Half Past the Month

June 16, 2016

(For the use of the membership only.)

“May you live in interesting times.” — Chinese curse

 

HAVE YOU NOTICED anything different about your Republican friends? Your co-workers? The market researchers tell us that they are more “engaged” politically. That may be a nice way of saying more opinionated.

This is good, or eventually so. The problem is that most of the newly engaged are grabbing hold of issues that have been banging around for decades if not centuries — gun control, to name one now in the fore. They could be called “pronouncers,” unabashedly pronouncing opinions formed on the drive to work, independent of constitutional principal or historical base. It is a dangerous time.

One such pronouncement is the importance of finding a Senate candidate “as conservative” as Dan Coats, who, after almost three decades of inconsequential service, is retiring again far from the banks of his supposedly beloved Wabash.

If, as the Libertarians say, the road to hell is paved with Republicans, this man is a veritable Indy 500 of good intentions lost on the turns. Meaningful systemic reforms? He beat them like rented mules. Here are the high points in the career of a conservative Indiana icon:

Last week his office announced that the senator is rethinking whatever was his thinking on gun rights. If Dan Coats is to be the standard for the new conservatism, liberalism will soon be superfluous.

 

— Craig Ladwig

*Vote characterizations from Conservative Review.



Comments...

Leave a Reply