Throw SoCons from the train.

Happens every bad GOP election cycle and this year it's Charles Johnson's turn to develop a case of the vapors:


This [the David Frum] argument makes sense to us, and we’ve been holding forth in our comments on this very topic. If the GOP decides to go in the Bobby Jindal direction (fundamental Christianity, creationism, hard-line anti-abortionism, aggressively anti-gay rights), it will be committing political suicide. As much as anything else, this election was a referendum on the social conservative agenda, and the social conservatives did not win.


My first prescription for proponents of the Godbotherer Heave-Ho Project, is, as always, to snuggle into one's easy chair with a nice hot mug of Biteme.

With marshmallows.


Of course it makes sense to him--Johnson thinks ID is the next worse thing after Al Qaeda. And for a Californian, he seems to have missed how the residents of the Biggest Blue told gay marriage proponents to stuff it. Political suicide--perhaps not so much?


And 2008 was "a referendum on the social conservative agenda"? In what universe? The one where he tries to fend off Christianist hordes hurling their Bibles and rosaries at his mountain survivalist retreat, maybe. Abortion was mentioned at one debate (two if you count Saddleback). The issue was the economy, plain and simple, and big-spending Barack, with his promises of Much, Much More Spending won big and spending freeze Johnny lost.


Sounds like a referendum on economic conservativism to me. And economic conservatives lost.


Hey, I'm just using what passes for the logic in his argument.

Oh, and let's not forget McCain explicitly campaigning on a more muscular foreign policy. Lost to the candidate of International Chat, big time.

Sounds like a referendum on foreign policy conservatism to me. And the hawks lost.

Any idiot with an axe to grind (and Mr. Johnson has a glittering collection) can spin up the same arguments, of comparable degrees of worthlessness.

The election turned on disgust with George Bush and the financial crisis. Period. Anybody who says otherwise is simply hard at work trying to gore somebody else's ox.

[Thanks to Owen at Southern Appeal for the link.]