From Teabags to Gasbags: “Mount Vernon Statement” Captures Paralytic Dullness of Conservatism

The Sharon Statement energized a generation of Commie-fearin’, Buckley-blessed wingnut big-domes. The “Contract With America” kept a Republican Congress in power long after the Contract itself had been stuffed into a paper-only recycling bag, and set out by the curb. The “Project for the New American Century” rescued Bill Kristol’s career as a malevolent, 5th-Dimensional imp and established the philosophical foundations of bloodthirsty exceptionalism that led to Dick Cheney’s “Operation TOTAL AMERICA FAIL.”

With antecedents like that, you’d expect that the much-hyped “CPAC Manifesto” would be traced by a vengeful angelic finger in Words of Power that literally burst into flames on the page. But you’d be in for a disappointment, as the actual Mount Vernon Statement, released this morning, reads like the truck pick-up manifest for a “Save the Founding Fathers” community scrap-collection drive. 

I mean, who needs Ambien when you have “stand up and shrug” rhetoric like this?:

The conservatism of the Constitution limits government’s powers but ensures that government performs its proper job effectively. It refines popular will through the filter of representation. It provides checks and balances through the several branches of government and a federal republic.

A Constitutional conservatism unites all conservatives through the natural fusion provided by American principles. It reminds economic conservatives that morality is essential to limited government, social conservatives that unlimited government is a threat to moral self-government, and national security conservatives that energetic but responsible government is the key to America’s safety and leadership role in the world. 

Spartacus, William Wallace and Bill Pullman in Independence Day have nothing to fear from Erick Erickson or the other Masters of Ratfuckery who’ve signed on to this exercise in semantic somnabulism. Here’s the list of “authors,” with a few of the usual grandstanding credibility-vampires highlighted: 

Edwin Meese, former U.S. Attorney General under President Reagan
Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America
Edwin Feulner, Jr., president of the Heritage Foundation
Lee Edwards, Distinguished Fellow in Conservative Thought at the Heritage Foundation, was present at the Sharon Statement signing.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council
Becky Norton Dunlop, president of the Council for National Policy
Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center
Alfred Regnery, publisher of the American Spectator
David Keene, president of the American Conservative Union
David McIntosh, co-founder of the Federalist Society
T. Kenneth Cribb, former domestic policy adviser to President Reagan
Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform
William Wilson, President, Americans for Limited Government
Elaine Donnelly, Center for Military Readiness
Richard Viguerie, Chairman, ConservativeHQ.com
Kenneth Blackwell, Coalition for a Conservative Majority
Colin Hanna, President, Let Freedom Ring
Kathryn J. Lopez, National Review

If the rest of CPAC is this spectacularly un-game-changing, a lot of people are going to wish they’d gone to the Opryland Hotel shindig, if only because it had Teh Real Crazy.

Posted by StrangeAppar8us on 02/17/10 at 12:27 PM • Permalink

Wonketeers are being invited to sign the statement which can be found here.

I think we have a duty to help them out, don’t you?

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