"Gee — with these guys on board"

Where do the pajamatarians dig up these vest-pocket gurus of theirs?

No, I take it back: clearly there can be no need to go dig for a Neocomrade C. E. Clayton when there are so many examples of him scattered across the landscape that can be picked up without any need for dynamite or pick-ax. Without any heavy liftin’, even, since Claytonite, the political mineral, corresponds to the pumice [1] of geologists.

Alternatively, think of Neocomrade C. E. Clayton as one of those "first four hundred names in the Boston telephone directory" that Buckley Minor yearned to be governed by. No need to dig for them when the Neanderthal Administration needs to be staffed, the numbers are right there in the book!

His late Excellency's little flower of pseudopopulist rhetoric is not often pressed into the service of Party ’n’ Ideology except by mere quotation, but anybody wishin’ to extract a whole sermonette from that text might do worse than to point out with what praeternatural prudence and wisdom WJB2 excluded all Bostonians with unlisted numbers. They would, of course, prove to be icky and snotty élitists in almost every single case.

So one might think of Neocomrade C. E. Clayton as Boston Dingaling #318 at the time when His late Excellency made the little funny. Our holy Homeland™ bein’ the place where everybody runs away from home, not just to get here the first time but again and again ever after, what could better befit a Neocomrade C. E. Clayton than to be at present listed (presumably) in the telephone directory of Horseshoe Bend ID? [2] [3] Still, the buckleyism is far from fresh, so perhaps it was this neocomrade’s father or grandfather who used to be Dingaling #318 back at the Hub? And God knows best about Claytons!

Though much less fun than gossip, substance has claims to make also. Since McSnarkey gets to big-manage his own scribbles, though nothing else, it should come as no surprise that he takes what might be called a Buckley-’phonebook’s-eye of Neocomrade C. E. Clayton’s here scheme to bail out the Party of Goldwater and Atwater. In the absence of a consolidated national database -- which of course we dare not compile because to do so would be Psocialism! [4] -- public opinion polls are, I suppose, the next best thing. Anyway, the neocomrade leans on them pretty heavily.

Indeed, his whole screed is an attempted exegesis of poll numbers: "If you look only at labels, it appears that" X. "But when asked [the leadin’ question preferred by Neocomrade C. E. Clayton, fortunately] "an astonishing 75 percent of Americans believe" not-X.

So why do not three Homelanders™ in four rush to the polls as often as is permitted to exalt the horn of the militant extremist Republican Party? Perhaps the pajamatarian guru cherishes some secret-sector theory about why not, but if so, he is not exactly willin’ to festoon the Naked Public Square™ with it at this point in time.

But maybe that objection is a tad unfair and imbalanced, for Neocomrade C. E. Clayton is not chiefly engaged in tryin’ to help the Party of Grant and Hoover do better electorally in 2010 or 2012 or 2016, but in purgin’ it of its dross so that it becomes worthy to do better: "'Tis not in mortals to command success; / But we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it." [5]

Neocomrade C. E. Clayton expects the Party of Big Management to deserve success in future by cementin’ a solid "anti-choice" (his expression) coalition on the followin’ platform: "Gee — with these guys on board, we can’t stop all elective abortions, but we can work on trying to stop at least half of the hundreds of thousands of abortions each year." "These guys" were identified as "the '[abortion to be permitted under] certain circumstances' crowd."

Though not among the Big Management Party’s best and brightest by a long shot, Neocomrade C. E. Clayton is at any rate pretty representative of the BMP's "Political Christojudæan" subfaction. [6] And there really is a sort of low cunnin’ in the attempt to pretend that counterabortion is the whole of social / cultural / faith-crazed counterrevolution. No other single issue will unite even half so many folks with the single-issue type of mindset. (To attempt the Claytonian rhetoric: "No other single-issue club will require so big a tent for their Annual Jamboree.")

I trust other peanuts in the peanut gallery will have made the obvious point that this narrow neocomradely Club for Fœtuphilia falls a long distance short of bein’ a holy-Homelandic™ political party of any sort, let alone of bein’ effectively identical with America’s Otherparty in particular, the Party of J. Sidney McCain.

A bit less obvious is the failure of Neocomrade C. E. Clayton to acknowledge that "social conservatism" is not even the dominant subfaction inside the militant extremist GOP. It never has been dominant, it isn't now, and, should it ever become so, why, my name shall become Marie of Roumania!

Rather than whistlin’ past that inevitable graveyard of his hopes, Neocomrade C. E. Clayton prefers to tiptoe past it. If he doesn't mention who is actually in charge of the Party of Big Management, why, perhaps the inhabitants of Outer Pajamastán won't think of it independently.

