Damage Control

This is pretty funny. Apparently, CPAC, fresh from booing Bob Barr for calling waterboarding by its proper name, had some sort of presidential straw poll in which Ron Paul was the winner. Apparently, the fact that Paul is even more plain-spoken about our Orwellian torture policies under Bush did not deter 31% of the crowd from picking him.

This is not at all to the liking of the mucky mucks of the Thing That Used to be Conservatism:
David Frum, author of the papal bull Unpatriotic Conservatives, which formally excommunicated those who were not on board with the Grand End to Evil Project, quickly moved to say, “Nothing to see here! Move along! Move Along!”

Rush Limbaugh likewise took to the airwaves to tell the 31% to shut up and get back on the reservation. In a prescient diagnosis he declared:

All I’ll tell you is that any organization that has a straw poll vote on who the party presidential candidate ought to be and comes up with Ron Paul is not an organization of conservatives.

Cuz what could possibly be conservative (in Limbaugh’s definition) about a group of people who endorse a guy who is consistently pro-life, who is consistently in favor of actual small government, who thinks wars should be fought according to Just War doctrine and declared in accordance with the Constitution, and who does not think the task of government is to prop up a sham financial system? So yeah: these guys are not part of the Thing That Used to Be Conservatism.

Huckabee sounded the same note. And, of course, FOX did due diligence pooh poohing it all.

The Thing that Used to Conservatism, like the Thing that Used to be Liberalism, can’t cope with hearing very much from its constituents. It’s got an agenda to push.