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It’s time for Kathleen Parker to retire

A home deep in the woods without Internet connectivity would be ideal

I can endure a lot. And with Kathleen Parker, I have. The Left’s pet quasi-Republican is at it again. Her criticisms of Sarah Palin during the campaign were bad enough. But now she joins the chorus of those aching to throw social conservatives under the bus. Oh, but it’s not just socons – it’s Christian socons in particular.

Her latest screed is particularly offensive. It is mocking, rude, and insulting:

As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit.

Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D.

I’m bathing in holy water as I type.

To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn’t soon cometh.

News flash, Kathleen: social conservative causes that are important to Christans were hardly in the forefront during this election.


Oh, here’s another one:

Which is to say, the GOP has surrendered its high ground to its lowest brows.

“Lowest brows,” eh. Excuse me, but who is your audience? DKos?

And (no surprise) Parker again hatchets Sarah Palin.

Let’s do pray that God shows Alaska’s governor the door.

One of my columnist favorites, Jonah Goldberg, calls out Parker on her antics. In NRO’s The Corner, Goldberg writes:

I don’t know what’s more grating, the quasi-bigotry that has you calling religious Christians low brows, gorillas and oogedy-boogedy types or the bravery-on-the-cheap as you salute — in that winsome way — your own courage for saying what (according to you) needs to be said. Please stop bragging about how courageous you are for weathering a storm of nasty email you invite on yourself by dancing to a liberal tune. You aren’t special for getting nasty email, from the right or the left. You aren’t a martyr smoking your last cigarette. You’re just another columnist, talented and charming to be sure, but just another columnist. You are not Joan of the Op-Ed Page. Perhaps the typical Washington Post reader (or editor) doesn’t understand that. But you should, and most conservatives familiar with these issues can see through what you’re doing.

What he said.

It’s time for Ms. Parker to disappear from any publications (e.g. Townhall) that make claims to represent conservatives and Republicans. She is not the kind who should be representing us to the world. Perhaps HuffPo is looking for writers.

COMMENTS

  • KBDay

    I can understand a writer who maybe doesn’t have enthusiasm for Palin, although it amazes me that an intelligent person doesn’t understand Palin’s appeal and abilities.

    But Parker really (in my opinion) is exploiting the Palin topic. How many times has she written the same thing?

    And what really gets me is how some of these so-called conservatives believe this party has to be dogmatic–I think we have more variety in the GOP intellectually than the Dems do.

    Parker is basically an elitist–most folks who live in her neck of the urban woods are, to be honest.

  • Joo

    Which means she’ll continue to be held up in the MSM as a “conservative” voice. She’s a conservative like I’m a blue-eyed blond.

  • Spiral

    McCain was at the top of the ticket. And McCain is not a favorate of the Social Conservatives.

    Doesn’t Kathleen Parker remember what McCain said about Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson during the 2000 primaries?

    The McCain defeat should be laid at the feet of those who want to deemphasize social issues, since McCain did not support the Federal Marriage Amendment and endorses federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

    I guess Kathleen Parker will think that the GOP is wholly owned by the Christian Right until it nominates someone from the Ayn Rand Institute.

  • towdogInCal

    I don’t really want to elaborate, because I’ll sound as bad as Kathleen, but there was a female writer over there who is now deceased, and seriously Ms. Parker should apply.

    She may speak for the GOP as it sits today, the Hagel bench specifically, but how is it I’m a Conservative, and I don’t remember her at any meetings?

    We obviously don’t meet anywhere, on anything that I’ve read from her.

  • DrDougAZ

    Ms. Parker is a conservative like Lincoln Chafee, like Chuckie Hagel, like Lindsay Gramnesty, and for that matter, like John McCain. Is she in such a cocoon that she doesn’t know that all states that have the chance to vote on gay marraige bans pass it resoundingly, even bluer than bluer California? Does she not know that most people call themselves pro-life. Good grief. She is so clueless, I wonder if she reads anything other than the New Yuck times and other liberal bird cage liners. How clueless can you be to not realize McCain probably would have went close to 40% popular vote without Palin.

  • towdogInCal

    Lets call them what they are

  • ssshannon1026

    If it is now perfectly ok to be a radical leftist, but unacceptable to be a christian, if we are to join the effort to disenfranchise Americans due to their religious beliefs, we are spitting on the long history of American society. We are spitting not just on Sarah Palin, we are spitting on our parents, our grandparents and all the generations that came before them.

    What is the point of ever winning another election if that victory is predicated upon the idea that our nation has always been some kind of vile christian theocracy?

    The only threat from religion is due precisely to the power that Americans are allowing to become concentrated in Washington DC. Yes, it would be really bad if a group of fundamentalist ever got complete control of that power. Almost as bad, in fact, as if such power ever fell into the hands of radical collectivists – like now for example. We conservatives stand opposed to there being such concentrated power made available to any such group of people, and we should continue to happily embrace christians in that effort.

  • havermeyer

    I think giving her space on townhall or anywhere else she writes that is conservative outlet is loopy. Let her write in newspapers and do whatever else, but don’t give her credibility by letting her write for conservative outlets.

