The "Crunchy Con" Conservative Rod Dreher for Webb

By: PM
Published On: 11/2/2006 9:52:15 PM

Rod Dreher is a former senior editor at the National Review.  He is now an editor at the Dallas Morning News.  His big work is about Crunchy Cons, conservatives who value religion and family over big business:  "Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, Gun-loving Organic Gardeners, Evangelical Free-range Farmers, Hip Homeschooling Mamas, Right-wing Nature Lovers, and Their Diverse Tribe of Countercultural Conservatives Plan to Save America (or at Least the Republican Party)"

In his blog, he writes in support of Webb in a powerful (and funny) way, quoting another fellow conservative, Radley Balko along the way.
http://www.beliefnet...

Friday, October 27, 2006
The bottom
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Now comes Allen with what I guess counts as an "October Surprise": highlighting passages from one of opponent Jim Webb's novels in which child molestation is depicted. This despicable demagoguery from Allen is pure, uncut boob bait. I agree with Ross that Radley Balko has the definitive take on the matter, which is excerpted here:
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Let's summarize: While George Allen was discovering his love for the Confederacy in Southern California and at the University of Virginia, Jim Webb was fighting the war in Vietnam, finding himself wholly immersed in a completely foreign culture. Webb was obviously rather profoundly affected by that experience. Because he chose to write about it, in a series of books that have won widespread praise from politicians, from fellow Vietnam vets, and from literary critics.

But war-loving, flag-waving George Allen has decided to hold all of that against Jim Webb. Tonight, Allen took what was clearly a scene-painting, cultural passage from one of those books, grotesquely took it out of context and sexualized it, then slapped it on a press release in an attempt to cheapen Webb's well-received books as cheap porn with hints of pedophelia.

This isn't just a political attack. It's an attack on art. On writing. On expression. Hell, it's an attack on knowledge and learning. It's cheap and tawdry and cynical.

Perhaps if George Allen hadn't himself procured a student deferment from the Vietnam War, he'd be more familiar with the country's culture, and wouldn't bastardize the work of a man who did fight, and who saw to share his experiences with the rest of us -- Allen and his campaign of course announcing and advertising their own willfull stupidity in the process.
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I hope Jim Webb beats this clabberhead like a drum.

Boom.

Comments



Crunchy Cons (railfanbob - 11/3/2006 7:17:31 AM)
Now this is an interesting group that I've never seen mentioned by any pundits as a voter bloc before.  I'm not familiar with this book.  But I noticed years ago that they exist -- they're particularly strong in Utah among Latter-day Saints (Mormons), and in northern California and the Pacific Northwest where the back to the land movement had "hippies" from the left mingling with "survivalists" from the right and with working class logging families who had been living that lifestyle for generations.  But they're pretty much to be found in any rural state, including Virginia.  Pick up an issue of "Backwoods Home Magazine" at the newsstand sometime.

I don't know how big this voting bloc is or whether it's as significant as the much-ballyhooed "NASCAR dads" and "safety moms".

If the pundits have noticed them at all they were either lumped in with the religious right, or with the Perot-Reform Party voters.  I would make the case that their natural home is in the Democratic Party.  Given the right candidates they do vote Democratic - reference Collin Peterson in northwestern Minnesota and Jim Matheson in Utah.  Both of them are Blue Dog Democrats who lean socially conservative and have A ratings (and endorsements) from the NRA, but they also have a strong populist streak on economic issues and some libertarian tendencies.  Their districts are very conservatiove, yet they keep getting re-elected by wider margins every year. 

What's notable about the crop of Democratic candidates this year is we have a whole boatload of 'em who fit the bill:  Jim Webb, Harold Ford, Jon Tester, Bob Casey, Jack Davis (NY-26), Heath Shuler (NC-11), and the list goes on.  And on.