Last of the Summer Whine

Intrepid Conservative fabulist, Doughy Pantload, finally gets at the real Perry Problem.

Guess what?

Turns out, The Perry Problem has nothing to do with Perry's unhinged ideas or arrogant, diamond-hard ignorance.

Nope.

Turns out, once you flense away all the annoying fact-y stuff, the real problem is, as always, the bigotry and snobbery of those damned Imaginary Hippies that hide under Jonah Goldberg's bed and vex him night and day.

Pantload from the Chicago Tribune:

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Let's cut through the clutter: A lot of people on the East and West coasts are bigots and snobs about "flyover types." They equate funny accents with stupidity, and they automatically assume someone who went to Texas A&M must be dumber than someone who went to Yale. Overt displays of religion trigger their fight-or-flight instincts, causing them to lash out irrationally.

My favorite example? When John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate, University of Chicago professor Wendy Doniger wrote that Palin's "greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman."

When I read such idiocy, it's impossible for me not to love Bush, Perry, Palin, et al. for their enemies.
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See! I told you it wasn't 'cause Perry, Perry, Quite Contrary is an injection-mold Dubya replicant made out of Pure Righteous Medieval Dumb!

And with so many powerful, tireless imaginary enemies circling and mocking this Good Christian Man for his Goodness and Christianity, the author of "Liberal Fascism" and inexplicable beneficiary of a million-dollar book contract

finds the notion of defending the verbal tics and cultural projectile vomitings of another shitkicking Preznit Cretin from the Empire of Texas just too, too exhausting.

But here's my problem: I find the prospect of another four or eight years of defending these cultural distinctions to be intensely wearying.

My weariness is hardly a major consideration for anybody, but I think it reflects a larger problem. Conservatism is starting to have an identity-politics problem all its own. I think conservatism needs to spend less time defending candidates for who they are, and more time supporting candidates for what they intend to do.

Bush's inability to articulate arguments had nothing to do with his Texan-ness or his Christianity, but a lot of folks on the right defended him as if that was the case. "He speaks American, don't you get it?"

To which I'd reply: "No, he speaks badly."

Perry's not a bad speaker, and I'm trying to keep an open mind. I suspect I agree with him more than I did with Bush, whose compassionate conservatism I loathed.
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Actually the real, real problem is that Jonah Goldberg is a very lazy hack and stunningly bad writer whose had hoped this particular, embarrassing cup o' bad Dubya Reruns could pass him by this time and doesn't relish the thought of having to bestir himself, don his cardboard armor, take up his Crayola sword, once again pressed very reluctantly into defending the open, running, yahoo sewer of a Movement upon which his livelihood completely depends.

So why is this bush-league toadstool even in my Chicago Tribune at all?

Oh yeah...