Regardless of how you view Newt Gingrich, this is an excellent article detailing the plight of the conservative movement and of the Republican party.

Conservative elected officials increasingly find themselves caught between two impulses: the revolutionary ideas that brought them into power and the need to explain and defend the institutions they inherited. And the longer these good men and women stay in office, the more likely they will be to defend the very bureaucracies and policies against which they once campaigned. The goal to transform government will be gradually overwhelmed by contentment with merely presiding over it.

So in 2005, in the wake of another in a string of electoral victories, the conservative movement faces a choice:

Is conservatism a grassroots movement dedicated to the transformation of government into an institution capable of meeting the challenges of the 21st century within the values of smaller government, lower taxes, stronger national security, greater individual freedom and strengthening American civilization as a unique “Creator endowed” system of human liberty?

Or, is conservatism a national and state capital-focused system of defending whatever compromise with the old order of liberal, big government is required in order to keep people we support in office?
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If anybody thinks that the fight over the Bolton nomination has anything to do with management style, I’ve got some sunny real estate outside of Pensacola for you. Over and above the fact that Bolton has had the temerity to criticize the United Nations, the god of the modernist “progressive” socialists that control the Democrat party, I think I know what really has them pissed off.

Sen. Joe Biden (Headcase-DE), realizing that he’s never going to be elected President, wants to secure as his legacy the establishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba. Bolton, as a man who speaks truth to power, has stood in his way. The Democrats, and the American/Global Left in general have long had a love affair with Castro and attached a romantic mystique to the Cuban revolution. This makes them bastards. Castro, among the richest heads of state in the world, has oppressed everyone, even Democrat client groups. As Stalin said, eggs need to be broken….

Anyway, apparently the Cuban government has turned a new leaf on free speech, meaning I doubt they charged Elian Gonzales any money to make this one. I especially like the way the press uses obviously canned responses from audience members, such as the girl expressing her joy that Elian “has the privelege of living in a socialist country.” Well, it breaks my heart personally that sell-out Americans prevented him from getting to live in a free one.

Islamicists have won big in the presumedly democratic elections in Saudi Arabia.