    I remember reading about the hate mail she gets and how she’s such an original thinker and martyr. I thought most of the “disagreement” mail was about right. It kinda saved having people having to post after the article except to say they concur with the dissenting opinion. Maybe that was her goal.

  • BigGator5

    Kathleen Parker is so wrong. Conservatives and Moderates need each other. When will both sides understand that simple fact?

  • azaeroprof

    This whole situation reminds me of terrorism during the Clinton years. The MSM, including pseudo-conservatives like Parker, have been waging an undeclared war against conservatives that went full-scale global this election cycle. It’s time we realized that we are at war and start fighting back.

    Perhaps some who have a background in journalism can suggest some better ways to do this. But in the meantime, any conservative pol or pundit should refuse to allow interviews with offending media outlets and/or reporters, we should stop buying or visiting the websites of these publications or reporters, etc. Maybe start a list of sponsors of MSNBC, WaPo, NYT, etc so we can either write to them or avoid them.

    Can’t win a war when you’re on the side that’s not fighting!

  • mbecker908

    The problem, however, is that moderates don’t win national elections because nobody can figure out what they stand for.

    GWB is an anomaly, in that people really voted against both AlGore and John Kerry in ’00 and ’04. Other than that moderates consistently get their butts – rightfully – kicked. See: J. McCain, R. Dole, GHW Bush, G. Ford. There is one consistent theme with our moderate candidates over the last 40 years (other than the fact that they are losers), and that’s that they basically don’t stand for anything beyond a bunch of fuzzy, feel good crap.

    We should have been able to nominate a conservative this time out, but they all left their brains in jar when came to putting together a campaign in the primary. McCain’s campaign was not much better, but because of his money problems early on everybody ignored him.

    I’m OK with moderates in the Senate and House, although the leadership needs to exercise some discipline. Someone like Specter should never have been allowed to ascend to the Chair of the Judiciary Committee. He and his moderate buddies cost us dozens of very well qualified judges.

  • Mike_Dugas

    Her email if you like:kparker@kparker.com

    Ms. Parker,
    I’m sorry but you couldn’t be more wrong about God and the GOP. Social Conservative issues were NOT at the forefront
    of this election. This election went the wrong way for a party for a variety of reasons but God wasn’t one of them. Reasons like we had a squish for a nominee who is a horrible communicator and who is best known for being a POW and going against his party.
    That was not a prescription for success. And you are also wrong about Palin. That woman energized a large portion of the party
    that wasn’t enthused by McCain, to the point that I was seeing Palin/McCain stickers. She was out drawing McCain and at times Obama at certain venues. This country elected an empty suited socialist first term Junior Senator from Illinois who spent 60+% of that first term running for president. The main reason he was elected was because the Democrat Party, hand in hand with the media, was able to control the content and direction of pretty much all information about this election. They were able to block
    any and all negative investigations and stories about their “selection” while painting he opposition in the most negative light possible
    over and over and over again. And because McCain is such a squish he didn’t fight fire with fire. Given the medias stranglehold
    on information broad casted I don’t even know if he had fought fire with fire would it have made it to the airwaves.
    This had nothing to do with the party’s belief in God…not this time. I’d say it had more to do with fear and ignorance. I would hope that you, claiming to be a Republican, wouldn’t allow yourself to become a tool for their propaganda.

                                                Sincerely,
    
                                                     Michael Dugas
    
  • GreyBeard

    She's a rinocrat

    She’s clearly a Rinocrat and absolutely a fraud. The left and the Democratic party would love to see social conservatives alienated as Parker advocates by the a Rino lead GOP. We can not allow that to happen.

    Ms. Parker’s self righteous attack on religious members of the Republican party and the conservative base is sad and likely is rooted in the backlash that she has received for attacking Governor Palin.

    Goldberg nails it!

  • wolfgang

    After the Republican loss of the House and Senate, then the White House, she probably feels that in order to earn her daily bread, so to speak, from hereon out, she needs to curry favor with the transvestites, the gender change advocates and the other perverts that delight in parading around in various states of undress or engaged in licentious activities who inhabitat the areas around Fisherman’s wharf and other nearby environs that give Nancy Pelosi’s home district the potent stench of Soddom and Gommorrah as well as impending fire and brimstone.

  • tsil

    Did anybody even read on a regular basis her before this series of childish outbursts? I had read a handful of her columns, but it’s not like she was ever at the top of the list. Well, she’s on the list for the cocktail parties. Perhaps she can help Chuckie Hagel write his memoirs of his overlong stay in the Senate.

    I am looking forward the rest of my political-watching life to never listening to a squishy moderate again.

  • JLenardDetroit

    depends on the definition of “Moderate?”

    We do need people with “Open minds,” so to speak, but as the saying goes – not so open minded their brains (or in this case any principles and/or morals) have fallen out!”

