“If you seek to be a perfect minority, you’ll remain a minority.”–Newt Gingrich

If we seek to be all things to all people, we’ll remain something worse: an imperfect minority with no credibility or hope of gaining any, doomed to the bayous of back-benchery and left to humor ourselves by mumbling dimly-remembered Reagan quotes to one another, such as “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States before sunsets were outlawed by decree of the Council of Global Warming Czars. Say, kids–throw another piano leg on that fire, would you? It’s cold in here!”

A beautiful mind, this Doc Zero:

This race is a microcosm of our strange politics, which have become like a speeding car with jammed door locks, cut brake lines, a dead steering wheel, and air vents that pump nitrous oxide. Everyone is dimly aware the country is heading for the edge of a cliff, but no one can muster the energy to search for alternatives.

The President took time away from his losing wars against Fox News, the Taliban, and economic reality to endorse the Democrat, who would doubtless prove a useful ally in the only war Obama is winning: the war on the American middle class. [...]

At least Obama would have been doing something interesting and unpredictable by endorsing Scozzafava. She clearly shares his views on the use of state power to suppress annoying journalists. Instead, he flew into the district to cough up some more empty rhetoric nobody will remember tomorrow, on behalf of a candidate no one cares about, but who stands a good chance of winning by default.

The other story, playing out in the background, is the second act of one political saga beginning, even as another draws to a close. The rising star of Sarah Palin passes over the melancholy ruins of Newt Gingrich, who spent the last of his credibility endorsing Scozzafava. The Republican Party of Gingrich dies, unloved and irrelevant. Something else is replacing it. [...]

He accomplished some amazing things, in the mid-90s. He’s a smart man who has offered some interesting ideas, in his second life as a conservative intellectual. The problem is that Newt is a political tactician, and in the final stages of a losing war against collectivist ruin, the time has come to focus on grand strategy, rather than tactics. The second decade of this century will be an existential war for the American soul, not a police action.

He spent far too much of his time as Speaker of the House shouting in vain for media referees to throw penalty flags that remained stuffed in their pockets. Meanwhile, the political battlefront has shifted into the fatal terrain of essential liberties and economic freedom. This is the time for courage, conviction, and bold action… not whining about “big tents,” while pushing a product of the Pataki machine with a Margaret Sanger award dangling around her neck. A Republican party that embraces Scozzafava over Hoffman isn’t a “tent.” It’s not even a lean-to. [...]

If no one presents a coherent alternative to socialism, it wins by default, because too much of the political and media culture desires it. We’ve already tumbled far past the point where anyone views the Constitution as even a speed bump, let alone a barrier to socialist ambition. The principles embodied in that incredible document will perish, if they are not respected, explained, and defended.

A party that supports Scozzafava over Hoffman cannot mount that defense. They can’t run candidates to the left of the Democrats, then expect a spellbound audience when they explain why the Democrats are wrong. This is not a question of rigid idealism, or remaining a “perfect minority.” The voters, including the fabled “moderates,” need to be persuaded, not pandered to. Running a liberal squish in a largely conservative district will not cause moderate voters to squeal with excitement over the billowing expanse of the GOP’s enormous tent, and rush to see what other wonders might be hidden inside.

Read it all.