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Defeat National Review

Defeat National Review

We should defer to the judgment of people who run a cover like this?

National Review is off the rails and off its rocker.  And plenty of their writers are having a good laugh about it on Twitter today.

Related:  The making of an anti-Romney

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NRO columnist would rather be right than see Obama defeated.

I cancelled my subscription back in 2001 or 2002. Maybe I should sign up again, just so I can cancel it again?

This is the same rag that posted pro-ground Zero victory mosque and jihad recruiting center propaganda which blood libeled Sarah Palin and said that islamic supremacist genocidal terrorist Muslim Brotherhood linked imam Rauf was just like the TEA Party. I bet they think we’d forget that. Well I haven’t! Screw them.

9thDistrictNeighbor | December 15, 2011 at 11:37 am

I just took Mr. Buckley’s advice and cancelled my own G..D… subscription.

It has been extremely difficult to read that magazine lately. So few quality magazines to ready any more.

NRO hasn’t been constructive to this Republican primary process at all. I have quit reading their commentary because it has been petty and negative for months, sounding more like my 13 year old debating his friends than a grown-up conversation.

With friends like these…..

Here is what they did, in case anyone needs a reminder:
http://zillablog.marezilla.com/2011/02/conservative-dhimmitude.html
Excerpt:
‘In January, the National Review published an article filled with falsehoods by cartoonist Henry Payne comparing radical lunatic imam Rauf of Ground Zero mosque and NJ slumlord fame to TEA partiers and accusing Sarah Palin of “libel” for telling the truth about the dangerous company that Rauf keeps when she voiced her opposition to the mega mosque planned for the site of the old Burlington Coat factory which was damaged in the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York City.’

Actually, this may have an unintended effect, at least in my case. I’m a big Marvin Martian fan, so this makes me like Newt more. 🙂

I wonder if he has a Illudium Pu-36 Space Modulator?

    Exactly! I am anti-Romney and would be fine having to vote for Gingrich and I love this illustration. I will have to make a copy at work and hang it up. (I work in a bookstore and we carry NR so I can just make a color copy without having to buy the magazine and support it.)

    I thought I read yesterday that Mark Steyn was distancing himself from NRs coming Romney endorsement. I’m kinda surprised to see that he wrote this article.

      dicentra in reply to angela. | December 15, 2011 at 9:48 pm

      I thought I read yesterday that Mark Steyn was distancing himself from NRs coming Romney endorsement. I’m kinda surprised to see that he wrote this article.

      Quoth Mark today:

      Re that NR editorial, I would like, politely, to dissent from my colleagues’ dismissal of Perry and Bachmann.

      As for the assertion of our more hysterical commenters that being reluctant to support a man with an office on K Street and a retainer from Freddie Mac is a sure sign that NRO is full of Beltway cocktail-sippers angling for cosy sinecures in the Romney administration, yeah, sure, whatever.… Anyone who thinks that sentient beings require an ulterior motive to be wary of a Newt nomination should have an herbal tea and lie down in a darkened room for half an hour.

      Mark doesn’t assume that it’s down to Mitt or Newt at this juncture, so there’s no reason to interpret his skewering of Newt as tacit support for Mitt.

    If Newt gets the nomination, the ‘Earth Shattering Kaboom’ will originate from the remnants of what used to be the flagship of American Conservativism.

Subotai Bahadur | December 15, 2011 at 11:51 am

Listkeeper, you have it right but do not take it far enough. Not only NRO, but all the Institutional Republicans. It is not just “being right” [something that they have yet to come within light years of]. It is demonstrating that regardless of what the peasants want; the Institutionals are in charge. By the ghost of Louis XVI; the Institutionals have selected Romney as the candidate, and no single Conservative or mass of Patriots is going to keep him from it. It is a well known principle. Lenin called it “Democratic Centralism”. The Germans called it “Führerprinzip” [note: the term was invented and used long before Hitler]. The resulting electoral debacle means nothing in comparison to the maintenance of control by those at the top. How very EUropean of them.

