Re-entry pains

So here I am, back in the blogosphere, after God knows how many failed attempts. Mostly because no one really reads this kind of shit. But I feel like these days, I just need an outlet to put out all the dissociated nonsense in my head down on paper (or hypertext).

This will serve as a sort of aggregator of links and whatnot that I find compelling/hilarious/disturbing and give me some latitude for commentary. We'll see how it works.

Well, let's start things off with something that strikes me as odd: the presidential odds of Fred Thompson.

Is the theoconservative movement in America in such disarray that it really needs Fred Thompson to swoop in and save it from the evil clutches of John McCain and Rudy Giuliani? As an Obamaniac myself, I understand the appeal of the outsider candidate with great communication, but the potential shortcomings are clear enough (inexperience, most prominently). I guess I don't understand this bickering about getting a "bona fide conservative" candidate (just as I don't understand lefty bickering about Hillary's war vote or Obama's religiosity). By creating this unreasonable hurdles for candidates to jump over, they're going to get stuck with either a.) a far right candidate who has no chance of getting elected in the general, thanks to the Bush "compassionate conservative" debacle, or b.) a far right candidate who can't even get elected by Republican primary voters, thus further weakening the "base."

Sure, politics changes over time, and no doubt, America is still moving rightward. Just as Reagan-appointed judges aren't conservative enough to be Supreme Court justices, so is Reagan now essentially not conservative enough to be President. A California governor from godless Hollywood, whose tree-hugging prevented a major highway from being built, who raised taxes ceaselessly to (gasp!) balance the budget, and who had done nothing in the way of instituting religion into government... good luck getting that guy past the "bona fide conservative" peanut gallery. My point is, sitting there with a score-card waiting for "Mr. Right" (pun intended) to come along is counter-productive for your movement. Their undying fidelity to dogmatic ideology (btw, Dobson is already saying Thompson isn't a TRUE Christian... whatever that means) undermines what made their movement so powerful in the first place: pragmatism.

That said, nothing would make me happier than to watch the theocons marginalized. Lot of good they've done. Yeesh. Now, theolibs... that could be interesting.