Sometimes, It's The Messenger. Sometimes, It's The Message

Tim says that David Brooks can see it.

Like me. It had nothing to do with Burke, and everything to do with what
the party had become. A bunch of bedwetting, loudmouth, corrupt, hypocritical,
and incompetent boobs with a mean streak a mile long and no sense of fair play
or proportion. . .

Screw them. I got out. They can have their party. I will vote for Democrats
and little L libertarians and isolationists until the crazy people aren’t
running the GOP. The threat of higher taxes in the short term isn’t enough to
keep me from voting out crazy people and voting for sane people with whom I
merely disagree regarding policy. Hillarycare doesn’t scare me as much as Frank
Gaffney having a line to the person with the nuclear football or Dobson and
company crafting domestic policy.

The Recess Supervisor says that Paul Krugman can see it.

What’s happening, presumably, is that modern movement conservatism attracts a
certain personality type. If you identify with the downtrodden, even a little,
you don’t belong. If you think ridicule is an appropriate response to other
peoples’ woes, you fit right in.

And Republican disillusionment with Mr. Bush does not appear to signal any change in that regard. On the contrary, the leading candidates for the Republican nomination have gone out of their way to condemn “socialism,” which is G.O.P.-speak for any attempt to help the less fortunate.

So once again, if you’re poor or you’re sick or you don’t have health
insurance, remember this: these people think your problems are funny.

Nick says that he can see it.

Conservative Values Have Led to Big Government Republicans:

This is where "conservatives" get naive. The major complaint among conservatives regarding Republicans is that Republicans have lost their way when it comes to big government. The problem is, you can't enforce the core Conservative beliefs without big government. How do you fight the War on DrugsTM without a huge investment by the government in both
size and money? The current battle costs us billions of dollars annually, and we're still losing it. The War on Drugs has done more to diminish our basic constitutional rights than the War on Terror ever has, and most Conservatives I talk to think we need to go further to police drug abuse.
Moreover, the War on Drugs is used as a model for how we attack other things that Conservatives and Republicans decry, that are part of the nanny state push like how we eat, and drink, and exercise. The War on Drugs was the original nanny state idea. How do you keep people from gambling if you aren't willing to have a big government that snoops in on every transaction that flows through your bank account? The list goes on an on.

Why can't the red-meat-true believers see it?