One problem is that being in charge of the official opposition in a dictatorship is not as good a gig as they think it is. They cannot even hope to benefit from the Cthulu Principle [toadies will be eaten last].

NRO epitomizes Institutional Republicanism. It is a point to remember when they try to claim relevance when the Republicans go through their inevitable Whig moment.

Subotai Bahadur

God & Man at National Review.

Years ago (about 50 of them), NR/Buckley set out to destroy the then infant John Birch Society. It didn’t work. Certainly the JBS was crippled by the then Republican establishment (Rockefeller/Romney in character; which is remarkably similar to today’s GOP establishment), but not mortally though that was the intent of NR.

The hit job being done to Newt is cut from the same cloth.

Today the JBS is stronger than ever. So many of its projections/predictions have come to pass. Consider this 1974 video,
http://www.jbs.org/component/content/article/1009-commentary/6381-the-jbs-in-1958-forerunner-of-the-tea-party-movement

    Charles Curran in reply to Gayle Spencer. | December 15, 2011 at 12:54 pm

    They destroyed themselves.

      Gayle Spencer in reply to Charles Curran. | December 15, 2011 at 1:59 pm

      Except the JBS has not been destroyed. Buckley’s dead, the NR is becoming irrelevant to the conservative movement(particularly with its Romeny endorsement and therefore the entrenchment of the GOP Ruling Class a la Cordeville’s July 2010 Am. Spec. article), but the JBS soldiers on, with much of its materials undergirding the arguments of the Tea Party.

        Hey, when you get a chance, fill us in on how and when Dwight Eisenhower became a conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy…Oh, Nixon too.

        scooby509 in reply to Gayle Spencer. | December 17, 2011 at 12:39 pm

        The LaRouchies have more influence than JBS. You’re on par with the Coffee Party. If that’s not politically destroyed, I don’t know what is.

Up ’till now NRO was a daily read for me (though, I usually skip anything Rammesh posts). I knew they were for Mitt.

There’s a huge difference between writing an article endorsing a candidate that gives your rationale for doing so and doing a pathetic hit job on another candidate. They don’t even have the courage to openly endorse Romney. They didn’t even have the courage to sign their hit job.

I spent a few hours over there last night letting them know in no uncertain terms how I felt about their ‘editorial’ and reading other comments. Seems pretty clear their going to lose a large portion of their subscription base.

I didn’t see the cover art until just now. Are you effing kidding me??? How ridiculous are they??

The people at National Review are dead to me.

They used to be a Conservative magazine. They’ve completely pissed off every Conservative that reads, or I should say USED TO read NR and NRO.

I don’t see how anyone can possibly imagine that Conservatives will turn out for a Progressive like Romney. It will never happen.

Did National Review completely miss out on the whole Tea Party movement? Are they completely ignorant of what the Conservative base has been fighting for???

No one’s going to turn out to vote FOR Mitt. Some of us will turn out to vote AGAINST Obama, but that’s how you lose an election. Its not as if we don’t have the example of John McCain staring us in the face.

Mitt has won only ONE election. He ran as a Progressive and he governed as a Progressive. He has never taken a stand for Conservatives on a single issue. I don’t understand why anyone would believe that he will govern as a Conservative if we elect him President. Seems FAR more likely he’ll govern like Schwarzenegger did in CA. How’d that work out?

    windbag in reply to Aarradin. | December 15, 2011 at 12:31 pm

    They don’t care about losing a subscription. They won’t admit any flaws. Remember Frum worked for them. I won’t question their conservative credentials, but I do question their wisdom.

NRO lost its allure for me a couple of years after WFB ceased being editor. Rich Lowry is practically a clone of Bill Kristol.

We should have known something when the NRO endorsed John McCain in the Arizona primary over J.D. Hayworth. Exactly what is conservative about John McCain? Answer, almost nothing. And this was after the debacle of McCain’s “honorable” loss to Obama in the presidential election.

