Soup | Anthony De Rosa - Ross’s passivity in the face of the Palin outrage...

Ross’s passivity in the face of the Palin outrage is related to a fantasy, a dream of a Nixon party that can finally destroy all those liberal elites who allegedly look down on Palin, and all those allegedly pseudo-meritocrats who despise her. But Nixonianism with starbursts is still Nixonianism: an attitude disguised as a politics. And it is the enemy of intelligent governing conservatism - it invariably leads to bigger and bigger government to placate a class and identity-based coalition. It is the mirror image of the corrupt identity-politics liberalism of the 1970s and 1980s. Stoking resentment even further won’t work.

- Andrew Sullivan. (via jgh)