Conservative Pay-Per-Click Pundits

As the Obama campaign found out, bloggers are like a pack of middle school soccer players, chasing the ball in a pack, darting from one end of the field to the other. Wherever the ball is kicked, that's where the bloggers are to be found. They are never ahead of the ball, they can't predict where it will be. Nor can they explain why the ball is where it is. Which gets the Malkinites into the mess of believing the main story of the day is Obama's Nancy Reagan gaffe. If that's what the pack is chewing on, it must be the story, right?

Malkinite: term for any knee-jerk, shallow, right-wing pundit for whom conservative has become a brand or label they like to wear. In this article, you can substitute Malkin for Rush, Coulter, Savage, any of 'em.

 Perhaps we should be happy that conservatives are so devoid of ideas that all they can is react to their opponents rather that inform us what they would do. These days, conservatism is predictable, so let's do Michelle Malkin's job for her, let's write her script for the next few years. Forgive us if the following paragraphs are glaringly obvious and dimwittedly dull, but we're pretending to be conservatives:

First off, Obama's cabinet choices, seen through Michelle Malkin's eyes, will be labeled rash, liberal, and wrong. Any Obama colleagues from Chicago will quickly be called the Chicago maffia.

give a minority person a job, Condi Rice for example, she is the best person available: ethnic identity played no part in the decision. And when a minority Republican jumps ship and endorses Obama, think Colin Powell, we're told it's for no other reason that racial identity, plus that the person wasn't a proper conservative to begin with. If a gay or lesbian person is found to be working at the White House, Malkin will come to the depressingly familiar conclusion that Obama is way, way outside the mainstream of American life.

Every times a pro-lifer gets a job, we'll be told how opportunities are on the increase for baby killers. That person's character will be assassinated. We'll be told how their degree isn't a proper degree because it's from a minor college in Hawaii or Idaho. We'll be treated to a dissection of the person's shopping habits, proving to us that the appointee is vain and untrustworthy. We'll be told how they don't go to church often enough, or they've vacationed in, gasp, islamic nations.

When Obama reaches agreement with other countries on action beneficial to America, the Malkinites will tell us Obama is sacrificing American interests to please his liberal buddies abroad. In the conservative mindset, treaty = appeasement, weakness, folly, surrendering to our enemies, unless of course it's a free trade agreement, in which case the Malkinites applaud handing over  limitless freedom to corporations while denying workers the most basic rights.

For conservatives, the personal is always political. Michelle Obama will be targeted because she probably won't be a smile-sweetly-stay-in-the-background first lady like Laura Bush. When Michelle wears Thakoon or Rodriguez instead of Oscar de la Renta, it'll be slammed as classless, trashy, indicative of her south Chicago upbringing.

By now you get the idea. When a conservative ignoramous comes along begging to be elected -- think Sarah Palin -- she's called a fresh face, a real American, an anti-elitist, a genuine voice of the people. When Democrats do the same, it's opportunist, a gamble, playing Las Vegas with the nation's future. Yawn, yawn, yawn.

It would help if the Malkinites could give us a couple of ideas of their own, something beyond slogans and platitudes. We all know the low tax mantra, the trickle down madness, the value of values, the small government gobbleydeegook. We want more meat than that.

We also want to known why it's socialism when you propose raising taxes for those earning more than $250,000 but it's not socialism when you hand $700 billion of taxpayers' money to Wall Street.

Why want to know why it's so virtuous to be pro-life at the point of conception and so anti-life that blighted inner cities are ignored and left to rot.

We'd like to know why it's marvelous for the economy to lower taxes for multi-millionaires while denying opportunity to poorer people, destroying human capital and potential in the process. We want to know why redistribution is good when president Bush sends out a stimulus check, and bad when Democrats suggest that enabling the middle class to keep more money would help kick start the economy.

We want to know why it's good foreign policy to bully our allies and ignore the United Nations, rather than work with them, leading by example.

Of course, the Malkinites have no answers to these questions. For them, it's all a matter of Obama's gaffes, simple sloganizing, and dreaming of a conservative wonderland which never existed, and will never exist.

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