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Released yesterday:

(1) Smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill
(2) Market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run healthcare;
(3) Market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;
(4) Workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check
(5) Legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;
(6) Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;
(7) Containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat
(8) Retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;
(9)
Protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care
rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion;
and
(10) The right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership

Just a reminder. December 2006:

I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really
focused much on the war in Iraq. I heard on the news about the new
deployments, and while I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place; I want assurances
that we are doing all we can to keep our troops safe.

My italics. Today:

“I want our president and this administration to listen to the advisers
who they hired. McChrystal, for one, back in March, telling
the president, 'Here's what we're going to need there' and then ramping
up that advice lately, saying, 'Mr. President, here's what we need in
Afghanistan to win, to make sure that those terror cells don't grow, so
that those terrorists don't come back over to the homeland in America,
on our soil, and kill innocent Americans.'”

Remember when Glenn Beck accused President Obama of winning followers like a totalitarian demagogue, warned against the nefarious tendencies of community organizers, and was himself defended against critics by Jonah Goldberg, who called Beck "a libertarian populist?” Now the cable television host is touting a "radical," details-to-be-announced mass movement that promises to save the United States. Its name: "The Plan."

It includes a series of adult education seminars where citizens will be taught political activism, self-reliance, and the dread community organizing. The often tearful Fox News personality also promises a book that will include more specifics.

"We need to start thinking like the Chinese," Mr. Beck said at a recent rally. "I’m developing a 100 year plan for America."

The weird thing is: some aspects of the current tea-party movement appeal to me. Its deep concern with debt and spending is shared by the Dish and has been since its inception. And a conservative critique of unrestrained capitalism - especially the reckless speculation and banking sector in the past decade - is vital if we are to save capitalism from itself. But Beck is not Richard Posner or Bruce Bartlett or Charles Murray, whose ideas are worth taking seriously. As Charles Murray puts it:

"Beck uses tactics that include tiny snippets of film as proof of a
person’s worldview, guilt by association, insinuation, and occasionally
outright goofs like the fake quote. To put it another way,
I as a viewer have no way to judge whether Beck is right. I have to
trust that the snippets are not taken out of context, that the dubious
association between A and B actually has evidence to support it, and
that his numbers are accurate. It is impossible to have that trust."

No wonder Palin feels a kindred spirit. The two of them represent the degenerate expression of cliches that used to be ideas (and ideas worth retaining and adjusting to new circumstances). But the vessel for rethinking will not come from proud ignoramuses and populist Elmer Gantrys. It will not come from reiterating propaganda but from confronting unpleasant facts about conservatism's recent catastrophic failures and mistakes.

Um:

When she got off the bus, wearing her familiar uniform of black skirt, high heels and red blazer, she waved with one hand and held her son Trig, dressed in a striped green sweater, in the other. The group erupted in applause. She walked to a small platform in the middle of the crowd, said "Thank you so much for showing up," and handed Trig to an aide.

What is the point of carrying the baby to the platform and then handing him to an aide? Why not leave him on the bus with an aide? Is he just a prop?

Really? I don’t recall George Tiller’s killing—or Eric Rudolf’s before him—as having touched-off some kind of widespread social or intellectual attack on American Christianity. Indeed, the United States Conference of Bishops responded to the Tiller murder in a manner that, had it been used by CAIR, would have prompted cries of moral equivalence:

“Our bishops’ conference and all its members have repeatedly and publicly denounced all forms of violence in our society, including abortion as well as the misguided resort to violence by anyone opposed to abortion,” Cardinal Rigali said. “Such killing is the opposite of everything we stand for, and everything we want our culture to stand for: respect for the life of each and every human being from its beginning to its natural end. We pray for Dr. Tiller and his family.”

And, I dunno, it is what it is. After all, what are you really supposed to say about religion. After all, not only is the bishops’ statement kind of inadequate, but the central premise of Christian religion (the whole Jesus thing) is—according to me and to Jeff Goldberg too—totally false. Islam too! And yet at the same time we all need to coexist. And fortunately the vast majority of people professing every faith, along with the vast majority of those professing no faith, are rejecting violence and not killing people.

He forced the massive and truly crippling Medicare prescriptions drug benefit through the Congress, backed two hugely expensive wars, refused to raise any taxes, and presided over an unprecedented rise in domestic discretionary spending. He took a surplus and gave us back a recession and a trillion dollar deficit. He believed that the executive branch had total authority to ignore the laws on torture, and possessed war-powers within the United States with respect to American citizens captured without due process.

But he is now intent on restraining "runaway spending and government expansion."