"An Abiding Hatred of Academia"

Via Robert Stacy McCain's comments, here's Mike LaRoche on his one-year blog anniversary:

Next week, my time at an academic institution with which I have been affiliated for nearly a decade comes to an end. And not a moment too soon. I love the subject I teach - history - but I have developed a deep and abiding hatred of academia that I doubt will ever abate. Twice in the last seven years, two different colleagues have tried to ruin me professionally and financially. But I am still standing, much to the chagrin of those two sons-of-bitches, no doubt.

In three months, I will be moving to another city in the great state of Texas to begin a new phase in my career as a historian. It is a move I should have made earlier, in retrospect, but better late than never. I will have more to say about the coming move in a later post.

I have to admit I share the pain sometimes, but I'm extremely lucky to be working with fellow political scientists ranging from moderate to conservative, including one former Reagan White House staffer.

I can't, of course, say that about the rest of my division colleagues (including a couple of International ANSWER activists), but conservatives can't give up the battle for control of America's cultural institutions, especially in education, the mass media, and Hollywood.

GOP at Risk of Becoming Monochromatic Party?

Here's Ronald Brownstein on the implications for the GOP of Arlen Specter's defection to the Democratic Party:

In one sense, Specter's defection merely continues a generation-long trend. Since the 1960s, each party's electoral coalition has grown more ideologically homogenous as conservatives have migrated away from the Democratic Party, and liberals and moderates have moved away from the GOP. That ideological resorting has thinned the ranks of Republican House and Senate members from left-leaning areas such as the Northeast and the West Coast and has culled Democrats from conservative regions, principally the South.

This ideological and geographic sorting-out has narrowed each party's reach. But Democrats in recent years have maintained a broader coalition, both in Congress and among voters, by demonstrating more receptivity to diverse views. In the Senate, for instance, Democrats hold 22 of the 58 seats representing the 29 states that twice voted for George W. Bush. And just 40 percent of self-identified Democrats consider themselves liberals, according to Gallup polling; the rest identify as moderate or conservative.

By contrast, the GOP is becoming an increasingly monochromatic party, dominated by the most conservative voters and regions. This process enormously accelerated under Bush and Karl Rove, who built their governing strategy on energizing the Republican base rather than on expanding it by courting swing voters. Today, Democrats hold their largest advantage in party identification over Republicans since President Reagan's first term, and 70 percent of the shrunken GOP core identifies as conservative. After Specter's leap, Republicans hold just two of the 36 Senate seats in the 18 mostly affluent and secular "blue-wall" states that twice voted against Bush -- and that have now voted Democratic in each of the past five presidential elections.

Notice Brownstein's framing: The Democrats have reached out "more receptively" and "maintained a broader coalition," while the Republicans have "thinned the ranks " and have become "an increasingly monochromatic party."

The Repubicans, in other words, have emerged as a "fearmongering neo-fascist hate-machine."

That's all well and good for the Democratic/progressive Republican political establishment that wants to turn the GOP into the party of gay marriage and cap-and-trade.

But as the power of the Tea Party movement is demonstrating, Republicans won't return to power by "running as a less enthusiastic version of big-government Democrats."

See also, Nice Deb, "For You Slow Learners Who Still Haven’t Figured Out The Tea Parties."

GOP-Smearing Image Credit: David Hoogland Noon.

Let Them Wear Lanvin Sneakers!

First Lady Michelle Obama volunteered at a D.C. food bank on Wednesday sporting $540 Lanvin sneakers:

Red State has the story, "Michelle Antoinette and the Don’t-Go-To-The-Mall Administration:"

It goes without saying that a Republican First Lady who showed up at a food bank during a recession wearing $540 sneakers would never hear the end of it, let alone one who had lectured voters on learning to make do with less. But you know, it goes deeper than that. Remember how Barack Obama relentlessly mocked George W. Bush, in the tone of a petulant teenager who can’t believe what Dad told him to do, for advising Americans to “go shopping” after September 11? Well, President Bush was absolutely in the right: the nation needed reassuring, and it needed to both sustain the consumer confidence and consumer demand that are the engines of our economy, and demonstrate to the world that we don’t change our routines to satisfy terrorists.

It's worth a click just for the ghoulish picture of the First Lady!