John Podhoretz served as speechwriter to President Ronald Reagan and President George H.W. Bush. He was a special assistant to White House Drug Czar William Bennett. He is a columist for Commentary, a conservative journal, and for the New York Post, a right wing, Murdock-owned rag. His conservative bona fides are good. Podhoretz is the son of conservative journalists Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. A second generation pig.
Today he published a column in the New York Post entitled "Suicide of the Right."
A few highlights:
Every piece of evidence we have so far on the government shutdown shows the public is blaming Republicans most of all for the standoff.
snip
[He goes on to talk about "Republican enablers" of the irresponsible who like this fight. He says he agrees with what they like substantively and what they dislike, but this is not working and will damage the cause for which they fight.]
If ObamaCare had been as unpopular as conservatives believed, their plan for the shutdown — that there would be a public uprising to force Democratic senators in close races in 2014 to defund it — would’ve worked. It didn’t. Not a single senator budged.
Their tactic failed, and now what they are left with is House Speaker John Boehner basically begging the president of the United States to negotiate with him.
One thing we know for sure is that it’s not an equal fight, this fight between a man who received 65 million votes nationwide and a man who received 246,000 votes in one congressional district in Ohio.
snip
[He concludes that conservatives need the Republican Party because it's the only game in town and destroying may well deeply harm conservatism as an ideology.]
NY Post: Suicide of the Right
Podhoretz was not among the conservative media who met Obama yesterday.
It may be too late for Republicans. I think they will push us into a deep recession, but in doing so destroy themselves electorally for a generation.
The Frankenstein monster is loose and much damage will be done before it is destroyed.