Dead at age 82.  Countdown to “Moonbat Grave Dance” at 3…2…1…

Hilldawg pimped out Chelsea to deliver this most snortworthy of one-liners.  BEVERAGE WARNING!  Here goes:

It was a surprising choice of topic given the mostly student crowd stuffed into a lounge at the University of Wisconsin Memorial Union. But the first question posed to Chelsea Clinton, who was stumping in Madison this afternoon for her mother, concerned Social Security.

“It is important to me because the Baby Boomers are aging,” the young woman told Clinton.

Clinton, the daughter of presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton, said that a return to “fiscal responsibility,” as promoted by her mother, would be one of the ways to secure Social Security. She also noted that her mom, as she referred to Hillary Clinton throughout the question and answer session, was the “most fiscally conservative candidate running” and “the only candidate who tells you how she’ll pay for everything.” 

Yeah, I can see how that whole multi-trillion dollar socialized medicine thingy could easily be confused with tax cuts and limiting the size and scope of the federal government.

That’s how the headline should ideally read.  Anywho, from MSNBC:

John McCain is a “true conservative,” President Bush says, although the presumptive Republican presidential nominee may have to work harder to convince other conservatives that he is one of their own.

McCain “is very strong on national defense,” Bush said in an interview taped for airing on “Fox News Sunday.” “He is tough fiscally. He believes the tax cuts ought to be permanent. He is pro-life. His principles are sound and solid as far as I’m concerned.”

But when asked about criticism of McCain by conservative commentators Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, the president said, “I think that if John is the nominee, he has got some convincing to do to convince people that he is a solid conservative and I’ll be glad to help him if he is the nominee.”

Juanny Mac, I’d suggest you decline the president’s offer to help bolster your “conservative” image.  He’s not exactly strong in the right department himself these days.

I’ve been saying this for a while, although Noonan seems to imply that the damage is virtually permanent.  I don’t think it is, but it is certainly near-term, if not long-term.  From Peggy Noonan:

On the pundit civil wars, Rush Limbaugh declared on the radio this week, “I’m here to tell you, if either of these two guys [Mr. McCain or Mike Huckabee] get the nomination, it’s going to destroy the Republican Party. It’s going to change it forever, be the end of it!”

This is absurd. George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other. He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues.

Were there other causes? Yes, of course. But there was an immediate and essential cause.

And this needs saying, because if you don’t know what broke the elephant you can’t put it together again. The party cannot re-find itself if it can’t trace back the moment at which it became lost. It cannot heal an illness whose origin is kept obscure.

She’s right.  The problem, though, is credibility.  When I see the main Republicans in the presidential race talk, I hear some of Dubya’s faux conservatism (in Huckabee) and McCain’s RINO-itis (global “warming” is real, we need open borders, etc.), and I cringe.  When I hear Romney and Rudy and talk about a return to fiscal conservatism, I think “You’re right, but good luck convincing people that twelve years of legislative rule, six of which with a Republican president, that yielded the doubling of the size of the federal government is just going to magically go away overnight.”  The GOP just isn’t as convincing with that message as it used to be.

Unlike Noonan, though, I wouldn’t say that the damage is irreversible…but it’s not over yet, either.

From Hot Air:

This is why people like Rush Limbaugh say that Mike Huckabee is no conservative, and they’re right to say it.

His aides are wary of New Hampshire. “It’s all no tax, no government there,” said Bob Wickers, a top strategist. “It’s not ideal.” But they believe that the message of economic anxiety that he preaches will help in Michigan’s primary on Jan. 15 and in states in the South, which have high poverty rates in addition to strong groups of social conservatives.

“It’s all no tax, no government there”…said as if it’s a bad thing (”not ideal”), by an adviser to the current Republican front-runner. “No tax, no government” is the Republican ideal, or at least it used to be. 

Yes, it did used to be, and in my humble opinion, it is the wild deviation from that ideal that contributed greatly to the defeat of the GOP in the 2006 midterms.  So Huckabilly’s solution?  More of the “borrow and spend” initiatives we’ve been treated to over the last eight years.  Friggin’ wonderful.

Welcome home, guys!  From Politico:

Republicans may trail in the polls on virtually every issue, but conservative influence is surging in both chambers of Congress as the GOP tries to find its soul again.

It’s a risky strategy to tack to the right while Democrats have momentum in most polls, but Republicans clearly believe that they need to recapture their base before they recapture the majority. 

A “risky strategy”?  What are they supposed to do, tilt to the left and be “Democrat lite”?  Or maybe it’s “risky” to try and be different from that Congress that’s…um…currently polling around an 11% approval rating?

Personally, I think it’s too little too late.  But I suppose it’s also “better late than never”, right?  At any rate, had they stuck to their fiscal conservative guns when they ran the show, perhaps things would be different.  But they didn’t, and I for one have a hard time taking them seriously these days on matters of fiscal responsibility.  Not that their ideological counterparts will be any better, of course.