I Was A Teenage Libertarian II:*

The Incredible Shrinking Memory


Apparently, Mr. Sullivan's very lucrative political amnesia shall be permitted to sail on and on, unimpeded, until the End of Days.

Okay then, that being the case, in this unusually long post, see if you can spot exactly where his brain turns to poo (and, no, while funny, "1977" will not be accepted as a valid answer):

The Party Of Fiscal Responsibility

Ezra Klein claimed last week that it's the Democrats. Douthat isn't convinced:

To the extent that there are serious liberal plans for bringing the budget toward balance — whether they involve centralized rationing, middle class tax increases or huge tax hikes on the rich — neither the White House nor the Democratic Party as a whole seems to feel a sense of urgency in rallying behind them. In part, no doubt, that’s because much of the left doesn’t think of the deficit as a particularly urgent issue. They have every right to take that view. But it explains why the case that the Democrats are the real party of fiscal seriousness looks thin indeed.

But the GOP after the past ten years? It has a very long way to go before it retains any credibility.

Skipping lightly over whether Mr. Sullivan meant "regains" [very likely given the context] or "retains" [unlikely] let us focus instead on what I'm sure we all remember as that positively motherfucking Camelot of Conservatism prior to 2001...

{Insert cheesy flashback special effects here}

Back when the United States could coast breezily along on those record-breaking Reagan/Bush Surpluses (bolstered by the confidence America then had in the robust good health of its economic institutions such as the Savings and Loan industry and the staunch moral rectitude of its high-flying Captains of Capitalism) with enough scratch set aside in the boodle bag to carry us comfortably through the Dark Days of The Clinton Profligacy. In fact, the good times might have gone on forever had it not been for a silly man in a flight suit (which no Conservative ever voted for...or voted for again...or in any way ever supported) who -- with naught but the able assistance of his trusty, gun-totin' sidekick -- single-handedly drove Adam and Eve Smith out of Conservative Paradise forever and ever.

Very sad.

Also thank God the emergency auxiliary backup Conservative at the Little Paper That Could is finally getting some linky love from the Daily Beast. Because, dammit, the off-brand generic diet Conservative cola product that Mr. Douthat brews up out of adjectives left over from David Brooks' bi-weekly Beltway Common Wisdom bromides truly represents an edgy, rebel perspective to which our consarn Lamestream Media simply will not devote anywhere near enough attention.

* (In response to a question from Tild, I'm pretty sure the tee-shirt font I used started out life as Ariel Black, with which I added some fading, mid-tone burning, perspective distortion, liquifying and pasting-into.)