Proximus is Latin for ‘next’. Pridianus is Latin for ‘yesterday’. As in SE Cupp and her fellow young Proximus project colleagues are so yesterday in their thinking.
So what’s all the hubbub you say? For one thing, it seems that SE Cupp has said some public and very pointed comments about Rush Limbaugh’s commentary on Sandra Fluke.
The big stink is over SE Cupp’s comments on Rush Limbaugh and the new project that she is heading called Proximus. There are two articles that we’re talking about. One is at American Thinker and the other is at The American Spectator.
The Jeffrey Lord article at American Spectator is a two-fer: 1) he delves into the Proximus Project and 2), he takes on SE Cupp for her ill-advised comments about Limbaugh. Both the American Thinker and Jeffrey Lord articles explain that trying to be hip in order to remain relevant while ignoring party political history is just old fashioned backwards thinking. There is nothing “foreward” or “next” about their views. Reagan knew instictively that it’s hip to be square. Twisting the party into a clone of the Democratic party is an old idea that should be placed in History’s file 13.
The American Spectator’s Jeffrey Lord opines in his critique of Cupp and her fellow travelers, that their POV sounds eerily like those criticisms in
…a book by liberal journalist Robert J. Donovan some 49 years ago, ominously titled “The Future of the Republican Party.” Written in the immediate aftermath of the Goldwater defeat in 1964, Donovan’s conclusion after detailed conversations with voters, pollsters, and both Republican and Democrat party elites around the country was that unless the GOP gave up conservatism and became a me-too moderate party with socially liberal candidates like then-New York Congressman and soon-to-be Mayor John Lindsay, the GOP was doomed.
Too many folk who call themselves Republican or conservative want to play the cards they were dealt in these last two elections rather than fight like Reagan and his guerilla army did to gain the nomination and go on to win three straight elections. And Reagan won two elections without the benefit of either talk radio or a sychophantic media. His rhetoric, his views are still relevant today. The guy was a master politician and years ahead of his time.
To the point:
American Thinker – [Cupp and her colleagues exhibit a] lack of historical awareness of conservatism. Are we seeing young conservatives who seem not to have grasped conservatism whole? Who do not understand the seamless thread that binds conservative values as a way of life, from the Constitution to gay marriage and abortion to free market economics and dealing with Al Qaeda?
SE Cupp on her twitter account tweets this: ”I see now ‘I don’t understand conservatism’ for criticizing Rush. Keep on telling yourselves the party’s fine guys. Working well for us”
Jeffrey Lord – Has Cupp never heard of the famous radical leftist feminist line that “the personal is political”? A line that took off in feminist lore when Carol Hanisch, known in the day (the late 1960s) as a founder of New York Radical Women, wrote a 1970 essay in Notes From the Second Year: Women’s Liberation titled “The Personal Is the Political”?
Fluke made that connection in her speech. Limbaugh was trying to make that connection in his remarks on Sandra Fluke as well. His slut remark notwithstanding, he made the connection. One which SE Cupp fails to see….still….
I ‘spect that SE will just have to keep “kicking at the goad”
Then the big question:
Jeffrey Lord – Are they [Cupp and colleagues] really conservatives — or just the latest, newest incarnation of that age old 20th century invention: the GOP moderate? The newest sparkling edition of a wannabe Ruling Class? Making the rounds of the bar scene in Manhattan and New York and longing to be hip? “
One final remark:
AT – Making the Manhattan social scene doesn’t cut it, not in terms of life shaping experiences, unless one is writing for People magazine or a newspaper’s “Life” section.
Jump into the pool SE, the water’s fine.
The AT article is here. The American Spectator article is here.