Kristol is a leading neocon, editor of the Weekly standard and his father Irving was one of the founders of neoconservatism. So his comments on last night’s Republican debate ares rather surprising.
The e-mails flooding into our inbox during the evening were less guarded. Early on, we received this missive from a bright young conservative: “I’m watching my first GOP debate…and WE SOUND LIKE CRAZY PEOPLE!!!!” As the evening went on, the craziness receded, and the demoralized comments we received stressed the mediocrity of the field rather than its wackiness.
He quotes Yeats, hoping the beast that slouches towards Bethlehem will be Christie because the rest of the Republican field are either unelectable or dull technocrats like Romney. (He thinks Perry has about done himself in. So do I.)
What he says about the Republican field is just as true of Democrats.
But in 2013, with the magnitude and urgency of the problems we face, don’t we deserve someone with a bigger sense of the task ahead, and a deeper sense of the solutions needed, combined with a proven record of bold governance, than the current field provides?
It’s that vision thing. No one in either party has it. Nor do they have real answers, or even ideas, for the huge problems lying ahead. Sure, Obama is more to my liking than any of the Republicans and I expect he’ll be re-elected. But he’s hardly been inspirational or a leader, much less having concrete plans for what to do about unemployment and the recession. And he’s never met a war he didn’t like.
So, the election will probably be between two dull technocrats, Romney and Obama, and instead of being about finding real solutions it’ll be a vicious, sickening mud-bath. The country deserves better than this.
It will be a mud slide and a blood bath. But based on what we’ve seen which party seems to bask in bloody sadism?