And indeed, perhaps by and large they won't. The Party of Goldwater and Atwater is more like a split-level ‘ranchhome’ than like any sort of tent, and the Pajama People are clearly not in possession of keys to the Executive Penthouse, or call it "the Goldwater level." Located down with the garage and the rumpus room (and the Lee Atwater Memorial Kulturzentrum) are the Pajama People. They are permitted and even encouraged to vote for the Big Management Party, but when it comes to runnin’ it -- well, let us attempt to be serious, please, ladies and gentlemen! It takes a credentialled Big Manager to big-manage properly, and that is that. Period. Full stop. [7]

In sum, attemptin’ to ignore what ought to be obvious leaves Neocomrade C. E. Clayton lookin’ a little silly when viewed from off the reservation. One thinks of the tail declining to mention any connection with its dog.

Mais que sçay-je from militant extremist Republicans and "social conservatism"? It's not as if I mind them losin’ elections.

Happy days.

[1] The textbook definition needs minimal adjustment: "A solidified frothy lava typically created when super-heated, highly pressurized [factionalism] is violently ejected from [Wingnut City]."

[2] All sorts of spoof fodder in that toponym! Where to begin? Can there exist a real place so predestined for allegory and polemic? So obviously designed by a Supervenient I.Q. to facilitate Mr. McSnarkey's jokes against Buckley Minor? "At HB-ID, there were only 317 names in the whole book before the Clayton clan moved in." "A poll conducted at HB-ID has revealed that 114.73% of the natives and locals believe that the only True Freedom™ is freedom to win the lottery." "What profession more quintessentially GOP than to be a bender of horseshoes?" "Where better to decry "identity politics" from than ID?" &c. &c.

But of course you'll be wanting to make up your own. I beg your pardon.

[3] Dr. Bones, McSnarkey's straight man, has dispatched the pet google to dig up the followin’ bare factual bones:

"Horseshoe Bend Idaho...Gateway to the World Famous Payette River

"Horseshoe Bend, Idaho is situated on a bend on the Scenic Payette River. Our small but growing community offers an up-to-date Library, Senior Center, Pre-School through 12 Grade school system, Community Health Clinic, Volunteer EMT's and Fire Department, serving both the city and the surrounding rural development. Four Churches, 770 population with an elevation of 2614, Horseshoe Bend experiences blue skies and fresh air year round."

Plus, till now, at least, an absence of discouragin’ words.

One of those gifts that never stops givin’ is HB-ID! Not only does that parochial stronghold of AEIdeology, the Chamber of Commerce, lead the googlehit parade, there is a "PAYette River" available for both Casino-of-Human-Events jokes and Party-of-Grant jokes: BINGO!!

[4] It would also (seem to) be in flagrant violation of Holy Writ:

"A difficulty arises in the story, however. What was it that David actually did wrong in commissioning the census? As was the case with the desire to build the Temple, we do not really find out in the Samuel narratives what it was God thought precluded the possibility of David building the temple. In I Kings, we find out part of the reason, and in I Chronicles, we find out the rest of it. Here, all we are told is "and again the anger of the LORD burned against Israel and He ... incited David against them to say, 'Go number Israel and Judah' (2 Sam. 24:1). Okay. Why was God angry? How does this square with the account in I Chronicles?" &c. &c.

Vreeland, G. D., The Darker Side of Samuel, Saul and David: Narrative Artistry and the Depiction of Flawed Leadership (Volume 2: Second Samuel), Xulon[sic] :2008, p. 290 of the googleswipe.

[5] Palæocomrade Sempronius is a little less unsatisfactory for us liberals and democrats and Demoncrats. After Palæocomrade Cato has delivered the famous tirade and stalked off, Sempy says "Curse on the stripling! how he apes his sire! / Ambitiously sententious!"

That is pretty much the present keyboard’s estimate of the señoritoly element at Wingnut City, assuming certain fairly obvious mutantis mutandis related to the quality of the respective sires.

[6] That's only my private-sectorian neocliché for the Baní Clayton, obviously. The drive-by fiends usually say "the Christian Right" or "cultural conservatives." The señorito itself speaks of "social conservatism" in the second paragraph, though I am not sure that all the Political Christojudæan wingnutettes and wingnuts would care to label themselves exactly that.

Still, we all know who it is talkin’ about. If we didn't, we could not have any desire to read such a piece at all. The only important terminological issue is that nobody accept Neocomrade C. E. Clayton's tacit suggestion that the PCj crew might as well be called "anti-choicers" as anythin’ else. That won’t do at all, because neither Society nor Culture--nor even the former Christojudæanity itself--can be sanely reduced to merely the membership rolls of the Little Friends of the Fœtus Association.

[7] Well, perhaps not 100% full. There must be at least a few Atwateroids who could get themselves admitted to the H*rv*rd Victory School (or some inferior imitation) and earn an MBA degree and thus become capable of Big Management. Such self-improvement does not seem to happen very often, but it is not in principle impossible.

Come to think of it, was not Neocomrade 1LT G. W. Bush of the TX Air National Guard pretty much still an Atwateroid even after graduatin’ from Lord Mammon's very finest seminary? This example proves, I think, that an Atwateroid can get into HVS, though of course in most cases there would be little point in that unless one came out different. (Master Dubya belonged, of course, to the hereditarily rich, who are indeed different from Mr. Fitzgerald and thee and me.)