NR is of the Beltway, by the Beltway and for the Beltway. After all, you want to get invited to the cool Christmas parties!

I’m as opposed to Gingrich as NRO is, and I agree with many of NRO’s points. But the way they did it, sorry, NRO is a disgrace.

The problem I have with it is not that they took a position on various candidates, but that they’ve decided FOR YOU which candidates you may or may not choose from.

And then they pretend to narrow it down to 3 candidates – the one that is their favorite vs. two that don’t have a chance. Because they are too chicken to come out and say it, and think we’re too dumb to figure it out.

Phooey to you, NRO, phooey!

Thanks for playing, but I’ll make up my own mind, Pravda Review!

Professor,

Happy Hanukkah to you and your family! (I want to say it now in case I’m too busy to be on the internet later).

National Review and the GOP establishment have fallen on the shark.

Peggy Noonan said some time ago that Obama seemed “snakebitten.” I agree. But, I’d go further and say the nation is snakebitten by Obama. With this great opportunity for pushback, what is their antivenom? Weak, soapy water. Okay … but don’t trash talk people who want to try a real antiserum.

As 9thDistrictNeighbor said in a comment above, “I just took Mr. Buckley’s advice and cancelled my own G..D… subscription.”

Well … I wasn’t going to … but you and the LI commenters convinced me.

I cancelled my own G-Damn subscription, and just paid for a Legal Insurrection subscription, instead.

I hate negativity. But NR and the GOP establishment has gone too far. They are “sharkbitten” to tweak Peggy. Newt repeatedly praised his fellow candidates and they accepted his praise … until he shot to the lead. Now negativity reigns. Shark jumping is in.

I know shark jumping. Here in Southern California we throw the little Great Whites back … so we can jump ’em later. This is a mile from my house:

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Venice-Beach-Shark-Rescue-130746238.html

LukeHandCool (who loves Great White Sharks and Legal Insurrection … and not necessarily in that order).

Talk about damaging your brand. In its recent editorial, NR managed to diss all the Republican candidates but Romney, Santorum and Huntsman.

Turns out the cover makes me like Looney Tunes a lot more than NR. Actually it would be funnier if the NR logo was there instead of Newt’s face.

They still have some people worth listening to. Steven Hayward and Victor Davis Hanson, though hard on Newt, are much fairer and more illuminating.

On the bright side, Tony Blankley has a good column at Real Clear Politics.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/12/14/newts_past_and_future_leadership_112396.html

This entire NRO episode reminds me of when Barbara Bush said she hoped Sara Palin would just stay in AK – no reason, no argument, no need to convince anyone of the merit of her position – she just issued the edict while looking down her pompous ass nose!.

If any of these elites could receive as well as they can transmit, they’d really be something. Their main problem is that their opinions of themselves are so large, there is no more room in their minds for anything else.

It’s a shame that we have Obama ruining our nation and there should be a really good chance for the Republicans to take back the WH, however, all of this nonsense going on, we seem to have formed the proverbial circular firing squad.

To the Blue Blood’s of the Republican party I say, we don’t want any more of your effing high minded edicts. We don’t want any more of your preoccupation with your own glory days (gone by, I may add). We want a Republican party that stands for the best chances for every American to realize their fullest potential. And we hope you can learn to listen as well as you can talk!

If we lose this election to Obama – the Republican Party will be toast! And as bad as Obama is, perhaps it may not be such a bad thing to purge the party of the Blue Blooded elites. And by the way, to Barbara Bush I say, I hope you (and your entire loser family) stay wherever the hell you are too!

If we lose to Obama, the Republican Party deserves to be toast. It would be nice to see the emergence of a new coalition of common sense conservatives and independents to form a new party, relegating the dying Republican Party to ever lessening numbers of would-be loser elitists.

This just reminds me that I’d sooner support Marvin the Martian for President than I would Mitt Romney.

