The problem I have with conservative intellectuals are that they are lost in their own mind. Take William Kristol (please), neoconservative analyst and commentator. He is the founder and editor of the The Weekly Standard and of course a regular commentator on the Fox News Channel.
With all that "K" Street cred you'd think he would know what he is talking about. Not!
In the up coming issue of The Weekly Standard, he wrote a piece called Forward, March!, in it Kristol ties himself in a Gordian Knot that he can't get himself out of.
Kristol's premise is simple; conventional wisdom says, "This incumbent is beatable."
Then as a good story teller Kristol vocalizes his doubts:
It’s true, the conventional consultant wisdom continues, that Republicans aren’t too popular either. But if the election is a referendum on Obama, and if Republicans can just avoid getting in their own way by raising wacky social issues or scaring people about their own plans for Medicare, and if the GOP can raise money, hammer away at Obama, and put together a first-class voter turnout operation in key states, then Obama should lose. And an Obama loss means a Republican victory.
What wisdom! What out of the box thinking. Not! Or, knot!
Now, Kristol fears a backward looking campaign, you know exactly what Romney has run to date, bash Obama on everything from Romney Care to not coddling the rich.
Kristol has a better idea:
What’s the alternative? A forward-looking campaign, more like Reagan’s in 1980 and Clinton’s in 1992. Reagan and Clinton didn’t simply depend on unhappiness with the incumbent. They elaborated a different, and they claimed better, path ahead for the country.
OK, I'll bite. What is this forward-looking campaign?
Can he explain that we’re heading off a cliff of debt and deficit if Obama’s fiscal policies are allowed to continue? Can his campaign make vivid the harm Obama’s tax hikes and regulations will do to the economy, and Obama-care to our health care system and our country? Can he explain what a second term of Obama judicial appointments will do to our courts? Can he explain the damage an Obama second term will do to self-government, and limited government, and constitutional government in America? Can he conduct a campaign that describes how much more dangerous the world might look in 2016 if we continue Obama’s foreign and defense policies? Can the Republican campaign present a choice of paths for the future, à la Paul Ryan’s budget and his explanation of it, rather than simply complain about the recent past and the difficult present?
That's it, the keys to the oval office. The way to America's heart. Paul Ryan’s budget. Need I say more?
"Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian Knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter"
Shakespeare, Henry V, Act 1 Scene 1