James Joyner Challenges the Right - Start Thinking!

Cop pulls over a guy with a McCain/Palin bumper sticker on the Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago. The Cop walks up to the McCainiac's window, 'Got any I.D.?'

The slack jawed patriot replies, ''Bou Wha'?'

Looky here, Rubes -A War Hero was beaten by a Community Activist - think about it. A man with a resume featuring decades of distinguished service to his country was beaten by a first-term, back bencher whose Illinois Senate record was distinguished by votes of 'Present' - think about it. A grassroots army of unemployed and unemployable voter registration clipboard artists, wiped out the broad GOP coalition of cultural conservatives - think about it.

The conservative movement so vital in the late 1980's quit thinking when Old Dutch took the oath of office. Democrats became Liberals and Republicans became real Americans.

The Democratic Party is thick with patriots and thinkers. The GOP is thick with Air-waves loudmouths and snotty snipers.

James Joyner is calling on conservatives -not GOP swan-singers, or Democrats to think.

Part of the reason I’m drawn to the center-left blogs, including those cited above, Kevin Drum, Steve Benen, and others despite disagreeing with them while finding it increasingly difficult to find center-right blogs worth my time is that the former are much more likely to get beyond the debates of the 1980 election. There’s almost no serious analysis of health care reform, urban planning, education, and many other issues that regularly crop up on the best lefty blogs on their conservative counterparts. If we read about those issues at all, they’re framed as if Ronald Reagan were still aspiring to high office: Say No to socialism! Abolish the Department of Education! Government IS the problem!

While traditionalist grand theory is still valuable and worth discussion, it doesn’t work as a blanket response to micro-level issues. And defining conservatism solely by “What would Reagan do?” is a political non-starter in a world that simply looks much different than in did twenty-eight years ago. It would be as if Reagan constantly droned on about the evils of Harry Truman. Time marches on. Debates must, too, in order to be interesting.

So, where are the right-of-center counterparts to Yglesias, Klein, and company? Perhaps the ever-moving James Poulus (now with a mixed bag of co-bloggers)? Pejman Yousefzadeh, perhaps, but his writings are not handily consolidated. All the others who come to mind are my age or older.

Good thinking, Mr. Joyner. Get to thinking.