NANCY PELOSI EVADES RESPONSIBILITY:
If Republicans say things that she and other Democrats judge as "harsh rhetoric", they demand apologies and recantations. But not for their own:
"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says anyone using harsh rhetoric to raise fears about health care reform should apologize and get on with writing policy, but said there's no reason to single out a Florida Democrat who said Republicans want sick Americans to "die quickly." "If anybody's going to apologize, everybody should apologize," she said when asked Thursday about Rep. Alan Grayson's comments on the House floor earlier this week. Pelosi's response reflects what Democratic aides have said privately since Grayson's remarks sparked an uproar: that Republicans have routinely said with impunity that Democrats want to "pull the plug on grandma" or create "death panels" to decide who deserves care and who doesn't."
Pointing fingers at others to obscure what you or your friends did is something little kids do. Democrats need to get off the playground.
ON THE STATE OF CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALS' INABILITY TO UNDERSTAND IT DEPT:
So the noted author Sam Tanenhaus has written on the supposed death of conservatism, and naturally many establishment liberals agree with him...and one thing they say over and over is this:
"One puzzling feature of American politics is that the people who call themselves conservatives seldom want to conserve anything. The modern conservative movement promotes radical transformation while ignoring classical conservative ideas — for example, Edmund Burke’s respect for established institutions and customs, for continuity with tradition and for incremental change."
Hmph. Of course, the logical endpoint of this would have to be, simply, if conservatives accepted and adopted that critique, the conservation of whatever is. Which is no philosophy at all. Frank Meyer exposed this falsehood years ago. A pity that our liberal friends are unfamiliar with it.
Though it is not at all surprising to see them wishing that conservatives would seek to "conserve" liberal triumphs. And, speaking of conservatism and liberalism...
IS CONSERVATISM DEAD? DEPT:
Well, let's look at views on abortion in this country. They may be changing:
"For most of the last two decades, a clear majority of Americans has supported the right to abortion. A new poll, though, suggests that support for abortion appears to have declined, with the public almost evenly divided over the issue. The apparent shift, which contradicts some other recent polls, has occurred in just the last year. In 2008, a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center found that those in favor of keeping abortion legal outnumbered opponents by 54 to 40 percent. The new poll, also conducted by Pew researchers, and released on Thursday, showed that the gap had narrowed: 47 percent of those surveyed said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and 45 percent said it should be illegal in all or most cases — a difference within the poll’s margin of sampling error."
And, concerning a likely 2010 Senate race in Pennsylvania, a Quinnipiac poll has conservative Republican Pat Toomey leading Arlen Specter by 1 point. Wow!
BASEBALL DIARY: the Tigers move closer to the AL Central title last night, beating Minnesota 7-2. Bob Wojnowski in the Detroit News has it exactly right--it's a team of pluggers and persistence. Magglio Ordonez is the prime example--he's struggled all year, but he's coming on now and had a key 3-run double last night. Good for him for sticking with it. But there's still work left to do for the Tigers...
