Bobby Jindal: Hey, Let's Tax the Rich
Rand Paul: Hey, Let's Have an Amnesty
WSJ: Hey, Let's Have Gay Marriage

Jindal makes the case for a blend of fiscal conservatism with a dash of populism:

“We’ve got to make sure that we are not the party of big business, big banks, big Wall Street bailouts, big corporate loopholes, big anything,” Jindal told POLITICO in a 45-minute telephone interview. “We cannot be, we must not be, the party that simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys.”

Rand Paul wants a pathway to citizenship for illegals.

He wants to work with liberal Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy and Republicans to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for pot possession. He wants to carve a compromise immigration plan with an “eventual path” to citizenship for illegal immigrants, a proposal he believes could be palatable to conservatives.

Brett Stephens in the WSJ says we must not only give up being interested in other people's sexual habits, but join the gay marriage movement. And also, learn Spanish.

Fellow conservatives, please stop obsessing about what other adults might be doing in their bedrooms, so long as it's lawful and consensual and doesn't impinge in some obvious way on you. This obsession is socially uncouth, politically counterproductive and, too often, unwittingly revealing.

Also, if gay people wish to lead conventionally bourgeois lives by getting married, that may be lunacy on their part but it's a credit to our values. Channeling passions that cannot be repressed toward socially productive ends is the genius of the American way. The alternative is the tapped foot and the wide stance.

Also, please tone down the abortion extremism. Supporting so-called partial-birth abortions, as too many liberals do, is abortion extremism. But so is opposing abortion in cases of rape and incest, to say nothing of the life of the mother. Democrats did better with a president who wanted abortion to be "safe, legal and rare"; Republicans would have done better by adopting former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels's call for a "truce" on social issues.

By the way, what's so awful about Spanish? It's a fine European language with an outstanding literary tradition—Cervantes, Borges, Paz, Vargas Llosa—and it would do you no harm to learn it. Bilingualism is an intellectual virtue, not a deviant sexual practice.

Which reminds me: Can we, as the GOP base, demand an IQ exam as well as a test of basic knowledge from our congressional and presidential candidates? This is not a flippant suggestion: There were at least five Senate seats in this election cycle that might have been occupied by a Republican come January had not the invincible stupidity of the candidate stood in the way.

I'm still trying to figure things out so I mention these as a Quote of the Day sort of thing, without endorsement.

I'll be honest: I thought I understood what was needed to win this election and I may have been very wrong. (I say "may" because it's possible things were just too stacked against us, so it's possible my prescriptions were generally right, but yet still insufficient.)

I keep thinking of that baseball manager: Doesn't anyone here know how to play this game? I'm not sure I can answer yes. Maybe everything I thought was wrong.

I think it's good that people are offering opinions and prescriptions. I suppose we'll have to see who wins the day. I really don't know anymore.

posted by Ace at 02:21 PM

| Access Comments