1. 1. Apparently National Review has joined the “well-fed Right” that Mr. Buckley decried in its mission statement. One can respectfully but legitimately inquire whether hints of honoraria, think-tank appointments, and the like influence decision making at journals like The New Republic and its counterparts.

2. There are exceptions to the above like Victor Davis Hanson, whose comparison of Gingrich and Romney is worth reading.

3. To dislodge an incumbent President, something close to a perfect storm is needed. If–if–today’s unemployment report is part of a trend, Obama will be reelected handily no matter who his opponent is.

4. While I was typing the above, the phone rang with a recording from Gingrich. The content was good on an absolute scale and excellent by comparison to the typical campaign pitch, but the sound quality and enunciation were poor. I also did not appreciate being put on hold until the Gingrich staffer came on the line, presumably to ask for money. Pretty amateurish, was my overall verdict.

Bill, I suspect that your student associates could put together something as good if not better. One expects more from a politician who is highlighting his experience.

    Hope Change in reply to gs. | December 15, 2011 at 8:50 pm

    Hi gs —

    Many elements of the Newt campaign being run by grassroots volunteer citizens. Some of the operations are probably learning as they begin, I surmise. I am thrilled at the idea of a campaign that is beholden to the American citizens who made it happen, and not “kingmakers” of influence.

    I am astonished to see who is for Newt and who is not. What an education!

    I think Richard Viguerie, linked at http://conservatives4newt.blogspot.com/
    is exactly correct:

    Richard A. Viguerie, at ConservativeHQ:
    “Grassroots conservatives and Tea Partiers are flocking to the Gingrich candidacy because outside of Washington, conservatives don’t want another content-free election.

    They want a campaign that says, ‘here’s how the federal debt crisis can be solved and the American economy restored,’ and, ‘here’s how government can be more accountable and efficient.’ That means building public support behind the kind of fundamental change that Gingrich is talking about.

    And the Republican establishment fears more than anything that, just like in 1994, Gingrich actually means it and can pull it off. … [snip] …

    What establishment Republicans really fear is that Gingrich’s great conservative ideas-based crusade will actually succeed, and that on Inauguration Day 2013, Gingrich will arrive at the White House at the head of a vast citizen movement with a legislative agenda and dozens of Executive Orders ready to implement the conservative government establishment Republicans have promised — but failed to deliver — for the past 45 years.” [end quote]

    I hope we can bear with the Gingrich volunteers. I prefer them any day to a campaign run by “professionals” who get paid by big money Establishment interests. We are the 100%. ALL Americans.

[…] wants as the GOP nominee, it has been made quite clear with editorials by George Will, National Review, and the Washington Examiner. Newt Gingrich doesn’t pass muster, Mitt Romney is the guy. […]

Haven’t read NR since Bill died.

Even before they were getting a little too “progressive” for my taste as he was no longer the editor and was just a contributor.

Sic transit gloria mundi Buckleum.

The list of people, publications, groups, institutions, and “mainstream conservative media” you have to cast into the outer darkness is getting longer and longer, professor.

That’s the inexorable logic of any form of political sectarianism.

    William A. Jacobson in reply to JEBurke. | December 15, 2011 at 7:20 pm

    Not really. It’s mostly just a handful of publications and a few talking heads who dominate the conservative media narrative. Thanks for calling me sectarian.

    Henry Hawkins in reply to JEBurke. | December 15, 2011 at 7:29 pm

    Invoking an ad populum logical fallacy and then invoking logic? Yikes.

If Palin has been thinking of endorsing Newt … now might be a good time.

[…] was shocked when I saw the cover of their next issue on Legal Insurrection […]

[…] that one) and Mitt Romney, which is laughable. National Review has taken it upon itself to dedicate an entire issue to destroying […]

So touchy. It is a primary, no one expected this to be pretty. I can’t wait to see what they come up with when Paul wins Iowa. Somehow I doubt most people here will be outraged then.

The Weekly Standard ain’t no paragon of intellectual thought either.