On Northeast Corridor Conservatives

I came across J.R. Dunn's fantastic piece the other day, but for some reason, forgot to link it here. It's a bit long, however, well worth the read:

But the Palin response is more shameless than any of these previous examples. It undermined a campaign in progress, it called into question the judgment of the acknowledged Republican leader, and far worse, it occurred during one of the most vicious ideological attacks mounted against any politician in recent memory. Sarah Palin and her family were and remain targeted by leftist interests with the simple goal of destruction. Most of the country has registered serious disapproval. Only three groups have demurred: leftist ideologues, the media, and a certain group of conservatives.

Clearly, a small but influential number of conservatives -- almost exclusively from the New York-Washington axis which we will term the “Northeast Corridor” -- could not comprehend Sarah Palin or what she represents, any more than the liberal-left could. In fact, the liberals can be said to have had a superior grasp of Palin’s impact. They, at least, saw her as a threat.

Northeast Corridor conservatism embodies an elite. It has been an elite since conservatism was first detectable as a distinct strain in the American political landscape. And like most elites, it has slowly become alienated from the people as a whole, to such an extent that it no longer clearly represents their interests. Whenever this occurs, there is eventually (if no attempt at regeneration is made) a swift and transformative upheaval which brings into being a new status quo. It never, to my knowledge, involves getting “a new base”. It almost always involves isolating and negating the old elite, and usually replacing it with a new one drawn from the previous base. In the realm of politics, this process goes under the name of “revolution”. In other fields, it is usually more low-key, though not any less complete.

Frankly, I'm loving McCain-Palin's promise to "shake up Washington" more and more everyday, if it means throwing some cold water in the faces of establishment types of all political persuasions. These so-called conservatives to whom Dunn refers bear very little, if any resemblance to the movement initiated by Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. And for the first time since this arduous campaign season began, the word "Maverick" is beginning to resonate with me (as I suspect with many others) in the most exciting, positive way. It is time to "put the government on the side of the people" and tell the northeastern corridor "intelligentsia" to take their elitism somewhere else -- maybe a trip to Alaska to mingle with the "common-folk" might wake them up to reality. And if that doesn't work, perhaps they could just move to France, along with the Hollywood crowd and the rest of the out-of-touch liberals.