumph could set those efforts back considerably.

Some people are apparently convinced that the best way to attract attention to themselves is to talk like a blithering idiot, a task that's easier for some than for others, I suppose. Hammerman's buffoonery is as if someone had made the claim that Sandy Koufax's amazing performance for the Dodgers in the 1965 World Series should have so buoyed American Jews that they might have been expected to run about New York City burning mosques and bashing Muslims.

In any case, I wonder what the rabbi would think if a Christian were to make remarks about Jews as bigoted as his were about Christians. I also have to wonder how many Christians the rabbi actually knows.

Why Not Newt?

I can't remember an election when the Republican front-runner claimed to be a conservative and yet was so vigorously opposed by so many of the leading lights in the conservative movement. Newt has managed to secure the disendorsement of Senator Tom Coburn, columnists George Will, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Peggy Noonan, Kathleen Parker, and Charles Krauthammer, talk show guy Glenn Beck, prominent blogger Eric Errickson, and a host of others.

Now National Review, the foremost conservative journal of opinion, founded by conservative icon William F. Buckley, has lent it's prestigious voice to the anti-Newt chorus:

A hard-fought presidential primary campaign is obscuring the uncharacteristic degree of unity within the Republican party. It has reached a conservative consensus on most of the pressing issues of the day. All of the leading candidates, and almost all of the lagging ones, support the right to life. All of them favor the repeal of Obamacare. Most of them support reforms to restrain the growth of entitlement spending. All of them favor reducing the corporate tax rate to levels that will make the U.S. a competitive location for investment. Almost all of them seem to understand the dangers of a precipitate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, and of a defense policy driven by the need to protect social spending rather than the national interest.

Conservatives may disagree among themselves about which candidate most deserves support, but all of us should take heart in this development — and none of us should exaggerate the programmatic differences within the field.

Just as heartening, the White House seems winnable next year, and with it a majority in both houses of Congress, so that much of this conservative consensus could actually become law. A conservative majority on the Supreme Court, a halt to the march of regulation, free-market health-care policies: All of them seem within our grasp. But none of them is assured, and the costs of failure — either a failure to win the election, or a failure to govern competently and purposefully afterward — are as large as the opportunity.

We fear that to nominate former Speaker Newt Gingrich, the frontrunner in the polls, would be to blow this opportunity. We say that mindful of his opponents’ imperfections — and of his own virtues, which have been on display during his amazing comeback.

Very few people with a personal history like his — two divorces, two marriages to former mistresses — have ever tried running for president. Gingrich himself has never run for a statewide office, let alone a national one, and has not run for anything since 1998. That year he was kicked out by his colleagues, the most conservative ones especially, who had lost confidence in him.

During his time as Speaker, he was one of the most unpopular figures in public life. Just a few months ago his campaign seemed dead after a series of gaffes and resignations. That Gingrich now tops the polls is a tribute to his perseverance, and to Republicans’ admiration for his intellectual fecundity.

Both qualities served conservatives well in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Gingrich, nearly alone, saw the potential for a Republican takeover of Congress and worked tirelessly to bring it about. Even before the takeover, Gingrich helped to solidify the party’s opposition to tax increases and helped to defeat the Clinton health-care plan. The victory of 1994 enabled the passage of welfare reform, the most successful social policy of recent decades.

Gingrich’s colleagues were, however, right to bring his tenure to an end. His character flaws — his impulsiveness, his grandiosity, his weakness for half-baked (and not especially conservative) ideas — made him a poor Speaker of the House. Again and again he combined incendiary rhetoric with irresolute action, bringing Republicans all the political costs of a hardline position without actually taking one. Again and again he put his own interests above those of the causes he championed in public.

There's much more at the link. Newt rose to the top because the party conservatives are looking for an alternative to Mitt Romney and Newt certainly seemed like the best qualified candidate in terms of intellect, accomplishment, and stature. Even so, as more information has emerged about him, largely from those who worked with him in congress in the 90s and others who have observed his career, huge doubts have been raised which make it unlikely that his lead will prove sustainable. I don't see how a candidate who's running as a conservative can campaign successfully when most of the most influential conservatives in the country don't want him as their president.

If that turns out to be the case the question then becomes to whom do the anti-Romney folks turn? Ron Paul? Jon Huntsman? Rick Santorum? Michelle Bachmann? I don't know but it seems that for now Romney is in the driver's seat.

Christopher Hitchens

We've had numerous occasions to mention Christopher Hitchens on these pages over the years. He was a brilliant writer and speaker, despite his too frequent predilection for unkindness and his obvious contempt for lesser minds, of which there are many.

Hitchens spent much of the last fifteen years or so writing what can justly be called screeds against belief in God, including an attack against Mother Teresa, of all people, as well as the book God Is Not Great.

He was diagnosed with esophygeal cancer last year but continued to write for Vanity Fair between his radiation and other treatments. Those treatments in the end proved unavailing. Christopher Hitchens died yesterday at the age of 62.

If he was wrong about the existence of God presumably he now realizes his error. If he was right, which I doubt very much, then he'll never have the satisfaction of knowing that he was right. Such is the tragedy of atheism.