    I’ve got NO problems with 60% Republicans. Most the RINOs we get all bent about, rightfully so IMO, are more like 10%. Do they ever read the Platform?!?! The Party needs to start Publicly denouncing and tossing some of these clowns. If a persons voting record doesn’t match with 50% of the Platform, they should have to call themselves DEMOCRATS or INDEPENDENTS – strip them of their (R).

    ATTENTION MODERATES… All the GIVE AND TAKE that seems to be demanded of the Republican Party (and this BS BI-Partisanship, which has all been a one-way street) gets us nothing but a Nation that is still heading further into Socialism/Communism. I’ll agree with you that we don’t have to rip apart everything, but for God’s sake we gotta STOP it’s progress (very purposeful word there, of course – Progressives = Socialists) and then we can argue on the degree to which we scale it back.

    People need to go dust off their Constitution (if they’ve ever seen a copy) and refresh their memory. If you think it is that “Living Document” crap, you don’t belong in the Republican Party. You can disagree with things, but you have to at least believe the ONLY way to change it is through the Constitutional AMENDMENT process and not the Progressive Courts Activism.

  • BigGator5

    I completely agree.

    The problem is that there is a vacuum in conservative leadership. You guys need to fill that hole or moderates will step up and fill it for you. The choice is yours.

  • bs

    you need to read this essay from our own Hunter Baker. Excellent.

  • mbecker908

    They just move into the corner office and impress their friends with the view.

    The problem, quite simply, is that moderates simply stand for nothing but getting along with the Democrats in power.

    And you’re absolutely right about conservatives stepping up and taking the reigns. It will be an interesting four years as see if anyone actually does that.

  • smagar

    Before she bravely took off after Sarah Palin, I don’t recall seeing too much of Parker’s work in print…well, anywhere.

    She was, as tsil described her, a “back bencher” of the chattering class.

    Well, take a look at her WaPo archive now.

    It seems that, since Parker first alerted the world to the dangers of the she-ape Sarah Palin (turn SNARK switch to “off” position), she’s gotten a lot more exposure in the Washington Post.

    Apparently Kathleen has figured out what WaPo readers and editors like to see.

    May she enjoy her new home.

  • Adjoran

    Parker being a particularly influential or widely read columnist at all, as observed by tsil above, until her tirades against Palin began.

    Even so, her new “following” is the sort of folk who will celebrate anyone who can be described – however loosely – as “conservative” who criticizes conservative candidates or ideas or endorses liberal ones. They will immediately turn upon their new-found celebrities the second they voice any opinion which does not conform with the foregoing criteria.

    This sad sideshow has been her “fifteen minutes of fame” promised by Andy Warhol. Parker will swiftly slide into an even deeper obscurity than that to which she is accustomed. I hope she enjoyed the ride, and is not too surprised when she finds she really has no audience, no home, and no friends.

  • alicelouise58

    Kathleen Parker and Peggy Noonan seem to be more jealous of Sarah Palin than anything else.

    Sometimes, I enjoyed their columns in the past. You have to realize, howerver, that they were the pet Conservative lawn jockeys for liberal publications; as well as token conservative guests at Manhattan cocktail parties.

    They never went too far off the Plantation. In 2000 Kathleen Parker approved the raid to get Elian Gonzalez back to Cuba. This is even when the Florida relatives were using accepted legal channels to keep him in the US. Peggy Noonan wrote approvingly of her Clinton White House tour in 1993.

    My advice to both of them: Peggy Noonan get back on the RFK bus and have an omelet with Dan Rather. Maybe, BO will invite you to meet his speechwriters. KP go to the HuffnPuff post. Arianna Huffington swithced sides, we don’t miss her. She still sounds bitter after all these years when she found out her ex-husband didn’t want to be in the White House. If Sarah Palin wins in 2012 you and Arianna can commiserate.

  • Loadmaster

    I sent this response to Ms. Parker after I read her WaPo article and I forward to Deborah Howell for her review.

    **You young lady don?t have a clue. You better hope this nation gets closer to GOD because that?s our biggest problem. Check the Zoby Poll on Obama?s voters?the MSM had a big hand in Obama?s election not the Christian right.

    On that final day for all of us?we?ll be reaching out to GOD. You better hope he hears Ms. Kathleen Parker. I?m not smiling as I type this or smoking a final cigarette.**

    Here’s my email to Ms. Howell.

    **This is my reply to Ms. Parker’s GOD and the GOP article. I wanted you to read it because it strikes to the heart of the problem the Post has. I think you should piggy back off of John Zoby latest MSM poll to better understand the problem you guys have. Ms. Parker article only confirms our belief that you guys have an agenda and it has nothing to do with FACTS.

  • PridianPontification

    I remember Parker, the former Style/Life section columnist for the Orlando Sentinel. Yes, writer of such thought provoking articles as “Death to the Worms” and “Safety a Big Concern in Family Violence.” Gee, ya think? Just a general rule here Miss Parker: if you constantly find yourself calling other people stupid…it ain’t a reflection on them. :)

  • Alberta

    In think the GOPs vision of humanism, that is, real, judeo-christian based humanism, has served us well in the past, and will continue to serve us well in the future.

    You see, Ms Parker, us god nuts have babies.

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